Figments of Imagination

LOOKING THROUGH A CHILD'S EYES

2007-08-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my yard. My kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff you can wish on.

When I look at an old drunk and he smiles at me, I see a smelly, dirty person who probably wants money and I look away. My kids see someone smiling at them and they smile back.

When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and don't have much rhythm so I sit self-consciously and listen. My kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the words. If they don't know them, they make up their own.

When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. My kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it, until they fall to the ground laughing.

When I pray I say thee and thou and grant me this, give me that. My kids say, "Hi God!!! Please keep the bad dreams away tonight. I would miss my Mommy and Daddy."

When I see a mud puddle I step around it. I see muddy shoes and clothes, and dirty carpets. My kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross and worms to play with.

I wonder if we are given kids to teach, or to learn from?

-Author Unknown

Boast of Quietness

2007-05-03T01:20:00.000-07:00

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.

The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.

Sure of my life and death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.

Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.

Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.

They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of that same poverty.

They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword,the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.

Time is living me.

More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.

They are indispensable, singular, worthy of tomorrow.

My name is someone and anyone.

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.

- Jorge Luis Borges

Tears and Rain

2007-03-31T04:40:00.000-07:00

Only recently did I get a chance to listen to James Blunt (I know Im a little late :)), the singer-song-writer, whose debut album ‘Back to Bedlam’ created quite a wave. He sings as if he is crying out a prayer for the heavens to hear, making you want to cry right beside him.. His voice has this animal-like quality that could echo within the hollow corridors of your mind.. His words are so perfect that they seem to have engraved in your heart forever..

I was touched by each and every song in this album. This is one of the songs that brought a tear to my eye.

Tears and Rain….

How I wish I could surrender my soul;
Shed the clothes that become my skin;
See the liar that burns within my needing.
How I wish I'd chosen darkness from cold.
How I wish I had screamed out loud,
Instead I've found no meaning.

I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.

How I wish I could walk through the doors of my mind;
Hold memory close at hand,
Help me understand the years.
How I wish I could choose between Heaven and Hell.
How I wish I would save my soul.
I'm so cold from fear.

I guess it's time I run far, far away; find comfort in pain,
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
Hides my true shape, like Dorian Gray.
I've heard what they say, but I'm not here for trouble.
Far, far away; find comfort in pain.
All pleasure's the same: it just keeps me from trouble.
It's more than just words: it's just tears and rain.

This album is special to me because it was the first present ever to be gifted by my beloved. Other beautiful songs in this album are ‘You’re Beautiful’, 'Goodbye My Lover’, ‘High’ and ‘Cry’.

THE LIGHT WITHIN...

2007-03-08T01:21:00.001-08:00

There isnt enough darkness in this world to blow away the light within me...

I do not know who had written these words... But I remember reading this a long time ago, and the words have been resonating within me ever since...

PROGRESS

2006-12-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable persists in trying to adapt the
world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

- George Bernard Shaw

UNITED WE DESTROY...

2006-11-14T00:30:00.000-08:00

Love, friendship, and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something.

- Anton Chekov

The World will never know my Beauty...

2006-10-12T01:49:00.000-07:00

Sharbat Gula - Her face, her eyes and the thousand things they said became famous when it was featured on the June 1985 cover of National Geographic Magazine. Gula's picture was taken by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. She was an Afghan Girl orphaned during the Soviet Union's bombing of Afghanistan and sent to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan in 1984.

The world will never know my beauty..,
It is far too ignorant and blind to understand...

Or even see something so exalted.

I’ll love whomever I please, and I have, and still do..

I’m broken but strong, knowing
I’ll never die by society’s hand- though
Its weight makes it harder to breathe...

So I walk on and I walk tall,
With every moment of pain displayed on my delicate skin..
A road map to what once was,
A place I never plan to venture.

I live for the moment alone,
Forget the future and the past,
They exist only in one’s mind.

I expect little but hope for the world,
Think small but dream big..

The world will never know my beauty,
For I could never be part of this world...

