"I'm gonna go back to coasting through life on my good looks. Hey, and my brains will always be there, so if I ever need them, I'll just whip 'em out and use them like a secret emergency rocket pack!"

- Michael Kelso, That 70's Show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xj2F8gpgq8&feature=related

Walt Whitman's poems are old yet progressive; he was the pioneer back in the old days, of the new, I feel. His poems ring with the eternal, that which is the core of every human being, and that, about his poems, is what makes your heart flutter in your chest. His poems are fluid, naked and erotic. Flushing and beating.

Sometimes with One I Love

by Walt Whitman

Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for fear I
effuse unreturn'd love,
But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay is
certain one way or another,
(I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not
return'd,
Yet out of that I have written these songs.)

Among the Multitude

by Walt Whitman

Among the men and women, the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else—not parent, wife, husband, brother, child,
any nearer than I am;
Some are baffled—But that one is not—that one knows me.

Ah, lover and perfect equal!
I meant that you should discover me so, by my faint indirections;
And I, when I meet you, mean to discover you by the like in you.

B. Yavuuhulan: Tuulyn ursgal shunuduu saihan

Туулын урсгал шeнeдee сайхан сан
Торгон долгио хаялан мяралздагсан
Хоёр ангир дандаа л хeвдeг сeн
Холын анир авангаа л дуугардаг сан.

Урсгалд нь умбагч сарыг ажин
Усанд нь хeвeгч оддыг тоолон
Бvvр тvvрхэн тохиолдлоо дурсан
Vvр цайлгах би дуртай сан.
Шившин шивнэх залуу навчис
Шeнийн дуу над аялдагсан
Сeeг моддын нь нэгийг тvшин
Шeнeжин сууж би сонсдог сон.

1957 он.

For all the memories made on and along the river Tuul.

Night train
Pick me up from my fears
Covered in sweat
I find you there
Hot and beating
beating
beating
night train
passing by
by
and by
My thought bubbles
float
in the dark
with the night train
passing by
your red heart
beating
beating
breathing
A heart
I observe you
breathing
The night train
has passed.
Only a heart beats
You
breathing
breathing
beating

Papa, why do we like to destroy
ourselves? You and me?
Tell me, when you were young,
were you me?

I am so dry and thirsty for my first inhalation
downwards,
fumes blowing high,
you slumped on the ground,
a broken puppet with the cat at his feet.

I pull down my face, feel
my innards swell and pull down
with all the poison, the shit
I deliberately expose myself to.

Papa, we'll sail down a beautiful sunny river one day,
I'm telling you, you and me,
Together and parallel.
I will gift you a bookcase, or maybe build from scratch
with wood you dream about,
manual saws.

All that is in us that we try to drown,
burn, hide,
that which sometimes explodes!
without warning,
we should, you know, Aav,
I think release it in machinery and creation.

Daddy, I'm your girl,
but Aav, I am your huu.
You and me, we share
blood and monsters
angels and despair, but Papa, don't despair.
Let's find some other broken
shit to repair.

It is funny, sad and strange how beauty is always fleeting. It shines steadily, stuns and twirls before your eyes. So near yet you can never touch, so close but in another world. Then, twirling, momentary beauty, it disappears, never to be seen again. The viewer, still stunned, begs, pleads to merely behold a moment longer and realizing only memory will be served, sighs and stares a million.

Everything else lingers. Unnecessarily.

After Many Days

I wonder if with you, as it is with me,
If under your slipping words, that easily flow
About you as a garment, easily,
Your violent heart beats to and fro!

Long have I waited, never once confessed,
Even to myself, how bitter the separation;
Now, being come again, how make the best
Reparation?

If I could cast this clothing off from me,
If I could lift my naked self to you,
Or if only you would repulse me, a wound would be
Good; it would let the ache come through.

But that you hold me still so kindly cold
Aloof my floating heart will not allow;
Yea, but I loathe you that you should withhold
Your pleasure now.


- D.H.Lawrence

More Rumi. Because moments ago, I was seething, in a bad mood, and now I am a feather floating in the air.

There Is A Candle In Your Heart

There is a candle in your heart,

ready to be kindled.

There is a void in your soul,

ready to be filled.

