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THE HISTORY TEACHER | BILLY COLLINS
Trying to protect his students' innocence
he told them the Ice Age was really just
the Chilly Age, a period of a million years
when everyone had to wear sweaters.
And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age,
named after the long driveways of time.
The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more
than an outbreak of questions such as
"How far is it from here to Madrid ( Read more... ) -
A STORY THAT COULD BE TRUE | WILLIAM STAFFORD
If you were exchanged in the cradle and
your real mother died
without ever telling the story
then no one knows your name,
and somewhere in the world
your father is lost and needs you
but you are far away.
He can never find
how true you are, how ready.
When the great wind comes
and the robberies of the rain
you stand on the corner shivering.
The people who go ( Read more... ) -
BAR NAPKIN SONNET 23 | MOIRA EGAN
Sometimes you have to swallow. I love you
might otherwise escape your lust-dumb lips.
By dumb I mean here dim-witted, not mute,
though I have learned the Helen Keller trick
to see no, hear no, speak no thing like truth.
How could this big dumb guy I'm sitting with
have made me come so hard I damn near swooned?
And now he's watching baseball as if it's
a ( Read more... ) -
FALLING AND FLYING | JACK GILBERT
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was ( Read more... ) -
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRDS SING | MAYA ANGELOU
The free bird leaps
on the back of the wind
and floats downstream
till the current ends
and dips his wings
in the orange sun 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 fearful trill
of the ( Read more... ) -
BLUEBIRD | CHARLES BUKOWSKI
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.
there's a bluebird in my ( Read more... ) -
HOW TO BUILD AN OWL | KATHLEEN LYNCH
1. Decide you must.
2. Develop deep respect
for feather, bone, claw.
3. Place your trembling thumb
where the heart will be:
for one hundred hours watch
so you will know
where to put the first feather.
4. Stay awake forever.
When the bird takes shape
gently pry open its beak
and whisper into it: mouse.
5. Let it go. -
WE'LL HAVE A DALMATIAN PLANTATION
Dude, this is a teaser trailer for Irvine Welsh's Ecstasy. And okay, teaser, so at the moment it just kind of looks like a slightly overexposed montage of fucking and raving, but. I can't even. It's like, Three Chemical Romances, right? Overall, it doesn't look overtly stylized which is neither here nor there, so. I mean - necrophiliacs! Obese ( Read more... )
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