Freres humains qui apres nous vivez,
N'ayez les coeurs contre nous endurcis ...
Men, brother men, that after us yet live,
Let not your hearts too hard against us be;
For if some pity of us poor men ye give,
The sooner God shall take of you pity.
Here are we five or six strung up, you see,
And here the flesh that all too well we fed
Bit by bit eaten and rotten, rent and shred,
And we the bones grow dust and ash withal;
Let no man laugh at us discomforted,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
If we call on you, brothers, to forgive,


Ye should not hold our prayer in scorn, though we
Were slain by law; ye know that all alive
Have not wit always to walk righteously;
Make therefore intercession heartily
With him that of a ******'s womb was bred,
That his grace be not as a dr-y well-head
For us, nor let hell's thunder on us fall;
We are dead, let no man harry or vex us dead,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.


The rain has washed and laundered us all five,
And the sun dried and blackened; yea, perdie,
Ravens and pies with beaks that rend and rive
Have dug our eyes out, and plucked off for fee
Our beards and eyebrows; never we are free,
Not once, to rest; but here and there still sped,
Driven at its wild will by the wind's change led,
More pecked of birds than fruits on garden-wall;
Men, for God's love, let no gibe here be said,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.
Prince Jesus, that of all art lord and head,
Keep us, that hell be not our bitter bed;
We have nought to do in such a master's hall.
Be not ye therefore of our fellowhead,
But pray to God that he forgive us all.


Algernon Charles Swinburne, trans.

I lay down on the covers and listen
to the sound that wood makes when it moves
when it moves so slowly you can barely notice
as spiders crawl on the soles of my feet
they move unashamed like the
Lepisma saccharina
commonly known as the enemy
or silverfishes
under my floorboards

I have got no meter
it makes me write like a renegade dropout
smoking outside the doors of
junior high
but this is not poetry I write
it's testimonies
of how I looked further and never found
much of anything

I'd sweep quietness away with one sudden movement
like when smoke disperses
with a waving hand I can expel
all that is wrong like if I
broke the best china and saw the violets
in pieces of porcelain on the floor but
I know that silence is thick and
nothing ever breaks against linoleum

The only thing to do
is jump over the moon.
Sometimes you can't do anything else.
Just close your eyes.
Stop thinking.
Jump.
Up to where no person can hurt you
and where gravity does not limit you.
Where you can be whoever you want
and still be a legend.
Because you jumped over the moon.
And guess what?
That's pretty **** awesome.

her skin tastes like sour patched kids
and she was a
sour,
patched
kid,
with more stories about rusty space ships
than about boys who say no.

my brain feels like a galaxy that eats itself slowly,
one star at a time.

his face sounds like a cresent moon
without the soft hum of adventure.
slowly dripping from his eyes was the fluid from his lungs
and he cried his death away.

my lips smell like anxiety
it's a familiar smell
but lingering faintly is the loss of sugar plum fairies and candy cane wishes.

Now, O now, in this brown land
Where Love did so sweet music make
We two shall wander, hand in hand,
Forbearing for old friendship' sake,
Nor grieve because our love was gay
Which now is ended in this way.

A rogue in red and yellow dress
Is knocking, knocking at the tree;
And all around our loneliness
The wind is whistling merrily.
The leaves -- - they do not sigh at all
When the year takes them in the fall.

Now, O now, we hear no more
The vilanelle and roundelay!
Yet will we kiss, sweetheart, before
We take sad leave at close of day.
Grieve not, sweetheart, for anything -- -
The year, the year is gathering.

There was a young lady called B
Who had an urgent desire to P
There was no toilet around
So she used the ground
What a sight that was to C

A star exploded a million point six years ago
in a galaxy we've yet to know exists.
Today the energy
reached us.
And your smile was brighter
although you had no clue why.
But because of this,
I smiled too.
And a day that was dark and heavy--
pressure flattening us like
an unrelieved argument we didn't know
we were having
turned around.
The dark side was enveloped in light
and we loved, giggled about stupid stuff
no one but us could ever understand
and somewhere
deep inside that impossibly far away place
a new star shimmered into being.

Why Damon, why, why, why so pressing?
The Heart you beg's not worth possessing:
Each Look, each Word, each Smile's affected,
And inward Charms are quite neglected:
Then scorn her, scorn her, foolish Swain,
And sigh no more, no more in vain.

Beauty's worthless, fading, flying;
Who would for Trifles think of dying?
Who for a Face, a Shape, wou'd languish,
And tell the Brooks, and Groves his Anguish,
Till she, till she thinks fit to prize him,
And all, and all beside despise him?

Fix, fix your Thoughts on what's inviting,
On what will never bear the slighting:
Wit and Virtue claim your Duty,
They're much more worth that Gold and Beauty:
To them, to them, your Heart resign,
And you'll no more, no more repine.