- Unknown Poet

~I came across this poem... thought it was AWESOME...~

IF

2006-09-23T00:30:00.000-07:00

~Picture stolen from the photo gallery of a fellow blogger 'A Day Dreamer' whose photographs I admire a lot~

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

- Rudyard Kipling

INVICTUS

2006-08-30T03:42:00.000-07:00

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

- William Ernest Henley

FRIDA

2006-08-22T01:51:00.000-07:00

~I am sure most of you know about Frida, the Mexican painter of the mid-twentieth century. I came to know of her after the movie ‘Frida’ and was instantly touched by her life beyond what words can express. Here is tribute to a great painter and a great woman.~

THE SOUL BEHIND THE ART

Her Birth…

Frida Kahlo wad born on July 6, 1907, although she claimed to be born in 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, as that was a moment that changed Kahlo's life. Frida was the product of an unhappy marriage, though she was very close to her father for the most of her life. The young Frida suffered a bout of polio at the age six. Still, with her father's encouragement and with her feisty, tom-boyish and brash personality that she kept throughout her life, she overcame her disability.

The Accident…

In 1925, a trolley car collided with a bus Kahlo was riding in; she suffered a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis, 11 fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail had impaled her abdomen, piercing through her uterus. All this happened at the age of 18. Because of the injuries to her pelvis and uterus, she was unable to carry a child to full-term without serious risks, a fact that she never could fully come to terms with. She survived her injuries and eventually regained her ability to walk, but she would have relapses of extreme pain which would plague her for life, often leaving her hospitalized and/or in bed for months at a time, agonized and miserable. Frida would undergo as many as 35 operations in her life.

After the accident, Kahlo turned her attention to a full time painting career. A carpenter made an easel that could be attached to her bed, and a mirror was placed in the canopy above, allowing her to embark on the series of self-portraits that would become central to her work. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, often incorporating symbolic portrayal of her physical and psychological wounds. "I paint self portraits because I am the person I know best", she used to say.

Love and Storm...

Her paintings attracted the attention of fellow artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married in 1929. They were often referred to as "The Elephant and the Dove" due to their difference in size. Their marriage was a loving but stormy one, largely due to Diego's weakness for extramarital flings. Their notoriously fiery temperaments also played a part in the storminess. His affairs with women would drive Frida to have her own affairs with both men and women. Frida did not hide from Diego the fact that she was bisexual. Diego tolerated her relationships with women, (among them was actress Josephine Baker) because it turned him on. But her relationships with men made him fiercely jealous. However, Diego's affair with her sister Cristina was the ultimate betrayal. The couple divorced, but remarried in 1940. This remarriage was as turbulent as the first.

Politics and Passion..

Active Communist sympathizers, Kahlo and Rivera befriended Leon Trotsky as he sought political asylum from Joseph Stalin´s regime in The Soviet Union. Initially, Trotsky lived with Rivera and then at Frida's home where he and Frida allegedly had an affair. Trotsky and his wife then moved to another house in Coyoacán where Trotsky was later assassinated. Sometime after Trotsky's death, Frida denounced her former friend and praised the Soviet Union under Stalin. She spoke favorably of Mao, calling China "the new socialist hope".

The End..

Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954 at the age of 47. Doctors reported a pulmonary embolism, suggesting that she may have committed suicide. The last entry in her diary read, 'I hope the exit is joyful - and I hope never to come back - Frida.'

She..

She was a heavy smoker, drank liquor in excess, was openly bisexual, sang off-color songs, and told equally ribald jokes to the guests of the wild parties that she hosted. Kahlo was noted for her unconventional appearance, declining to remove her facial hair (she had a small mustache and unibrow which she exaggerated in self portraits).

Lots of her works were painted lying in the bed, drawing on her personal experiences (her troubled marriage, her painful miscarriages, her numerous operations). A local critic wrote: 'It is impossible to separate the life and work of this extraordinary person. Her paintings are her biography.'

She captures the desire and despair of her life in each stroke of paint. Diego Rivera once said about her, 'The only artist in the history of art who tore open her chest and heart to reveal the biological truth of her feelings.'

