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delrica
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6889 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 02:21 PM

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"December 2004 AOTM: O.P.P. Tribute (Other People's Poetry!!)"


  

          

Peace and love ya'll.

This month, we are going to try something a little different. Instead of picking someone from the boards as our artist of the month, we are going to pay a tribute to all writing by having an O.P.P. month (OPP = Other People's Poetry).

The rules are simple. Post a poem/short story/work of writing by an author that is NOT you. If it's from a website, please put a link so folks can check out the writer's other stuff. If it is a book, include the name of the book and obviously include the name of the author.

I would really like to see folks post non-OKPs (nothing personal, but we already know everyone's work here).

Why do it? Because there are a lot of us who read other people's work and it helps to read all forms of writing; you never know where you'll find inspiration.

So have at it folks! And Merry Xmas, Happy Chanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and whatever other religious seasons greetings there is.

----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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Topic Outline
Subject Author Message Date ID
RE: December 2004 AOTM: O.P.P. Tribute (Other People's Poetry!!)
Dec 01st 2004
1
By Aminu Mahmud @ Literatenubian.com
Dec 01st 2004
2
he didnt know you?...
Dec 01st 2004
6
      RE: he didnt know you?...
Dec 03rd 2004
32
           RE: he didnt know you?...
Dec 08th 2004
46
"We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar
Dec 01st 2004
3
A Motherfucker Too
Dec 01st 2004
4
b/c I dig Patricia Smith on a whole 'nuther level
Dec 01st 2004
5
      soul power...
Dec 01st 2004
7
      *pssssst*
Dec 02nd 2004
11
      On Gwendolyn Brooks
Dec 06th 2004
41
We Never Know
Dec 01st 2004
8
yes,
Dec 02nd 2004
14
CRITICAL CONDITION
Dec 01st 2004
9
A Mixed Message
Dec 02nd 2004
10
wow
Dec 02nd 2004
13
RE: A Mixed Message
Dec 02nd 2004
15
Song Lyrics (and their backstory): His Eye Is On The Sparrow
Dec 02nd 2004
12
Shakespeare's Sonnet 130-talk about keepin' real
Dec 02nd 2004
16
RE: Shakespeare's Sonnet 130-talk about keepin' real
Dec 02nd 2004
20
resting in peace
Dec 02nd 2004
17
Maya Angelou
Dec 02nd 2004
18
RE: Maya Angelou
Dec 02nd 2004
23
u know, ive never been a maya fan
Dec 02nd 2004
25
      RE: u know, ive never been a maya fan
Dec 04th 2004
35
      not many care for maya... i've always been kinda
Dec 05th 2004
38
      maya got me started on it (writing)
Dec 05th 2004
40
Langston Hughes
Dec 02nd 2004
19
when i pledged
Dec 05th 2004
39
gwendolyn brooks
Dec 02nd 2004
21
last one....maybe not
Dec 02nd 2004
22
      seamus heaney
Dec 02nd 2004
24
in the year i loved your mother
Dec 02nd 2004
26
Sylvia Plath.
Dec 02nd 2004
27
Daddy by Sylivia is the "bee's knees." nm
Dec 03rd 2004
28
Pablo Neruda
Dec 03rd 2004
29
they must not know what's up
Dec 08th 2004
51
~Muhummad Ali~
Dec 03rd 2004
30
nothing beats that...
Dec 03rd 2004
31
claude mckay baptism
Dec 03rd 2004
33
ive been reading all these to get inspired
Dec 03rd 2004
34
This is a poem for people (like me) who hate their jobs
Dec 04th 2004
36
Second Coming
Dec 04th 2004
37
You've probably read this before, but if not here it is(little long)
Dec 07th 2004
42
RE: You've probably read this before, but if not here it is(little long)
Dec 07th 2004
43
Sorry, my bad
Dec 08th 2004
45
this is rather brilliant...nm
Dec 09th 2004
54
Dec 07th 2004
44
I was going to post this... YES!!!! nm
Dec 08th 2004
49
emily dickinson
Dec 08th 2004
47
audre lorde
Dec 08th 2004
48
Ntozake Shange....
Dec 08th 2004
50
crack annie
Dec 09th 2004
53
she reminds me of someone..
Dec 10th 2004
55
      she gotta flare bout herself not many seem to
Dec 11th 2004
57
Alexander Pope
Dec 08th 2004
52
Honey, I Love --
Dec 11th 2004
56
One for Presyzion
Dec 12th 2004
58
i miss that muthafucker...
Dec 12th 2004
59
damn i miss him...
Dec 15th 2004
67
my two favorite poems by my single favorite author
Dec 13th 2004
60
i like my body when it is with your
Dec 13th 2004
61
      RE: i'd never read that one before...
Dec 16th 2004
72
carolyn rodgers
Dec 13th 2004
62
amiri baraka
Dec 13th 2004
63
RE: amiri baraka
Dec 13th 2004
64
Balboa, the Entertainer
Dec 15th 2004
65
Jean Toomer
Dec 15th 2004
66
portrait in georgia.
Jan 01st 2005
75
Lucille Clifton
Dec 16th 2004
68
miss rosie
Dec 16th 2004
69
Sylvia Plath- Insomniac
Dec 16th 2004
70
Carl Sandburg
Dec 16th 2004
71
Amiel Larrieux
Dec 29th 2004
73
the pretensions of poverty
Dec 30th 2004
74
RE: December 2004 AOTM: O.P.P. Tribute (Other People's Poetry!!)
Jan 04th 2005
76

PhotoSynthesis
Charter member
16101 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 03:08 PM

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1. "RE: December 2004 AOTM: O.P.P. Tribute (Other People's Poetry!!)"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Poet & Writer: Kahil Gibran

Book: The Prophet

Selection 1: Self-Knowledge

=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=;=

And a man said, "Speak to us of Self-Knowledge."

And he answered, saying:

Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.

But your ears thirst for the sound of your heart's knowledge.

You would know in words that which you have always known in thought.

You would touch with your fingers the naked body of your dreams.

And it is well you should.

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.


~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~

Selection 2: On Joy & Sorrow


Then a woman said, "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.







A guitar string vibrating, a measure of my soul, a breech in the silence --
I've always felt like words come through me & I write them down... they have no master --- gsquared ♥

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/photosynthesis_music.htm

  

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Revolt
Member since Apr 06th 2004
3661 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 03:39 PM

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2. "By Aminu Mahmud @ Literatenubian.com"
In response to Reply # 0


          

I'm so narcissistic cuz he wrote this about me, but I don't even know him! I thought that was amazing that he could pick up something from my words to write about, so here it is...Hee hee...I think it's a though...

--------------------------------------------------------

*~Still Night (After Christine B., a kindred poetess)~*
By aminu mahmud


'The night is beautiful,
so the faces of my people.'
-Langston Hughes
From the remains of the day,
her glad eye drink of the
residue of night dreams.
In the full ripennes
of night,
nothing but her
portrait exist.
If we are smooth pebbles,
spiralling down the depths
of clear water,
we leave bubbles,
ripples to sparkle
the face of night's high moon.
But we are, indeed,
divers that explores
the heartsprings;
when we plummet down,
we also pop up to pluck
air and light.
Where she stand,
savouring the pluvial night,
the dog-nose wetness of the earth,
her washed wholeness,
dried off in the swoosh skirting
wind...
But it's still night, sista!
It's still night:
the mouse that scoured our cupboards,
mated in our absence,
and unknown to us,
spawned her offspring in the dark;

now, they evade the soft footfalls
of our watchful mousers.
But in the paradise fullness
of night, the portrait, that last,
is my sista's glowing face;
that plush wholeness,
washed by the pluvial night
and dried off by her heart's
scooshing sun...
mutatis mutandis.


(c) aminu mahmud
____________

Jamaican funk.

"The fact is, we live and breathe and move in the unknown all the time. The unknown is from this moment onwards—you're already living there"
© Deepak Chopra





Life is just a screwed up .


  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 07:17 PM

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6. "he didnt know you?..."
In response to Reply # 2


  

          


damn...

so it was your face that gave
him inspiration?

a picture?

i wanna see it...lol.




***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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Revolt
Member since Apr 06th 2004
3661 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 02:25 PM

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32. "RE: he didnt know you?..."
In response to Reply # 6


          

haha, no he didnt know me, and though he had seen a picture of me, it was based on the soul of my words that inspired him to write that, which still blows me away.

and if ya want a pic you gotta inbox maaaaan lol.
____________

Jamaican funk.

"The fact is, we live and breathe and move in the unknown all the time. The unknown is from this moment onwards—you're already living there"
© Deepak Chopra





Life is just a screwed up .


  

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delrica
Charter member
6889 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 10:05 AM

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46. "RE: he didnt know you?..."
In response to Reply # 32


  

          

or go to the archived phreestyle photo thread from last month...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RIP Simmon Teffera (1983-1/15/2003), you are always with us.

