Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixéd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved

For Desire, by Kim Addonizio

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here
and get down on your knees and tell me
just how fucking good I look

Renouncement

I MUST not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,
I shun the love that lurks in all delight--
The love of thee--and in the blue heaven's height,
And in the dearest passage of a song.
Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng
This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;
But it must never, never come in sight;
I must stop short of thee the whole day long.
But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,
When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,
And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,
Must doff my will as raiment laid away,--
With the first dream that comes with the first sleep
I run, I run, I am gather'd to thy heart.

By Alice Meynell

Down with War Criminals!

"Generic appeals to peace never roused our interest: war, today as four centuries ago, has a very solid raison d'etre, rooted in the criminal decisions of states and supernational powers, the United States as well as Charles V's empire. Ethnic cleanings and retaliations have their reason too, a reason that we reject and oppose, being aware that time won't stop rewarding with victories and defeats those who keep up this struggle, i.e. the only conflict worth enlisting for. These days of bloodbath coincide with our Q promotional tour all over Italy. It would immoral and inconsistent with our long-time political praxis not to seize this opportunity, that's why we're using our paradoxical "fame" to censure both the madness of rulers and the apathy of the ruled ones."

From a press release, by the collective authors of 'Q', the Luther Blissett project, Bologna, April 1st, 1999 (the entire press release found in the link)

Suicide in the Trenches by Siegfrid Sassoon

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

I SEE by Roque Dalton

I think they’ve lied to us enough.

Now I have the key to the hieroglyph
pain gave me between fits of a drunks laughter
lungers from a jailer and glares from a rabid dog
without a heart

This much I also know: it will be difficult to make men accept
this nakedness someone who possess the light reverts to
hard to convince them that so far all the laughs were turned against
them
and that all the hands held out to them had cruel nails

(its a bit chilly but it’s better that way
now that the mortal fires
the flushed faces in the middle of the orgy
the feverish myth invented by the wine settled in your blood
and spider webs clinging to the tongue have disappeared.)

I’m going to strip some of the last veils off right now.

And I’ll be the one
to take care of the wounds.

Liberal Humanists

“Liberals. Liberal humanists. That would be the enemy, in all positions... [the illusion that] there is a self who exists prior to anything who goes around emoting, experiencing and developing. This is what I hate”

From the review of C by Tom McCarthy, by Jenny Turner in the LRB

the night, the porch

To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
what all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
to the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
-- "The Night, The Porch"

Like You

Like you I

love love, life, the sweet smell

of things, the sky-

blue landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up

and I laugh through eyes

that have known the buds of tears.

I believe the world is beautiful

and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me

but in the unanimous blood

of those who struggle for life,

love,

little things,

landscape and bread,

the poetry of everyone.

By Roque Dalton

Enragés

[Jacques] Roux once said that "liberty is no more than an empty shell when one class is allowed to condemn another to starvation and no measures taken against them"

On Poetry

And what of pure poetry? Poetry’s absolute power will purify men, all

men. “Poetry must be made by all. Not by one.” So said Lautréamont. All

the ivory towers will be demolished, all speech will be holy, and, having at

last come into the reality which is his, man will need only to shut his eyes

to see the gates of wonder opening.

—Paul Éluard, “Poetic Evidence”

The Voyage by Charles Baudelaire, from Fleurs du Mal

The Journey

To Maxime du Camp

I

For the child, adoring cards and prints,
The universe fulfils its vast appetite.
Ah, how large is the world in the brightness of lamps,
How small in the eyes of memory!

We leave one morning, brains full of flame,
Hearts full of malice and bitter desires,
And we go and follow the rhythm of the waves,
Rocking our infinite on the finite of the seas:

Some happy to escape a tainted country
Others, the horrors of their cradles; and a few,
Astrologers drowned in the eyes of a woman,
Some tyrannical Circe of dangerous perfumes.

So not to be transformed into animals, they get drunk
On space and light and skies on fire;
The biting ice, the suns that turn them copper,
Slowly blot out the brand of kisses.

But the true travelers are they who depart
For departing's sake; with hearts light as balloons,
They never swerve from their destinies,
Saying continuously, without knowing why: "Let us go on!"

These have passions formed like clouds;
As a recruit of his gun, they dream
Of spacious pleasures, transient, little understood,
Whose name no human spirit knows.

II

It is a terrible thought that we imitate
The top and the ball in their bounding waltzes; even asleep
Curiosity tortures and turns us
Like a cruel angel whipping the sun.

Whimsical fortune, whose end is out of place
And, being nowhere, can be anywhere!
Where Man, in whom Hope is never weary,
Runs ever like a madman searching for repose.

Our soul is a brigantine seeking its Icaria:
A voice resounds on deck: "Open your eyes!"
A hot mad voice from the maintop cries:
"Love. Glory. Fortune!" Hell is a rock.

Each little island sighted by the look-out man
Becomes another Eldorado, the promise of Destiny;
Imagination, setting out its revels,
Finds but a reef in the morning light.

O the poor lover of chimerical lands!
Must one put him in irons, throw him in the water,
This drunken sailor, contriver of those Americas
Whose glimpses make the gulfs more bitter?

