Bow Down to the Hippie Queen

Brave One

Brave One

Her wings fell limply at her side

her eyes gleam up with deep pleading

but nothing will stop the bleeding

Ivory tears she tries hard to hide

soon begin to turn crimson

and it has only just begun

She tried to fight against the tide

now she shivers in the cold

disbelieving she was bold

Crushing is the pain held inside

as she tries to shake free her chains

left to the mercy of the rains

Alone with no one to confide

a broken soul forsaken

because she was so mistaken.

Quote of the Week

It is because of men that women dislike one another--Jean de La Bruyere

Runners up:

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo--Gerorger Bernard Shaw

A true friend is one who likes you despite your acomplishments--Arnold Bennett

Bit By Bit

Bit By Bit

International Liteature - Update

A while back I posted a list of books called My Personal Reading List, which was a collection of books gathered from the recomendations of others on Non-American/English liteature. So I thought I would post ratings and prehaps breif reviews about each of the books I have read from that list.

Anna Karnine ~ Tolstoy

Rating: * * * *

I found this to be a rather charming, though not nessciarly happy, and interesting book upon love and relationships, it is the story that looks at several different relationships, and how each individual previces there loves, and thier ideas about relationships, from the devoted faithful young couple struggling through marraige, to the adultress, and a devoted loving wife, with the womanizing husband. This book is very passionate and moving, but it also gives a rather realistic glimpse into life and love.

Madame Bovary ~ Flaubert

Rating: * * *

It starts out a bit slow and kind of dry, in the begining I did not find that the main characters really grabbed my attention. But the second part of the book it does begin to get intersting and the story picks up more. You are introduced to a new set of characters that I find to be all rather entertaining in someways even comical. It is a tragic love story of a young woman Emma who is discontent with her husband, a not very ambitious doctor who is content where he is, and spends most his time away working leaving his wife alone to day dream of a more exciting life.

The Metamorphosis ~ Kafka

Rating: * * * *

This is a bazzar story that is touched by both humur and sadness. It starts out in a rather comical fashion but as the story progresses it becomes more emotional, and yet still a thread of comody prevades throughout. The story is about a pool family who is being supported by thier son, Gregor. When one day Gregor wakes up to discover he had over night metamorphed into a giant insect. Not knowing what to do about him his family at first keeps him locked within his room and with his condition they begin to gradullay decline.

Books in Progress:

Death in Venice

Sun Child

Sun Child

She was raised in the sun

a sun with heavy lided eyes

that never did wink;

stretched across the sky languidly

Crowned in golden light,

she liked to dance among the flowers,

flowers of yellow that never slept

And above in the sky

the bright fire-orange eye

watched with a steady gaze

that grazed upon the skin

She never dreamed

for she never closed her eyes,

but she danced in fields of amber

in the light of day;

a day that is never vanquished

A child cradled in warmth and radiance,

her eyes seemed to shine

in illuminated innocence

born by the shield from darkness and shadows

Yet only a half-lived life

beneath the watch of a sun

that never smiled

without a purpose.

Sheep Need Not Apply

The Short Story

I was bored so I decided to put together a list of short stories I have read, and than becasue I have nothing better to do at the moment, I decided to post it up here.

Edgar Allan Poe

The Black Cat

A Tell-tale Heart

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Gold-Bug

Ligeia

A Decent into the Maelstrom

The Purloined Letter

MS. Found in a Bottle

William Wilson

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Cask Amontillado

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Masque of the Red Death

The Premature Burial

The Imp of the Perverse

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

Hop-Frog

The Angel of the Odd

The Devil in the Belfy

Loss of Breath

Chekhov Anton

Sleepy

The Black Monk

Gooseberries

The Man in the Case

About Love

The Student

Rothchild’s Fiddle

D.H. Lawrence

Sun

The Man Who Loved Islands

Two Bluebirds

The Shadow in the Rose Garden

The Blind Man

Witch A la Mode

The Old Adam

Stephen Crane

Maggie: A Girl of the Streets

The Blue Hotel

Bride Comes to Yellow Sky

The Open Boat

The Monster

Henry James

The Altar of the Dead

The Beast of the Jungle

The Jolly Corner

An International Episode

Daisy Miller

The Turn of the Screw

The Aspern Papers

Herman Melville

Bartleby

The Piazza

The Encantadas

The Bell-Tower

Benito Cereno

The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids

Billy Budd

Girl in the Mirror

Atheletes of Wannabe Model

I flipped on the TV to find that a tennis match was on instead of the show I usually watch. Now I do not watch tennis and I have no real interest in tennis, and yet tennis is evil. In that whenever I happen to find it on I always get sucked into watching it, even as I am sitting there thinking that I do not want to watch and have no real interest in what is going on, I cannot look away, at least for the first few minitues before I come back to my senses.