"Before I became a member of this group, I thought a Haiku was just a villian on the "Samauri Jack" cartoon." © Nowachaoticthing

"This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" by Delrica Andrews - Now on Sale
($6 including S & H) ... just email me or hit the inbox w/ your info (I do accept paypal payments)






----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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clarion
Member since Jul 07th 2003
9469 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 03:43 PM

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3. ""We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them see only us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!

..

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 05:24 PM

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4. "A Motherfucker Too"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

A Motherficker Too
by Patricia Smith

"...the whole band would just like have an
orgasm every time Bird or Diz would play
...Sarah Vaughan was there also, and she's
a motherfucker too."
- Miles Davis

Up to you to figure out which one of 'em
we talking about. Could be any of three,
lining the babes up like dominos,
swearing they just had the love to give,
and up on stage, passing it on,
flashing it shameless, struttin' it silly,
those blowings that coulda caught fire
if fire was what they wanted.
And two of them smack slapped,
and one of them born
with beep beep in his blood
and even with bebopping this heavy,
it was a mess before you know it.
Up to you to figure out
which one we talking about.
Arkansas road walking with church funky
pumping through branches and he stop
and he wail an all-night answer
the Lord don't want nothing to do with,
blue lines so funky they smelled bad.
irrational flyer, up there so much
Gabriel post a note saying
'No sidemen needed, damnit,
keep that horn in its cage.'
But he blow so tender. Up baby, Up,
mute like screaming through a
closed mouth. Up baby, Up,
and two of them smack slapped
and one lock himself away,
riding the back of the bitch.
Strapped down on daddy's farm,
banging the walls and
shit! how many ways is blue?
Came out kicking, came out crazy,
and wanted nothing else but
a hungry woman after jamming.
The three of them,
Dark appetites in triple,
and one stoked it out,
one exploded,
one just got old.
The thing to remember
is the collision of Miles, Bird, and Dizzy,
all of them lost behind Miss V,
three motherfuckers in awe of another.





  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 05:35 PM

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5. "b/c I dig Patricia Smith on a whole 'nuther level"
In response to Reply # 4
Wed Dec-01-04 05:36 PM

  

          

here's another one:

Asking For a Heart Attack
By Patricia Smith

Aretha.
Deep butter dipt, burnt pot liquor, twisted sugar cane,
vaselined knock knees clacking extraordinary gospel.
hustling toward the promised land in 4/4 time, Aretha.
Greased and glowing awash in limelight, satisfied moan
'neath the spotlight, turning ample ass toward midnight,
she the it's-all-good goddess of warm cornbread
and bumped buttermilk, know jesus by his first name.
carried his gospel low and democratic in rollicking brownships,
sang his drooping corpse down from that ragged wooden T,
dressed him up in something shiny, conked that holy head of hair,
then Aretha rustled up bus fare and took the deity downtown.
They coaxed the DJ and slid electric until the lights slammed on.
she taught him dirty nicknames for his father's handiwork.
She was young then, thin and aching, her heartbox shut tight.
So Jesus blessed her, He opened her throat and taught her
to wail that way she do, she do wail that way don't she
do that wail the way she do wail that way, don't she?
Now every time 'retha unreel that screech, sang Delta
cut through hurting glimpse been-done-wrong bone,
a born-again brother called the Holy Ghost creeps through that.
and that, for all you still lookin', is religion.

Dare you question her several shoulders,
the soft stairsteps of flesh leading to her shaking chins,
the steel bones of a corseted frock eating into bubbling sides,
zipper track etched into skin,
all those faint scars, those lovesore battle wounds?
ain't your mama never told you
how black women collect the world,
build other bodies onto their own?
No earthly man knows the solution to our hips,
asses urgent as sirens,
titties familiar as everybody's mama
crisscrossed with pulled roads of blood.
Ask us why we pray with our dancin shoes on,
or why we grow fat away from everyone
and toward each other...





  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 07:21 PM

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7. "soul power..."
In response to Reply # 5


  

          


damn y'all gon' make me write up in here!

***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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delrica
Charter member
6889 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 07:38 AM

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11. "*pssssst*"
In response to Reply # 7


  

          

That's the whole idea (to become inspired *wink*)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RIP Simmon Teffera (1983-1/15/2003), you are always with us.

"Before I became a member of this group, I thought a Haiku was just a villian on the "Samauri Jack" cartoon." © Nowachaoticthing

"This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" by Delrica Andrews - Now on Sale
($6 including S & H) ... just email me or hit the inbox w/ your info (I do accept paypal payments)






----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

Printer-friendly copy | Top

        
soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Mon Dec-06-04 05:46 PM

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41. "On Gwendolyn Brooks"
In response to Reply # 5


  

          

"You need to know Chicago if you're going to learn to miss her"
by Patricia Smither

According to my mother, the sage of
Aliceville, Alabama,
There are three things that really
piss the Lord off:
Lies told in the name of vanity,
which, once you ponder, all lies are.
A girl or woman, no matter how old
she is or claims to be,
wearing pants past the threshold of
a Baptist church.
And calling on Jesus when you don't
really need Him.
In her dimming eyes, the tip of this
latter sin
pokes heaven in its tender belly.
The Lawd too busy to be bothering with you chile,
with your little worries, that sudden raging blackhead
upside your nose, that lightskinned boy
who won't look twice at your dark and scrawny.
The Lord don't hear you when you will
that Monday morning run in your stocking not to be there,
when you wonder if you have married the wrong man,
when at 2:57 in what you assume is a kickass slam poem
you spot a dead face in the audience,
drifting away from your passion,
and you forget the other thousands of people,
you pray that just he, that one disconnected soul,
will suddenly be irreparably twisted by what you say.
In three seconds.
In two.
In one.

Here in this snaking cavern, where we peel away our
overload of skins to find what is shaking and bony beneath,
I confess to calling on Jesus quite recently, somewhat idly
but with a growing sense of bewilderment, daring Him to
appear before me and explain His latest move in a
mysterious way. Winter, with its sudden twists of ice and
circumstance, is gone now. It is time for warmth returning.
So why is Gwendolyn Brooks still dead?

To understand the question, you need to know Chicago.

You need to feel the slivers of ice in its breath, ride its wide
watery hips, you need to inhale a kielbasa smothered in
slippery gold onions while standing on a corner in a
neighborhood where no face mirrors your own. You need to
know the West Side, the hurting fields, the home of Q Ali,
the home of Regie Gibson, the chocolate city burned to its
bones in '68. You need to know how flap-jowled Mayor
Daley walled us in, forced us to build our own language and
our own castles crafted carefully of dirty dollar bills and free
cheese. Every colored girl on those streets had to be a poet,
or die. We all scanned the world with Gwen's huge and
hungry eyes.

You need to know Chicago if you're going to learn to miss
her. You need to know about The Alex, the only movie
theater on the West Side, where rats as big as toddlers
poked slow noses into your popcorn. We strutted pass
sawdust storefronts with brown meat crowding the
windows, where you could buy the head of a hog with no
questions asked. We walked pass service stations with
pump jockeys eyeing our new undulating asses, pass
fashion palaces where layaway kept us yearning for
glamour with its cheap threads already unraveling. You
need to come with me to the corner store where you could
buy 45s and vanilla-iced long johns and school supplies and
fat sour pickles that floated in a jar in the corner. And when
you asked for one Miss Caroline would plunge her hammy
forearm into the brine and pull out the exact pickle you
pointed to, plop it into a single-ply paper bag and if you
were truly West Side you'd shove a peppermint stick down
the middle of that pickle and slurp until the battle between
salt and sugar dizzied you. You gnawed candy dots off
columns of white paper, gobbled Lemonheads, sucked in
spaghetti licorice, pushed pink sweatsocks down on
Vaselined legs and put that last dime in the jukebox to hear
Fontella Bass or Ruby Andrews or whatever gospel WVON
was preaching.

And you constantly bumped into borders:
Don't go downtown where the stares will wither you,
don't go into Cicero where the white folks will spit on you,
stay right here where everything is comfortably brown,
where you can get your hair pressed until it lay
black and flat upside your head like ink,
where you can put on lace socks and stiff pinafore
and sit at the Walgreen's lunch counter with your mother
and have a veal cutlet in deep sluggish gravy and a
chocolate milkshake. Stay here, baby girl,
where normal looks like you,
where a sister in riotous headwrap
and thick beige stockings
pens your soundtrack cause she knows,
because she is skinny, and unsure,
and only has at her disposal
every single word
ever written.

I wonder if the shell of her is thin and papery while leftover
poetry rumbles wildly inside, bouncing off the walls of the
body that held her. I wonder where the words go, the ones
she didn't have time to use, the phrases left unturned, I
wonder if her final room was crowded with them, if the
mourners felt giddy and disturbed because there were so
many things around them begging to be said.