Thus the old vagabond, tramping through the mud,
With his nose in the air, dreams of shining Edens;
Bewitched his eye finds a Capua
Wherever a candle glimmers in a hovel.

III

O marvelous travelers! what glorious stories
We read in your eyes as deep as the seas.
Show us the caskets of your rich memories
Those wonderful jewels of stars and stratosphere.

We would travel without wind or sail!
And so, to gladden the cares of our jails,
Pass over our spirits, stretched out like canvas,
Your memories with their frames of horizons.

Tell us, what have you seen?

IV

"We have seen the stars
And the waves; and we have seen the sands also;
And, despite shocks and unforeshadowed disasters,
We have often, as here, grown weary.

The glory of sunlight on the violet sea,
The glory of cities in the setting sun,
Lit in our hearts an uneasy desire
To sink in a sky of enticing reflections.

Never did the richest cities, the grandest countryside,
Hold such mysterious charms
As those chance made amongst the clouds,
And ever passion made as anxious!

— Delight adds power to desire.
O desire, you old tree, your pasture is pleasure,
And whilst your bark grows great and hard
Your branches long to see the sun close to!

Do you ever increase, grand tree, you who live
Longer than the cypress? — Nevertheless, we have carefully
Culled some sketches for your ravenous album,
Brothers finding beauty in all things coming from afar!

We have greeted great horned idols,
Thrones starry with luminous jewels,
Figured palaces whose fairy pomp
Would be a dream of ruin for a banker,

Robes which make the eyes intoxicated;
Women with tinted teeth and nails
And cunning jugglers caressed by serpents."

V

And then, what then?

VI

"O childish minds!

Never to forget the principal matter,
We have everywhere seen, without having sought it,
From top to bottom of the fatal ladder,
The wearisome spectacle of immortal sin:

Woman, base slave of pride and stupidity,
Adores herself without a smile, loves herself with no distaste;
Man, that gluttonous, lewd tyrant, hard and avaricious,
Is a slave of the slave, a trickle in the sewer;

The joyful executioner, the sobbing martyr;
The festival that flavors and perfumes the blood;
The poisonous power that weakens the oppressor
And the people craving the agonizing whip;

Many religions like ours
All scaling the heavens; Sanctity
Like a tender voluptuary wallowing in a feather bed
Seeking sensuality in nails and horse-hair;

Fearing Humanity, besotted with its own genius,
Is as mad today as ever it was,
Crying to God in its furious agony:
"O my fellow and my master, I curse thee!"

And the less senseless, brave lovers of Dementia,
Flee the great herd penned in by Destiny,
And take refuge in a vast opium!
— Such is the eternal report of the whole world."

VII

O bitter is the knowledge that one draws from the voyage!
The monotonous and tiny world, today
Yesterday, tomorrow, always, shows us our reflections,
An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom!

Must we depart? If you can do so, remain;
Depart, if you must. Someone runs, another crouches,
To deceive that vigilant and fatal enemy,
Time! Ah, there are some runners who know no respite,

Like the wandering Jew or like the apostles,
Whom nothing aids, no cart, nor ship,
To flee this ugly gladiator; there are: others
Who even in their cradles know how to kill it.

When at last he shall place his foot upon our spine,
We will be capable of hope, crying: "Forward!"
As in old times we left for China,
Eyes fixed in the distance, halt in the winds,

We shall embark on that sea of Darkness
With the happy heart of a young traveler.
Do you hear these voices, alluring and funereal,
Singing: "This way, those of you who long to eat

The perfumed lotus-leaf! it is here that are gathered
Those miraculous fruits for which your heart hungers;
Do come and get drunk on the strange sweetness
Of this afternoon without end!"

By those familiar accents we discover the phantom
Over there our personal Pylades stretch out their arms to us.
"Swim to your Electra to revive your hearts!"
Says she whose knees we one time kissed.

VIII

O Death, my captain, it is time! let us raise the anchor!
This country wearies us, O Death! Let us make ready!
If sea and sky are both as black as ink,
You know our hearts are full of sunshine.

Pour on us your poison to refresh us!
Oh, this fire so burns our brains, we would
Dive to the depths of the gulf, Heaven or Hell, what matter?
If only to find in the depths of the Unknown the New!

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)

Poem from Before Sunrise

Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash / Oh baby with your pretty face / Drop a tear in my wineglass / Look at those big eyes / See what you mean to me / Sweet-cakes and milkshakes / I'm a delusion angel / I'm a fantasy parade / I want you to know what I think / Don't want you to guess anymore / You have no idea where I came from / We have no idea where we're going / Lodged in life / Like branches in a river/ Flowing downstream / Caught in the current / I carry you / You'll carry me / That's how it could be / Don't you know me? / Don't you know me by now?

From Before Sunrise

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

From Waking Life

A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone.

He's an outsider to the human community.

He thinks to himself, "I must be insane."

What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does,

a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes.

These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs.

Man wants chaos.

In fact, he's gotta have it.

Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread.

We're irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state...

created out of death and destruction.

