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Racheal McKnight Aug 2015
You can't just write a poem,
With no meaning behind its lines.
It can be about your happiness,
Or what goes on during your troubled times.

I personally can't write about a tree,
Without there being a story.
Such as me climbing up one,
Or an animal that lives in the tree.

A poem is nothing without morales,
And that is how it is.
There always must be meaning,
And I don't mean this as a dis.
st64 Mar 2014
Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change  
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery  
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.


Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train  
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.  
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.


Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.  
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.


Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.  
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.


The train whistle still wails its ancient sound  
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
happy birthday, antonio -- may your soul-seasons exceed four :)


Naomi Shihab Nye
b. 1952

Naomi Shihab Nye was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1952. Her father was a Palestinian refugee and her mother an American of German and Swiss descent, and Nye spent her adolescence in both Jerusalem and San Antonio, Texas. Her experience of both cultural difference and different cultures has influenced much of her work. Known for poetry that lends a fresh perspective to ordinary events, people, and objects, Nye has said that, for her, “the primary source of poetry has always been local life, random characters met on the streets, our own ancestry sifting down to us through small essential daily tasks.”

A contributor to Contemporary Poets wrote that she “brings attention to the female as a humorous, wry creature with brisk, hard intelligence and a sense of personal freedom unheard of” in the history of pioneer women.

Nye received her BA from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and continues to live and work in the city. “My poems and stories often begin with the voices of our neighbors, mostly Mexican American, always inventive and surprising,” Nye wrote for Four Winds Press. “I never get tired of mixtures.”

In Hugging the Jukebox (1902), Nye continues to focus on the ordinary, on connections between diverse peoples, and on the perspectives of those in other lands. She writes: “We move forward, / confident we were born into a large family, / our brothers cover the earth.” Nye creates poetry from everyday scenes throughout Hugging the Jukebox in poems like “The Trashpickers of San Antonio” and the title poem, where a boy is enthusiastic about the jukebox he adopts and sings its songs in a way that “strings a hundred passionate sentences in a single line.”

Nye is a fluid poet, and her poems are also full of the urgency of spoken language. Her direct, unadorned vocabulary serves her well:
‘A boy filled a bottle with water.
He let it sit.
Three days later it held the power
of three days.’
Such directness has its own mystery, its own depth and power, which Nye exploits to great effect.

Fuel (1998) is perhaps Nye’s most acclaimed volume. The poems range over a variety of subjects, settings and scenes. Reviewing the book for Ploughshares, Victoria Clausi regarded it as, above all, an attempt at connection: “Nye’s best poems often act as conduits between opposing or distant forces. Yet these are not didactic poems that lead to forced epiphanic moments. Rather, the carefully crafted connections offer bridges on which readers might find their own stable footing, enabling them to peek over the railings at the lush scenery.”

As a children’s writer, Nye is acclaimed for her sensitivity and cultural awareness.
Nye told Contemporary Authors: “I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime…Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”
J Arturo Dec 2017
A little bird tried to fly through the screen door and I thought, 'if only there were more air up here'.

The view from the second story deck encompassed miles of low scrub hills, piñon, and was daily growing less hazy as the fires subsided. The little bird was dead. Was not even twitching or rolling or whatever idiot birds do to fight or hold onto life. Or maybe it was unconscious. If it was a head impact, it could just be out cold. I could take it in for a bit, see if it revives. But the brains of birds are very small... maybe not large enough to switch out of consciousness without damaging the whole system. It could wake up brain damaged: amnesic, whistling gibberish, unable to collaborate or co-worm-locate or sit on eggs or whatever other higher functions birds perform. Angry, all the time. Likely a burden and a danger to the community. Condemned to either death or a life of lonely suffering. I'd rather not be culpable for that.

Prospective buyers are arriving at four, the realtor as well, for a tour, so I grabbed a broom and swept the quiet body into the shaggy juniper that surrounded the house. Swept up with maple leaves that had settled on the porch since this time yesterday, together a mass of decomposing matter, under the railing and into the dark.

