Quote: Hubert H. Humphrey

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.

- Hubert H. Humphrey

D.H. Lawrence: The Enkindled Spring

I am trying an experiment with another type of blog at:

http://thornblossom.stripgenerator.com/

I experimented with a DH Lawrence poem. I enjoyed trying to figure out what images to use.

I think this would be wonderful with Haiku.


I had to remove the embeded images because they did not scale well with this blog. Here are the links to each one of them:


Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

THE ENKINDLED SPRING


This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green,
Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes,
Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between
Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes.

I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration
Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze
Of growing, and sparks that puff in wild gyration,
Faces of people streaming across my gaze.


And I, what fountain of fire am I among
This leaping combustion of spring? My spirit is tossed
About like a shadow buffeted in the throng
Of flames, a shadow that’s gone astray, and is lost.


D.H. Lawrence (1916)

Ogden Nash: Listen...

Listen...


There is a knocking in the skull,
An endless silent shout
Of something beating on a wall,
And crying, “Let me out!”

That solitary prisoner
Will never hear reply.
No comrade in eternity
Can hear the frantic cry.

No heart can share the terror
That haunts his monstrous dark.
The light that filters through the chinks
No other eye can mark.

When flesh is linked with eager flesh,
And words run warm and full,
I think that he is loneliest then,
The captive in the skull.

Caught in a mesh of living veins,
In cell of padded bone,
He loneliest is when he pretends
That he is not alone.

We’d free the incarcerate race of man
That such a doom endures
Could only you unlock my skull,
Or I creep into yours.

Rod McKuen: Autumn As It Is...

Autumn as a season

and autumn as a life
are different
than I first expected.
The first, an abstract;
the second, a subtract.


The leaves turn crimson,
the hair turns white.
The leaves fall down,
as do testicles
and the firmest breast.


The dream goes on
for trees and man.
The difference is
the tree survives
the harshest winter,
but man may get
a simple cough
and raw will be
the days that follow.


It is as it is. It was as it was.
Nothing changes
but the scenes and seasons.
Worry not. It is only life
and that is all we have.
It often isn’t much
but nearly always quite enough.


R.I.P. Ron



I changed the poem because too many people didn't understand the first poem I put here. Chris understood, but I got tired of the email and phone call questions about why I chose the first poem.


First I was going to quote Rod McKuen, "I say again the poem is me. I lived, or am living it. I accept no advice on how it could or should be lived." But, this isn't about me and my choices, but rather about a man's death.


Hopefully this poem will be better received.

Stephen Schwartz: No Time At All (From Pippin)

In honor of naming my new cat, here is my favorite song from Pippin...

When you are as old as I, my dear
And I hope that you never are
You will woefully wonder why, my dear
Through your cataracts and catarrh
You could squander away or sequester
A drop of a precious year
For when your best days are yester
The rest'er twice as dear....

What good is a field on a fine summer night
When you sit all alone with the weeds?
Or a succulent pear if with each juicy bite
You spit out your teeth with the seeds?
Before it's too late stop trying to wait
For fortune and fame you're secure of
For there's one thing to be sure of, mate:
There's nothing to be sure of!

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

I've never wondered if I was afraid
When there was a challenge to take
I never thought about how much I weighed
When there was still one piece of cake
Maybe it's meant the hours I've spent
Feeling broken and bent and unwell
But there's still no cure more heaven-sent
As the chance to raise some hell

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Now when the drearies do attack
And a siege of the sads begins
I just throw these noble shoulders back
And lift these noble chins
Give me a man who is handsome and strong
Someone who's stalwart and steady
Give me a night that's romantic and long
And give me a month to get ready
Now I could waylay some aging roue
And persuade him to play in some cranny
But it's hard to believe I'm being led astray
By a man who calls me granny

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Oh, it's time to start livin'
Time to take a little from this world we're given
Time to take time, cause spring will turn to fall
In just no time at all....

Sages tweet that age is sweet
Good deeds and good work earns you laurels
But what could make you feel more obsolete
Than being noted for your morals?

Here is a secret I never have told
Maybe you'll understand why
I believe if I refuse to grow old
I can stay young till I die
Now, I've known the fears of sixty-six years
I've had troubles and tears by the score
But the only thing I'd trade them for
Is sixty-seven more....

Oh, it's time to keep livin'
Time to keep takin' from this world we're given
You are my time, so I'll throw off my shawl
And watching your flings be flung all over
Makes me feel young all over

In just no time at all....

Emily Dickinson: After great pain, a formal feeling comes

After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?


The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone --


This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First -- Chill -- then Stupor -- then the letting go --

Mark 10:1-12

10He left that place and went to the region of Judea and beyond the Jordan. And crowds again gathered around him; and, as was his custom, he again taught them.


2 Some Pharisees came, and to test him they asked, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’
3 He answered them, ‘What did Moses command you?’
4 They said, ‘Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.’
5 But Jesus said to them, ‘Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you.
6 But from the beginning of creation, “God made them male and female.”
7 “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
9 Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.’

10 Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter.
11 He said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.’

Dorothy Parker: Resume

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol (Exerpt From)

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Edgar Allan Poe: 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?.

Pablo Neruda: One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII (Translated by Mark Eisner)

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Robert Desnos: I Have Dreamed of You So Much (Translator Unknown)

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.

Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make your dear voice come alive again?


I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.

For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many days and years, I would surely become a shadow.


O scales of feeling.


I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.

I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who counts for me today,

I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much with your phantom,

that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom among phantoms,

a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that moves

and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

W. H. Auden: The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

A. E. Housman: He would not stay for me, and who can wonder

He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?

He would not stay for me to stand and gaze.

I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder,

And went with half my life about my ways

Christina Davis: The Primer

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one

of each word and the one

who used it, used it up).

In the history of language

the first obscenity was silence.

Fujiwara Kimikage: A Poem

Was it a previous life
Which binds our fates, decrees that now
My feelings must be stirred --
Rushing into love with you, so hidden
Like the peak of Mount Tsukuba from my sight?