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Here are berries, leaves, twigs and blossoms fair,
And here, my heart that for you alone beats.
Clasp it in your pale hands and please do not tear,
But see it as a gift, to your pretty eyes sweet.

I come to you covered with dew and sap,
Which the morning’s wind freezes on my forehead.
Bear me, in my fatigue, to lie in your lap,
Dreaming of pleasures to restore me from the dead

On your young ***** let my head rest,
My body still sated with your last kiss;
Let my mind dwindle after such a tempest
And I’ll sleep a little beside you in bliss.
Your soul is a choice, bucolic scene
With charming travellers in a masquerade
Playing the lute and dancing, yet seem
Sad beneath their fanciful charade.

All carouse in a minor key
Of victorious love and opportunity,
They seem not to believe in their delight
And their song mingles with the moonlight,

In the still moonlight, beautiful and blue,
Birds in the trees dream and sigh by
Elegant fountains among marble statues,
And the cascades in their ecstasy cry.
Translation of one of Verlaine's most famous poems and the inspiration for one of Debussey's celebrated piano suites.
Cate Apr 2015
Part one:
I wake up. Everything's still kinda quiet. Except the highway. I've slept next to a high way since as long a I can remember. Has everyone? How far do you have to be to escape the endless trickle of passengers and their escorts tumbling down the great divide of one way or the other, compressing and condensing the magnitude and grandeur of the space between them? I like it that way. Always wondering who's face has crossed across your conscious space, that has drifted to the back of your brain. How alike are they to the innumerable faces you pass in the midst of all manner of journeys. Yours is as irrelevant to them as theirs is to you and yet for a split second, you both simultaneously glance over at the precise moment and you know, there's gotta be something more than this.
Part one of a series I'm doing on human connectivity to our environment and surroundings
As the voice of a dead man might sing
From the depths of his tomb,
For you, Mistress, my tuneless voice rings
False in my heart’s catacomb.

Open your soul and hear the knell
Of my mandolin strings:
This song I wrote, for you, which tells
Of cruel and childish things.

I will sing of your eyes, onyx and gold,
Purged of every shadow,
Then the Lethe of your breast, the cold
Styx of your hair’s dark flow.

As the voice of a dead man might sing
From the depths of his tomb,
For you, Mistress, my tuneless voice rings
False in my heart’s catacomb.

Then I will praise, above all
Flesh that heaven did bless
Whose opulent perfumes recall
Nights long and sleepless.

Finally, I will speak of the kiss
Of your sweet red lip,
Oh, how my martyrdom is bliss,
– My angel! – My Whip!

Open your soul and hear the knell
Of my mandolin strings:
This song I wrote, for you, which tells
Of cruel and childish things.
A translation of Paul Verlaine's Sérénade from his collection 'Poèmes saturniens'.
Amanda Fletcher Apr 2015
People say I’m loud,
I just wish my voice would carry with the wind and
into the ears of everybody who’s not asking to hear
what I’m talking about.
You didn’t invite yourself,
I invited you to hear me out.

You won’t hear me,
you’ll hear my object of choice
held high with two hands, to the sky, to the spray of your tear
gas in my eyes,
but be not blinded in sight as you are deaf to the ear,
loud and clear
you see my poison spilled on the mattress my body was mutilated on,
shoving out through my sweaty hands,
drip, drip, dripping onto the streets you defend with
your devices of destruction.

My words weight is less than a million dollars,
less than a tuition,
less than my fore father’s current colleagues
who are counting down days from suits to polo shoes,
making face on the last of their public legacy,
they don’t want a face like me writing slogans on their cities about ignorance and inconsistency.

I guess I’m not loud enough,
it takes more than volume to raise
The roof the roof the roof is on fire.
Save the pen, the paper, your voices and chairs,
your mattress and umbrellas that protect us
from your outrage at my outrageous voice
Silenced by a shield. Silenced by batons.
Silenced by political power without political people,
incorrect intentions, raging with rovers 100 feet above my head
exploding like an overfilled balloon.