It's in all of us. We revel in it.

Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things,

painting them up as great human tragedies.

But we all know the function of the media has never been...

to eliminate the evils of the world, no.

Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them.

The powers that be want us to be passive observers.

Hey, you got a match?

And they haven't given us any other options...

outside the occasional, purely symbolic,

participatory act of voting.

You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left?

I feel that the time has come to project my own...

inadequacies and dissatisfactions...

into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes,

Let my own lack of a voice be heard.

Schools should be palaces.

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes. Schools should be palaces. Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense. That is my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

--Sam Seaborn, fictional character from sci-fi/fantasy TV show The West Wing.

1 Corinthians 13

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Ezekial 25:17

The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish, and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger, those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon thee

Summer Interlude

"There are five or six films in the history of the cinema which one wants to review simply by saying, 'It is the most beautiful of films.' Because there can be no higher praise... I love Summer Interlude." Jean Luc Godard, Cahiers du Cinéma, (July 1958)

And this I dreamt, and this I dream, by Arseny Tarkovsky

And this I dreamt, and this I dream,
And some time this I will dream again,
And all will be repeated, all be re-embodied,
You will dream everything I have seen in dream.

To one side from ourselves, to one side from the world
Wave follows wave to break on the shore,
On each wave is a star, a person, a bird,
Dreams, reality, death - on wave after wave.

No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be,
Life is a wonder of wonders, and to wonder
I dedicate myself, on my knees, like an orphan,
Alone - among mirrors - fenced in by reflections:
Cities and seas, iridescent, intensified.
A mother in tears takes a child on her lap.

Life, Life by Arseny Tarkovsky

1

I don't believe in omens or fear
Forebodings. I flee from neither slander
Nor from poison. Death does not exist.
Everyone's immortal. Everything is too.
No point in fearing death at seventeen,
Or seventy. There's only here and now, and light;
Neither death, nor darkness, exists.
We're all already on the seashore;
I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets
When a shoal of immortality swims by.


2

If you live in a house - the house will not fall.
I'll summon any of the centuries,
Then enter one and build a house in it.
That's why your children and your wives
Sit with me at one table, -
The same for ancestor and grandson:
The future is being accomplished now,
If I raise my hand a little,
All five beams of light will stay with you.
Each day I used my collar bones
For shoring up the past, as though with timber,
I measured time with geodetic chains
And marched across it, as though it were the Urals.


3

I tailored the age to fit me.
We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe;
The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced,
Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes - and it prophesied,
Threatening me with destruction, like a monk.
I strapped my fate to the saddle;
And even now, in these coming times,
I stand up in the stirrups like a child.

I'm satisfied with deathlessness,
For my blood to flow from age to age.
Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on
I'd willingly have given all my life,
Whenever her flying needle
Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe.

Silentium! by Fyodor Tyutchev

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal

the way you dream, the things you feel.

Deep in your spirit let them rise

akin to stars in crystal skies

that set before the night is blurred:

delight in them and speak no word.

How can a heart expression find?

How should another know your mind?

Will he discern what quickens you?

A thought, once uttered, is untrue.

Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:

drink at the source and speak no word.

Live in your inner self alone

within your soul a world has grown,

the magic of veiled thoughts that might

be blinded by the outer light,

drowned in the noise of day, unheard...

take in their song and speak no word.

Stolen from urban75. Source Unknown.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be so but they endure
Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose from off the common
And geese will still a common lack
Till they go and steal it back.

Secret Story

From Dentist by Roberto Bolano:

"That's what art is, he said, the story of a life in all its particularity. It's the only thing that really is particular and personal. It's the expression and, at the same time, the fabric of the particular. And what do you mean by the fabric of the particular? I asked, supposing he would answer: Art. I was also thinking, indulgently, that we were pretty drunk already and that it was time to go home. But my friend said: What I mean is the secret story.... The secret story is the one we'll never know, although we're living it from day to day, thinking we're alive, thinking we've got it all under control and the stuff we overlook doesn't matter. But every damn thing matters! It's just that we don't realize. We tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, we don't even realize that's a lie."

pishtacos

From this article:

As a metaphor, the Andean legend is easy enough to decipher. Whether the villains are conquistadors, Catholic priests, mining engineers, or gun-toting drug dealers in the jungle, they stand in for five centuries of exploitation and extraction—a narrative of foreign powers feeding from the soft belly and open veins of Latin America

From Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere

"Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion."

Vineland

From Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

"Well I still wish it was back then, when you were the Count. Remember how the acid was? Remember that windowpane, down in Laguna that time? God, I knew then, I knew. . . ."

They had a look. "Uh-huh, me too. That you were never going to die. Ha! No wonder the State panicked. How are they supposed to control a population that knows it'll never die? When that was always their last big chip, when they thought they had the power of life and death. But acid gave us the X-ray vision to see through that one, so of course they had to take it away from us."

"Yeah, but they can't take what happened, what we found out."

"Easy. They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming — just another way to claim our attention, so that beautiful certainty we had starts to fade, and after a while they have us convinced all over again that we really are going to die. And they've got us again." It was the way people used to talk.