Gwendolyn Brooks, undisputed queen of the colored girl,
was buried in Chicago. She undoubtedly went to glory in
stockings that sagged, dressed as if dressing never
mattered, perhaps in a print with gazelles leaping and trees
swaying and her thin silver hair hidden beneath an African
gasp with the sound of her laughing beneath. Someone
probably commented on how small she suddenly looked
and, if there is a God, at least one person demanded that he
show Himself and explain this, His skewered timing, His
wacky choice of angels.




  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 07:42 PM

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8. "We Never Know"
In response to Reply # 0
Wed Dec-01-04 07:48 PM

  

          

Author: Yusef Komunyakaa
Title: We Never Know
Book: Dien Cai Dau


He danced with tall grass
for a moment, like he was swaying
with a woman. Our gun barrels
glowed white-hot.
When I got to him,
a blue halo
of flies had already claimed him.
I pulled the crumbed photograph
from his fingers.
There's no other way
to say this: I fell in love.
The morning cleared again,
except for a distant mortar
& somewhere choppers taking off.
I slid the wallet into his pocket
& turned him over, so he wouldn't be
kissing the ground.


***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 11:21 AM

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14. "yes,"
In response to Reply # 8


  

          

I love Yusef Komunyakaa's work.
pick up his book, everybody: Neon Vernacular





  

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Naanaa
Charter member
95 posts
Wed Dec-01-04 08:37 PM

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9. "CRITICAL CONDITION"
In response to Reply # 0


          


BY: Chavisa Woods


Of course
children must be saved
The starry eyes perpetually shot to heaven
Oceans gleaming behind the ear
Earth churning beneath fingernails
Everything to learn
Of course

Everyone compares America to a child
But what if
America is the grandfather
recently remarried
upgraded
from his dreary quilt stitching first wife
to a blousy young 2nd,
Debauching
gargantuan mountains
smooth plains
moist valleys

What if he still beats his dog when no one is looking
Too fragile to get out of the chair
rocking in the middle of a dim room
dusty books
lining expensive shelves
Murmuring about murderous conspiracies
sons and daughters plotting against him
“Gotta keep the money safe.”
“Can’t trust any body these days.”

The mean one,
The one you call
or go see
twice a year
even though
he threatened to cut off your ear
when you were eight
out of fear
respect
or need

What if America is your grandfather
writhing on the bed
wrecked with Alzheimer’s
coughing up bile
cursing his brother’s mispronounced name

What then
do you do
with the plug?

http://www.myspace.com/n_a_a

  

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paperdollpoet
Charter member
2238 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 05:44 AM

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10. "A Mixed Message"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

by Tara Betts
http://voices.e-poets.net/BettsT/home.html


What makes me so damned tragic?
not a fragmented exotic mystery
jezebel born from the blood of rape
nor child of the so called integration experiment


I heard folks tell my momma
How can parents put children through that
It makes life so much harder,


I have seen my mind
build bridges within blood
my biology connects with ovaries & melanin
with no capital to spare


I explode from Nella Larsen novels
yet somehow, I am invisible woman
descendant of Invisible Man
niece of an Ex-Colored Man
I balance proud weight & independent discipline
on scales of identity
swinging precarious images of Pinky & Pecola
Decades before my birth


when certificates denied
evident possibility
plain as brown freckles
across my face
when some enjoyed the milk
but avoided sunlight honey
so no secrets would break
into shards of life on racial concrete
where I stand whole/deconstructing
past nicknames
like zebra, mutt or half-n-half
while remembering my father
held me through 11-year-old
tears calling me by name
calling me beautiful


Now, some say
must be Black
could be white
maybe she's pinay
Add Mexican to the list
Puerto Rican
tan white girl
Are you from the South?
Or the best one yet
Are you Egyptian?
At least when I wandered
a continent where textbooks concealed
land anchoring the Sphinx


I rekindle links as I touch
brown hands with palms
the same shade as mine
I find myself within
amalgamation improvisation
within Black
contradicting the bubbling brew of
unidentifiable, indecipherable
ethnic glamor girls
What was she anyway?


No Concubine mistress
nor color caste breeding
rippin paper bag tests into confetti
Ready to dissolve with steam rising
from a glass of other


I defy categories
fill in all the gaps
where miscegenation laws
blotted my birth


My voice smatters blood in the face
of Aryan Nations
I am what they feared
Never passed in the world
but passed salves over broken flesh
reclaiming nationhood I lost generations ago
retracing veins from history's corpse
resounding with speech
extending beyond
now


- Tara Betts, copyright November 1999


---



www.sheflypaper.com

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 11:03 AM

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13. "wow"
In response to Reply # 10


  

          

i just read this poem the other day...




  

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delrica
Charter member
6889 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 11:49 AM

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15. "RE: A Mixed Message"
In response to Reply # 10


  

          

by far one of my favorite poets.

----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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delrica
Charter member
6889 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 08:00 AM

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12. "Song Lyrics (and their backstory): His Eye Is On The Sparrow"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

This song is by far one of my favorite pieces of writing as well as music.

backstory and lyrics taken from: http://members.tripod.com/~Synergy_2/lyrics/sparrow.html

His Eye Is On The Sparrow - written by Civilla D. Martin, 1905

Why should I feel discouraged, why should the shadows come,
Why should my heart be lonely, and long for heaven and home,
When Jesus is my portion? My constant friend is He:
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

"Let not your heart be troubled," His tender word I hear,
And resting on His goodness, I lose my doubts and fears;
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

Whenever I am tempted, whenever clouds arise,
When songs give place to sighing, when hope within me dies,
I draw the closer to Him, from care He sets me free;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me;
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.

I sing because I'm happy,
I sing because I'm free,
For His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me.

Backstory on the song:

"Early in the spring of 1905, my husband and I were sojourning in Elmira, New York. We contracted a deep friendship for a couple by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle, true saints of God. Mrs. Doolittle had been bedridden for nigh twenty years. Her husband was an incurable cripple who had to propel himself to and from his business in a wheel chair. Despite their afflictions, they lived happy Christian lives, bringing inspiration and comfort to all who knew them. One day while we were visiting with the Doolittles, my husband commented on their bright hopefulness and asked them for the secret of it. Mrs. Doolittle's reply was simple: "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me." The beauty of this simple expression of boundless faith gripped the hearts and fired the imagination of Dr. Martin and me. The hymn "His Eye Is on the Sparrow" was the outcome of that experience."
The next day she mailed the poem to Charles Gabriel, who supplied the music.
Singer Ethel Waters so loved this song that she used its name as the title for her autobiography.

----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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solomon13
Member since Oct 21st 2004
1149 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 12:20 PM

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16. "Shakespeare's Sonnet 130-talk about keepin' real"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Peep the twist at the end!


My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, shy then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grw on her head.

I have seen roses damask'd red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I nevr saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground;
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare

------------------------------
This one chick tried to Billy Jean me, but I was wearing TWO rubbers, so name that nigga Houdini! - Rass Kass

This is just a blk man's reality. He can change the course of mighty rivers and bend steel with his bare hands bu

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 03:23 PM

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20. "RE: Shakespeare's Sonnet 130-talk about keepin' real"
In response to Reply # 16


  

          

this is one of my favorite sonnets of his. this one and one twenty somethin...




  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 01:56 PM

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17. "resting in peace"
In response to Reply # 0


          

The Talking Back of Miss Valentine Jones: Poem # one

June Jordan

well I wanted to braid my hair
bathe and bedeck my
self so fine
so fully aforethought for
your pleasure
see:
I wanted to travel and read
and runaround fantastic
into war and peace:
I wanted to
surf
dive
fly
climb
conquer
and be conquered
THEN
I wanted to pickup the phone
and find you asking me
if I might possibly be alone
some night
(so I could answer cool
as the jewels I would wear
on bareskin for you
digmedaddy delectatio
"WHEN
you comin ova?"
But I had to remember to write down
margarine on the list
and shoepolish and a can of
sliced pineapple in casea company
and a quarta skim milk cause Teresa's
gaining weight and don' nobody groove on
that much
girl
and next I hadta sort for darks and lights before
the laundry hit the water which I had
to kinda keep an eye on be-
cause if the big hose jumps the sink again that
Mrs. Thompson gointa come upstairs
and brain me with a mop don' smell too
nice even though she hang
it headfirst out the winda
and I had to check
on William like to
burn hisself to death with fever
boy so thin be
callin all day "Momma! Sing to me?"
"Ma! Am I gone die?" and me not
wake enough to sit beside him longer than
to wipeaway the sweat or change the sheets/
his shirt and feed him orange
juice before I fall out of sleep and
Sweet My Jesus ain but one can
left
and we not thru the afternoon
and now
you (temporarily) shownup with a thing
you says' a poem and you
call it
"Will The Real Miss Black America Standup?"

guilty po' mouth
about duty beauties of my
headrag
boozeup doozies about
never mind
cause love is blind

well
I can't use it

and the very next bodacious Blackman
call me queen
because my life ain shit
because (in any case) he ain been here to share it
with me
(dish for dish and do for do and
dream for dream)
I'm gone scream him out my house
be-
cause what I wanted was
to braid my hair/bathe and bedeck my
self so fully be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
not pity
be-
cause what I wanted was
your love
your love

i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 02:00 PM

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18. "Maya Angelou"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

"Phenomenal Woman"

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.


and...

