The world is a great book; he who never stirs from home reads only a page.
quote by Saint Augustine
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.
quote by Mickey Spillane
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Billet-Doux
She reads by the light of a guttering candle
and likes the feel of each page's gilt edge
as she lifts it slightly at the corner, readying
herself to turn it. If the wind whips
the sycamore branches outside her window,
if her nightgowned shoulders shudder once
from a sudden chill, so much the better,
and the book must tell of children toiling
for bread and pennies in a textile mill,
or tender brothers doomed to sharpen
their bayonets in opposing armies,
or a family of refugees, dust
in their mouths, gazing with longing at the far
shore of a river. And I long only
to be the author of that book she reads
whose page glows from the same dim
flame that illuminates her face,
the author whose thought she contemplates
as she touches a fingertip to a word
to mark her place and turns her head
toward the kettle that has begun to whistle.
poem by Chris Forhan
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Jeannies Diary
How does our world spin
Without me and her nest
Could there really be
Such happiness
Oh, shes got a dark side too
Even murderous
But I love that
Just like here
I dont have a change at writing the book
I just wanna be a page
In jeannies diary
One single page
In jeannies diary
Yes I am intense
Maybe quite obsessed
Everything she does is curious
Oh, shes going to let me in
I just know its so
Then again, who do I kid
I dont have a prayer at writing the book
I just wanna be a page
In jeannies diary
One single page
In jeannies diary
She could have anything she wants
So why not me
She could have anything she dreams
Oh, to be one single page
One single page
One single page in jeannies dairy
song performed by by Eels
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The End Of The Chapter
Ah, yes, the chapter ends to-day;
We even lay the book away;
But oh, how sweet the moments sped
Before the final page was read!
We tried to read between the lines
The Author's deep-concealed designs;
But scant reward such search secures;
You saw my heart and I saw yours.
The Master,--He who penned the page
And bade us read it,--He is sage:
And what he orders, you and I
Can but obey, nor question why.
We read together and forgot
The world about us. Time was not.
Unheeded and unfelt, it fled.
We read and hardly knew we read.
Until beneath a sadder sun,
We came to know the book was done.
Then, as our minds were but new lit,
It dawned upon us what was writ;
And we were startled. In our eyes,
Looked forth the light of great surprise.
Then as a deep-toned tocsin tolls,
A voice spoke forth: 'Behold your souls!'
I do, I do. I cannot look
Into your eyes: so close the book.
But brought it grief or brought it bliss,
No other page shall read like this!
poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Scribbles On A Page
Scribbles on a page…
scribbles on a page…
back of a yellow notebook
torn pages out
let me go home
God!
let me go home
Scribbles on a page…
scribbles on a page…
my little black writing pad
bent cover-spine
let me go home
God!
let me go home
(i think i need a break)
(i think i need to sleep)
poem by Michael Romero
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Just The Way It Is....
this morning i bring a book
under a tree
and i begin to read
every page
the sun comes up
the sun comes down
I've done my duty to keep the peace of this world
to try to understand what complications
mankind has made
i am simplifying what i can do to make this world
a place for us
page by page
word to word
cover to cover
tonight i will go back to my room
sleep on my bed
it will be cold and dark
just the way it is.....
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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Home Alone Happy Without Working Computer
Home alone happy without working computer
I take my pen in hand
And slowly write these words –
Let the world click and paste and post
I am out of it for now-
I have before me an evening of any book I like
Of any page I want to write
-
Peace of Mind is one place of attention at a time-
Here weighing each word as I write
I am at home with my inner self-
I hear my own thoughts
I correct them at my own pace.
So many words and so many pages
Have been written in my life-
Now in this one
I am wholly at home
Peaceful, quiet happy
Each word a small blessing
As I write it-
This is the only poem I know
The only page I see
The only place of attention
I give myself and my soul to
At this moment.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,
Wanted to lean, wanted much most to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom
The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.
The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.
And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself
Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.
poem by Wallace Stevens
Submitted by Dan Costinaş
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Listen, Learn, Read On
In ages past when spells were cast
In a time of men in steel
When a man was taught no special thing
It was all done by feel
So listen, so learn, so read on
You gotta turn the page, read the book of taliesyn
Hear the song of lovely joan
Her sound so sweet and clear
In the courtroom of the king
Among children and the peers
So listen, so learn, so read on
You gotta turn the page, read the book of taliesyn
now hear ye the words of taliesyn,
On the foaming beach of the ocean,
In the day of trouble,
I shall be of more service to thee
Than three hundred salmon...