I'd spent a lot of time alone in the house on Grand. Watched nature slowly creep through the iron fence and into the faux-pond, up under the patio bricks, purple flowered and needley plants growing taller and more hostile daily. Increasing numbers of little brown birds mistaking the reflected sunset in the plate glass doors for real sky.

"If only there were more air up here." A little joke I repeat out loud while sweeping broken bodies into shrubs. The thickest places, where they wouldn’t be seen when (if) someone ever dropped by to view the house.


I don't live here, the house is soon to be foreclosed. But a friend of mine knew I needed a place to stay and offered this, his third home, empty of everything except a coffee maker, some landscaping tools, a few boxes that had yet to be moved. I have a twin sized mattress in what must have been a child's room: a strip of Denver Broncos wallpaper runs the circumference, every other surface painted complimentary blue.


The couple arrived at five. She wears a salmon coloured shawl over a white blouse. They’re performing the theatric act of young couples in love (with the idea of a larger house): she ecstatic over the seven jets in the master Jacuzzi tub, he hesitant about the people-paths in the wall-to-wall-carpet, the everpresent pastels we know were once in vogue but will take weeks and at least two layers of base to fully eradicate. It’s the realtor’s job to showcase the place but I often stand outside the plate glass windows of the living room, keeping an eye. Playing the role of groundskeeper because hitchhiker is so much less glorious.

So far it’s been the same. Always she with a genuine smile that will be gone forty minutes after she’s left the driveway. He, always in t-shirt and “trying to be casual” jacket calculating the square footage of each room, the viability of the fireplace. Opening cabinets, but not concerned with storage space. He wants to see if the brass hinges really have brass pins. Is it wood, linoleum? Look closely at his eyes and watch them dance across a virtual blackboard, adding up the gallons of primer and paint needed to cover up the colour mistakes of a before-his-decade.

  2

You can almost watch his eyes dart across the blackboard. A house is a house but the home must be shredded, burned, before making it yours.


But they all do this. A dozen or so now, this summer. And I spend a lot of time alone. Injecting my thoughts into people who think they know what they need next, before getting in a small car and checking out a properly closer to town. Making little jokes to myself as I sweep the porch. The isolation even maybe altering small parts of my self. The social parts, perhaps. I feel good, most days, but find myself repeating the same phrases: “****. Shower. Shave”, “If only there were more air up here.”, “I could learn to love a leopard”, even recently a little Old Testament, which like a ******* I’ve been taking to bed with increasing frequency and a growing selfish guilt, repeating,

“As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him.”


They won’t be back, but for the first time now there’s a deer in the yard. Meaning there must be a hole in the fence. A doe, and fawn too, and I can sit and stare with my broom in hand because my job is to sweep the deck. Dead birds and maybe rats, leaves of course, but with all the water the bank is wasting on this waste of a lawn, come deer: come all ye deer, come and eat. Maybe you will even eat the frighteningly thistly things. Regardless, in exchange for this room I was given a broom and deer are far too large to sweep.



When my student visa expired in Canada I left the country with no identification, five Canadian dollars, a five litre backpack mostly occupied by a camera, and in my mind some distillation of the romanticism from On The Road that I’d managed to power-read in a Heathrow bookstore four years before (lacking the pounds to actually purchase the book). I crossed the border via ferry, and entered the country without identification. I thought this was impossible but it turns out that when you have no time but your whole future ahead of you, and nowhere to get to anyway, insisting “I am a U.S. citizen and you need to let me into this country” does in fact work, if you repeat it enough, and are willing to wait. In my case border patrol even gave me a twenty note and a pat on the back before sending me on my way.