"Still I Rise"

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.






==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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PhotoSynthesis
Charter member
16101 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 04:35 PM

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23. "RE: Maya Angelou"
In response to Reply # 18


          

Mos' def' -- ONE OF MY FAVORITES! -- *Yuuup*


*Classic*

A guitar string vibrating, a measure of my soul, a breech in the silence --
I've always felt like words come through me & I write them down... they have no master --- gsquared ♥

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/photosynthesis_music.htm

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 04:39 PM

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25. "u know, ive never been a maya fan"
In response to Reply # 18


          

but, she has one work...that i can call 'decent'
the title is beyond me right now...

i think maya is mediocre
i realize this is MY sentiment
but either way....

i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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PhotoSynthesis
Charter member
16101 posts
Sat Dec-04-04 09:44 AM

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35. "RE: u know, ive never been a maya fan"
In response to Reply # 25


          

I had the priviledge & opportunity to meet Maya at a "Black Empowerment Conference" -- She was the banquet guest speaker.

Besides being "down to earth" and REAL -- She's a complete package deal -- INSIDE & OUT.

Her life -- Her trials & tribulations -- AS WELL AS HER WRITTEN WORK -- Makes her an ideal *Phenomenal Woman* -- And the fact that she's BLACK adds that special "spice" and familiarity that the common average person -- As well as the intellectually astute & diplomat -- can relate to!

I like her -- (as a person) -- And that's all that matters to me.

A guitar string vibrating, a measure of my soul, a breech in the silence --
I've always felt like words come through me & I write them down... they have no master --- gsquared ♥

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/photosynthesis_music.htm

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Sun Dec-05-04 06:08 AM

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38. "not many care for maya... i've always been kinda"
In response to Reply # 35


  

          

an exception to some rule... for some reason, what she writes, i can feel... and i don't read many poets... i read very few...



==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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sparrow
Member since Nov 24th 2004
130 posts
Sun Dec-05-04 12:59 PM

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40. "maya got me started on it (writing)"
In response to Reply # 25


  

          

so i'll always have a spot in my heart for her...tho now i do find i prefer the work of other poets/writers to her

guess its kinda like that feeling u have abt a first crush

*******************
a woman like me
needs to own her own galleries
write her own anthologies
needs blueberry bagels for breakfast
coconut rice for lunch
pork chops & glasses of wine for dinner
nothing but a string of pearls
and some moisturizer
to bed

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 02:07 PM

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19. "Langston Hughes"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor,
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now,
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.



==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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3rd i
Charter member
15831 posts
Sun Dec-05-04 09:55 AM

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39. "when i pledged"
In response to Reply # 19


  

          

we had to learn this.







myspace: http://profiles.myspace.com/users/7641819

http://www.villans.net/
http://www.soularmada.net/okaysistas/

www.myspace.com/3rd_i

3rd i: so u gonna be my child's god parent
Dawgeatah: i already have 3
3rd i: yeah but do u have a black one..like pokemon gotta catch them all.

i am a self-mutilator
of the worst kind...
(c)MyLife

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 04:29 PM

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21. "gwendolyn brooks"
In response to Reply # 0


          

"the mother"

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not
get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious
sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my
dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your mar-
riages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not de-
liberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be
said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I
loved you
All.



i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 04:33 PM

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22. "last one....maybe not"
In response to Reply # 21


          

"Eating Together"
Li-Young Lee

In the steamer is the trout
seasoned with slivers of ginger,
two sprigs of green onion, and sesame oil.
We shall eat it with rice for lunch,
brothers, sister, my mother who will
taste the sweetest meat of the head,
holding it between her fingers
deftly, the way my father did
weeks ago. Then he lay down
to sleep like a snow-covered road
winding through pines older than him,
without any travelers, and lonely for no one.

i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 04:36 PM

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24. "seamus heaney"
In response to Reply # 22


          

"Mid-Term Break"
Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.

Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.


i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 05:37 PM

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26. "in the year i loved your mother"
In response to Reply # 0
Thu Dec-02-04 05:39 PM

  

          

By Regie Gibson

in the year i loved your mother
i lived a glorious death
i was satellite traveling between blood and star
a planet evolving through rage and grief

in the year I loved your mother
was a time of drought and deluge
a season of rain and ruin

between us much soil and water
an illiterate ocean of language and diction

I arrived to her half broken half breaking

in the year I loved your mother
we were drum and drone
a volley of polemic and ideal

once
I glimpsed you
waving at me from her mouth
as dawn met our shoulders
she whispered your name

we became the thin line between sea and mountain
valley and sky

in the year I loved your mother
gravity abandoned me to her
she was vortex – a black hole
sewn into the belly of a continent
crushing all into singularity.

grapewaswinewas
soundwassongwas
motionwasdancewas
dovewasvulturecirclingwaslandingwas
all
that
was
:
was
herYYY

the year I loved your mother
was the year tragedy tamed tongues

we severed ours
stitched them into
one anothers mouths
we grew fluent
in speaking pain

we brought stones from our pockets
traded them
hurled them back towards
each others wounds
and those that missed
were gathered later
were used to build our walls

she was an equinox of razors when I found her
an autumn of featherless wings
caught in this gale of a man

your mother was: soft lips cutting calluses
from my knuckles

a silk fist logged hard in my mouth

where it opened into a sunflower
widening in the crag of my throat

in her skin I was cryptic blasphemy
transparent
decoded
holy





  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Thu Dec-02-04 08:48 PM

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27. "Sylvia Plath."
In response to Reply # 0


  

          


Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.





***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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mindful
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Fri Dec-03-04 07:33 AM

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28. "Daddy by Sylivia is the "bee's knees." nm"
In response to Reply # 27


  

          





==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
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http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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LaDeeDeF_99
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4028 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 08:43 AM

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29. "Pablo Neruda"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

..wanted the spanish version. when i find it ill post it. its important to read it in the original language

Love For This Book
Pablo Neruda
Translated by Dennis Maloney and Clark Zlotchew

In these lonely regions I have been powerful
in the same way as a cheerful tool
or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed
or like a dog rolling around in the dew.
Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning
another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then
the algae that lashed our wild rocks,
the waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,
all will be firm without us,
all will be ready for the new days,
which will not know our destiny.

What do we leave here but the lost cry
of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind
that cut our faces and kept us
erect in the light of purity,
as in the heart of an illustrious star?

What do we leave, living like a nest
of surly birds, alive, among the thickets
or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?
So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating
the earth, this soil and its harshness,
deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me
return to my place beneath the hungry earth.

We asked the ocean for its rose,
its open star, its bitter contact,
and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded
we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.
It's late now. Perhaps
it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,
perhaps only a night, like the eyelid
of a grave look that encompassed
the measure of the sea that surrounded us,
and in this territory we found only a kiss,
only ungraspable love that will remain here
wandering among the sea foam and roots

From The House in the Sand by Pablo Neruda. Copyright © 1966, 2004 by Fundacion Pablo Neruda. Translation copyright © 1990, 2004 by Dennis Maloney and Clark Zlotchew.

  

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Mystic_Elixir
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Wed Dec-08-04 06:05 PM

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51. "they must not know what's up"
In response to Reply # 29


          

very talented man, one of my favorites.


to retain my illusion of sanity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Plan to be , I will! need to learn to truly love our .


















_______closing remarks______

" To be nobody but yourself-- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and to never stop fighting.-- E.E. Cummings"

"There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as husband and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends" ---Homer, The Odyssey

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent"--- E. Roosevelt

"Love is anterior to life
posterior to death
Initial of creation, and
the exponent of breath"--Emily Dickenson

Mystic: One who experiences mystical union, or direct communion with God or Ulitmate reality.

Elixir: A substance held capable of prolonging life indefinitely (also panacea) a sweetened, alcoholic, medicinal solution... I am


  

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Nowachaoticthing
Member since Dec 24th 2002
2178 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 01:45 PM

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30. "~Muhummad Ali~"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Me,
We.

