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The Hypocrite


I got up this morning and put on a face
My collection is quite large
I can’t afford the social disgrace
Of being too soft or too hard
My life depends on what others think
And what others do and say
My masks are the props that link
My acting to life’s stage
Covering who I really am
And what I’m really like
My masks can make me anyone
In the shadowed light
I can’t let them see me as myself
Or how I really feel
They would put me on the shelf
If I were really real
I am a star in the play of life
And I act my part very well
They can’t see all my pain and strife
Or how, my soul, I have to sell
My masks can hide it all from them
At least I think they can
All my deed and all my sins
Are hidden from the eyes of man?

A poem by P.Reil
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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton



You're a Genius all the time
FIVE A.M.

Elan that lifts me above the clouds
into pure space, timeless, yea eternal
Breath transmuted into words
Transmuted back to breath
in one hundred two hundred years
nearly Immortal, Sappho's 26 centuries
of cadenced breathing -- beyond time, clocks, empires, bodies, cars, chariots, rocket ships skyscrapers, Nation empires
brass walls, polished marble, Inca Artwork
of the mind -- but where's it come from?
Inspiration? The muses drawing breath for you? God?
Nah, don't believe it, you'll get entangled in Heaven or Hell --
Guilt power, that makes the heart beat wake all night
flooding mind with space, echoing through future cities, Megalopolis or Cretan village, Zeus' birth cave Lassithi Plains -- Otsego County
farmhouse, Kansas front porch?
Buddha's a help, promises ordinary mind no nirvana --
coffee, alcohol, cocaine, mushrooms, marijuana, laughing gas?
Nope, too heavy for this lightness lifts the brain into blue sky
at May dawn when birds start singing on East 12th street --
Where does it come from, where does it go forever?

~ Allen Ginsberg



Lost in never never land
A little drop of sunlight,
As the rain beams down.
It lands upon the shoulder,
Of her wedding gown.

It glitters for a second,
But then bleeds away.
The moment of forever,
On the wedding day.

The happiness and sadness,
By the alter stand.
Pronouncing vows forever,
Across the grated land.

Everyone watch and listen,
As the lovers speak.
The vows to be forgotten,
And the love that will grow weak.

And freedom passes swiftly,
Like the headless on a horse.
"Knots cannot be broken",
Goes the childrens chorus.

Then they leave together,
Holy, sacred pair.
And live forever infamy.
With broken heart and chair.

- The Gnat (1/25/07, 13:37 PM CST)
__________________
"As I was walking up the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away."
-From Identity



Heres my best effort;

IoHitSoL

icicles of hate in the summer of love,
twisted, convoluted,
melting beneath the sun of joy,
pooling in a puddle of discontent.

children splash their feet, hatred their reward,
innocence lost forever,
ripped from their unsuspecting souls,
real life has begun, carefree childhood
abruptly over.

icicles of hate melting in the summer heat,
spawn rivers of reality we all must swim in,
OR DROWN!
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"It's a kilt, not a dress, you uncultured swine!"

Founding member of the Divide by Zero Foundation.

There's too much blood in my caffeine system!!



Heres another from my younger days;

Lost Inspiration

As a matter of course
i sat to put pen to paper
To clear the cobwebs from
the dark corners of my mind

to my utter surprise
there were none to be found!
could my mind really be
CLEAR of all the clutter?

GAD!! a creative disaster
NO cobwebs, NO intricate designs
to scribe onto some otherwise
blank inviting sheet of white

a mundane may not understand
what a terrible loss this could be
or perhaps they may, maybe that
is why there are so few smiles to be seen!



Here's one I wrote on a day I was feeling particularly religious :P

Just Look Up
As I journeyed to the pool of wisdom
to quench my thirst for knowledge,
I was confronted with the Blood Red Sky,
it was as if it carried the embers
of some unseen INFERNO and I was struck
by its beauty and intensity.
Moved as I was, I wrote this verse,
not hoping to capture what I had seen.
Only wishing not to lose that amazement,
at least not right away.
A dozen different emotions were pulled
from within the depths of my being,
Awed, engulfed, amazed, intimidated, empowered,
Unnerved, desperate, even Enlightened.
those who don't believe nature can inspire
are naught but babbling fools.
Anyone with vision, both inward and outward
can't help but be touched by such a display.
Those who say, GOD is not with us
must not be looking at their surroundings
Every day I see the evidence of divine works
and my soul is renewed once more.

I know, it's crap, but hey, it's my crap



Lost in never never land
I walk along an empty beach,
Looking for the fading sun.
I stand under a starless sky,
With no where left to run.

Thoughts of thousand sands drift by,
A flee upon the shore.
Years of pain and hopeless torn,
Until the never more.

I cast a blinding shadow,
From which no heart can see.
A wail upon the bleeding dream,
A silence covers me.

