7/20/2008 - Dancing Leaves

Dancing Leaves

Dancing in sunlight

with a twinkling  of eyes blink

soft green hues intensified

Tickled by the wind

gentle aerial ripples

a caress upon my soul.

7/19/2008 - Dawn A New Day

Dawn A New Day

Spread my wings

and fly away

Shed a tear

and hide away

Close my eyes

and dream a new day

On my knees

begging you to stay

If I could breathe

I'd run away

Never a word

I can say

Spread your wings

and carry me away

Together we will enter

a brand new day

You always know

the words to say

From this world

you'll hide me away

I know in your arms

forever I'll stay.

7/19/2008 - Greetings

7/7/2008 - Fear Is Not the End

Fear Is Not the End

I feel the breath against my back:

close my eyes

and count to ten

Once I would have been terrified;

paralyzed

Give myself over to the control

icy fingers against my skin

But No! Never again

will I stand motionless;

relinquish my freedom

Open my eyes

to look dead ahead

it is my time to rise

No longer will I be impotent

I've watched my own blood for the last time

I wonder what color do you bleed in?

Time to turn a new corner

I close my eyes and count to ten

and I hope you run and hide

because this is the last time

fear can push me down

At last the beast has woke inside.

7/7/2008 - Gossamer Wings

Gossamer Wings

A tear in the gossamer wings

the powder begins to flake away

while flight becomes impossible

only a reoccurring dream

such colors that no longer mean anything

overtime will begin to fade

weighted down by the pressed print made

another's mark born like a brand

A shred of iridescence

no longer each band of vibrance

speaking as one in a single voice

now just guttural sounds

a lesson in aesthetics

how quick anything can be made ugly

with only a twist of asymmetrical disharmony

Tears tumble down

only to wash away the essence

now trapped within the self-made bubble

understanding begins to seep in

how gossamer can decay

and leave in its place

only echoes of former beings

unable to survive outside

psychedelics.

7/6/2008 - Firefighting Monks

This is a story I heard that I really liked and wanted to share.

I do not know how many of you know, but this year has been really bad for fires in California. And in the latest fire outbreak the firemen were starting mandatory exvacuations, and apperently up in the area where the fire is, there is a monostary of Zen Monks I think it was, and they refused to evacuate. They said that is goes against what they belive in and what they are all about, and instead they are going to stay and fight. So a few of the firemen actually stayed with the monks to start and train them on how they could combat against the fires.

7/4/2008 - 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.

7/4/2008 - 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

7/3/2008 - Bit By Bit

Bit By Bit

7/2/2008 - 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.

Death in Venice ~ Mann

Rating: * * *

Books in Progress:

Yougth, Beautiful Yougth

7/1/2008 - 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.

7/1/2008 - Sheep Need Not Apply

7/1/2008 - 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

Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis

H.P Lovecraft

Dagon

Polaris

Beyond the Wall of Sleep

The Doom that Came to Sarnath

The White Ship

The Cats of Ulthar 

Thomas Mann

Death in Venice

6/30/2008 - Girl in the Mirror

6/30/2008 - 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.

6/27/2008 - 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.

6/27/2008 - 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.