But anway, it was a womans tennis match, and one of the players was wearing earing on the court while she was playing, and they were these like fancy tear drop earings not just like a stud. But dangling earings. And it just lookesd stupid. What was she thinking, presumbly when she got up in the morning she knew ahead of time that she was going to have a tennis match today and so when she dressed it was with that in mind. So what in the world made her decide, you know, what I really need is to where these earings to spend the majority of my day running around back and forth upon the court.

Love

Love

Love:

a soft cascading caress

feathery touches

with sweet rising tenderness

Love:

seen deeply within a lovers eyes

felt suddenly through my body

my heart stuttering

with stolen breath

Love:

glistening upon the sea

dancing twilight of the stars reflection

whispers carried in the breeze

all felt like a dream

Love:

an unveiled mystery

like the mist dissipating

just before the fingers touch

yet cool tender kisses

tantalize the skin

Love:

awakened from deep within

undeniable feeling

that captivates even as it frees

the comfort in the darkness

is love.

Verse 30

Santo leaned back against the velvet red cushions of the couch. It was framed in fine dark wood carved with lion’s feet and was very straight backed. The noise of the hotel lobby seemed to blend together around him. The hotel was very posh. Not of his own choosing, but it is where she instructed to meet him. Perhaps out of old habit, but he would have preferred something a bit more subtle. Peter stood rapt before him. Not swaying a word keeping his dark eyes fixed forward, in the proper stance of inattention, as if though standing right there he was oblivious to all being said. Yet still ready to leap at first command and obey in an instant. Why had he brought the boy? Santo wondered to himself, here of all places, for such an ungodly task. He could not say, yet something had compelled him. Some old sentimentality? Now he was dressed in a fine well made and hand cut suit of gray, the white collar still adorning his neck. Quite the spectacle they must have made, and yet, perhaps thankfully so, none seemed to pay them the slightest heed. “What you are proposing is unthinkable.” He said in a slow drawn voice. His pale eyes upon the figure of the woman before him. “To break the house? After so many years? I am out of it now, trying to find some comfort in my dwindling years. I am too old to be dragged back into this sort again. Why have you contacted me? You know there is nothing to be done. It is the way it has always been, and not without reason mind you. You know that as well as I do.”

            “If you believed half of what you said you would not be here” She said crisply. They were the perfect opposites of each other. While his body was languid against the couch, his face betrayed much strain and anxiety, but she said, alert, erect, attentive, but her face was as serene as ever. How she had managed it he will never know, but she had kept her looks almost as pristine as the day they met. Her gloved hands rested just upon the top of her knee as one leg was crossed gracefully over the other. The black dress she wore fell smoothly over her body, betraying not a wrinkle inspire of her posture. Her face earnestly upturned to his though particularly obscured by the hat she wore. Which looked like something of a throwback, to a lost and dead age of glamour, and yet she pulled it off beautifully.

            “Why now of all times? After all these years, what has made you suddenly come forward? What has changed?” Santo could not take his eyes from her. Even knowing of the life he once had before, he felt a rising shame that he could not completely release. What would people think? A man of the cloth sitting here, starting at a woman like that? Inwardly he chuckled to himself, was he really growing so soft?

            “Lives are going to be broken” He could detect the almost desperation in her voice, something that was so far removed from her usual hauteur it made him stir in his seat. “Have you forgotten what we once shared? What was stolen from us” Her voice began to rise like a tide with anger, that it had drawn a few glances of the stranger passing by, of course they could not begin to imagine what was discussed but still. Why had she persisted they meet in public? He let out a drawn sigh speaking in a firm gradual tone. “That was a long time ago, and you know, doing this is not going to change our past or our future. What are you not telling me?” Yes he was sure there was something else, she was always a romantic, but he had never known her to be given to such wild heroic whims as this, not on so selfless a motive as she proclaimed.

