A Softer World: reminder
Current mood: animated

Currently reading : Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia By Elizabeth Gilbert

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Who Will Know Us?
Current mood: breezy

for Jaroslav Seifert

It is cold, bitter as a penny.
I'm on a train, rocking toward the cemetery
To visit the dead who now
Breathe through the grass, through me,
Through relatives who will come
And ask, Where are you?
Cold. The train with its cargo
Of icy coal, the conductor 
With his loose buttons like heads of crucified saints,
His mad puncher biting zeros through tickets.

The window that looks onto its slate of old snow.
Cows. The barbed fences throat-deep in white.
Farm houses dark, one wagon
With a shivering horse.
This is my country, white with no words,
House of silence, horse that won't budge
To cast a new shadow. Fence posts
That are the people, spotted cows the machinery
That feed Officials. I have nothing
Good to say. I love Paris
And write, "Long Live Paris!"
I love Athens and write,
"The great book is still in her lap."
Bats have intrigued me,


The pink vein in a lilac.
I've longed to open an umbrella
In an English rain, smoke
And not give myself away,
Drink and call a friend across the room,
Stomp my feet at the smallest joke.
But this is my country.
I walk a lot, sleep.
I eat in my room, read in my room,
And make up women in my head — 
Nostalgia, the cigarette lighter from before the war,
Beauty, tears that flow inward to feed its roots.

The train. Red coal of evil.
We are its passengers, the old and young alike.
Who will know us when we breathe through the grass?

--Gary Soto

Currently watching : Pushing Daisies - The Complete First Season Release date: 2008-09-16

2:12 AM - 3 Comments - 3 Kudos - Add Comment

Vacation
Current mood: full

I love the hour before takeoff,
that stretch of no time, no home
but the gray vinyl seats linked like
unfolding paper dolls. Soon we shall
be summoned to the gate, soon enough
there'll be the clumsy procedure of row numbers
and perforated stubs—but for now
I can look at these ragtag nuclear families
with their cooing and bickering
or the heeled bachelorette trying
to ignore a baby's wail and the baby's
exhausted mother waiting to be called up early
while the athlete, one monstrous hand
asleep on his duffel bag, listens,
perched like a seal trained for the plunge.
Even the lone executive
who has wandered this far into summer
with his lasered itinerary, briefcase
knocking his knees—even he
has worked for the pleasure of bearing
no more than a scrap of himself
into this hall. He'll dine out, she'll sleep late,
they'll let the sun burn them happy all morning
—a little hope, a little whimsy
before the loudspeaker blurts
and we leap up to become
Flight 828, now boarding at Gate 17.
 
--Rita Dove

Currently listening : Dino: The Essential Dean Martin By Dean Martin Release date: 2004-06-01

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Compulsively Allergic to the Truth
Current mood: blissful

I'm sorry I was late.
I was pulled over by a cop
for driving blindfolded
with a raspberry-scented candle
flickering in my mouth.
I'm sorry I was late.
I was on my way
when I felt a plot
thickening in my arm.
I have a fear of heights.
Luckily the Earth
is on the second floor
of the universe.
I am not the egg man.
I am the owl
who just witnessed
another tree fall over
in the forest of your life.
I am your father
shaking his head
at the thought of you.
I am his words dissolving
in your mind like footprints
in a rainstorm.
I am a long-legged martini.
I am feeding olives
to the bull inside you.
I am decorating
your labyrinth,
tacking up snapshots
of all the people
who've gotten lost
in your corridors.

--Jeffrey McDaniel

Currently watching : The New Adventures of He-Man, Vol. 1 Release date: 2006-12-26

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I’m nobody! Who are you?
Current mood: optimistic

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us--don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

--Emily Dickinson

Currently listening : Hey Ma By James Release date: 2008-09-16

9:42 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

seriously cheaper
Current mood: good

Currently listening : Gossip In The Grain By Ray LaMontagne Release date: 2008-10-14

3:37 AM - 5 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

going green
Current mood: amused

Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.
--Russell Baker

Hollywood Gas is 3.99 a gallon today. (premium, La Brea & Sunset) Yeesh.

What's the gas price where you are?
Comment below. =]

Many red devils ran from my heart
Current mood: animated

Many red devils ran from my heart
And out upon the page,
They were so tiny
The pen could mash them.
And many struggled in the ink.
It was strange
To write in this red muck
Of things from my heart.

--Stephen Crane

Currently watching : Paris, Je T'Aime (Paris, I Love You) Release date: 2007-11-13

2:16 AM - 89 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

登鶴雀樓 ;
Current mood: contemplative

登鶴雀樓

白日依山盡,
黃河入海流.

欲窮千里目,
更上一層樓.

--王之渙

English:

Ascend to the Crane Sparrow Pavilion

Mountains cover the white sun,
And oceans drain the golden river;
But you widen your view three hundred miles
By going up one flight of stairs.

--Wang Zhihuan: Tang Dynasty Official & Chinese Poet

Currently listening : Debut By Björk Release date: 1993-07-13

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Say Yes Quickly
Current mood: selective

Forget your life.
Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is.
It's time to pray.
You've carved so many little figurines, too many.
Don't knock on any random door like a beggar.
Reach your long hand out to another door,
beyond where you go on the street,
the street where everyone says,
"How are you?"
and no one says
How aren't you?

Tomorrow you'll see what you've broken and torn tonight,
thrashing in the dark.
Inside you there's an artist you don't know about.
He's not interested in how things look different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you're causing terrible damage.
If you've opened your loving to God's love,
you're helping people you don't know and have never seen.

Is what I say true?
Say yes quickly, if you know,
if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe.

-- Rumi
- Translated by Coleman Barks

Currently listening : & Yet & Yet By Do Make Say Think Release date: 2002-03-26

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