Favorite Poem Project: The Poems: The Sentence: "The Sentence
by Anna Akhmatova
And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—

Unless . . . Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I've foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house."

Toad Skin By Barry Goldensohn: "Toad Skin
By Barry Goldensohn
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2003, at 8:11 AM PT

On a dirt road, a paper-thin dry thing
like a black parchment cut-out of a toad
in mid-leap, partly sideways, drawn by a master,
now boneless, as if it never had bones.
Only the tough skin survived the flattening
by one of the rare cars here. Poor unwary thing.
How much of us will last, tough, stiff,
cured by summer sun. Our better towels
outlast our flesh. Are Nazi lampshades
holding up? Shrunken heads? Mummies?
Count on bones. Stone monuments. A few poems."

Bush still eating beef despite mad cow scare : HindustanTimes.com: "'He has continued to eat beef, he has eaten beef in the last couple of days,' said White House spokesman Scott McClellan when asked how the President had responded to the announcement of the first US case of the disease in a cow on Tuesday."

"But we do sense the more difficult truth: that Family represents the reality of which Christmas is the dream. It is of course Family (messy, complex, miserable, happy, so many gradations of those last two words) which is the real gift, beneath the wrapping. Family is the daily miracle, and Christmas is the enforcement of ideals which, in truth, do not matter. It would be tempting therefore to say 'Well, then ditch Christmas!' the same way people say 'Ditch God' or 'Ditch marriage,' but people find it hard to do these things because they feel that there is more than a ghost in these machines, there is an animating spirit."

'If we can't persuade nations of comparable values of the rightness of our cause, then we'd better reexamine our reasoning.'

Cage Match 1: "City Squirrel vs. Mountain Squirrel Cage Match"

"Great was my Anguish, as I realiz'd that my Years of Tireless Preaching had borne rotten Fruit. As Punishment, I forc'd my Children to sleep upon Nettles, drink rancid Gravy and recite the Book of Leviticus before they could go to the Out House."

ABC6.com - Married Priest Ordained in Rhode Island: "Married Priest Ordained in Rhode Island"

"Don't mix alcohol with stereotypes. If you are Irish, drink rum. If you are a pirate, drink whiskey. "

WorkingForChange-This Modern World: The Patriotism Police: "This Modern World: The Patriotism Police"

The Poor Poet's Corner: "Trial by Fire



Trial by fire, trial by fears.
in the midst of it all I have lost my greatest peer.
come to me, I'm more than ready for the fear.
realizing the truth never known.
here I am now feeling alone.
dark spaces in me abound.
I will laugh and fight like a clown.
jingle of my heart bells, scrap of my minds claws.
the pain in me you shall feel it all.
dancing in the dark, cutting you out of me
leaving the moon to quide my way."

SECRETS OF THE DEAD . Bridge on the River Kwai . Background | PBS: "Though records are sketchy, approximately 61,000 Allied prisoners of war are believed to have labored on the railway, including 30,000 British, 18,000 Dutch, 13,000 Australian, and 700 American soldiers. An estimated 16,000 of those troops died, many of them from diseases like cholera, beri beri, malaria, and typhoid, and most during an intensified period of construction known as speedo that commenced in January 1943. Another 200,000 Asian laborers, mostly Thai, were forced to work on the railway. More than 80,000 lost their lives"

"If the first Gulf war has come to be remembered in the iconic image of a laser-guided bomb going deep down into a hole, the video of a uniformed American doctor's tongue depressor bunker-busting Mr. Hussein's private places may prove equally memorable. "

Celebrate Life - November/December, 2001: "We are often tempted, like George Bailey, to see more obstacles than opportunities. At such times, we need a light that helps us to see that our life is truly a great gift. Christmas is that light. And that light never ceases to shine. "

"Sagittarius: (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)
You'll compete with the Devil for your immortal soul in a midnight game of Scrabble, and win handily when he can only think of creepy, depressing Latin words."

"'All Things Dull And Ugly' from Monty Python's Contractual Obligations Album

All things dull and ug-ly,
All creatures, short and squat,
All things rude and na-sty,
The Lord God made the lot.