"To be a poet is a condition, not a profession."
- Robert Frost

http://inevitabletruth.blogspot.com/
http://www.lulu.com/content/187759
http://www.hdfest.com/Barry/allreviewsbarry.html
http://wishbonec.wordpress.com/

  

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Revolt
Member since Apr 06th 2004
3661 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 02:23 PM

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31. "nothing beats that..."
In response to Reply # 30


          

that is THE embodiment of absolute oneness. period.
____________

Jamaican funk.

"The fact is, we live and breathe and move in the unknown all the time. The unknown is from this moment onwards—you're already living there"
© Deepak Chopra





Life is just a screwed up .


  

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LaDeeDeF_99
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4028 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 05:43 PM

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33. "claude mckay baptism"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Into the furnace let me go alone;
Stay you without in terror of the heat.
I will go naked in--for thus ''tis sweet--
Into the weird depths of the hottest zone.
I will not quiver in the frailest bone,
You will not note a flicker of defeat;
My heart shall tremble not its fate to meet,
My mouth give utterance to any moan.
The yawning oven spits forth fiery spears;
Red aspish tongues shout wordlessly my name.
Desire destroys, consumes my mortal fears,
Transforming me into a shape of flame.
I will come out, back to your world of tears,
A stronger soul within a finer frame.


  

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LaDeeDeF_99
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4028 posts
Fri Dec-03-04 11:32 PM

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34. "ive been reading all these to get inspired"
In response to Reply # 0
Fri Dec-03-04 11:32 PM

  

          

but i have a SEVERE case of writers block

and i mean SEVERE

i cant write ANYTHING....

im stuck stuck stuck stuck.....



peace
ladee

  

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thadonmama
Member since Dec 04th 2004
14 posts
Sat Dec-04-04 05:11 PM

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36. "This is a poem for people (like me) who hate their jobs"
In response to Reply # 0
Sat Dec-04-04 05:18 PM

  

          

for young buppies who wish they could (but know they’ll never) live their lives like jimi hendrix
by Jarvis Q. DeBerry
“’cause i got my own world to live through and i ain’t gonna copy you” -jimi hendrix, “if 6 was 9”



sometimes, jimi,
we wish six was nine
wish we could ditch our nine to fives
starched white collars
cuffed slacks and
company parties (?)
where don’t nobody be dancin’.

sometimes success seems stiflin’
uniformity becomes anonymity
becomes we be
indistinguishable cogs on corporate wheels
spinnin’ around, going nowhere fast
or even slow
and we know that life is callin’
us to do something more,
something uniquely us,
something profoundly personal,
something mystically musical,
something wonderfully weird
that will take the world a good two decades
to catch on to.

but then the check comes
and mama’s already told everybody she know
that you got a good job
and when you go home you get mobbed
by folks telling you
“i always knew you’d make it.
you always was so smart.”

a good job.
like the isley brothers and little richard gigs
were good jobs,
but you said
i got sounds in my head
and i can’t be playing ‘em
wearing no mohair suits.
can’t be 1-2-3-4ing
no foreign dance steps.
and if YOU think I’M being too outrageous
then a wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-bop-bam my ass
is outta here.
gon’ take a spaceship to a musical planet
that ain’t even been discovered yet.

and sometimes you gave us glimpses
of what it was like there
playing the star spangled banner
in a manner more apocalyptic
than patriotic,
replacing rockets’ red glares
with hiroshimaic melt-downs
ungodly sounds that only you
could reign in
and make musical

o say can you see
by the infernal light
of the napalm burning
villages in the night?

and though you eschewed copy cats
we wish we was
bold bad brazen
crazily creative
like you
or at the very least
we wish you would come back
and teach us to un-care
what others think
how to un-need
their approval
how to un-cookie cut ourselves
from the baking sheet of respectability
before we are hardened
into being just like the person
one, two and three cubicles over.

but you have already gone
high over yonder,
leaving us here
to hum along like well-oiled machines
but with purple haze
all in our brains.

___________________________________________________________

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always. --Gandhi

  

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Naanaa
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Sat Dec-04-04 05:18 PM

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37. "Second Coming"
In response to Reply # 0


          

this is the poem Chinua Achebe got the idea for 'Things Fall Apart'. it was written right before WWII, but i think it's interesting to read today and see how relevant it still is.


THE SECOND COMING
By: W.B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

http://www.myspace.com/n_a_a

  

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NoBle
Member since Nov 23rd 2004
446 posts
Tue Dec-07-04 02:30 AM

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42. "You've probably read this before, but if not here it is(little long)"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

The anthropologist has become so familiar with the diversity of ways in which different people behave in similar situations that he is not apt to be surprised by even the most exotic customs. In fact, if all of the logically possible combinations of behavior have not been found somewhere in the world, he is apt to suspect that they must be present in some yet undescribed tribe. The point has, in fact, been expressed with respect to clan organization by Murdock. In this light, the magical beliefs and practices of the Nacirema present such unusual aspects that it seems desirable to describe them as an example of the extremes to which human behavior can go.

Professor Linton first brought the ritual of the Nacirema to the attention of anthropologists twenty years ago, but the culture of this people is still very poorly understood. They are a North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Cree, the Yaqui and Tarahumare of Mexico, and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east....

Nacirema culture is characterized by a highly developed market economy which has evolved in a rich natural habitat. While much of the people's time is devoted to economic pursuits, a large part of the fruits of these labors and a considerable portion of the day are spent in ritual activity. The focus of this activity is the human body, the appearance and health of which loom as a dominant concern in the ethos of the people. While such a concern is certainly not unusual, its ceremonial aspects and associated philosophy are unique.

The fundamental belief underlying the whole system appears to be that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease. Incarcerated in such a body, man's only hope is to avert these characteristics through the use of ritual and ceremony. Every household has one or more shrines devoted to this purpose. The more powerful individuals in the society have several shrines in their houses and, in fact, the opulence of a house is often referred to in terms of the number of such ritual centers it possesses. Most houses are of wattle and daub construction, but the shrine rooms of the more wealthy are walled with stone. Poorer families imitate the rich by applying pottery plaques to their shrine walls.

While each family has at least one such shrine, the rituals associated with it are not family ceremonies but are private and secret. The rites are normally only discussed with children, and then only during the period when they are being initiated into these mysteries. I was able, however, to establish sufficient rapport with the natives to examine these shrines and to have the rituals described to me.

The focal point of the shrine is a box or chest which is built into the wall. In this chest are kept the many charms and magical potions without which no native believes he could live. These preparations are secured from a variety of specialized practitioners. The most powerful of these are the medicine men, whose assistance must be rewarded with substantial gifts. However, the medicine men do not provide the curative potions for their clients, but decide what the ingredients should be and then write them down in an ancient and secret language. This writing is understood only by the medicine men and by the herbalists who, for another gift, provide the required charm.

The charm is not disposed of after it has served its purpose, but is placed in the charmbox of the household shrine. As these magical materials are specific for certain ills, and the real or imagined maladies of the people are many, the charm-box is usually full to overflowing. The magical packets are so numerous that people forget what their purposes were and fear to use them again. While the natives are very vague on this point, we can only assume that the idea in retaining all the old magical materials is that their presence in the charm-box, before which the body rituals are conducted, will in some way protect the worshiper.

Beneath the charm-box is a small font. Each day every member of the family, in succession, enters the shrine room, bows his head before the charm-box, mingles different sorts of holy water in the font, and proceeds with a brief rite of ablution. The holy waters are secured from the Water Temple of the community, where the priests conduct elaborate ceremonies to make the liquid ritually pure.

In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated as "holy-mouth-men." The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them. They also believe that a strong relationship exists between oral and moral characteristics. For example, there is a ritual ablution of the mouth for children which is supposed to improve their moral fiber.

The daily body ritual performed by everyone includes a mouth-rite. Despite the fact that these people are so punctilious about care of the mouth, this rite involves a practice which strikes the uninitiated stranger as revolting. It was reported to me that the ritual consists of inserting a small bundle of hog hairs into the mouth, along with certain magical powders, and then moving the bundle in a highly formalized series of gestures.

In addition to the private mouth-rite, the people seek out a holy-mouth-man once or twice a year. These practitioners have an impressive set of paraphernalia, consisting of a variety of augers, awls, probes, and prods. The use of these items in the exorcism of the evils of the mouth involves almost unbelievable ritual torture of the client. The holy-mouth-man opens the client's mouth and, using the above mentioned tools, enlarges any holes which decay may have created in the teeth. Magical materials are put into these holes. If there are no naturally occurring holes in the teeth, large sections of one or more teeth are gouged out so that the supernatural substance can be applied. In the client's view, the purpose of these ministrations is to arrest decay and to draw friends. The extremely sacred and traditional character of the rite is evident in the fact that the natives return to the holy-mouth-men year after year, despite the fact that their teeth continue to decay.

