Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Some call it bi-polar
I prefer manic-depression
It fits us better with adequate expression
We live our life in swooping loops
We strive at our peak then it droops
And the doleful drudge is destitute
Until all progress stops and stoops
To a halt, face down in mud and roots

And then we rise
Called back to life by a guiding light held deep inside
Sorely self-aware, we work until we burst
Droll desperation, at our best when at our worst
"Wow you got your **** together you lost and soulless ruffian."
Then we hit our peak and it all starts back up again
In spite of all the learn'd have said;
I still my old opinion keep,
The posture, that we give the dead,
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands --
The Indian, when from life releas'd
Again is seated with his friends,
And shares gain the joyous feast.

His imag'd birds, and painted bowl,
And ven'son, for a journey dress'd,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that knows no rest.

His bow, for action ready bent,
And arrows, with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,
And not the finer essence gone.

Thou, stranger, that shalt come this way.
No fraud upon the dead commit --
Observe the swelling turf, and say
They do not lie, but here they sit.

Here still lofty rock remains,
On which the curious eye may trace,
(Now wasted, half, by wearing rains)
The fancies of a older race.

Here still an aged elm aspires,
Beneath whose far -- projecting shade
(And which the shepherd still admires
The children of the forest play'd!

There oft a restless Indian queen
(Pale Shebah, with her braided hair)
And many a barbarous form is seen
To chide the man that lingers there.

By midnight moons, o'er moistening dews,
In habit for the chase array'd,
The hunter still the deer pursues,
The hunter and the deer, a shade!

And long shall timorous fancy see
The painted chief, and pointed spear,
And reason's self shall bow the knee
To shadows and delusions here.
Philip Freneau (1752 - 1832), American poet
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Freneau
small hands
like small minds
can never grasp great things
 Feb 2017 Mike Marshall
Ramin Ara
Raise your words
Not your voice
It's the rain
That grows flowers
Not thunder
with all these Black Sheep
    from the bottom end
    of the top 1 percent
in the new government
spewing lies without shame
we will have to rename
the White House
Apropos recent developments
Next page