Poetry to read when you're vaked :)

[Abysmal Vapor]

Hi there ,i think there is no such thread ,and since i like poetry very much and there are threads about various branches of art ,i find it suitable to start one .
Here is one of my favorites by James Turner

The Truth Is A Woman Who

looks like a man who looks like a woman who
stands in front of a mirror opposite a mirror
in a room within a room
at the end of a circular corridor in space.

She's a bastard.

She doesn't miss a thing. Loves it
when she's misunderstood.
Sighs with pleasure
when you say she doesn't exist.

Never uses make-up. To her that clever stuff
about the blueness of the sky being an illusion
is just an illusion. Language wasn't her idea.

There's nothing quite like a philosopher
to make her laugh.

From time to time she does a double-take
at a scientist. Then
laughs almost as long.
The way they concentrate
only on the curvature of the smudges
her long gown makes in the dust.

She's there when forests and cities burn, but has
no history of her own. Give her a rifle,
she'd only pick her teeth with it.

She's the friend, if only they knew it,
of the outcast mad (survivors
of torture too vivid to remember).
She's no psychotherapist, but if you can look
into her eyes,
you don't need therapy.

She's waded in the same river so often
its mud continually anticipates
the soles of her feet.

She blushes the colour of leaves
and listen,
nothing frightens her. Even nothing
doesn't frighten her.

 

[SD_haze]

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean –
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.

“Devotion,” Robert Frost

 

[EveryDayAmnesiac]

I know what Christopher Walken reads when he's vaped...

 

[Havelock Vetenari]

One of my favourite observations on the 'human condition' is by Alexander Pope(an excerpt from an Essay on man,III The Proper Study, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_Man) :

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac'd on this isthmus of a middle state,
A Being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself, abus'd or disabus'd;
Created half to rise and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl'd:
The glory, jest and riddle of the world!

 

[Seren]

One of my favourites as a child.....

and another....

 

[grokit]

Happy winter solstice

 

[Vitolo]

One brick at a time... one day at a time.. I build the new me.
Spilling cement, desperately needed to patch the gaps I leave between the bricks.
I catch what cement I can, and smooth it in.
Yeah- my wall has leaks... yes the weather gets in, and I get chilled...
But I built this ... it is mine. I will live in it.
I wont compare this new shell, with the prefabricated ones I dwelled in before.
I will stay here, and be happy here.
This is mine...
only mine

Vitolo upon release, after 5.5 week coma and 2 years in rehabilitation hospital

 

[Seren]

A call for humanity......

Love yourself, be yourself, because you are beautiful.....

And a bit of Benjamin.....

 

[Vitolo]

What do you do when the music stops?,
And the sun no longer shines through the pane(pain?),
The thin eggshell of your existence POPS,
And instead of sunshine you’re touched by the
rain.
Reality lashes it’s long sharp tongue,
As naked you stand...You can no longer hide,
Searching for friends to stand among,
Just to have that tongue shove you aside.
There’s no hiding behind your youth anymore,
For youth, like yon eggshell , teeters and drops...
Like Humpty Dumpty -- impossible
to restore!
What do you do when the music stops?

Vitolo

 

[momofthegoons]

I dont regret our late nights
Talking about the world
And all it's problems
I don't regret loving you
Or letting you in
I regret letting you take control
Of me
And my mind
Making me believe
That after all the laughs, tears and smiles
That what I am
Is not good enough

m.e.

 

[Vitolo]

I dream of a world where vapor rises from the ground around us.

Vapor... in swirls and cloudlike concentrations.

We stay calm in this place, because we breath vapor inadvertantly as we go about our daily lives.

Some among us hang out in locations of highest density... and others prefer to frequent areas that provide a special "nature" of vapor. (I love Blue Dream)

In swirls vapor rises... and we get the option to occassionaly duck our heads into increasingly infrequent pockets of "clearair"... for purposes of completing mundane tasks such as reading the fine print on the instructions of a vaporizer manual......