It is to be hoped that, when a thorough study of the Nacirema is made, there will be careful inquiry into the personality structure of these people. One has but to watch the gleam in the eye of a holy-mouth-man, as he jabs an awl into an exposed nerve, to suspect that a certain amount of sadism is involved. If this can be established, a very interesting pattern emerges, for most of the population shows definite masochistic tendencies. It was to these that Professor Linton referred in discussing a distinctive part of the daily body ritual which is performed only by men. This part of the rite includes scraping and lacerating the surface of the face with a sharp instrument. Special women's rites are performed only four times during each lunar month, but what they lack in frequency is made up in barbarity. As part of this ceremony, women bake their heads in small ovens for about an hour. The theoretically interesting point is that what seems to be a preponderantly masochistic people have developed sadistic specialists.

The medicine men have an imposing temple, or latipso, in every community of any size. The more elaborate ceremonies required to treat very sick patients can only be performed at this temple. These ceremonies involve not only the thaumaturge but a permanent group of vestal maidens who move sedately about the temple chambers in distinctive costume and headdress.

The latipso ceremonies are so harsh that it is phenomenal that a fair proportion of the really sick natives who enter the temple ever recover. Small children whose indoctrination is still incomplete have been known to resist attempts to take them to the temple because "that is where you go to die." Despite this fact, sick adults are not only willing but eager to undergo the protracted ritual purification, if they can afford to do so. No matter how ill the supplicant or how grave the emergency, the guardians of many temples will not admit a client if he cannot give a rich gift to the custodian. Even after one has gained and survived the ceremonies, the guardians will not permit the neophyte to leave until he makes still another gift.

The supplicant entering the temple is first stripped of all his or her clothes. In everyday life the Nacirema avoids exposure of his body and its natural functions. Bathing and excretory acts are performed only in the secrecy of the household shrine, where they are ritualized as part of the body-rites. Psychological shock results from the fact that body secrecy is suddenly lost upon entry into the latipso. A man, whose own wife has never seen him in an excretory act, suddenly finds himself naked and assisted by a vestal maiden while he performs his natural functions into a sacred vessel. This sort of ceremonial treatment is necessitated by the fact that the excreta are used by a diviner to ascertain the course and nature of the client's sickness. Female clients, on the other hand, find their naked bodies are subjected to the scrutiny, manipulation and prodding of the medicine men.

Few supplicants in the temple are well enough to do anything but lie on their hard beds. The daily ceremonies, like the rites of the holy-mouth-men, involve discomfort and torture. With ritual precision, the vestals awaken their miserable charges each dawn and roll them about on their beds of pain while performing ablutions, in the formal movements of which the maidens are highly trained. At other times they insert magic wands in the supplicant's mouth or force him to eat substances which are supposed to be healing. From time to time the medicine men come to their clients and jab magically treated needles into their flesh. The fact that these temple ceremonies may not cure, and may even kill the neophyte, in no way decreases the people's faith in the medicine men.

There remains one other kind of practitioner, known as a "listener." This witchdoctor has the power to exorcise the devils that lodge in the heads of people who have been bewitched. The Nacirema believe that parents bewitch their own children. Mothers are particularly suspected of putting a curse on children while teaching them the secret body rituals. The counter-magic of the witchdoctor is unusual in its lack of ritual. The patient simply tells the "listener" all his troubles and fears, beginning with the earliest difficulties he can remember. The memory displayed by the Nacirema in these exorcism sessions is truly remarkable. It is not uncommon for the patient to bemoan the rejection he felt upon being weaned as a babe, and a few individuals even see their troubles going back to the traumatic effects of their own birth.

In conclusion, mention must be made of certain practices which have their base in native esthetics but which depend upon the pervasive aversion to the natural body and its functions. There are ritual fasts to make fat people thin and ceremonial feasts to make thin people fat. Still other rites are used to make women's breasts larger if they are small, and smaller if they are large. General dissatisfaction with breast shape is symbolized in the fact that the ideal form is virtually outside the range of human variation. A few women afflicted with almost inhuman hyper-mammary development are so idolized that they make a handsome living by simply going from village to village and permitting the natives to stare at them for a fee.

Reference has already been made to the fact that excretory functions are ritualized, routinized, and relegated to secrecy. Natural reproductive functions are similarly distorted. Intercourse is taboo as a topic and scheduled as an act. Efforts are made to avoid pregnancy by the use of magical materials or by limiting intercourse to certain phases of the moon. Conception is actually very infrequent. When pregnant, women dress so as to hide their condition. Parturition takes place in secret, without friends or relatives to assist, and the majority of women do not nurse their infants.

Our review of the ritual life of the Nacirema has certainly shown them to be a magic-ridden people. It is hard to understand how they have managed to exist so long under the burdens which they have imposed upon themselves. But even such exotic customs as these take on real meaning when they are viewed with the insight provided by Malinowski when he wrote:

Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered his practical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization.


******SiG***************
"my crisis stems where
love used to bloom"-BarTek

  

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delrica
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Tue Dec-07-04 06:35 AM

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43. "RE: You've probably read this before, but if not here it is(little long)"
In response to Reply # 42


  

          

Ok, who wrote this? What book is it from? Gotta include that in the post, baby!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RIP Simmon Teffera (1983-1/15/2003), you are always with us.

"Before I became a member of this group, I thought a Haiku was just a villian on the "Samauri Jack" cartoon." © Nowachaoticthing

"This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" by Delrica Andrews - Now on Sale
($6 including S & H) ... just email me or hit the inbox w/ your info (I do accept paypal payments)






----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

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NoBle
Member since Nov 23rd 2004
446 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 01:44 AM

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45. "Sorry, my bad"
In response to Reply # 42


  

          

This is an essay written by an anthropologist
by the name of Horace Miner. It is about us!
Nacirema==American backwards, he wrote this essay
and showed it to people, they were appalled at how
these people lived and could knowingly ruin their
own lives, then he told them it was about them.
Ironic huh..

******SiG***************
"my crisis stems where
love used to bloom"-BarTek

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Thu Dec-09-04 04:53 PM

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54. "this is rather brilliant...nm"
In response to Reply # 42


  

          






  

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delrica
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6889 posts
Tue Dec-07-04 06:53 AM

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44. ""
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Ain't I a Woman!©
~~Sojourner Truth

That man over there say
a woman needs to be helped into carriages
and lifted over ditches
and to have the best place everywhere.
Nobody ever helped me into carriages
or over mud puddles
or gives me a best place...

And ain't I a woman?
Look at me
Look at my arm!
I have plowed and planted
and gathered into barns
and no man could head me...
And ain't I a woman?
I could work as much
and eat as much as a man--
when I could get to it--
and bear the lash as well
And ain't I a woman?
I have born 13 children
and seen most all sold into slavery
and when I cried out a mother's grief
none but Jesus heard me...
and ain't I a woman?
that little man in black there say
a woman can't have as much rights as a man
cause Christ wasn't a woman
Where did your Christ come from?
From God and a woman!
Man had nothing to do with him!
If the first woman God ever made
was strong enough to turn the world
upside down, all alone
together women ought to be able to turn it
rightside up again.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RIP Simmon Teffera (1983-1/15/2003), you are always with us.

"Before I became a member of this group, I thought a Haiku was just a villian on the "Samauri Jack" cartoon." © Nowachaoticthing

"This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" by Delrica Andrews - Now on Sale
($6 including S & H) ... just email me or hit the inbox w/ your info (I do accept paypal payments)






----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 04:07 PM

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49. "I was going to post this... YES!!!! nm"
In response to Reply # 44


  

          





==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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LaDeeDeF_99
Charter member
4028 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 12:33 PM

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47. "emily dickinson"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

i died for beauty, but was Scarce


I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, -the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.



peace
ladee

  

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LaDeeDeF_99
Charter member
4028 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 12:40 PM

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48. "audre lorde"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

this one i havent read before...shes one of my favorites...im starting to get carried away here. great post topic, delrica!


peace
ladee

Making Love to Concrete
AUDRE LORDE

An upright abutment in the mouth
of the Willis Avenue bridge
a beige Honda leaps the divider
like a steel gazelle inescapable
sleek leather boots on the pavement
rat-a-tat-tat best intentions
going down for the third time
stuck in the particular

You cannot make love to concrete
if you care about being
non-essential wrong or worn thin
if you fear ever becoming
diamonds or lard
you cannot make love to concrete
if you cannot pretend
concrete needs your loving


To make love to concrete
you need an indelible feather
white dresses before you are ten
a confirmation lace veil milk-large bones
and air raid drills in your nightmares
no stars till you go to the country
and one summer when you are twelve
Con Edison pulls the plug
on the street-corner moons Walpurgisnacht
and there are sudden new lights in the sky
stone chips that forget you need
to become a light rope a hammer
a repeatable bridge
garden-fresh broccoli two dozen dropped eggs
and a hint of you
caught up between my fingers
the lesson of a wooden beam
propped up on barrels
across a mined terrain


between forgiving too easily
and never giving at all.