How I ended up sitting on the floor watching birds die, backlit by a desert sunset, in the mountains of New Mexico, is a long story, and to be honest the details have largely escaped me. I do remember I was reading Hemingway. “The Innocents Abroad”, and trying to find myself in any character I could lay my hand on. The word “Innocent” in the title, I suppose, far moreso any actual character, struck the most.


It’s the middle of The Great Recession. Or The Great Depression. The Great Compression. I can’t remember any longer which economic period this particular episode occupied (why can’t they name them more sensibly, like hurricanes?) Call it, then, The Great Introspection, as I narrated myself through the dozen rooms of a million-dollar house: the material self still alive and thriving inside in a self-congratulatory spiral over the personal ROI that left Canada on five dollars and put me, rent free, in a home worth that multiplied 200,000 times. The home where I first had my own key. The home where I learned to drink a glass of water before my morning coffee.

(Five years and $98,000 in college expenses later that was, easily, the best advice I’ve ever received.)


Eventually the phone was disconnected, the water, the power. The jacuzzi, though dry, was still a good place to lie and read. And the piñon and snakes, cacti and juniper, then inklings of pine trees came in steadily. When you would look at them they would freeze. But every morning something new was growing, some new pink flower popped up promisingly to crack the mortar in front of the door. Sweetly at first, then growing thorns, and I walking the perimeters saying “if only there were more air out here”, saying, “can not feel her anymore”, as if the decadent madness of the lawn could be silenced by speaking out loud. Trying to walk the edge of the fence, increasingly losing it in the encroaching bush, then resigning myself to the living room, the **** carpet flattening into a forest path while I impressed miles into that offensive floor.



words. seeds. thistles. marvin morales.


Sleeping on that filthy mattress, the Denver Broncos looking down, still optimistic about their upcoming trophy, or cup. Whatever it was that a bunch of cartoon horses could win. But the sweeping gave me solace, even though the growing thistles made the bricks uneven and caught in the bristles of the broom, leaving little shards of transplanted pink flowers emedded in the yellow polyethylene. I loathed them, but looking back I can see I played straight into their plan. Transplanting little seeds to new weak places in the cement, where they could grow tall again and **** up what little good was left of the land. Bring deer to eat them. Bring little idiot birds to pick the seeds out of the faeces, recycling with pure intent, and flying off into the bright light of sunset. Then crashing broken to the floor.

And like the lawn, like the porch, like what happens when you read Twain, something in me changed. “If only there were more air”, yes, but there is never enough air. Piling up among the deer, among the doe, among my now all-consuming pacing and talking to ghosts who don’t live here anymore, among the many birds who ate their worms and went on to hatch a dozen more, flew into a plate glass sunset, and were ignored.
9/22/2014
Spanish

    –Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?
Se dirían crisálidas de piedra
De yo no sé qué formidable raza
En una eterna espera inenarrable.
Los cráteres dormidos de sus bocas
Dan la ceniza negra del Silencio,
Mana de las columnas de sus hombros
La mortaja copiosa de la Calma
Y fluye de sus órbitas la noche;
Victimas del Futuro o del Misterio,
En capullos terribles y magníficos
Esperan a la Vida o a la Muerte.
Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?–
    Piedad para las vidas
Que no doran a fuego tus bonanzas
Ni riegan o desgajan tus tormentas;
Piedad para los cuerpos revestidos
Del armiño solemne de la Calma,
Y las frentes en luz que sobrellevan
Grandes lirios marmóreos de pureza,
Pesados y glaciales como témpanos;
Piedad para las manos enguantadas
De hielo, que no arrancan
Los frutos deleitosos de la Carne
Ni las flores fantásticas del alma;
Piedad para los ojos que aletean
Espirituales párpados:
Escamas de misterio,
Negros telones de visiones rosas…
Nunca ven nada por mirar tan lejos!
    Piedad para las pulcras cabelleras
–Misticas aureolas–
Peinadas como lagos
Que nunca airea el abanico *****,
***** y enorme de la tempestad;
Piedad para los ínclitos espiritus
Tallados en diamante,
Altos, claros, extáticos
Pararrayos de cúpulas morales;
Piedad para los labios como engarces
Celestes donde fulge
Invisible la perla de la Hostia;
–Labios que nunca fueron,
Que no apresaron nunca
Un vampiro de fuego
Con más sed y más hambre que un abismo.–
Piedad para los sexos sacrosantos
Que acoraza de una
Hoja de viña astral la Castidad;
Piedad para las plantas imantadas
De eternidad que arrastran
Por el eterno azur
Las sandalias quemantes de sus llagas;
Piedad, piedad, piedad
Para todas las vidas que defiende
De tus maravillosas intemperies
El mirador enhiesto del Orgullo;