The hare he bounds across the page
Past castles white and fair
Past dreaming chessmen on their boards
With a fools mate as a snare
So listen, so learn, so read on
You gotta turn the page, read the book of taliesyn
three times I have been born
I know this from meditation...
The bird he flies the distance
From pages two to six
Past minstrels in their boxes
To the waters of the styx
So listen, so learn, so read on
You gotta turn the page, read the book of taliesyn
Dont take the pictures lightly
Listen to their sound
For from their coloured feeling
Experience is found
So listen, so learn, so read on
You gotta turn the page, read the book of taliesyn
all the sciences of the world are collected in my breast,
For I know what has been, what is now,
And what hereafter will occur...
song performed by by Deep Purple
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Book
Before I drink myself to death,
God, let me finish up my Book!
At night, I fear, I fight for breath,
And wake up whiter than a spook;
And crawl off to a bistro near,
And drink until my brain is clear.
Rare Absinthe! Oh, it gives me strength
To write and write; and so I spend
Day after day, until at length
With joy and pain I'll write The End:
Then let this carcase rot; I give
The world my Book -- my Book will live.
For every line is tense with truth,
There's hope and joy on every page;
A cheer, a clarion call to Youth,
A hymn, a comforter to Age:
All's there that I was meant to be,
My part divine, the God in me.
It's of my life the golden sum;
Ah! who that reads this Book of mine,
In stormy centuries to come,
Will dream I rooted with the swine?
Behold! I give mankind my best:
What does it matter, all the rest?
It's this that makes sublime my day;
It's this that makes me struggle on.
Oh, let them mock my mortal clay,
My spirit's deathless as the dawn;
Oh, let them shudder as they look . . .
I'll be immortal in my Book.
And so beside the sullen Seine
I fight with dogs for filthy food,
Yet know that from my sin and pain
Will soar serene a Something Good;
Exultantly from shame and wrong
A Right, a Glory and a Song.
poem by Robert William Service
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Lost In A Book
SHHH!
don't bother me
I'm lost in a book
mixed up with
the complicated plots
and outrageous characters
when i'm lost in a book
I don't have to think
about my life
I'll get stuck in
a fantasy world
and never
have to come back
home again
one book
after another
I read, read, read
different places
different people
a new world
I start fresh
each time
I open up a new book
when i'm lost in a book
I am safe
no one can hurt me
I'm happy
when I'm lost
in a book
poem by Annie Janine
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Seeking everything
Seeking everything
~
A life, a world so often sought
Without a picture of what it may be
A world, a phrase somewhere picked up
In a poem, a book or a song
To what it reads we all think different
And interpretation becomes the thought
The thought becomes the dream
A lavish fantasy so well looked upon
That we are all lost in what we seek
Blind to the ambition it brings
Blind to the fantasy of which it reads
We take each word by our own demands
Pluck them like flowers to the vase
That all we see is a thing of beauty
The first picture of a new world
Where the new life does await
And however it may or may not look
It remains but a thought and what we find
Is that which we seek to fulfil our lives
poem by Matthew Holloway
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Sleep Around
Do it like she like, do it like she like it {x4}
Chorus:
Do it like she like it
So your baby dont wanna sleep around
Give her what she want when she want
When it come 2 u, she down
Baby let me read her journal
Or should I say: she turned around and it was gone
The innuendo reads eternal
Or should I say: every other page Im on
When she come 2 cook your dinner
U can ask her if what I say is true
The secret will remain within her
But her shade of red will turn yours blue
Chorus
Maybe u recall last summer
When u saw her ridin in my car
A kiss or 2 later she was back in your bed
Smellin like a fallen star
Just because shes fine
U think she dont wine & dine with everyone u know
Oh, long as ure fooled, Im cool
She says she gonna put me in a video
U need 2...
Chorus
Oh yeah!
Sleep around, sleep around {x2}
Im the one who sent the herbs and a book on how 2 use them
Im the one who pointed out her fears and how 2 lose them
And if a difference love will make
This advice u oughta take
Baby let me read her journal
Or should I say: she turned around and it was gone
The innuendo reads eternal
Or should I say: every other page Im on
U need 2...
Do it like she like, do it like she like it (sleep around) {x3}
Do it like she like it, like it, like it...
Do it like she like it
So your baby dont wanna sleep around
Give her what she want when she want it
When it come 2 u, she down
Sleep around, sleep around
Do it like she like it
So your baby dont wanna sleep around
(Im watchin u, baby) (do it like she like it, do it)
Give her what she want when she want it
When it come 2 u, she down
(do it like she like)
Sleep around, sleep around
Do it like she like, do it like she like it {x4}
(sleep around) {x5}
Do it like she like {x5}
Do it like she like it
Do it like she like
Do it {x10}
Do it like she like it (sleep around)
song performed by by Prince
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Book Of Life
In the book of life
we learn a little
with each page we turn.
