"Love For This Book" by Pablo Neruda

Love For This Book
by Pablo Neruda

 In these lonely regions I have been powerful
in the same way as a cheerful tool
or like untrammeled grass which lets loose its seed
or like a dog rolling around in the dew.
Matilde, time will pass wearing out and burning
another skin, other fingernails, other eyes, and then
the algae that lashed our wild rocks,
the waves that unceasingly construct their own whiteness,
all will be firm without us,
all will be ready for the new days,
which will not know our destiny.

What do we leave here but the lost cry
of the seabird, in the sand of winter, in the gusts of wind
that cut our faces and kept us
erect in the light of purity,
as in the heart of an illustrious star?

What do we leave, living like a nest
of surly birds, alive, among the thickets
or static, perched on the frigid cliffs?
So then, if living was nothing more than anticipating
the earth, this soil and its harshness,
deliver me, my love, from not doing my duty, and help me
return to my place beneath the hungry earth.

We asked the ocean for its rose,
its open star, its bitter contact,
and to the overburdened, to the fellow human being, to the wounded
we gave the freedom gathered in the wind.
It’s late now. Perhaps
it was only a long day the color of honey and blue,
perhaps only a night, like the eyelid
of a grave look that encompassed
the measure of the sea that surrounded us,
and in this territory we found only a kiss,
only ungraspable love that will remain here
wandering among the sea foam and roots.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Homework" by Allen Ginsberg

Homework
by Allen Ginsberg

Homage Kenneth Koch

If I were doing my Laundry I’d wash my dirty Iran
I’d throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I’d wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,   
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,   
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie   
Then I’d throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon till it came out clean.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas

My creative writing students have been working on villanelle poems, so I thought today I'd share the most beautiful, solemn villanelle I know.

Do not go gentle into that good night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"The Metal and the Flower" by P.K. Page

The Metal and the Flower
by P.K. Page

Intractable between them grows
a garden of barbed wire and roses.
Burning briars like flames devour
their too innocent attire.
Dare they meet, the blackened wire
tears the intervening air.

Trespassers have wandered through
texture of flesh and petals.
Dogs like arrows moved along
pathways that their noses knew.
While the two who laid it out
find the metal and the flower
fatal underfoot.

Black and white at midnight glows
this garden of barbed wire and roses.
Doused with darkness roses burn
coolly as a rainy moon:
beneath a rainy moon or none
silver the sheath on barb and thorn.

Change the garden, scale and plan;
wall it, make it annual.
There the briary flower grew.
There the brambled wire ran.
While they sleep the garden grows,
deepest wish annuls the will:
perfect still the wire and rose.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Playing to the River" by Jeff Daniel Marion

Playing to the River
by Jeff Daniel Marion

She stands by the riverbank, 
notes from her bagpipes lapping 
across to us as we wait

for the traffic light to change. 
She does not know we hear— 
she is playing to the river,

a song for the water, the flow
of an unknown melody to the rocky 
bluffs beyond, for the mist

that was this morning, shroud
of past lives: fishermen
and riverboat gamblers, tugboat captains

and log raftsmen, pioneer and native 
slipping through the eddies of time. 
She plays for them all, both dirge

and surging hymn, for what has passed 
and is passing as we slip
into the currents of traffic,
the changed light bearing us away.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"All Kinds of Fires Inside Our Heads" by Nikki Wallschlaeger

All Kinds of Fires Inside Our Heads
by Nikki Wallschlaeger

The number of bodies i have
is equal to the number of
gurney transfers that are
televised.

If we’re all “just human”  
then who is responsible?

A fire station drying out
from addiction. outside
the drizzling of firepower,
lowballing suns

it’s like a sauna in here.
the strain of a charred
bladder. bottled water
bad wiring,

that spark is no good
come sit with me for a
minute. my feet full of
diluted axe fluid

thought I heard you say
everything is medicine
but that’s just hearin
what you wanna hear





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Poem Ending with a Sentence by Heath Ledger" by Frank Bidart

Poem Ending with a Sentence by Heath Ledger
by Frank Bidart

Each grinding flattened American vowel smashed to
centerlessness, his glee that whatever long ago mutilated his

mouth, he has mastered to mutilate

you: the Joker's voice, so unlike
the bruised, withheld, wounded voice of Ennis Del Mar.