You feel it, don't you?

You feel the separation

from the Beloved.

Invite Him to fill you up,

embrace the fire.

Remind those who tell you otherwise that

Love

comes to you of its own accord,

and the yearning for it

cannot be learned in any school.

The Agony and Ecstacy

In the orchard and rose garden
I long to see your face.
In the taste of Sweetness
I long to kiss your lips.
In the shadows of passion
I long for your love.

Oh! Supreme Lover!
Let me leave aside my worries.
The flowers are blooming
with the exultation of your Spirit.

By Allah!
I long to escape the prison of my ego
and lose myself
in the mountains and the desert.

These sad and lonely people tire me.
I long to revel in the drunken frenzy of your love
and feel the strength of Rustam in my hands.

I’m sick of mortal kings.
I long to see your light.
With lamps in hand
the sheiks and mullahs roam
the dark alleys of these towns
not finding what they seek.

You are the Essence of the Essence,
The intoxication of Love.
I long to sing your praises
but stand mute
with the agony of wishing in my heart.

- Rumi

The next Rumi poem I was going to upload is intense. Save it for another day?

Liberating, eye and heart-opening... Sensual, mystical, beautiful, passionate.

WITH PASSION

With

passion pray. With

passion work. With passion make love.
With passion eat and drink and dance and play.
Why look like a dead fish

in this ocean

of

God?

-Rumi

I Am and I Am Not

I’m drenched
in the flood
which has yet to come

I’m tied up
in the prison
which has yet to exist

Not having played
the game of chess
I’m already the checkmate

Not having tasted
a single cup of your wine
I’m already drunk

Not having entered
the battlefield
I’m already wounded and slain

I no longer
know the difference
between image and reality

Like the shadow
I am
And
I am not

- Rumi.

Unser Volk

I wonder what fields your great grandmother ran through as a young girl
Her light hair wild like the flowers she stood in,
Her smile bright like the red of her skirt.

I wonder which woods my great grandfather hid in as a young man
White and red from the cold, and Reds and Whites behind his back
His smile the only clue to his well-hidden secret.

I wonder what tree stump your great grandmother sat on as a young woman
Staring beyond the soot gray lake, swallowing hot tears
Her heart frozen like the land her lover walked in, dragging his chains.

I wonder what lands my grandfather galloped through as a young man
Lungs bursting with song and life,
His thick locks blowing, flowing in the wind of change.

I imagine the open plains my father slept on as a young boy
On his back, counting the stars in the night sky
As black as his future, black plains as empty as he was inside.

***

When you know the notes to sing
You can sing most anything
That's what my mama told me
Round and round and round you go
When you find love you'll always know
I let my father mold me
Daddy couldn't be all wrong
[Not gonna let you slip away, I'm gonna be there]
And my mama made me learn this song
[You're gonna bring your love to me, I'm gonna get you]
That's why I can't help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know
The deeper I go

All is fair in love she said
Think with your heart, not with your head
That's what my mama told me
All the little things you do
Will end up coming back to you
I let my father mold me
Daddy couldn't be all wrong
[Not gonna let you slip away, I'm gonna be there]
And my mama made me learn this song
[You're gonna bring your love to me, I'm gonna get you]
That's why I can't help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know
I can't help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know

Someone said that romance was dead
And I believed it instead of remembering
What my mama told me
Let my father mold me
Then you tried to hold me
You remind me what they said
This feeling inside I can't explain
But my love is alive
And I'm never gonna hide it again
Daddy couldn't be all wrong
[Not gonna let you slip away, I'm gonna be there]
And my mama made me learn this song
[You're gonna bring your love to me, I'm gonna get you]
That's why I can't help falling in love
I fall deeper and deeper the further I go
Kisses sent from heaven above
They get sweeter and sweeter the more that I know
Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper
Never gonna hide it again
Sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter
Never gonna have to pretend
Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper
Never gonna hide it again
Sweeter and sweeter and sweeter and sweeter
Never gonna have to pretend
You got to just let your body move to the music
You got to just let your body go with the flow
Falling in love, falling in love, falling in love
I can't keep from falling in love with you
You know there's nothing better that I'd like to do

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality - Plutarch.

