They Are Not Long - Ernest Dowson

Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses,
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Some Kiss We Want - Rumi

There is some kiss we want with 

our whole lives, the touch of 

spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into

me. Close the language- door and

open the love window. The moon

won't use the door, only the window.

Wild Geese - Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things

You are Earth by Aubrey Marcus

You are comprised of: 

84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water 

spread across 38 trillion cells.

 

You have been built up from nothing 

by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, 

according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix 

and small enough to be carried by (an egg) and a sperm. 

 

You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, 

broken down to their smallest parts 

and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing.

 

You are not living on Earth. 

You are Earth.

 

Bleeker Street – Robert Dimler

Have
you ev-
er needed
a pair of dimes
to place a call at
night? At 2 a.m.,
on Bleeker Street,
beneath a
broken
light?

Tone Deficit BY KEVIN MCFADDEN

Can't tell your oh from your ah? Go, go or else 
go ga-ga. What, were you born in a barn? Oh. 
Ah. What do you say when the dentist asks? 
No novacaine? Nah. Then joke's on us, Jack: 

we gnaw ourselves when we really ought to know. 
Can't tell the force from the farce, nor our 
cores from our cars. The horde works hard in this 
new nation of shopkeeps, moles in malls, minding 

our stores when we should be minding our stars. 
Harmony, whoremoney—can we even tell 
the showman from the shaman? Or are we 
the worst kind of   tourists, doing La France 

in low fronts, sporting shorts at Chartres 
and so alone in our élan? Nope. We're Napoleons 
of nowhere, hopeless going on hapless, 
unable to tell our Elbas from our elbows.

I could suffice for Him, I knew by Emily Dickinson

I could suffice for Him, I knew—
He—could suffice for Me—
Yet Hesitating Fractions—Both
Surveyed Infinity—

"Would I be Whole" He sudden broached—
My syllable rebelled—
'Twas face to face with Nature—forced—
'Twas face to face with God—

Withdrew the Sun—to Other Wests—
Withdrew the furthest Star
Before Decision—stooped to speech—
And then—be audibler

The Answer of the Sea unto
The Motion of the Moon—
Herself adjust Her Tides—unto—
Could I—do else—with Mine?