~Her paintings are the outcry of pain portrayed like a poem on canvas.~

THE POEMS ON CANVAS

Self-Portrait

Henry Ford Hospital (1932)

On July 4th, 1932, Frida suffered a miscarriage in the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. In this disturbing work, Kahlo paints herself lying on her back in a hospital bed after a miscarriage. The figure in the painting is unclothed, the sheets beneath her are bloody, and a large tear falls from her left eye. The bed and its sad inhabitant float in an abstract space circled by six images relating to the miscarriage. All of the images are tied to blood-red filaments that she holds against her stomach as if they were umbilical cords. The main image is a perfectly formed male fetus, little "Dieguito", she had longed to have. The orchid was a gift from Diego. The snail she said, alludes to the slow paced miscarriage. The salmon pink plaster female torso she said was her "idea of explaining the insides of a woman". The cruel looking machine she invented "to explain the mechanical part of the whole business". Finally, in the lower right corner is her fractured pelvis that made it impossible for her to have children.

A Few Small Nips (1935)

Broken-hearted over her husband's affair with her younger sister Cristina, Frida recreated her sorrow and anger in this painting. Her own pain being too great to depict, she projected it onto another woman's misfortune. A newspaper report about a woman murdered in an act of jealousy provided the artist with the subject matter for this work. The murderer defended his actions before the judge by saying: "But it was just a few small nips!" The violent deed makes symbolic reference to Frida's own mental state and her own emotional injuries. The banner held by love doves, of all things, bears the painting's title. One dove is black, the other white, alluding perhaps to the light and dark sides of love.

The Two Fridas (1939)

Shortly after her divorce from Diego Rivera, Frida completed this self-portrait of two different personalities. Frida's diary says this painting had its origin in her memory of an imaginary childhood friend. Later she admitted it records the emotions surrounding her separation and martial crisis. On the right, the part of her person which was respected and loved by Diego, is the Mexican Frida in Tehuana costume. In her hand she holds an amulet bearing the portrait of Diego as a child. On the left, a more rather European Frida in a lacy white dress, the Frida that Diego no longer loved. The hearts of the two women lie exposed, a device Frida often used to express her pain. The unloved Frida's heart is broken while the other Frida's heart is whole. From the amulet that Frida is holding springs a vein that travels through both women's hearts and is finally cut off by the surgical pincers held in the lap of the rejected Frida. In despair, Frida tries to stop the flow of blood from Diego but it keeps dripping…she is in danger of bleeding to death. The stormy sky filled with agitated clouds may reflect Frida's inner turmoil. Holding her own hand, she is her only companion.

Self-Portrait with Necklace of Thorns (1940)

Frida has unraveled Christ's crown of thorns and wears it as a necklace, presenting herself as a Christian martyr. The thorns digging into her neck are symbolic of the pain she still feels over her divorce from Diego. Hanging from the thorny necklace is a dead hummingbird whose outstretched wings echo Frida's joined eyebrows. In Mexican folk tradition, dead hummingbirds were used as charms to bring luck in love. Over her left shoulder the black cat, a symbol of bad luck and death, waits to pounce on the hummingbird. Over her right shoulder the symbol of the devil, her pet monkey…a gift from Diego. Around her hair, butterflies represent the Resurrection.

Roots (1943)

In this self-portrait, Frida is fusing with a plant, becoming a part of the Earth. A childless woman's dream of fertility in which her torso opens up like a window that gives birth to a vine. Frida's blood courses through the vine and into red vesicles that extend beyond the vine to feed the parched earth. With her elbow propped on a pillow, she sees herself as a tree of life. ``Roots,'' sold for $5.62 million, setting a record as the most expensive Latin American work ever purchased at an auction.

Broken Column (1944)

Frida stands all alone crying on a vast baron plain beneath a stormy sky. Perhaps it's her way of saying that she must deal with her physical and emotional pain on her own. In 1944 when Frida painted this self-portrait, her health had deteriorated to the point where she had to wear a steel corset. The straps of the corset seem to be all that is holding the artist's broken body together and upright. An Ionic column, broken in several places, symbolizes her damaged spine. The yawning cleft in her body is repeated in the furrows of the bleak fissured landscape. An even more powerful symbol of her pain is the nails piercing her face and body. The nails represent the physical pain she has endured since her accident. The larger nail piercing her heart represents the emotional pain caused by Diego.

Without Hope (1945)

A lack of appetite resulting from her many surgeries and numerous illnesses, left Frida very thin. Her doctor, Dr Eloesser, prescribed complete bed rest and a fattening diet. In this painting, the artist portrays what she considered to be a "forced feeding" diet. The wooden structure that once held her canvases for painting now holds a funnel that continuously feeds her. Her arms seem to be pinned beneath the blankets and she is unable to control the situation….the situation seems to be "Without Hope". In her diary, Frida wrote the following entry about this painting:
"I would not wish to harbor the slightest hope. Everything moves to the beat of what's enclosed in the belly."