I watched a video of J. K. Rowling's commencement speech given at Harvard in 2008. She talked about the importance of failure and imagination. It was refreshing and thought-provoking, and of course, I took it upon myself and just thought a little while.

"Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential."

It made realize that I have never failed greatly. I thought about what my heart beats for and what direction I want to go. I thought about how one should tackle the little 'failures' we come across in life and come out on the other side a more developed and enriched version of you. I thought about my friends... Whether pushing people out of your life can shut them out forever. And of course, I thought about art.



The link for the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkREt4ZB-ck

"your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;"

again, an excerpt from ee cummings' somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond.

the beauty of this poem... touches me inside, and voices my feelings in a way i never could.

We scheme,
demean,
i find
you blind,
too light-

in time,
we'll die.

We drink,
can't think
and sink
into an altered state.

Float up in bubbles
of yayity,
gaiety,
to our unquestioned deity
until we pop and bloom
and wilt, slowly
we descend-
i immerse my body

in gloom.

William Carlos Williams is the man!

What have I to say to you
When we shall meet?
Yet—
I lie here thinking of you.

The stain of love
Is upon the world.
Yellow, yellow, yellow,
It eats into the leaves,
Smears with saffron
The horned branches that lean
Heavily
Against a smooth purple sky.

There is no light—
Only a honey-thick stain
That drips from leaf to leaf
And limb to limb
Spoiling the colours
Of the whole world.
I am alone.

The weight of love
Has buoyed me up
Till my head
Knocks against the sky.

See me!
My hair is dripping with nectar—
Starlings carry it
On their black wings.
See, at last
My arms and my hands
Are lying idle.

How can I tell
If I shall ever love you again
As I do now?

- A Love Song, WCW.

Spring is like a perhaps hand, by E. E. Cummings

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere) arranging
a window,into which people look (while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here) and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and fro moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there) and

without breaking anything.

somewhere i never travelled,gladly beyond - by E.E.Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Up
down
sit
stand
slow
quick
easy
hard
now
wait
here
there
come
go
.

To be alive, by Gregory Orr

To be alive: not just the carcass
But the spark.
That's crudely put, but…

If we're not supposed to dance,
Why all this music?

I hate morning

I hate light

stark,

cold and white

baring insecurities

pulling down ugly shades of reality

over my eyes

Bring night

with sublety in every corner

warm smooth embraces

in the dark

only the other eye

to guide.

A Community of the Spirit, Rumi.

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours.

You moan, "She left me." "He left me."
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

Hm...

How funny that all I remember of you is your belt, fine leather, and hair
Oh, and your backside, that poise extending out to your elbows
Hinting and hiding something that runs in you.
And with your backside and your leather belt and hair... You fade.


How funny that the first thing I think of you is your smell
like the juice of crushed onions that pierce through my nostrils
And all the beautiful glowing gems of you come second. Or last.
Leaving a bittersweet light silently dancing in the shade of that year.


How stupid that I should think of intersections now
And parallel lives,
Biting my nails and pushing up my glasses.

Чиний дурлал, Б. Явуухулан

Хавирган сар нэмэн нэмсээр дvvрдэг шиг
Хайрын сэтгэл минь улам чамд дасаад байх юм.

Сарны гэрэлд лянхуа навчсаа хумьдаг шиг
Сайхан чиний хайрын илч чинь буураад байх юм.

Өвсөнд буусан vvрийн шvvдэр хийсдэг шиг
Арилах болов уу,
Усанд унасан борооны дусал хатдаггvй шиг
Амьдрах болов уу?

Чиний дурлал.

1958 он
___

A beautiful poem called "Your Love" by Mongolian poet B. Yavuuhulan (1929-1982), written in 1958. I thought I'd post it considering it's Valentine's Day. A rough and questionable translation by me:

Like the new moon adds and adds to become full
My feelings of love are getting more used to you.

Like the lotus closes its petals in the moonlight
The warmth of your love, beautiful, is fading.

Like the morning dew on grass blows away
Will it disappear?

Like raindrops that fall in water never dry
Will it live on?

Your love.
___

He has many beautiful poems and the first one I read was when I was 12, called "Tehiin Zogsool". I had such a hard time just paying attention and reading it, mainly because my Mongolian was pretty bad and I had to read it for Literature class. Last winter, I read the poem again online and actually cried.