You can beat my words down
but you can’t burn my furniture,
bigger than you, bolder than you, screaming louder
through a mouth it doesn’t even possess,
looking on the face of a choir, a whole choir,
asking to cure our disease.
I will hold my symbols of faith, ****, and freedom in my right hand
and swear to tell the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth
until our protest has made a difference,
until my metal chairs have molded your thoughts
into signatures on a page of on a page of social justice.
It just is, bigger than you, bolder than you, louder than me,
Don’t test me, Test my furniture.
It will always be heard.

People say I'm loud.
I just wish my voice would carry into the ears
or everybody not asking to hear what I am talking about.
Well, I'm not talking,
My object speaks pretty loud.
Written under pen name Jason Red

Meant to be read aloud
The rosy-green flight
Of hills and ramps
Blurred in twilight
By a soft lamp

Golden valleys darken
Red in the breeze
Small birds harken
In headless trees

The sadness fades
In my mind’s medium
These autumn shades  
Shatter the sky’s tedium
Translation of Bruxelles – Simples Fresques I by the French poet Paul Verlaine.
Cate Mar 2015
The summer is beginning to
Seep back into my sallow skin
As the crisp night air
Turns warm and fragrant

And the sky
Dirtied with light
Disapates back into
An eerie though
Strangely comforting displacement.

Always temporary,
Change remains scary.
But the uncharted territory
Can't always be complementary
To the days whims and desires.

Weeks may come and go
And I will remain uninspired,
But soon the summer breeze
Will come whispering again
To remind me

Of the tickle of anticipation
When ideas are all I have
And facts have yet to
Set themselves into any certain order

And I don't feel so old
And your body will block the cold
With sandy smirks
And drunken comfort
As we slosh together uncaringly
For a few nights out of the week

And maybe by and by
You'll mean something to me
Or maybe we'll just go with
"We'll see"

But either way you will come again with the summer
And again I'll see
if I can try to be happy.

3.25.15 C.e.M
Very rough, need critique/ to finish
Nicole Mar 2015
Tú que me alumbras cada día,
tú que acaricias mi piel
cantando una melodiosa sinfonía.

Puedo sentirte
en cada extremidad de mi cuerpo
mi pasión por ti
se fue creando con el tiempo.

Das vida y color a mi mundo
Me inspiras y haces que me exprese
en menos de un segundo.

Maravillas y desastres
creas a la vez,
guardas historias y misterios
de aquello que nunca podremos ver.

Eres única
en todos los sentidos
y al contemplarte
aumentas mis latidos.

En ti puedo ver
cosas que jamás encontraré,
eres lo más hermoso
que en este universo puede haber.

Das fruto y esperanza
aún cuando las fuerzas
no alcanzan.

Si otros no te aprecian,
yo sí lo haré,
no voy a permitir
que contaminen ese gran ser.

Me arropas de tus encantos
en cada anochecer,
esa espectacular imagen
y ese maravillso resplandecer

Tú sola te complementas,
admirable sueles ser,
contienes diversas cualidades que solo
tú puedes poseer.

Eres reflejo
de pureza y calidad,
eres todo un sueño
hecho realidad.

Pasados oscuros,
has podido vivir,
pero en ti siempre está
esa magia que te ha permitido resistir.

Muchos han tratado de tomar tu lugar,
pisotearte e ignorarte
y tu importancia anular.

En ti están
cautivadas las generaciones,
relatas cada evento de los humanos
y sus terribles acciones.  

Eres bella,
única y especial
y esa alma libre
que danza sin cesar.

A ti, Madre Tierra,
te quiero agradecer,
por ser esa inspiración
que me ayuda a crecer.
Meg Howell Mar 2015
So you left
and I grew out my hair
and you grew out the distance
and it stayed that way for a while
until I cut my hair
and the memories came back
and the distance didn't seem too far at all
I've sewn my heart together with thread made silver 'lone
The blood that dripped from my lip and deep within my bone
It swept into my mind like a dainty little dancer
But the thread made no sound, and still gives me no answer
Instead silver wrapped around my waist like a metal corset
And dares me not to breathe, so now every breath **I force it
Okay so this is actually one of my favorite pieces of poetry I wrote. It's another old one.
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