Vaporizers.... The vapor devices would be used primarily for if one had to go into a vapor free zone (hospital, nuclear plant, etc.)

I dream......

 

[grokit]

I posted this in the quotes thread recently because I forgot about this one.




"today my professor told me
every cell in our entire body
is destroyed and replaced
every seven years.

how comforting it is to know
one day i will have a body
you will have never touched."


~via @impactings
‪#‎LateNightThoughts‬
Photos by Bertil Nilson

 

[grokit]

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.


~ by Robert Frost

 

[VapeKnight]

roses are red, violets are blue. I love vaping , and so do you .

 

[phattpiggie]

Love this version

 

[hackslasher]

 

[momofthegoons]

 

[grokit]

Goodbye Blue Sky

"Look mummy, there's an aeroplane up in the sky"

Did did did you see the frightened ones?
Did did did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter when the
promise of a brave new world unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?

Did did did you see the frightened ones?
Did did did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all gone, but the pain lingers on.

Goodbye, blue sky
Goodbye, blue sky.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.

~ Roger Waters​

 

[Silat]

Lord Byron

OH Time! the beautifier of the dead,
Adorner of the ruin, comforter
And only healer when the heart hath bled—
Time! the corrector where our judgments err,
The test of truth, love,—sole philosopher,
For all beside are sophists, from thy thrift,
Which never loses though it doth defer—
Time, the avenger! unto thee I lift

My hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift:
Amidst this wreck, where thou hast made a shrine
And temple more divinely desolate,
Among thy mightier offerings here are mine,
Ruins of years—though few, yet full of fate:—
If thou hast ever seen me too elate,
Hear me not; but if calmly I have borne
Good, and reserved my pride against the hate
Which shall not whelm me, let me not have worn
This iron in my soul in vain—shall they not mourn?

 

[Fat Freddy]

Tattoo

What once was meant to be a statement—
a dripping dagger held in the fist
of a shuddering heart—is now just a bruise
on a bony old shoulder, the spot
where vanity once punched him hard
and the ache lingered on. He looks like
someone you had to reckon with,
strong as a stallion, fast and ornery,
but on this chilly morning, as he walks
between the tables at a yard sale
with the sleeves of his tight black T-shirt
rolled up to show us who he was,
he is only another old man, picking up
broken tools and putting them back,
his heart gone soft and blue with stories.


Ted Kooser, from Delights & Shadows, Copper Canyon Press

 

[Fat Freddy]

FACING IT

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Yusef Komunyakaa

 

[Fat Freddy]

Old Men Playing Basketball

-- By B.F. Fairchild


The heavy bodies lunge, the broken language
of fake and drive, glamorous jump shot
slowed to a stutter. Their gestures, in love
again with the pure geometry of curves,

rise toward the ball, falter, and fall away.
On the boards their hands and fingertips
tremble in tense little prayers of reach
and balance. Then, the grind of bone

and socket, the caught breath, the sigh,
the grunt of the body laboring to give
birth to itself. In their toiling and grand
sweeps, I wonder, do they still make love

to their wives, kissing the undersides
of their wrists, dancing the old soft-shoe
of desire? And on the long walk home
from the VFW, do they still sing

to the drunken moon? Stands full, clock
moving, the one in army fatigues
and houseshoes says to himself, pick and roll,
and the phrase sounds musical as ever,

radio crooning songs of love after the game,
the girl leaning back in the Chevy’s front seat
as her raven hair flames in the shuddering
light of the outdoor movie, and now he drives,

gliding toward the net. A glass wand
of autumn light breaks over the backboard.
Boys rise up in old men, wings begin to sprout
at their backs. The ball turns in the darkening air.



.

 

[Krazy]

Anything by Blake. I still have my fav 3 memorized from >30 years ago.

 

[Krazy]

A Poison Tree
Willian Blake

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

 

[Krazy]

The Devine Immage
William Blake


To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is God, our father dear:
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love,
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew.
Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.