Once I have the voice

that's
the line

and at

the end
of the line

is a hook

and attached
to that

is the soul.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"us" by Tory Dent

us
by Tory Dent

in your arms
it was incredibly often
enough to be 
in your arms
careful as we had to be at times
about the I.V. catheter
in my hand,
or my wrist,
or my forearm
which we placed, consciously,
like a Gamboni vase,
the center of attention,
placed, frail identity
as if our someday-newborn
on your chest—
to be secluded, washed over
in your arms
often enough, it was
in that stillness, the only stillness
amidst the fears which wildly collided
and the complexities
of the illness, all the work
we had yet to do, had just done,
the hope, ridiculous ammounts of it
we had to pump
from nothing, really,
short-lived consensus
possibility & experiment
to access
from our pinched and tiny minds
just the idea of hope
make it from scratch, air and water
like manufactured snow
a colossal fatigue
the severe concentration
of that, the repetition of that
lifted for a moment
just above your arms
inevitable, pressuring
it weighed down
but remained above
like a cathedral ceiling,
strangely sheltering
while I held tightly 
while there I could
in your arms
only there, the only stillness
remember the will,
allow the pull, tow against inevitable ebb—
you don't need reasons to live
one reason, blinking in the fog,
organically sweet in muddy dark
incredibly often enough
it is, it was
in your arms





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"The Way through the Woods" by Rudyard Kipling

Happy Earth Day!

The Way through the Woods
by Rudyard Kipling

They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago. 
Weather and rain have undone it again, 
And now you would never know 
There was once a road through the woods 
Before they planted the trees. 
It is underneath the coppice and heath, 
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees 
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease, 
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods 
Of a summer evening late, 
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools 
Where the otter whistles his mate, 
(They fear not men in the woods, 
Because they see so few.) 
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, 
And the swish of a skirt in the dew, 
Steadily cantering through 
The misty solitudes, 
As though they perfectly knew 
The old lost road through the woods.
But there is no road through the woods.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Eagle Poem" by Joy Harjo

Eagle Poem 
by Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear;
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe, knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"The Rule" by Shail D. Patel

The Rule
by Shail D. Patel

Discipline. Free will 
Doesn't mean freewheel. 

But what about Eros? Let 
Eros harrow whom he will. 

I have sipped my sip 
And poisoned the well. 

I am well pleased with my thirst. 
I know my thirst no evil. 

You'll die of thirst, Shail. 
If  the salt sea wills.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"The Nineteenth of April" by Lucy Larcom

The Nineteenth of April
by Lucy Larcom

This year, till late in April, the snow fell thick and light:
Thy truce-flag, friendly Nature, in clinging drifts of white,
Hung over field and city: now everywhere is seen,
In place of that white quietness, a sudden glow of green.

The verdure climbs the Common, beneath the leafless trees,
To where the glorious Stars and Stripes are floating on the breeze.
There, suddenly as Spring awoke from Winter’s snow-draped gloom,
The Passion-Flower of Seventy-six is bursting into bloom.

Dear is the time of roses, when earth to joy is wed,
And garden-plot and meadow wear one generous flush of red;
But now in dearer beauty, to her ancient colors true,
Blooms the old town of Boston in red and white and blue.

Along the whole awakening North are those bright emblems spread;
A summer noon of patriotism is burning overhead:
No party badges flaunting now, no word of clique or clan;
But “Up for God and Union!” is the shout of every man.

Oh, peace is dear to Northern hearts; our hard-earned homes more dear;
But freedom is beyond the price of any earthly cheer;
And freedom’s flag is sacred; he who would work it harm,
Let him, although a brother, beware our strong right arm!

A brother! ah, the sorrow, the anguish of that word!
The fratricidal strife begun, when will its end be heard?
Not this the boon that patriot hearts have prayed and waited for;—
We loved them, and we longed for peace: but they would have it war.

Yes; war! on this memorial day, the day of Lexington,
A lightning-thrill along the wires from heart to heart has run.
Brave men we gazed on yesterday, to-day for us have bled:
Again is Massachusetts blood the first for Freedom shed.

To war,—and with our brethren, then,—if only this can be!
Life hangs as nothing in the scale against dear Liberty!
Though hearts be torn asunder, for Freedom we will fight:
Our blood may seal the victory, but God will shield the Right!





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"The Past" by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Past
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The debt is paid, 
The verdict said, 
The Furies laid, 
The plague is stayed, 
All fortunes made; 
Turn the key and bolt the door, 
Sweet is death forevermore. 
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin, 
Nor murdering hate, can enter in. 
All is now secure and fast; 
Not the gods can shake the Past; 
Flies-to the adamantine door 
Bolted down forevermore. 
None can re-enter there,— 
No thief so politic, 
No Satan with a royal trick 
Steal in by window, chink, or hole, 
To bind or unbind, add what lacked, 
Insert a leaf, or forge a name, 
New-face or finish what is packed, 
Alter or mend eternal Fact. 





