Morning Is Yellow Like A Desk Is Square
He always wanted to explain things. But no one cared. So he drew. Sometimes he would draw and it wasn't anything. He wanted to carve it in stone or write it in the sky. He would lie out on the grass and look up in the sky. And it would be only him and the sky and the things inside him that needed saying. And it was after that he drew the picture. It was a beautiful picture. He kept it under his pillow and would let no one see it. And he would look at it every night and think about it. And when it was dark, and his eyes were closed, he could still see it. And it was all of him. And he loved it. When he started school he brought it with him. Not to show anyone, but just to have with him like a friend. It was funny about school. He sat in a square brown desk Like all the other square brown desks And he thought it should be red And his room was a square brown room. Like all the other rooms. And it was tight and close. And stiff. He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, With his arm stiff and his feet flat on the floor. Stiff. With the teacher watching and watching. The teacher came and spoke to him. She told him to wear a tie like all the other boys. He said he didn't like them. And she said it didn't matter. After that they drew. And he drew all yellow and it was the way he felt about morning. And it was beautiful. The teacher came and smiled at him. 'What's this?' she said. 'Why don't you draw something like Ken's drawing? Isn't it beatiful?' After that his mother bought him a tie. And he always drew airplanes and rocket ships like everyone else. And he threw the old picture away. And when he lay alone looking at the sky, It was big and blue and all of everything, But he wasn't anymore. He was square inside. And brown. And his hands were stiff. And he was like everyone else. And the things inside him that needed saying didn't need it anymore. It had stopped pushing. It was crushed. Stiff. Like everything else.
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'And Tomorrow'
Today is filled with anger,
fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast,
afraid of common fate.
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants to face.
Nightmares to humanity
and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage,
violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness
cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down
but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity
content when I`m droped.
But tomorrow I see change,
a chance to build a new,
built on spirit intent
of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind
and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart
to keep the dream alive.
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Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shorless seas. The good Mate said, Now we must pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave Admiral, speak, what shall I say? Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! and on! My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly wan and weak! The stout Mate thought of home; a spray Of salt wavewashed his swarthy cheek. What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, If we sight naught but seas at dawn? Why, you shall say at break of day, 'Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!' They sailed. They sailed. Then spake the Mate; This mad sea shows its teeth tonight. He curls his lip, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave Admiral, say but one good word; What shall we do when hope is gone? The words leapt like a leaping sword; Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on! Then, pale and worn, he kept his deck And peered through darkness. Ah! that night Of all dark nights! And then a speck -- A light! A light! A light! A light! It grew, a starlit flag unfurled! It grew to be Time's burst of dawn. He gained a world; he gave that world Its greatest lesson: On! sail on!
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We held hands on the last night on earth. Our mouths filled with dust, we kissed in the fields and under trees, screaming like dogs, bleeding dark into the leaves. It was empty on the edge of town but we knew everyone floated along the bottom of the river. So we walked through the waste where the road curved into the sea and the shattered seasons lay, and the bitter smell of burning was on you like a disease.In our cancer of passion you said, 'Death is a midnight runner.' The sky had come crashing down like the news of an intimate suicide. We picked up the shards and formed them into shapes of stars that wore like an antique wedding dress. The echoes of the past broke the hearts of the unborn as the ferris wheel silently slowed to a stop. The few insects skidded away in hopes of a better pastime. I kissed you at the apexof the maelstrom and asked if you would accompany me ina quick fall, but you made me realize that my ticket wasn't good for two. I rode alone. You said,'The cinders are falling like snow.' There is poetry in despair, and we sang with unrivaled beauty, bitter elegies of savagery and eloquence.Of blue and grey. Strange, we ran down desperate streets and carvedour names in the flesh of the city. The sun has stagnated somewhere beyond the rim of the horizon and the darkness is a mystery of curves and line.Still, we lay under the emptiness and drifted slowly outward,and somewhere in the wilderness we foundsalvation scratched into the earth like a message. the untitled poem--afi
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The whispering waves were half asleep, The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep The smile of Heaven lay;
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On Linden, when the sun was low, All bloodless lay the untrodden snow, And dark as winter was the flow Of Iser, rolling rapidly.
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Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass, Whah de branch'll go a-singin' as it pass.
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A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins.
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Lord, 'tis Thy plenty-dropping hand That soils my land; And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, Twice ten for one; Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day; Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year; The while the conduits of my kine Run cream, for wine. All these, and better, Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful heart...
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Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. Because, in other words, the powerful don't play; they mean to keep that power, and those who are the powerless (you and me) better shape up --mimic/ape/suck --in the very image of the powerful, or the powerful will destroy you --you and our children.