Apuntales tus soles o tus rayos!

Eros: acaso no sentiste nunca
Piedad de las estatuas?…

              English

    –Eros: have you never felt
Piety for the statues?
These chrysalides of stone,
Some formidable race
In an eternal, unutterable hope.
The sleeping craters of their mouths
Utter the black ash of silence;
A copious shroud of Calm
Falls from the columns of their arms,
And night flows from their eyesockets;
Victims of Destiny or Mystery,
In magnificent and terrible cocoons,
They wait for Life or Death.
Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Piety for the statues?
    Piety for the lives
That will not strew nor rend your battles
Nor gild your fiery truces;
Piety for the bodies clothed
In the solemn ermine of Calm,
The luminous foreheads that endure
Their marble wreaths, grand and pure,
Weighty and glacial as icebergs;
Piety for the gloved hands of ice
That cannot uproot
The delicious fruits of the Flesh,
The fantastic flowers of the soul;
Piety for the eyes that flutter
Their spiritual eyelids:
Mysterious fish scales,
Dark curtains on rose visions…
For looking so far, they never see!
    Piety for the tidy heads of hair
–Mystical haloes–
Gently combed like lakes
Which the storm’s black fan,
Black and enormous, never thrashes;
Piety for the spirits, illustrious,
Carved of diamonds,
High, clear, ecstatic
Lightning rods on pious domes;
Piety for the lips like celestial settings
Where the invisible pearls of the Host gleam;
–Lips that never existed,
Never seized anything,
A fiery vampire
With more thirst and hunger than an abyss.
Piety for the sacrosanct sexes
That armor themselves with sheaths
From the astral vineyards of Chastity;
Piety for the magnetized footsoles
Who eternally drag
Sandals burning with sores
Through the eternal azure;
Piety, piety, pity
For all the lives defended
By the lighthouse of Pride
From your marvelous raw weathers:

Aim your suns and rays at them!

Eros: have you never perhaps felt
Pity for the statues?
Nameless  May 2014
Dare devil
Nameless May 2014
I was a dare devil,
I always raised the level,
I got bruises and scars,
But that didn't stop me from going bizarre

I would jump and skate,
But it wasn't my fate,
I have to find something else to do,
Before I don't have clue
© Sasha Morales
gypssywind Feb 2021
help me be like a tree
strong and mighty healing energy
let me be like the wind
always there
no beginning or end
guide my soul
as i start again.
sacred womb filled with deep desires
divine flame that lights my fire
guarding, guiding, dodging out the dark
unique individual
creating a spark.
my sacred spider spirit guide
i come to you within the night
weaves webs of hope on my thorn pricked thighs
morning rises
dew drops
drip on my bed
water heals my worried dread
reflections of truth
act as a reminder
to soften my heart and always be kinder
may i always remember
my destiny and who i was made to be
remove my ego and pride
so now i can see,
IN LA'KECH
i am u and u are me

Maya Ixchel Morales
I'm sorry boo
I never meant to
Couldn't forsee this happening

Oh god what have I done?
Am I unfaithful...