            She sat speechless a moment yet she knew it would come to this. Slowly she came to lift her purse into her lap as she snapped it open and reached inside; carefully her fingers drew the photograph out before she tossed it lightly upon the table between them. She said nothing at first as she watched him. Santo leaned forward as he took the picture up and looked down to it a moment. His gaze turned back up to her. There was something, something familiar about that photo. Yet he was sure he had never seen the girl within it. Soon his unvoiced questions would be answered. “She is our daughter. And the whelp of the man who broke my heart, who destroyed our lives and tore us apart is going to claim her as his own.”

            Santo was stunned. The picture forgotten was still balanced between his fingertips yet he no longer saw it, he saw nothing. This must be some joke, some dream, he thought. At any moment he would wake up, and yet he could not deny the realty the moved around him. Her words continued, it was a struggle for him to try and grasp just what she was saying.

            “I am sorry I never told you, but I was afraid, afraid of what might happen to her, what they might do to her. I had to protect her, it would have been too risky if you knew. And if you had known, you would have talked me into doing something impossible. I took great pains to conceal the pregnancy and the child after she was born. But it seems now that has backfired. HE is going to take her if we do not do something.” Her eyes burned into his soul as the realization began to hit him. Thundered through his body and jolted him back into consciousness and yet, still nothing was truly answered. The task she proposed as all but impossible and yet…his eyes were drawn back to the photo. His daughter, his flesh and blood, being sacrificed by the offspring of the man who ruined his own life?

            “What can we do?” He said with some resignation. Perhaps he had learned too well from the past, but no more could he be the same man who he once was that would leap into a pit of vipers trusting only some blind emotion.

Quote of the Week

The Old Ones

The Old Ones

We have lived for over a million years
we know what has begun
we have witnessed the downfall
felt a quiver of rains tears
but now we feel the end is near.

So alas we may finally rest
too long we have lingered
decaying bit by bit
sorrow the burden we carry
for much that has been lost.

We will just fade away into the night
a night that will last for eternity
in the dark we can close our eyes
and never think again of what we compromised.

Once when we had the strength
we stood by and watched motionless
never believing it could come to this
arrogant in our own immortality.

But the earth is no longer ours
and now powerless we watch it taken
at last they will destroy themselves
and release us from our bonds
to the soul that once was ours.

Soon we will embrace sweet oblivion
that will come at the end of our existence
maybe there we can forget
the pain and regret for what we have allowed.

Now we just want to disappear
cling to some remaining visions
of what once the world was
before the last remnants evaporate

and we have only nightmares
with no dreams for our slumber.

Camhead

A new toy I acutally want

Dead Souls

Dead Souls

Silently they walk the night

through the shadows that call their name

dead souls with ever watching eyes

songs of morning haunt the years

the ghostly melody begins to rise

never a word spoken of where they came

silently they walk the night

Bound away and hidden from sight

all their sorrow and all their pain felt the same

dead souls with ever watching eyes

songs of morning haunt the years

upon their lips may pass forsaken lies

never a word spoken of where they came

silently they walk the night

To feel their touch is to know their plight

silently they walk the night

hidden in the dark to hide their shame

never a word spoken of where they came

dead souls with every watching eyes

no longer to this world do they have ties

songs of morning haunt the years

songs of morning haunt the years

Shunned forever from the light

cast outside they shall remain

silently they walk the night

dead souls with ever watching eyes

songs of morning haunt the years

silently they walk the night.

Only Here

Only Here

I do not know

where I am going

anymore

Ahead of me

I cannot see

it is all just a

foggy blur

I try and look back

but the way is covered

in broken rose petals

so many lost memories

Here I stand

on broken glass and eggshells

nowhere to step

without a throb

of pain

Where am I to go

when I am so lost

in the gray

Nothing ever can stay

but the bitter taste

that still remains

Now and than

a fresh breath inhaled

but even it comes with a sting

Tears will do no good

always someone else's price

to be paid

The pull to just

slip away

but the voices

that call you back

through the decay

100 Greatest Books - Update

I came acros this list of what are considered to be the 100 greatest books of the 20th century, I decided that I would reach each of these books, here is the list of books I have read. The numbders in front of the title is the order they appear on the list. The * are a sort of 5 star rating system for how well I liked the book. I will also list if any the books I am in the progress of reading.

TBA = To Be Announced

2.The Great Gastby * * * *

10. The Grapes of Wrath * * *

41. Lord of the Flies * * * *

45. The Sun Alos Rises * * * *

48. The Rainbow * * * *

64. The Catcher in the Rye * * * * *

78. Kim * * *

88.The Call of the Wild * * * * *

93. The Maugs * * * * *