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Choi Jeong Min" by Franny Choi

Choi Jeong Min
by Franny Choi

For my parents, Choi Inyeong & Nam Songeun

in the first grade i asked my mother permission
to go by frances at school. at seven years old,

i already knew the exhaustion of hearing my name
butchered by hammerhead tongues. already knew

to let my salty gook name drag behind me
in the sand, safely out of sight. in fourth grade

i wanted to be a writer & worried
about how to escape my surname — choi

is nothing if not korean, if not garlic breath,
if not seaweed & sesame & food stamps

during the lean years — could i go by f.j.c.? could i be
paper thin & raceless? dust jacket & coffee stain,

boneless rumor smoldering behind the curtain
& speaking through an ink-stained puppet?

my father ran through all his possible rechristenings — 
ian, isaac, ivan — and we laughed at each one,

knowing his accent would always give him away.
you can hear the pride in my mother’s voice

when she answers the phone this is grace, & it is
some kind of strange grace she’s spun herself,

some lightning made of chain mail. grace is not
her pseudonym, though everyone in my family is a poet.

these are the shields for the names we speak in the dark
to remember our darkness. savage death rites

we still practice in the new world. myths we whisper
to each other to keep warm. my korean name

is the star my mother cooks into the jjigae
to follow home when i am lost, which is always

in this gray country, this violent foster home
whose streets are paved with shame, this factory yard

riddled with bullies ready to steal your skin
& sell it back to your mother for profit,

land where they stuff our throats with soil
& accuse us of gluttony when we learn to swallow it.

i confess. i am greedy. i think i deserve to be seen
for what i am: a boundless, burning wick.

a minor chord. i confess: if someone has looked
at my crooked spine and called it elmwood,

i’ve accepted. if someone has loved me more
for my gook name, for my saint name,

for my good vocabulary & bad joints,
i’ve welcomed them into this house.

i’ve cooked them each a meal with a star singing
at the bottom of the bowl, a secret ingredient

to follow home when we are lost:
sunflower oil, blood sausage, a name

given by your dead grandfather who eventually
forgot everything he’d touched. i promise:

i’ll never stop stealing back what’s mine.
i promise: i won’t forget again.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"County Fair" by Mary Karr

County Fair
by Mary Karr

On the mudroad of plodding American bodies,
         my son wove like an antelope from stall   
to stall and want to want. I no’ed it all: the wind-up
         killer robot and winged alien; knives   
hierarchical in a glass case; the blow-up vinyl wolf
         bobbing from a pilgrim’s staff.
Lured as I was by the bar-b-que’s black smoke,
         I got in line. A hog carcass,
blistered pink on a spit, made its agonized slow roll,   
         a metaphor, I thought, for anyone
ahead of me—the pasty-faced and broad. I half-longed   
         for the titanium blade I’d just seen
curved like a falcon’s claw. Some truth wanted cutting   
         in my neighbors’ impermanent flesh.
Or so my poisoned soul announced, as if scorn   
         for the body politic
weren’t some outward form of inner scorn,
         as if I were fit judge.
Lucky my son found the bumper cars. Once I’d hoped   
         only to stand tall enough
to drive my own. Now when the master switch got thrown   
         and sparks skittered overhead
in a lightning web, I felt like Frankenstein or some   
         newly powered monster.
Plus the floor was glossy as ice. Even rammed head-on,
         the rubber bumper bounced you off unhurt
and into other folks who didn’t mind the jolt, whose faces
         all broke smiles, in fact,
till the perfect figure-eight I’d started out to execute
         became itself an interruption. One face   
after another wheeled shining at me from the dark,
         each bearing the weight of a whole self.   
What pure vessels we are, I thought, once our skulls
         shut up their nasty talk.
We drove home past corn at full tassel, colossal silos,   
         a windmill sentinel. Summer was starting.
My son’s body slumped like a grain sack against mine.   
         My chest was all thunder.
On the purple sky in rear view, fireworks unpacked—silver   
         chrysanthemum, another in fuchsia,
then plum. Each staccato boom shook the night. My son
         jerked in his sleep. I prayed hard to keep   
the frail peace we hurtled through, to want no more
         than what we had. The road
rushed under us. Our lush planet heaved toward day.   
         Inside my hand’s flesh,
anybody’s skeleton gripped the wheel.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"ode to coffee/oda al café" by Urayoán Noel

ode to coffee
          oda al café  
by Urayoán Noel

(after Juan Luis Guerra)