Thats been on my mind this past couple of hours
I didnt mean to say what I did
Was trying to be nice and friendly
Trying to brighten their mood
I wasnt looking for love
I have you
Right?
You'll stay here right?
I'm scared...
Terrified
Petrified
Mortified

What have I done
Am I unfaithful...

I cant live with myself
Whyd i act in such a way
What's wrong with me
The voices they scream inside
Someone please help me
I've dishonored myself
My character
My partner and
my morales
sunprincess Jul 2018
You will see what I mean, log onto any internet site
Pick up your remote and turn on any station
Read your local paper, chat with all your neighbors
This is one more unbelievable investigation

Impossible! He's lying, she's lying, they're all lying
Things like this just don't happen in our nation
In this great land, people are down right respectable
Believe this everyone receives a proper education

See families with children are always kept together
Small children being raised by parents impeccable
Government entities aren't transplanting flowers
Check this, in this great land of morales acceptable

Would you believe one has their own perspective?
Half of what I said just may be true for all of you
On the other hand everything I said may be false
So if you choose, you can say the sky is baby Blue

Only some of us know the Truth!
tangshunzi Jul 2014
Per quanto adoro un matrimonio moderno o rustico .io sono un vero romantico a cuore .Un amante Jane Austen che si innamora perdutamente di morbidi .fiori lussureggianti e giardino ricevimenti partito- esque che vi toglierà il fiato .Questo .amici miei .è uno di quei matrimoni.Una splendida storia drop-dead .che è tutto il romanticismo .e tutto sulla bella .Vedi tutto catturato dalle Fotografia Redfield nella piena galleria .

ColorsSeasonsSummerSettingsMansionStylesRomanticTraditional Elegance

Da Sposa.Peter e io ci siamo incontrati nella scuola media.ma non iniziare risalente fino a dopo ci siamo laureati di scuola superiore .Dopo incontri per oltre otto anni .Peter ha infine deciso di proporre .con l'aiuto del nostro cane .Dexter .Peter fece un segno da appendere al collo Dexter ' che ha dettoè èommy .vuoi sposare papà?ècon un po' di zampa di cane sul segno .363 giorni dopo che Peter ha proposto .ci siamo sposati .Se potessi scegliere alcune parole chiave per descrivere l'ispirazione complessiva



e il tema stavamo andando perché sarebbero: romantico .classico ed elegante .Niente di troppo pesanteèVolevamo una serata piena luce d'amore .risate .la famiglia e gli amici .Volevamo solo che tutto sia classico .
tocchi speciali e progetti fai da te : Abbiamo avuto un artista dal vivo (pittore ).che ogni singolo ospite pensava fosse davvero incredibile !E lei era assolutamente abiti da cerimonia taglie forti incredibile ;una giovane donna di grande talento .Inoltre .il nostro cane ha svolto un ruolo speciale .era sullo sfondo della cerimonia di nozze .e poi dopo ci siamo sposati ufficialmente è venuto avanti in modo che potessimo recesso lungo la navata come una famiglia .La nostra lista di birra è stata inoltre selezionata a mano dal padre dello sposo .

PROGETTI fai da te:zecche

èsalvavita nel cartoncino che sembravano coi libri conè e èsu di loro .o la data del matrimonio .o la nostra monogramma sposato in penna d'oro .

èLa toile e tabella navy numeri in corniciè eacquisti per telai per diversi mesi .raccogliendo una o due qui o là .poi spray dipinto tutti loro oro .Mi piace toile e volevo nel mio matrimonio in qualche modo .ma non è tutto .così ** avuto l'idea di fare la tabella numeri toile .Quindi.con avorio e carta da parati blu toile .** tagliato ogni pezzo in base vestiti da sposa economici alle dimensioni del telaio.rintracciato numeri .e poi dipinto i numeri blu navy con vernice artigianali .

èHo anche fatto ilè èr .e la signoraèfirmare allo stesso modo.ma utilizzata vernice d'oro per un tocco diverso .

