If to live is to be awake and to die is to sleep then how can one dream?
For no matter how hard I scorn my blood, my faith still stands and to die would be sin upon my name; I am but a human, but to take the morning away is a gods power for which I do not wish to have. A modern day Hamlet is nothing new, we see corruption everyday yet we stand still.

How can I trust myself with such vengeance if my choices lead to the end? To the land of no return? I pity such who would dare to venture, but that is only to help heal the grief of not being able to go myself. A lost man in a small and desperate body attempting to live a final dream.

i feel the water pulling me down
drowning drowning in the lack of sound
i can see the moonlight shimmer
reflecting the weight of his voice’s timbre
i smile the water gushing between my teeth
never again will  i have to hear him speak
I see the halls and the turrets of the father
finding me finding me other places to wander
i see him talking to a crown of stone
the teeth eyes and lips mine alone
Pulling me down in the lack of sound
as in my love i start to drown

She was told to get to a nunnery;
Warned not to get involved,
To step aside.
His love was inconstant as the moon,
Defined by worthless trinkets
And very poor poetry.
Instead,
She went lily picking,
Broke her mirror on the bank
(is that a belly bump sinking),
Shattered him to despondency.
It's time for poison and rapiers:
The royal family's dead;
The stench is lifting.

Have you ever done something
and then could not believe
it could possibly have been you?

Have you ever said something
and then cringed when you heard it
exiting your mouth?

That would be me, sometimes . . .

Or, while mentally calculating
your accumulating grocery bill,
have you run into a friend
only to completely lose count?

I have stood in front of the door to my home
trying to lock or unlock the door
using the keyless entry fob from my car.

I have done this --- more than once.

I have, months after getting rid of that car,
searched for its keyless entry fob
on my keychain.

I have spent hours and days
searching for glasses on my head,
for keys that I was holding,
for the purse on my shoulder,
and have managed to miss them completely.

I have called information for a number,
written it down,
and then had to call them back
because I misplaced the number before I could redial the phone.

I have neglected friends and family,
duties and responsibilities,
not from lack of love
or sound intention,
but merely by allowing myself to be distracted.

If I had followed up
on what I knew at seventeen
whales, sharks, mankind ---
might already be saved.

Who knows what my focused mind might have accomplished?

But instead
I put myself to sleep
because the real world
was far too much to bear,
and living in books and dreams
so very much safer
than all the dysfunction awaiting outside.

I met my soulmate at twenty
and then left him behind
marrying one man,
and then another,
who never got me -
instead of the one and only man who truly did.

There's a reason that God protects children and Fools.
There's a purity of heart,
an innocence of spirit,
and . . . occasional lapses in intellect.

So, for all of the lessons I've learned and I've lost,
There are worse things than being a Fool.

Which I remind myself again
as I accidentally call my own cell phone
and then hang up my land line to answer the call.

In parting, I offer what I finally learned, which is

This above all:
To thine own Fool be true.

Cori MacNaughton
6Apr2005

I’m a hypocrite,
I’m full of
Wit?
I’m harmless
But I’m proud,
So I won’t sell my lemonade
To a whisky-drinking crowd.
For those who order
Sweet ice tea -
I say let them drink!
But New Yorkers drink Long Islands
And are more like me, I think.
I know I’m not an Atheist
But me and God don’t talk.
I think he built his watches
And then went for a walk. (4)
The armies go on fighting
Until the reaper wins
Or Armageddon’s curtain falls
Before Act III of the play begins.
The question asked by Hamlet
So many years ago
Today still asked by many,
Still the answer we can’t know:
“To be or not to be?” he asked.
To suffer or to die?  And
“Shuffle off this mortal coil”
Leave our loved ones here to cry.
There is beauty all around us
Inside us too, if we but look.
Though we might not like every cake
We can’t crucify the cook.
So eat when you are hungry
And drink when parched and dry.
Live life, for life’s worth living,
You’ll have eternity to die.
Phil Lindsey 6/2/15

Where perils cut
Do sorrows bleed?
Does pain depend upon
the laying of our scene
or are the plagues upon the race
a universal theme?
The winds are wanting
change and haunting
all the sleeping’s
most pleasant dreams.

How strange it seems for one to see
at once all that they’re meant to be.

Unlike the man who wanted flee
by death. “To be or not to be?”

Perhaps now do I ask to thee:
How is it to live and to be?

Not to the immobilized tree,
that knows of nothing how to be;

Perhaps ask not the humble bee,
A bee is all it is to be.

Oh! Our knowledge is like a flee,
which is a tiny thing to be.

Or is it like the deep blue sea,
A vast blue strange odd thing to be?

The strangest thing: the stranger’s plea,
asking on if we are to be

more than this. Is the question key
to knowing what one is to be?

Oh let it be, I say to me.
What you will be, you are to be.

I’ll express what I know
To spare you your pride
And allow you to keep your secrets.
Lately, I’ve fallen
And not in the literal sense.
I [pause]
I’ve lost the meaning of life
There is no point for me to continue my journey
I’ve stopped exercising
I’ve stopped walking under the majestic sky
The clouds my safe haven
The blue sky my tranquility
I’ve stopped looking into the golden sunlight
Only for my skin to embrace its warmth
I’ve stopped breathing
Holding my breath, waiting for the beauty to resurface
For what I once saw has vanished
I see poison in the air, so I hold my breath
Hold my breath
As I run out of oxygen, my mind scatters
To how a human is the perfect invention
The perfect tool
For reason, understanding, and unlimited thinking
The movement of man
How angelic
Yet how insignificant
We are but one creation among billions
Our existence is only a hazard
To the perfect environment around us
The majestic sky
The clouds; my safe haven
The golden sunlight
All we have done is turn them to poison
To dust
I see you laugh, as you must think this a joke
Yet I must ask
What have you done
To save the one God that created the beauty and the destruction
Mother Nature herself?