©1993, 1995 by Audre Lorde

"Making Love to Concrete" is from Audre Lorde's The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance, published by W.W. Norton & Co. in August, 1993. Lorde's work appear in this STANDARDS' tribute by permission of the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency, Inc., New York.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 04:08 PM

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50. "Ntozake Shange...."
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

someone i love dearly, sent me a copy of one of her books...

you are sucha fool

you are sucha fool/ i haveta love you
you decide to give me a poem/ intent on it/ actually
you pull/ kiss me from 125th to 72nd street/ on
the east side/ no less
you are sucha fool/ you gonna give me/ the poet/
the poem
insistin on proletarian images/ we buy okra/
3 lbs for $1/ & a pair of 98 cent shoes
we kiss
we wrestle
you make sure at east 110 street/ we have cognac
no beer all day
you are sucha fool/ you fall over my day like
a wash of azure

you take my tongue outta my mouth/
make me say foolish things
you take my tongue outta my mouth/ lay it on yr skin
like the dew between my legs
on this the first day of silver balloons
& lil girl's braids undone
friendly savage skulls on bikes/ wish me good-day
you speak spanish like a german & ask puerto rican
market men on lexington if they are foreigners

oh you are sucha fool/ i cant help but love you
maybe it was something in the air
our memories
our first walk
our first...
yes/ alla that

where you poured wine down my throat in rooms
poets i dreamed abt seduced sound & made history/
you make me feel like a cheetah
a gazelle/ something fast & beautiful
you make me remember my animal sounds/
so while i am an antelope
ocelot & serpent speaking in tongues
my body loosens for/ you

you decide to give me the poem
you wet yr fingers/ lay it to my lips
that i might write some more abt you/
how you come into me
the way the blues jumps outta b.b.king/ how
david murray assaults a moon & takes her home/
like dyanne harvey invades the wind

oh you/ you are sucha fool/
you want me to write some more abt you
how you come into me like a rollercoaster in a
dip that swings
leaving me shattered/ glistening/ rich/ screeching
& fully clothed

you set me up to fall into yr dreams
like the sub-saharan animal i am/ in all this heat
wanting to be still
to be still with you
in the shadows
all those buildings
all those people/ celebrating/ sunlight & love/ you

you are sucha fool/ you spend all day piling up images
locations/ morsels of daydreams/ to give me a poem

just smile/ i'll get it

the lady is bad... i mean... bad...



==================
life when
loving yourself
.

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-09-04 12:24 PM

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53. "crack annie"
In response to Reply # 50


          


i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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clarion
Member since Jul 07th 2003
9469 posts
Fri Dec-10-04 11:33 AM

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55. "she reminds me of someone.."
In response to Reply # 50


  

          

...

..

  

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mindful
Charter member
41306 posts
Sat Dec-11-04 12:24 PM

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57. "she gotta flare bout herself not many seem to"
In response to Reply # 55


  

          

notice...


==================
save your love
i'm coming
. ©New Edition

!





------------------------------
my work
http://meetmsmindful.wordpress.com
http://www.lulu.com/content/7598631
http://evan-roth.com/grey.php

  

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Mystic_Elixir
Charter member
1808 posts
Wed Dec-08-04 06:15 PM

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52. "Alexander Pope"
In response to Reply # 0


          



You know where you did despise
(Tother day) my little Eyes,
Little Legs, and little Thighs,
And some things, of little Size,
You know where.


You, tis true, have fine black eyes,
Taper legs, and tempting Thighs,
Yet what more than all we prize
Is a Thing of little Size,
You know where.








to retain my illusion of sanity
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Plan to be , I will! need to learn to truly love our .


















_______closing remarks______

" To be nobody but yourself-- in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else-- means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and to never stop fighting.-- E.E. Cummings"

"There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as husband and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends" ---Homer, The Odyssey

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent"--- E. Roosevelt

"Love is anterior to life
posterior to death
Initial of creation, and
the exponent of breath"--Emily Dickenson

Mystic: One who experiences mystical union, or direct communion with God or Ulitmate reality.

Elixir: A substance held capable of prolonging life indefinitely (also panacea) a sweetened, alcoholic, medicinal solution... I am


  

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PhotoSynthesis
Charter member
16101 posts
Sat Dec-11-04 09:12 AM

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56. "Honey, I Love --"
In response to Reply # 0


          

By Eloise Greenfield

Written thru the eyes of a child:


HONEY, I LOVE --

I love
I love a lot of things -- a whole lot of things
Like
My cousin comes to visit and you know he's from the South
Cause every word he says just kind of slides out of his mouth
I like the way he whistles and I like the way he walks
But honey, let me tell you that I LOVE the way he talks
I LOVE the way my cousin talks

AND ...

The day is hot and icky and the sun sticks to my skin
Mr. Davis turns the hose on, everybody jumps right in
The water stings my stomach and I feel so nice & cool
Honey, let me tell you that I LOVE a flying pool
I love to "feel" a flying pool

AND ...

Renee comes out to play an brings her doll without a dress
I make a dress with paper and that doll sure looks a mess
We laugh so loud and long & hard the doll falls to the ground
Honey, let me tell you that I LOVE that laughing sound
I love to make the laughing sound

AND ...

My uncle's car is crowded and there's lots of food to eat
We're going down the country where the church folks like to meet
I'm lookin' out the window at the cows and trees outside
Honey, let me tell you that I LOVE to take a ride
I love to take a family ride

AND ...

My mama's on the sofa sewing buttons on my coat
I go and sit beside her, I'm through playin' with my boat
I hold her arm and kiss it 'cause it feels so soft and warm
Honey, let me tell you that I LOVE my mama's arm
I love to kiss my mama's arm

AND ...

It's not so late at night, but still I'm lying in my bed
I guess I need my rest, least that's what my mama said
She told me not to cry 'cause she don't want to hear a peep
Honey, let me tell you I DON'T love to go to sleep
I DO "NOT" LOVE TO GO TO SLEEP
But I love
I love a lot of things
A whole lot of things
And honey,
I Love You Too


This poem ain't nutthin' spectacular by any means -- But it just reminds me of childhood & the simplicity of love -- Viewed behind the eyes of a child.

Seems like love don't become "complex" & confusing until you get older, nahmean? -- *sigh*

A guitar string vibrating, a measure of my soul, a breech in the silence --
I've always felt like words come through me & I write them down... they have no master --- gsquared ♥

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/2/photosynthesis_music.htm

  

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blaksilence
Charter member
1533 posts
Sun Dec-12-04 12:54 PM

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58. "One for Presyzion"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

and everybody who misses his work.

yea he's an okp

but ask me if i really give a fuck..

Prez:

The door to my bedroom denotes so many things: obviously, an exit into another part of the house, somewhere new, breathtakingly needed, right now. It symbolizes movement; stillness. Outside is 3 a.m., the wind’s constant knuckles softly knocking against the one wider-than-high window to my closing-in bedroom. It’s yesterday and tomorrow’s probably all over again: I’m sleepless. Last month the doctor gave me “something to help you sleep,” though I’ve taken about four moon’s worth, which helped, and I’m thankful to a god or God (right now I’m unaware and too neurotic to choose if I even believe), tonight, I’m thinking about emptying the bottle’s entire earth into the soil of my throat, burying and cultivating death. My mind is shifting images of the impure: My face, if when I die—the color of it—shall it become a purple hue? Perhaps alter into a rancid debut of a vulgar artist, whose hands have molded a once recognizable face into a mask suitable for in-dumpster viewing or scooping the filth of gutters?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i see you breh..

maintain.

_____________________________________

The cry I bring down from the hills
__________belongs to a girl still burning
__________inside my head. At daybreak

____________________she burns like a piece of paper. - YK

  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Sun Dec-12-04 09:54 PM

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59. "i miss that muthafucker..."
In response to Reply # 58


  

          


for real.

***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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Revolt
Member since Apr 06th 2004
3661 posts
Wed Dec-15-04 08:13 PM

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67. "damn i miss him..."
In response to Reply # 58


          

he's a poetry god, imho.
____________

Avi: Awwwww...me *heart* you Longo.









I paint letters on

יא כִּי אָנֹכִי יָדַעְתִּי אֶת-הַמַּחֲשָׁבֹת, אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי חֹשֵׁב עֲלֵיכֶם--נְאֻם-יְהוָה: מַחְשְׁבוֹת שָׁלוֹם וְלֹא לְרָעָה, לָתֵת לָכֶם אַחֲרִית וְתִקְוָה. יב וּקְרָאתֶם אֹתִי וַהֲלַכְתֶּם, וְהִתְפַּלַּלְתֶּם אֵלָי; וְשָׁמַעְתִּי, אֲלֵיכֶם. יג וּבִקַּשְׁתֶּם אֹתִי, וּמְצָאתֶם: כִּי תִדְרְשֻׁנִי, בְּכָל-לְבַבְכֶם.