Another poem I like by B. Yavuuhulan is "Tuulyn ursgal shunuduu saikhan", which translates into "The flow of Tuul (river) is beautiful by night". But I'll save that for another day.

We Real Cool, by Gwendolyn Brooks

We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.

RIP Alexander McQueen.

Scissors

Sharp scissors
with which to cut
perception from vision
to receive art.

Sharp scissors
with which to cut
rationale from feeling
to receive love.

Sharp scissors
with which to cut
dreams from reality
to receive today.

Sharp scissors
with which to cut
throat and wrist
when I get pissed.

Alcohol is good.
It was pretty.
You smelled good.
And I no longer me.
Mind was gone.
All else was on
But clarity cowers at the feet of reason
And I left you alone.
A rose was lifted.
The alcohol had drifted.
Smell was fading.
And I was coming back.
Devil mind was home.
I nervously shifted.
Rationale went ballistic.
And I quickly stomped the rose.
Dreams are ugly.
Thoughts of a lunatic.
Reality shades on eyes
And I unplug the cord.
Nothing is peace.
Mind was alcohol.
All day, on my shoulders,
I carry a bleeding poison snake.
Feelings should drown
Calculations prove it.
Sense governs all.
And I am a most loyal slave.

All day, on my shoulders,
A bleeding poison snake.

I think poetry sucks out all beauty from life. Either live on poetry. Or live.

And since I been writing a few lately, maybe I should die.

This is not the place for art.

Nothing is as it seems.

Nothing is as it seems.
Every picture is just a picture.
Every facade has a tiny crack, through which if you peer through,
You get a glimpse of what is true
And repulsively ugly.
But I will stand my ground,
Embrace my naivety with arms tight
Tell myself over and over again
That I am not here to fight.

I believe in Beauty
Purity
Light
Transparency
Respect
Clarity
Honesty
Peace
Love.

I believe in Beauty... and will stand my ground, even if I were all alone in an already lost war.

These Days, by Nico.

I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking
These days, these days.
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to.

The Lie

"Tell wit how much it wrangles
In fickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in overwiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie."

- Sir Walter Raleigh, The Lie (excerpt)

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is barren field
Frozen with snow.

Dreams, by Langston Hughes.

This is one of my favorite poems; it's like my mantra. Whenever I start to doubt my goals, my aim in life, my beliefs, my dreams, I quickly recite this in my head and it puts things back in perspective. Short and simple, and so true.

Just remember, a human being with no dreams is a mere vessel taking up space on this planet.

The Man Who Was Thursday (A Nightmare), G. K. Chesterton.

I finished this book a few days back. I had started reading it in 2004 and was already halfway through, when I came upon what I thought was a flaw in the plot (the part where Syme challenges the Marquis to a duel). So I threw it down and never finished it.

Before I picked this one up again, I was (and still am) halfway through this book, "Everyone Worth Knowing". Before that, I read "Shopaholic and Sister", which was all light-hearted, entertaining and funny. And before that it was "HP and the Deathly Hallows", which I realized I had totally outgrown but had to read just so I could say, "I read 'em all!"

So, basically, I overdosed on the commercial books a little and felt I needed some real quality.

Some rich language.

Some pomp (as in "pompous") and haughtiness (as in "haughty").

This time around, the storyline just ran and ran, and I had to keep up. I was quite amused at the part where I'd thought the story was flawed and realized it was all my lack of patience back then.

It has been a most engaging, entertaining, suspenseful, funny, delightful visual and psychological journey, this book.

To Edmund Clerihew Bentley:

A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay;
Round us in antic order
Crippled vices came-
Lust that had lost its laughter,
Fear that had lost its shame.
Like the white lock of Whistler,
That lit our aimless gloom,
Men showed their own white feather
As proudly as a plume.
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
(excerpt)

G. K. C.

I don't really
have much of a life physically;
I live in thought.
I live a thousand lives
and as many dreams,
I am a thousand lives
and the Great Supreme.
In thought, I disect,
dismember,
analyze,
reassemble,
try to remember,
then realize
Decades have passed
and I am still a blank canvas.