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I will not speak of the famous beauty of dead women: I will say the shape of a leaf lay once on your hair....
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The Volunteer AT dawn, he said, I bid them all farewell, To go where bugles call and rifles gleam. And with the restless thought asleep he fell, And glided into dream. A great hot plain from sea to mountain spread, - Through it a level river slowly drawn: He moved with a vast crowd, and at its head Streamed banners like the dawn. There came a blinding flash, a deafening roar, And dissonant cries of triumph and dismay; Blood trickled down the river's reedy shore, And with the dead he lay. The morn broke in upon his solemn dream, And still, with steady pulse and deepening eye, Where bugles call, he said, and rifles gleam, I follow, though I die!
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In forming a judgment, lay your hearts void of foretaken opinions; else, whatsoever is done or said, will be measured by a wrong rule; like them who have jaundice, to whom everything appears yellow.
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Therefore (for) whomsoever Allah intends that He would guide him aright, He expands his breast for Islam, and (for) whomsoever He intends that He should cause him to err, He makes his breast strait and narrow as though he were ascending upwards; thus does Allah lay uncleanness on those who do not believe.
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When by the Ruins oft I past My sorrowing eyes aside did cast And here and there the places spy Where oft I sate and long did lie. Here stood that Trunk, and there that chest, There lay that store I counted best, My pleasant things in ashes lie And them behold no more shall I. Under the roof no guest shall sit, Nor at thy Table eat a bit. No pleasant talk shall 'ere be told Nor things recounted done of old. No Candle 'ere shall shine in Thee, Nor bridegroom's voice ere heard shall bee. In silence ever shalt thou lie.
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How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the very bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our hearts honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg -- a cozy, loving pair.
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My dog lay dead five days without a grave
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I wept in my dreams. I dreamed you lay in the grave; I awoke, and the tears still poured down my cheeks. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you had left me; I awoke and I went on weeping long and bitterly. I wept in my dreams, I dreamed you were still kind to me; I awoke, and still the flow of my tears streams on.
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The advantage of doing one's praising for oneself is that one can lay it on so thick and exactly in the right places.
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With aching hands and bleeding feet We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; We bear the burden and the heat Of the long day, and wish 'twere done. Not till the hours of light return All we have built as we discern.
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"And Tomorrow"
Today is filled with anger,
fueled with hidden hate.
Scared of being outkast,
afraid of common fate.
Today is built on tragedies
which no one wants to face.
Nightmares to humanity
and morally disgraced.
Tonight is filled with Rage,
violence in the air.
Children bred with ruthlessness
cause no one at home cares.
Tonight I lay my head down
but the pressure never stops,
knowing that my sanity
content when I`m droped.
But tomorrow I see change,
a chance to build a new,
built on spirit intent
of heart and ideas based on truth.
Tomorrow I wake with second wind
and strong because of pride.
I know I fought with all my heart
to keep the dream alive.
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True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrong-doing by its prohibitions. And it does not lay its commands or prohibitions upon good men in vain, though neither have any effect on the wicked. It is a sin to try to to sic alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is, God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst penalties, even if he escapes what is commonly considered punishment.
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I lay on the bowsprit, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight towering above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment lost myself- actually lost my life. I was set free... dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm and the high dim-starred sky... I belonged within a unity and joy to life itself.
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Queer little twists go into the making of an individual. To supress them all and follow clock and calendar and creed until the individual is lost in the neutral grey of the host is to be less than true to our inheritance.... Life, that gorgeous quality of life, is not accomplished by following another man's rules. It is true we have the same hungers and same thirsts, but they are for different things and in different ways and in different seasons.... Lay down your own day, follow it to its noon, your own noon, or you will sit in an outer hall listening to the chimes but never reaching high enough to strike your own.
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God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart.
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Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning. I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning. I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.
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She used to drag her mattress besider her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.
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But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.
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When kings the sword of justice first lay down; They art no kings, though they posess the crown; Titles are shadows, crowns are empty things, The good of subjects is the end of kings.
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Animals live by ethics! (1) A flock of wild geese had settled to rest on a pond. One of the flock is captured by a gardener who had clipped its wings. When the geese started to resume their flight, this one tried frantically, but vainly, to lift itself into the air. The others, observing its struggles, flew about in obvious efforts to encourage it, but no use. The entire flock then settled back on the pond and waited, even though the urge to go on was strong, for several days, until the damaged feathers grew sufficiently to permit the goose to fly. (2) A friend who owned a small cafe and used to throw crumbs for the sparrows, noticed that one was injured and had difficulty getting about. But he was interested to discover that the other sparrows would leave the crumbs which lay nearest their crippled comrade so that he could get his share, undisturbed.'
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