Fotografia : Fotografia Redfield | Florist : Radebaugh ' fioraio e Greenhouse | Wedding Cake : Graul ' Mercato | Cerimonia Luogo : La Liriodendron Mansion | Banco Luogo vestiti da sposa economici : La Liriodendron Mansion | Scarpe : Ivanka Trump | Bridesmaids Dresses : Alfed Sung | Catering :Dean And Brown Catering | vestito dello sposo : Tux Da Chaps Ralph Lauren | Grooms Scarpe : Clarks bostoniano | Cerimonia Musicista : Miriam Joy | Day Of Coordinatore: Stephanie Day Of Dream Day Planners | Abiti Groomsmen ' : Tux Da Chaps Ralph Lauren | Hair Stylist :sally Morales Of Blondie ' Hair Studio | Inviti .programmi e Signage: persnickety Invito Studio | Jewlerey : Kate ***** | live Artista / Pittore : Leah Crumbling | Banco Gruppo: The Bachelor Ragazzi band | Videographers : Reflexion Videografia | Designer Abito da sposa: AmsaleAmsale è un membro del nostro Look Book .Per ulteriori informazioni su come vengono scelti i membri .fare clic qui
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Giardino di nozze presso il Liriodendron Mansion_vestito da sera
Kota  Nov 2014
Ice Cold
Kota Nov 2014
The world is colder when you open up its’ jaws.
The sign says no, but your heart says go.
You’ll blame the stars or the snakes beneath your feet,
don't forget to hide the receipt.
You inject blame to the dead.
Where are your morales, where is your sense?
Where is the blood when you need to mend?
This is your fault and this is your sword.
Please, take your daily dose.
Ignore our existence, so you can beg for more.
Beg for the claws inside your heart.
And once they’re out, once they melt,
I promise, I promise
It’ll cool you like a quilt.
I promise, No!
I guarantee-

You’ll miss the bruises and the cuts.
You’ll miss the screaming and the torture.
No more clay in the ruts, no more tape to the edges.
Just blood and heart attacks.
Oh, You’ll miss it.

And when you sleep at night you’ll ask the ceiling “why?”
“Why is it so cold?”
Because you opened up it’s god ****** jaws,
slit your wrists and fed the beast.
A meal on a plate, dessert in it’s hands.

Torture that you call it, a blessing that we give.
Seasons kiss your skin, but pain will destroy it,
no mending for your sin.
No light will kiss you, no laughter or kin.
The Ice will take you in!
The Ice will take you in!
The ice will love you. The ice will bathe you in it’s grin.
You will miss us dear, oh how I promise.
Do take a walk in the forest. Let the wind sink in.
I will whisper I will scream.
You will shiver to my note.
The cold bites honey, wear your coat.
It's about depression.
Madeysin  Apr 2015
Lez-b-honest
Madeysin Apr 2015
She said, I'll never love a man...
Who ridicules my weight,
I said then don't,
Who bothers me about my posture,
Being straight...scoliosis,
I said then don't,
Who says I can't wear this or that,
I said then don't,
Who questions my morales & beliefs,
I said then don't,
Who makes fun of the things,
That bring me relief,
I said then don't,
Who wants to have *** after the first date,
I said then don't,
She said, I'll never love a man...
I said then don't.
I ran down the steps to write this
Jose Amezcua Nov 2014
Have the shatering cries awoken you
Have the conscientious thoughts split you in two
Or will you shrug and let it pass
Mumbling silent "I'm glad it aint my ***"

Contradicting morales give us hope
Dangling in view like a transparent rope
Instead of taking action we hessitate, stall
All the whille letting the person below fall

I however, will not run from the fight
Face down the darkness even in the shadow o f the night
I will be there to say "Hey miss,
Why are you crying
Is it cuz of all the people dying
Don't worry it won't be long
One day they will hear our sad song
They will realize what went wrong
For humanity will see us through
This I promise you"

— The End —