We learn a little tolerance
can go a long, long way
along with a little patience
will help us through the day.
In the book of life,
every page has something new
to give our life fulfilment
as each page we journey through.
18 September 2008
poem by David Harris
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To an Ungentle Critic
The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what’s the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look
For newer pictures in this book;
You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine.
A fresh wind fills the evening air
With horrid crying of night birds....
But what reads new or curious there
When cold winds fly across the air?
You’ll only frown; you’ll turn the page,
But find no glimpse of your “New Age
Of Poetry” in my worn-out words.
Must winds that cut like blades of steel
And sunsets swimming in Volnay,
The holiest, cruellest pains I feel,
Die stillborn, because old men squeal
For something new: “Write something new:
We’ve read this poem—that one too,
And twelve more like ’em yesterday”?
No, no! my chicken, I shall scrawl
Just what I fancy as I strike it,
Fairies and Fusiliers, and all
Old broken knock-kneed thought will crawl
Across my verse in the classic way.
And, sir, be careful what you say;
There are old-fashioned folk still like it.
poem by Robert Graves
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Life's Lesson Book
Life is a ponderous lesson-book, and Fate
The teacher. When I came to love's fair leaf
My teacher turned the page and bade me wait.
'Learn first,' she said, 'love's grief';
And o'er and o'er through many a long tomorrow
She kept me conning that sad page of sorrow.
Cruel the task; and yet it was not vain.
Now the great book of life I know by heart.
In that one lesson of love's loss and pain
Fate doth the whole impart.
For, by the depths of woe, the mind can measure
The beauteous unscaled summits of love's pleasure.
Now, with the book of life upon her knee,
Fate sits! the unread page of love's delight
By her firm hand is half concealed from me,
And half revealed to sight.
Ah Fate! be kind! so well I learned love's sorrow,
Give me its full delight to learn tomorrow.
poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Book Of Days
Your life is as a book
Written on the pages are the weeks
For you would give anything to take just one look
Into the next chapter, the next page
Each page is a new thought, a new dream
Sometimes it takes so long to pass that page
And sometimes nothing is as it seams
For you know you can not go ahead or back
You know you are where you are
You know you can't change that
As you read page to page, so near to fear
You write the chapters as you go, with each turn
Each turn, each move changes what's to come
And you know each moment could be the last
With this in mind you go so mumb
So numb to the touch, to the thought
You turn page after page
until you reach the 'end'
And only then, you are freed from the title
The title that has kept your thoughts bound, and tight
You turn the pages one by one
You take the pain, take the joy
Until you are done
And your story becomes another on the shelf of eternity
(1/24/2008)
poem by Bethany Maxwell
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The Fairy Book
In summer, when the grass is thick, if Mother has the time,
She shows me with her pencil how a poet makes a rhyme,
And often she is sweet enough to choose a leafy nook,
Where I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairy-book.
In winter when the corn's asleep, and birds are not in song.
And crocuses and violets have been away too long,
Dear Mother puts her thimble by in answer to my look,
And I cuddle up so closely when she reads the Fairy-book.
And Mother tells the servants that of course they must contrive
To manage all the househod things from four till half-past five,
For we really cannot suffer interruption from the cook,
When we cuddle close together with the happy Fairy-book.
poem by Norman Rowland Gale
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The Best Book In The World
the best book
in the world
the only true book
is the world itself
the Book of Nature
the best book is the silence
the wordless-ness in
the clouds and the sky
and the rivers and the oceans
and the lands
and the grass that breaks through the concrete;
and in the deserts and the volcanoes
and the stars
and the moon
and the creatures of the earth
and in all fellow beings
and the vastness beyond
and the vastness within
the best book
the only true book
(every other book is distortion)
is the world itself
the Book of Nature:
read it
poem by Raj Arumugam
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On A Young Poetess’s Grave
UNDER her gentle seeing,
In her delicate little hand,
They placed the Book of Being,
To read and understand.
The Book was mighty and olden,
Yea, worn and eaten with age;
Though the letters look’d great and golden,
She could not read a page.
The letters flutter’d before her,
And all look’d sweetly wild:
Death saw her, and bent o’er her,
As she pouted her lips and smil’d.
And weary a little with tracing
The Book, she look’d aside,
And lightly smiling, and placing
A Flower in its leaves, she died.
She died, but her sweetness fled not,
As fly the things of power,—
For the Book wherein she read not
Is the sweeter for the Flower.
poem by William Cosmo Monkhouse
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