Yermiyahu 29:11-13


  

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Otto
Member since Dec 19th 2002
4624 posts
Mon Dec-13-04 04:17 AM

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60. "my two favorite poems by my single favorite author"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
-the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

ee cummings



________________________________


and....

__________________________________


somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Mon Dec-13-04 08:23 AM

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61. "i like my body when it is with your"
In response to Reply # 60


  

          

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric furr, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh....And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

...
ee is that muthafuckin fiya...lol.


***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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Otto
Member since Dec 19th 2002
4624 posts
Thu Dec-16-04 06:53 PM

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72. "RE: i'd never read that one before..."
In response to Reply # 61


  

          

it is awesome man...ee rocks...

-Otto

  

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morpheme
Charter member
94867 posts
Mon Dec-13-04 02:33 PM

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62. "carolyn rodgers"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

i'll be back w.the piece tomorrow

_____________
Kamikaze Genes
____________♌♀
goddess; small g.

  

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Naanaa
Charter member
95 posts
Mon Dec-13-04 06:04 PM

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63. "amiri baraka"
In response to Reply # 0


          

Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note

Lately, I've become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.
And each night I get the same number.
And when they will not come to be counted,
I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up
To my daughter's room and heard her
Talking to someone, and when I opened
The door, there was no one there...
Only she on her knees, peeking into

Her own clasped hands

http://www.myspace.com/n_a_a

  

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soulchild
Member since Dec 25th 2003
1272 posts
Mon Dec-13-04 06:24 PM

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64. "RE: amiri baraka"
In response to Reply # 63


  

          

i love amiri baraka.
and i dug this poem when i read it a few months ago.
good choice.




  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Wed Dec-15-04 05:55 PM

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65. "Balboa, the Entertainer"
In response to Reply # 63


  

          

by
Amiri Baraka

It cannot come
except you make it
from materials
it is not
caught from. (The philosophers
of need, of which
I am lately
one,
will tell you. ``The People,''
(and not think themselves
liable
to the same
trembling flesh). I say now, ``The People,
as some lesson repeated, now,
the lights are off, to myself,
as a lover, or at the cold wind.

Let my poems be a graph
of me. (And they keep
to the line where flesh
drops off. You will go
blank at the middle. A
dead man.

But
die soon, Love. If
what you have for
yourself, does not
stretch to your body's
end.
(Where, without
preface,
music trails, or your fingers
slip
from my arm





***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Wed Dec-15-04 07:38 PM

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66. "Jean Toomer"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          


Face
--

Hair—
silver-gray,
like streams of stars,
Brows—
recurved canoes
quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
Her eyes—
mist of tears
condensing on the flesh below
And her channeled muscles
are cluster grapes of sorrow
purple in the evening sun
nearly ripe for worms.


***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

"I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary." -Margaret Atwood

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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Morehouse
Member since Feb 25th 2003
7568 posts
Sat Jan-01-05 11:26 PM

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75. "portrait in georgia."
In response to Reply # 66


  

          

Hair--braided chestnut,
coiled like a lyncher's rope,
Eyes--fagots,
Lips--old scars, or the first red blisters,
Breath--the last sweet scent of cane,
And her slim body, white as the ash
of black flesh after flame.


***********************************


"At least embarrassment is not an imitation.
It's intimacy for beginners,
the orgasm no one cares to fake.
I almost admire it. I almost wrote despise." -Alice Fulton

"The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea."
-Sylvia Plath

"I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary." -Margaret Atwood

***********************************
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500290931


myself is sculptor of
your body’s idiom:
the musician of your wrists;
the poet who is afraid
only to mistranslate
a rhythm in your hair...
-E.E. Cummings

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-16-04 05:48 AM

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68. "Lucille Clifton"
In response to Reply # 0


          

cutting greens
Lucille Clifton

curling them around
i hold their bodies in obscene embrace
thinking of everything but kinship.
collards and kale
strain against each strange other
away from my kissmaking hand and
the iron bedpot.
the pot is black.
the cutting board is black,
my hand,
and just for a minute
the greens roll black under the knife,
and the kitchen twists dark on its spine
and i taste in my natural appetite
the bond of live things everywhere.

i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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rgv
Charter member
4556 posts
Thu Dec-16-04 05:49 AM

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69. "miss rosie"
In response to Reply # 68


          

Lucille Clifton

when I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up

i just want chu to know
how i feel
how i feel

  

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the Light
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1332 posts
Thu Dec-16-04 03:00 PM

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70. "Sylvia Plath- Insomniac"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          


The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments— the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy roses that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue—
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forhetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of gray mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.


Insomniac, May 1961, Collected Poems, faber and faber, 1981

____________________________________________________

Loose Lips Sink Ships!
*stop by, say hi*
http://shattered-star.blogspot.com

"in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous

  

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the Light
Charter member
1332 posts
Thu Dec-16-04 03:07 PM

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71. "Carl Sandburg"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Losses

I have love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.
(Losses of God,
All will go
And one day
We will hold
Only the shadows.)


And They Obey

Smash down the cities.
Knock the walls to pieces.
Break the factories and cathedrals, warehouses and homes
Into loose piles of ston and lumber and black burnt wood:
You are the soldiers and we command you.

Build up the cities.
Set up the walls again.
Put together once more the factories and cathedrals, warehouses
and homes
Into buildings for life and labour:
You are workmen and citizens all: We command you.

____________________________________________________

Loose Lips Sink Ships!
*stop by, say hi*
http://shattered-star.blogspot.com

"in faith
we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail
among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous

  

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Chaoticbelle
Member since Dec 26th 2004
40 posts
Wed Dec-29-04 09:50 AM

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73. "Amiel Larrieux"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

granted it is a song but ih has perhaps what just might be the most powerful words I have ever heard.

"Make Me Whole"
by Amiel Larrieux
on "Infinite Possibilities" CD


Darling I want you to listen
I stayed up all night
So I could this thing right
and I don't think there's anything missing
but a person like you
makes it easy to do
I've waited for so long
to sing to you this song
(Chorus)
your eyes are like the windows to heaven
your smile could heal a million souls
your love completes my exisistence
you're the other half that makes me whole
you're the only other half that makes me whole

I think the angels are your brothers yeah
they told you about me
said "you're just what she needs"
and I find myself thanking your mother
for giving birth to a Saint
my spirit flies when I say your name
If there's one thing that's true
it's that I was born to love you

(Chorus)
your eyes are the windows to heaven
your smile could heal a million souls
your love completes my exisistence
you're the other half that makes me whole
you're the only other half that makes me whole

You made my dreams
come true over
and
over again
and I honestly truly believe
that you and me are
written in the stars
I've lived my whole life through
just giving thanks to you

(Chorus)

your eyes are the windows to heaven
your smile could heal a million souls
your love completes my exisistence
you're the other half that makes me whole
you're the only other half that makes me whole




"I have spread my dreams under your feet; tread softly because you tread on my dreams." ~ WB Yeats

  

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idle
Member since Dec 02nd 2002
130 posts
Thu Dec-30-04 09:46 PM

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74. "the pretensions of poverty"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Coelum Britannicum
____________________

Thou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,
To claim a station in the firmament,
Because thy humble cottage, or thy tub,
Nurses some lazy or pedantic virtue
In the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,
With roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,
Tearing those humane passions from the mind,
Upon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,
Degradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,
And, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone,
We not require a dull society
Of your necessitated temperence
Or that unnatural stupidity
That knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc'd
Falsely exalted passive fortitude
Above the active. This low abject brood,
That fix their seats in mediocrity,
Become your servile minds; but we advance
Such virtues only as admit excess,
Brave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,
All-seeing pridence, magnaniminty
That knows no bound, and that heroic virtue
For which antiquity hath left no name,
But patterns only, such as Hercules,
Achilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath'd cell;
And when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,
Study to know but what those worthies were.

T. CAREW (1595?-1645?)

I think he is, in a most polite manner, instructing or suggesting 'mankind' remove there heads from their asses.

  

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delrica
Charter member
6889 posts
Tue Jan-04-05 06:37 AM

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76. "RE: December 2004 AOTM: O.P.P. Tribute (Other People's Poetry!!)"
In response to Reply # 0


  

          

Thank you to everyone who participated!


----------------------
Cop my stuff, mayne!

My first chapbook: "This Chapbook Was Made With Pilfered Office Products" available now - $6.00

My 2nd chapbook, coming in 2007: "Orgasms and Ice Cream"

fmi: http://www.myspace.com/delrica

  

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