from Africa to a Caribbean hill
            de África a las lomas del Caribe
to the smiling ruin of our cities
            a la feliz ruina de ciudades
anoint the neural vessels we refill
            al matorral neural en donde vive
until your acid muse drowns our pities
            tu agria musa que ahoga soledades
return us to our tribe that grew dark beans
            devuélvenos al semillero isleño
cut through the grease of our late-night omelets
            metaboliza la grasa nocturna
and warm this empty diner by the club
            trae tu calor a nuestro desvelo
where luckless lovers stare at tiny screens
            haz que el amante no muera de sueño
and poets brew old socks into psalmlets
            tu borra es poema que embadurna
while dreaming it rains coffee from above.
            y sombría tu alegría de cielo.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"It's the Little Towns I Like" by Thomas Lux

It's the Little Towns I Like
by Thomas Lux

It’s the little towns I like 
with their little mills making ratchets 
and stanchions, elastic web, 
spindles, you 
name it. I like them in New England, 
America, particularly-providing 
bad jobs good enough to live on, to live in 
families even: kindergarten, 
church suppers, beach umbrellas ... The towns 
are real, so fragile in their loneliness 
a flood could come along 
(and floods have) and cut them in two, 
in half. There is no mayor, 
the town council’s not prepared 
for this, three of the four policemen 
are stranded on their roofs ... and it doesn’t stop 
raining. The mountain 
is so thick with water parts of it just slide 
down on the heifers—soggy, suicidal— 
in the pastures below. It rains, it rains 
in these towns and, because 
there’s no other way, your father gets in a rowboat 
so he can go to work.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"What Women Are Made Of" by Bianca Lynne Spriggs

What Women Are Made Of
by Bianca Lynne Spriggs

There are many kinds of open.
— Audre Lorde

We are all ventricle, spine, lung, larynx, and gut.
Clavicle and nape, what lies forked in an open palm;

we are follicle and temple. We are ankle, arch,
sole. Pore and rib, pelvis and root

and tongue. We are wishbone and gland and molar
and lobe. We are hippocampus and exposed nerve

and cornea. Areola, pigment, melanin, and nails.
Varicose. Cellulite. Divining rod. Sinew and tissue,

saliva and silt. We are blood and salt, clay and aquifer.
We are breath and flame and stratosphere. Palimpsest

and bibelot and cloisonné fine lines. Marigold, hydrangea,
and dimple. Nightlight, satellite, and stubble. We are

pinnacle, plummet, dark circles, and dark matter.
A constellation of freckles and specters and miracles

and lashes. Both bent and erect, we are all give
and give back. We are volta and girder. Make an incision

in our nectary and Painted Ladies sail forth, riding the back
of a warm wind, plumed with love and things like love.

Crack us down to the marrow, and you may find us full
of cicada husks and sand dollars and salted maple taffy

weary of welding together our daydreams. All sweet tea,
razor blades, carbon, and patchwork quilts of Good God!

and Lord have mercy! Our hands remember how to turn
the earth before we do. Our intestinal fortitude? Cumulonimbus

streaked with saffron light. Our foundation? Not in our limbs
or hips; this comes first as an amen, a hallelujah, a suckling,

swaddled psalm sung at the cosmos’s breast. You want to
know what women are made of? Open wide and find out.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"A Locked House" by W. D. Snodgrass

A Locked House
by W. D. Snodgrass

As we drove back, crossing the hill,
The house still
Hidden in the trees, I always thought—
A fool’s fear—that it might have caught   
Fire, someone could have broken in.   
As if things must have been
Too good here. Still, we always found   
It locked tight, safe and sound.

I mentioned that, once, as a joke;   
No doubt we spoke
Of the absurdity
To fear some dour god’s jealousy   
Of our good fortune. From the farm   
Next door, our neighbors saw no harm   
Came to the things we cared for here.   
What did we have to fear?

Maybe I should have thought: all
Such things rot, fall—
Barns, houses, furniture.
We two are stronger than we were
Apart; we’ve grown
Together. Everything we own
Can burn; we know what counts—some such   
Idea. We said as much.

We’d watched friends driven to betray;   
Felt that love drained away
Some self they need.
We’d said love, like a growth, can feed   
On hate we turn in and disguise;
We warned ourselves. That you might despise   
Me—hate all we both loved best—
None of us ever guessed.

The house still stands, locked, as it stood   
Untouched a good
Two years after you went.
Some things passed in the settlement;   
Some things slipped away. Enough’s left   
That I come back sometimes. The theft   
And vandalism were our own.
Maybe we should have known.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Confluence" by Yusef Komunyakaa

Confluence
by Yusef Komunyakaa

I’ve been here before, dreaming myself
backwards, among grappling hooks of light.

