fallslikesnow

The neon's and the cigarettes Rented rooms and rented cars The crowded streets, the empty bars Chimney tops and trumpets The golden lights, the loving prayers The coloured shoes, the empty trains I'm tired of crying on the stairs The downtown lights

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon. As for the Greek theatrical tradition Which represents that summer's expedition Not as a mere reconnaisance in force By three brigades of foot and one of horse (Their left flank covered by some obsolete Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet) But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt; And only incidentally refute Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute The Persian monarch and the Persian nation Won by this salutary demonstration: Despite a strong defence and adverse weather All arms combined magnificently together. -- Robert Graves

I have brought the great ball of crystal; ............................Who can lift it? Can you enter the great acorn of light? ..............But the beauty is not the madness Tho' my errors and wrecks lie about me. And I am not a demigod, I cannot make it cohere. (Canto 116) Ezra Pound

Batter my heart, three-personed God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end. Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain, But am betrothed unto your enemy: Divorce me, untie or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. John Donne,

via MeFi

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this freak of nature, they will wrap his body in newspaper and carry him to the museum. But tonight he is alive and in the north field with his mother. It is a perfect summer evening: the moon rising over the orchard, the wind in the grass. And as he stares into the sky, there are twice as many stars as usual. - Laura Gilpin via metachat

Online with illustrations here . “Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice: That alone should encourage the crew. Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”” via plep

GREEN AND GREY The time I think most clearly, the time I drift away Is on the bus-ride that meanders up these valleys of green and grey I get to think about what might have been and what may yet come true And I get to pass a rainy mile thinking of you And all the while, all the while, I still hear that call To the land of gold and poison that beckons to us all Nothing changes here very much, I guess you'd say it never will The pubs are all full on Friday nights and things get started still We spent hours last week with Billy boy, bleeding, yeah queuing in Casualty Staring at those posters we used to laugh at: Never Never Land, palm trees by the sea Well there was no need for those guys to hurt him so bad When all they had to do was knock him down But no one asks to many questions like that since you left this town Ch: And tomorrow brings another train Another young brave steals away But you're the one I remember From these valleys of green and the grey Yo...

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett

Three Short Poems : 'The underground roads Are, as the dead prefer them, Always tortuous.' 'When he looked the cave in the eye, Hercules Had a moment of doubt.' 'Leaning out over The dreadful precipice, One contemptuous tree.'

Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love W.H. Auden Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephermeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful. Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon, Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Among the glaciers and the rocks The hermit's sensual ecstasy. Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreadful cards foretell, Shall be paid, but not from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn...

I. three signs of an airman: practical jokes nervousness before taking off rapid healing after injury three kinds of enemy walk: the grandious stunt the melancholic stagger the paranoic sidle three kinds of enemy bearing: the condor's stoop the toad's stupor the robin's stance three kinds of enemy face: the fucked hen the favorite puss the stone-in-the-rain three terms of enemy speech: I mean quite frankly speaking as a scientist etcetera three enemy questions: am I boring you? could you tell me the time? are you sure you're fit enough? three results of an enemy victory: impotence cancer paralysis three counterattacks complete mastery of the air lastly but ten it's moving again lastly but nine I forgot the sign lastly but eight it's getting late lastly but seven why aren't there eleven? lastly but six I dont like its ...tricks the maid is just dribbling tea and I shall not be disturbed until supper...

No. I wont listen any more. Go away. What is that you are saying? (Goes R. I. E. & speaks as if talking to somebody) No. I'll have my own way. I told you from the first I was go[ing] to. Yes I'm quite ready to take the consequences (Goes C) He's always interfearing. As if one could make any kind of enchantment worth looking at, if one had always to be thinking of him (at C, facing audience) The Stage Manager says I've got to make an enchantment for you -- something wonderful -- Something unlike anything you ever juggle for you. That I'm to cause a vision to come before your eyes, but he doesn't want to let me please myself. He says it must be simple, easy to understand, and all about real human beings but I am going to please myself this time (going halfway to the side). It's no use shaking you hand at me there. I am going to do just as I like. What is the use of getting the black jester out of the waste places if he is not to do what he like (returns to...

Mony klyf he ouerclambe in contrayez straunge, Fer floten fro his frendez fremedly he rydez. At vche warþe oþer water þer þe wy3e passed He fonde a foo hym byfore, bot ferly hit were, And þat so foule and so felle þat fe3t hym byhode. So mony meruayl bi mount þer þe mon fyndez, Hit were to tore for to telle of þe tenþe dole. Sumwhyle wyth wormez he werrez, and with wolues als, Sumwhyle wyth wodwos, þat woned in þe knarrez, Boþe wyth bullez and berez, and borez oþerquyle, And etaynez, þat hym anelede of þe he3e felle; from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Many a cliff did he climb in that unknown land, where afar from his friends he rode as a stranger. Never did he come to a stream or a ford but he found a foe before him, and that one so marvellous, so foul and fell, that it behoved him to fight. So many wonders did that knight behold, that it were too long to tell the tenth part of them. Sometimes he fought with dragons and wolves; sometimes with wild men that dwelt in t...

From the Guardian Arts Pages, here . "In his Conceptual Tableaux, made in the 1960s, Kienholz wrote details of proposed works, each accompanied by a brass plaque, that would eventually be realised if a buyer came up with the cash. The Black Leather Chair, from 1966: This is a tableau about the Negro in America. The piece is simply a black leather chair completely covered in a block of lucite plastic and mounted on a suitable base. On the left side is a tunnel in the plastic where the viewer can reach in and touch one small portion of the chair. "It is possible that I will never be able to make this tableau as I do not have the chair in my possession at this time. It is stored in an attic in Texas and is the property of a Negro family there. I am told by a friend that although the family is reluctant to part with it, he will be able to get it for me some time in the future. "The leather on the chair is made from the skin of his great-grandfather". Some wor...

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves." Blaise Pascal, found here .

Why are we weigh'd upon with heaviness, And utterly consumed with sharp distress, While all things else have rest from weariness? All things have rest: why should we toil alone, We only toil, who are the first of things, And make perpetual moan, Still from one sorrow to another thrown: Nor ever fold our wings, And cease from wanderings, Nor steep our brows in slumber's holy balm; Nor harken what the inner spirit sings, 'There is no joy but calm!'— Why should we only toil, the roof and crown of things? From "Song of the Lotos-Eaters", Alfred Tennyson [I'm blogging Tennyson ? I must be insane]

It's maor impotant thath we spot the execat places we get our impotance from tyan we feel the happiness. we see the skynets, the looops of steel through the the concrete toweres - no-one bele8ives me - ther are limits - there are things throungh the things - there are things that mattere

"Ghost capital, real city of varied stones, the great gray place of winds and wynds, old, new and festive by turns, between the river and the hills with its own stone stump, that frozen flow, that fractured plug of ancient matter that fascinated him. He came to stay in Sciennes road, just liking the name, not knowing the place. It was handy, both for the university and the Institute, and if he pressed his face against the window of his cold, high-ceilinged room he could just see one edge of the Crags, gray-brown corrugations above the slate roofs and smoke of the city." From The Bridge by Iain Banks . The above quote comes about half way through the book. The city is Edinburgh, the Institute is the Grant Institute of Geology. I read this book for the first time as a first year geology student at Edinburgh University, living in a high-ceilinged flat on Sciennes Road. When I read the words above I pressed my face to the cold window and saw the edge of Arthurs Seat and a ...