"I am not sick. I am broken.But I am happy as long as I can paint."

~For the entire collection of Frida's pintings visit http://www.fridakahlofans.com/mainmenu.html~

GRIEF

2006-08-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

For certain is death for the born
And certain is birth for the dead;
Therefore over the inevitable
Thou shouldst not grieve.

- Bhagavad Gita

~Yet having a heart that we have and the way it beats for our loved ones, grief is as inevitable as fate~

We Owe God a Death

2006-08-04T00:03:00.000-07:00

By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once: we owe God a death: I'll ne'er bear a base mind: an't be my destiny, so; an't be not, so: no man is too good to serve's prince; and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.

- William Shakespeare

THE THINKER

2006-07-29T01:15:00.000-07:00

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a French sculptor known for his unique, virtuoso ability to organize a complex, turbulent, deeply pocketed surface that set him apart from the figure sculpture traditions before and since his time.

In 1880 he was awarded the commission to create a portal for the planned Museum of Decorative Arts. Although the museum was never built, Rodin worked for 37 years on this monumental sculptural group, The Gates of Hell, depicting scenes from Dante's Inferno in high relief. "The Thinker" was originally meant to depict Dante, the great Italian poet, in front of the Gates of Hell, pondering his great poem.

The first large-scale bronze cast was finished in 1902, but was not presented to the public until 1904. It became the property of the city of Paris and was put in front of the Panthéon in 1906. In 1922, however, it was moved to the Hôtel Biron, transformed into a Rodin Museum. More than any other Rodin sculpture, 'The Thinker' moved into the popular imagination, as an immediately recognizable icon of intellectual activity.

Source: - Wikipedia

What could have made him think so much???

SELF PITY

2006-07-09T23:36:00.000-07:00

I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.

- D. H. Lawrence

HIGH FLIGHT

2006-07-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence; hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.

Up, Up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

- By Jon Gillespie Magee Jr., Pilot Officer, RCAF - 1941

~In December 1941, Pilot Officer John G. Magee, a nineteen year old American serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England, was killed when his Spitfire collided with another airplane inside a cloud. Several months before his death, he composed his immortal sonnet "High Flight," a copy of which he mailed to his mother in the United States.~

A Second-hand Bookshop

2006-06-23T03:12:00.000-07:00

Stolen from GuNs

The sunlight filters through the panes
Of book-shop windows, pockmarked grey
By years of grimy city rains,
And falls in mild, dust-laden ray
Across the stock, in shelf and stack,
Of this old bookshop-man who brought,
To a shabby shop in a cul-de-sac,
Three hundred years of print and thought.

Like a cloak hangs the bookshop smell,
Soothing, unique and reminding:
The book-collector knows its spell,
Subtle hints of books and binding
In the fine, black bookshop dust
Paper, printer's-ink and leather,
Binder's-glue and paper-rust
And time, all mixed together.

`Blake's Poems, Sir-ah, yes, I know,
Bohn did it in the old black binding,
In '83.' Then shuffles slow
To scan his shelves, intent on finding
This book of songs he has not heard,
With that deaf searcher's hopeful frown
Who knows the nightingale a bird
With Feathers grey and reddish-brown.

- John Arlott

PIETA

2006-06-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

One of the most incredible sculptures I have come across...

.. By Michelangelo

HOPE...

2006-06-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

- Emily Dickinson

MEMORIES...

2006-06-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine

Quiet thoughts come floating down
And settle softly to the ground
Like golden autumn leaves around my feet
I touched them and they burst apart with sweet memories...
Sweet memories...

Of holding hands and red bouquets
And twilights trimmed in purple haze
And laughing eyes and simple ways
And quiet nights and gentle days with you...

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wine
Memories...memories...

Of holding hands and red bouquets
And twilights trimmed in purple haze
And laughing eyes and simple ways
And quiet nights and gentle days with you

Memories, pressed between the pages of my mind
Memories, sweetened through the ages just like wineMemories...memories...