True to the seasons, I’ve lived every word
spoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?

Hunger quivers on a fleshly string
at the crossroad. So deep is the lore,

there’s only tomorrow today where darkness
splinters & wounds the bird of paradise.

On paths that plunge into primordial
green, Echo’s laughter finds us together.

In the sweatshops of desire men think
if they don’t die the moon won’t rise.

All the dead-end streets run into one
moment of bliss & sleight of hand.

Beside the Euphrates, past the Tigris,
up the Mississippi. Bloodline & clockwork.

The X drawn where we stand. Trains
follow rivers that curve around us.

The distant night opens like a pearl
fan, a skirt, a heart, a drop of salt.

When we embrace, we are not an island
beyond fables & the blue exhaust of commerce.

When the sounds of River Styx punish
trees, my effigy speaks to the night owl.

Our voices break open the pink magnolia
where struggle is home to the beast in us.

All the senses tuned for the Hawkesbury,
labyrinths turning into lowland fog.

Hand in hand, feeling good, we walk
phantoms from the floating machine.

When a drowning man calls out,
his voice follows him downstream.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Firefly" by Jacqueline Woodson

Firefly
by Jacqueline Woodson

It's almost May
and yesterday
I saw a firefly.

You don't see
them a lot
in the city.

Sometimes
in the park
in the near dark

one comes out
you'll hear
a little kid shout

Lightning bug! Firefly!

It's almost May
and yesterday
I caught a firefly in my hand.

First firefly I
seen in a 
long, long time.

Make a wish,
Miss Edna said.
Make a good one.

Firefly wishes always come true.




Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"New Lines for Fortune Cookies" by James Masao Mitsui

New Lines for Fortune Cookies
by James Masao Mitsui

—after Frank O’Hara

You have been smiling across the table at your date
with a sesame seed stuck in your teeth.

You will gain sophistication, become accepted by Reader’s 
Digest, and retire in Puyallup.

In your next life you will be a teacher
and no one will ever call you by your first name.

After your next vacation you will come home
and discover that your neighbors have redecorated
in the style of Iowa trailer court.

If you feel like you’re getting old,
secretly plant zucchini in your neighbor’s flowerbeds.

Avoid people who iron their sheets
or roll their socks & underwear.

Painting and poetry and music will show us where we should
be going, not the senate or tv news.

The next thermos bottle you see will actually
be a listening device made in Korea.

All the people in this restaurant
are glad that they are not you.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Along with Youth" by Ernest M. Hemingway

Along with Youth
by Ernest M. Hemingway

A porcupine skin, 
Stiff with bad tanning, 
It must have ended somewhere. 
Stuffed horned owl 
Pompous 
Yellow eyed; 
Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig 
Sooted with dust. 
Piles of old magazines, 
Drawers of boy’s letters 
And the line of love 
They must have ended somewhere. 
Yesterday’s Tribune is gone 
Along with youth 
And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach 
The year of the big storm 
When the hotel burned down 
At Seney, Michigan.

Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Rainforest" by Teresa Mei Chuc

Rainforest
by Teresa Mei Chuc

I close my eyes so that I can see it.
What we so freely eliminate. Who is

not guilty of it? We reek of paper.
Everywhere we go is paper. Our

hands are stained with paper.
Walls. What echoes from our walls.

The sweet whisper of rainforest—
even the name makes the sound of

rushing water or perhaps it’s a ghost
that haunts us. They say the dead

that did not die a peaceful death are
doomed forever to wander the earth.

But perhaps this earth is for them
already a cemetery—stacks and

stacks of flesh on a desk. Which
one belongs to which tree?

Already, we’ve traded oxygen for
so much.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.

"Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll

Jabberwocky
by Lewis Carroll

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
      And the mome raths outgrabe. 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son! 
      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! 
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun 
      The frumious Bandersnatch!” 

He took his vorpal sword in hand; 
      Long time the manxome foe he sought— 
So rested he by the Tumtum tree 
      And stood awhile in thought. 

And, as in uffish thought he stood, 
      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, 
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, 
      And burbled as it came! 

One, two! One, two! And through and through 
      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! 
He left it dead, and with its head 
      He went galumphing back. 

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? 
      Come to my arms, my beamish boy! 
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” 
      He chortled in his joy. 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves 
      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: 
All mimsy were the borogoves, 
      And the mome raths outgrabe.





Read, listen, share, create, and be on watch.