And maybe in a distant world,
Pain can be nothing more.
As a mirror image, reflects on distant shore.
And thousand flags unfurled,
When hearts will cease to beat.
As a mirror image, reflects on foreign feet.

Until my pain seeps further,
Into the heaving waves.
A poisons every world,
With nothing it saves.

How many worlds must fall,
From grief and pain?
What worlds will tumble down,
Further into the insane?

I stand upon a shore,
Looking at the sea.
I stand upon a shore,
With reflections of agony.

The Gnat



La Mer

A white mist drifts across the shrouds,
A wild moon in this wintry sky
Gleams like an angry lion's eye
Out of a mane of tawny clouds.

The muffled steersman at the wheel
Is but a shadow in the gloom; -
And in the throbbing engine-room
Leap the long rods of polished steel.

The shattered storm has left its trace
Upon this huge and heaving dome,
For the thin threads of yellow foam
Float on the waves like ravelled lace.

-Oscar Wilde



It has stood since the Beginning of Time.
..yadda, yadda.
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something witty goes here......



Lost in never never land
The Oarsman
Two coins to sail the sea,
And with the oarsman be.
Two pieces of gold,
For all eternity.

I stop along my walk,
To that forsaken shore.
Wondering at the price,
For the nevermore.

The wind blows through the dark,
Cold and damp on the way.
I stop and look for light,
No light for no day.

I know the oarsman waits,
For his morbid ride.
For souls time forgot,
And hopes that all have died.

I climb aboard the ship,
And hand my stolen fare.
The light of life is gone,
As we sail to neverwhere.

- The Gnat

Canceled Dreams
I put my dreams on hold,
Because you told me to.
I wanted to believe,
That all you said was true.

I should see in your eyes,
That it was all a lie.
My heart soon broken,
And then I life to cry.

The dreams that do not happen,
For broken hopes complain.
A moment left of hope,
And then my soul to drain.

What will I fall back on,
Dreams crumbled like shale.
Your lies you spread so beautifully,
And hopes that ever fail?

I bleed more then I should,
From the broken seems,
I thought of what I could have,
And all my canceled dreams.

- The Gnat



canceled dreams - happens to us all! rite of passage, methinks.



The City in the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines and palaces and towers
(Time-eaten towers and tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.

No rays from the holy Heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently--
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free--
Up domes--up spires--up kingly halls--
Up fanes--up Babylon-like walls--
Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers--
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.

There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol's diamond eye--
Not the gaily-jewelled dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass--
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea--
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.

But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave--there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide--
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy Heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow--
The hours are breathing faint and low--
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.

*


~ Edgar Allan Poe ~
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You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough.
~William Blake ~

AiSv Nv wa do hi ya do...
(Walk in Peace)




Caitlyn, have you read 'A Dream Within a Dream' by Poe?

Poe is a favorite of mine... so yeah, I've read A Dream Within a Dream... and almost posted it instead of The City in the Sea...

BTW... today is Poe's birthday... he would have been 200 years old...



You want to post like me?
BTW, let me post a dream within a dream (for the both of us).

A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?




Chappie doesn't like the real world
Letter To Ibrahim
by Khaled Mattawa

You remember the joke, right?
About the guy who wanted
to build a future
but ran out of cement,
ran out of bricks, tossed around
by the wheels of fortune,
crushed under the concrete of neglect
like the bird we found
in the middle of a street
downtown, head nodding,
wings barely flapping,
drowning in automobile exhaust.
I held it, felt the warm clay
cooling in my hands.
I could almost see all its flights
returning to nest forever
in the grayness of its down.
You watched me make
a place for it under a tree.
At least it'll die
in the shade, you said.
And death will come
slowly riding the coattails
of a breeze. It's morning where you live now.
In your room in Leiden,
you're calling friends
in London, Cairo and D.C.
There's a windmill
in the distance. The old woman
whose basement you rent
plants tulips because they,
like the Turk cycling to deliver
fresh milk and cheese,
are predictable, on time.
Your notebooks are crowded
with cob webs and pigeons
and the angels for whom you wait
build houses on the ocean floor.
Half drunk in Tennessee,
I think of you. I'm happy here
laughing at white lies and curses,
running out of bricks, but not embraces.
Listen brother, it's the same everywhere.
We all raise memories like trees
to live under their shadows,
to be sheltered by their magnificent,
leaking roofs.



The Current state

I've never seen such sadder states, than that which my fellow man creates.
Shards of shattered beasts cast atop hollowed streets.
Life measured by the cent, not much good even when they're spent.

Leaders all seem to know the answer, yet all I hear is self-indulgent banter.
When force exceeds, it's always for the greater need.
Deafened to the Gods of reason, cultivating a new destructive season.

Waves of suffering crash onto the shore, to be heard from no more.
Material and ethereal locked in futile stance, for we know which stands no chance.
When all is said and done, when the killing is done, what more could it be had it been you or me?
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...uh the post is up there...