- Sung by Elvis Presley

Death Must Be So Beautiful...

2006-06-01T23:44:00.000-07:00

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

– Oscar Wilde

'MEMORIES OF A FATHER'

2006-05-16T02:34:00.000-07:00

'Memories of a Father', by Professor T V Eachara Varier is a book released by the The Asian Human Rights Commission in the year 2004. This book enumerates the real-life story of Professor Varier's desperate and endless attempts to get to the bottom of his son's arrest, torture, murder and disappearance at the hands of the police force in Kerala, India, during the period of emergency rule.

Let me allow the book to speak for itself. These are a few words in the book that brought a lump in my throat...

"I steadfastly believed that Rajan would come back. I always asked my wife to keep apart a bowl of rice and a plantain leaf for him. He may step in any time. He may be hungry.
There should be rice ready at home for him. Yes, he will come back. Sure he will…

At night when the dogs barked and made noise for no reason, I woke up and waited at the doorstep… waiting for a call of “father”. Keeping the door open, I went back and fell tired into the bed. A sob, “Oh my little child”, got choked in my throat."

With prayers that never again should a parent got through what Prof. Varier did, let me share this story with you...

http://www.ahrchk.net/pub/pdf/mof.pdf

WIND BENEATH MY WINGS

2006-05-08T22:10:00.000-07:00

[This is the only song till date that truly describes what my father means to me]

It must have been cold there in my shadow,
to never have sunlight on your face.
You were content to let me shine, that's your way.
You always walked a step behind.

So I was the one with all the glory,
while you were the one with all the strength.
A beautiful face without a name for so long.
A beautiful smile to hide the pain.

Ch:-
Did you ever know that you're my hero,
and everything I would like to be?
I can fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,
but I've got it all here in my heart.
I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it.
I would be nothing without you.

Ch:-
Did you ever know that you're my hero?
You're everything I wish I could be.
I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings.

Did I ever tell you you're my hero?
You're everything, everything I wish I could be.
Oh, and I, I could fly higher than an eagle,
for you are the wind beneath my wings,
'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

Oh, the wind beneath my wings.
You, you, you, you are the wind beneath my wings.
Fly, fly, fly away. You let me fly so high.
Oh, you, you, you, the wind beneath my wings.
Oh, you, you, you, the wind beneath my wings.

Fly, fly, fly high against the sky,
so high I almost touch the sky.
Thank you, thank you,
thank God for you, the wind beneath my wings.

- Sung beautiful by Bette Midler

Music is my Refuge...

2006-05-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the spaces between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

- Maya Angelou

Because I Could Not Stop for Death...

2006-05-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves—
And Immortality.

We slowly drove— He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed Us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—'tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses' Heads
Were toward Eternity—

- Emily Dickinson

A DIVINE IMAGE

2006-05-06T01:10:00.000-07:00

Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And secrecy the human dress.

The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace seal'd,
The human heart its hungry gorge.

- William Blake

AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE

2006-05-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

- William Blake

(I love these lines from the poem)

THE TAME BIRD WAS IN A CAGE

2006-05-04T22:49:00.000-07:00

[Thanks Lovemarks for this poem... :)]

The tame bird was in a cage, the free bird was in the forest.
They met when the time came, it was a decree of fate.
The free bird cries, "O my love, let us fly to the wood."
The cage bird whispers, "Come hither, let us both live in the cage."
Says the free bird, "Among bars, where is there room to spread one's wings?"
"Alas," cries the caged bird, "I should not know where to sit perched in the sky."
The free bird cries, "My darling, sing the songs of the woodlands."
The cage bird sings, "Sit by my side, I'll teach you the speech of the learned."
The forest bird cries, "No, ah no! songs can never be taught."
The cage bird says, "Alas for me, I know not the songs of the woodlands."

- Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

PAIN

2006-05-04T05:21:00.000-07:00

To purchase pain with all that joy can give,
And die of nothing but a rage to live.

- Alexander Pope

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings...

2006-04-03T04:52:00.000-07:00

A free bird leaps on the back of the wind
and floats downstream till the current ends
and dips his wing in the orange suns rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage
can seldom see through his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings with a fearful trill
of things unknown but longed for still
and his tune is heard on the distant hill
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

- Maya Angelou

[One of my favourite poems...]