Each little snake that poisons,
Each little wasp that stings,
He made their prudish venom,
He made their horrid wings.

All things sick and cancerous,
All evil great and small,
All things foul and dangerous,
The Lord God made them all.

Each nasty little hornet,
Each beastly little squid,
Who made the spiky urchin?
Who made the sharks? He did!

All things scant and ulcerous,
All pox both great and small,
Putrid, foul and gangrenous,
The Lord God made them all.

Amen."

Auto response from Flabber11 (4:15:50 PM): Northeasterners are so afraid of other people. A young child in a grocery market isle becomes a target in his mothers eyes. "Ross! Get out of the middle of the isle, people wont stop for you!" Apply my strict goal of no moral compromise to the child and he would stay in the isle and stare down any shopping carts coming at him. "This planet was made for organic life forms you metallic four wheeled fiend," he would say, "you get out of my way!" It's tricky though, if the carriage was brought up spoiled, getting everything he wanted (new wheels, a good advertisement attached to him) he may attack the small child, and we all know who suffers when there are outbreaks of violence within commercially zoned buildings: the consumer.

Flabber11 (1:35:19 PM): So theres this Advertisemnt off the highway
Flabber11 (1:35:21 PM): in EP
Flabber11 (1:35:33 PM): that says "Go Vegiterian, It's An Immaculate Conception"
Flabber11 (1:35:44 PM): And has Mary cradling a dead turkey carcass
Flabber11 (1:36:02 PM): PETA (Peaople foe the Ethical Treatment Of Animals) put it up
richardwood401 (1:36:16 PM): people must be buzzing
Flabber11 (1:36:20 PM): And There was a huge oputrage, cause RI has a higher percentage of catholics then anywhere in the country
Flabber11 (1:36:23 PM): yeah thyey are
Flabber11 (1:36:30 PM): it was in the paper and on the news and on talk shows
Flabber11 (1:36:34 PM): and I called up to defend it
Flabber11 (1:36:36 PM): on one show
Flabber11 (1:36:47 PM): But anyways- someone spraypainted SHAME!! on it
Flabber11 (1:37:14 PM): And i was pissed off that no one does that to beer or cigarette, hummer or casino adds
Flabber11 (1:37:20 PM): So i went to look at it yesterday
Flabber11 (1:37:31 PM): and someone had written after the SHAME!!
Flabber11 (1:37:34 PM): ON EATING MEAT!
richardwood401 (1:38:09 PM): nice come back

"To live in the information age is, in a way, to live in a modern day Tower of Babel. One is constantly communicating – with cell phones, e-mails, pagers and in chat rooms – but one may very well be out of touch. One gets on the 'right' side of the digital divide but one might have to pay a price: Language is streamlined, and intimacy is forsaken for the high valued currency called information. "

"It's so quiet this high up, the feeling you get is that you're one of those space monkeys. You do the little job you're trained to do. Pull a lever. Push a button. You don't understand any of it, and then you just die. "

Self-Inflicted's Poem 'Sleep' at Allpoetry.com:
"Silent once again
Laying my head upon my pillow
Each breath gets fainter
Every movement more subtle
Please Do Not Disturb."

"When You are Old "
W. B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars."

'W. B. Yeats': Near-Perfect Poems, Imperfect Poet:
"Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart."

"Buckle up: It's going to be one hell of a bumpy ride. The stars aren't speaking metaphorically here. Wear your seatbelt all week."

You just don't hear about to many blimp accidents these days.
CARSON, Calif. (AP) -- A cameraman inside a Goodyear blimp was injured when the airship came loose from its moorings, drifted into a parked truck and nose-dived into a fertilizer pile beside a plant nursery."

"Or what about Owen Wilson? I was all into him after Bottle Rocket. I said he was a real talent with the potential to be a big star. Then Shanghai Noon comes out, and there's Than, jumping on the Owen Wilson bandwagon, waving the Owen Wilson flag! "

One time a guy handed me a picture of himself, and he said, "Here's a picture of me when I was younger." Every picture of you is of when you were younger. Here's a picture of me when I am older. You son of a bitch, how'd you pull that off? Let me see that camera...