Void Poems Quotes

You try to be faithful And sometimes you're cruel. You are mine. Then, you leave. Without you, I can't cope. And when you take the lead, I become your footstep. Your absence leaves a void. Without you, I can't cope. You have disturbed my sleep, You have wrecked my image. You have set me apart. Without you, I can't cope.

This moment my mind is bereft of poetry, yet I want to write nothing but a poem.

Don't ask me any questions. I've seen how things that seek their way find their void instead.

Poetry And it was at that age... Poetry arrived in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river. I don’t know how or when, no, they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence, but from a street I was summoned, from the branches of night, abruptly from the others, among violent fires or returning alone, there I was without a face and it touched me. I did not know what to say, my mouth had no way with names my eyes were blind, and something started in my soul, fever or forgotten wings, and I made my own way, deciphering that fire and I wrote the first faint line, faint, without substance, pure nonsense, pure wisdom of someone who knows nothing, and suddenly I saw the heavens unfastened and open, planets, palpitating planations, shadow perforated, riddled with arrows, fire and flowers, the winding night, the universe. And I, infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void, likeness, image of mystery, I felt myself a pure part of the abyss, I wheeled with the stars, my heart broke free on the open sky.

Worry not if you are in darkness and the void sucks you in further. This is not the place we go to die. It’s where we are born and our stories begin.

Till her appointed course be run; Till on the darkness faint her breath Flown to the silent void, and Death Sit crowned upon the ashen sun. (“The Testimony of the Suns”)

By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago; Yet still the silver corpse must spin And with another's light must glow. Her frozen mountains must forget Their primal hot volcanic breath, Doomed to revolve for ages yet, Void amphitheatres of death. And all about the cosmic sky, The black that lies beyond our blue, Dead stars innumerable lie, And stars of red and angry hue Not dead but doomed to die.

Still perfect,” he said. “Read to me.” “This isn’t really a poem to read aloud when you are sitting next to your sleeping mother. It has, like, sodomy and angel dust in it,” I said. “You just named two of my favorite pastimes,” he said. “Okay, read me something else then?” “Um,” I said. “I don’t have anything else?” “That’s too bad. I am so in the mood for poetry. Do you have anything memorized?” “‘Let us go then, you and I,’” I started nervously, “‘When the evening is spread out against the sky / Like a patient etherized upon a table.’” “Slower,” he said. I felt bashful, like I had when I’d first told him of An Imperial Affliction. “Um, okay. Okay. ‘Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question . . . / Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” / Let us go and make our visit.’” “I’m in love with you,” he said quietly. “Augustus,” I said. “I am,” he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. “I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.” “Augustus,” I said again, not knowing what else to say. It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn’t say it back. I

Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

In each thrust, I pray... that I may be able to fill that longing she has in her soul. Giving her body if even only a few seconds of respite - as she forgets the void from embracing everything in my beastly world...

II A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,       A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,       Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,           In word, or sigh, or tear — O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,       All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Have I been gazing on the western sky,       And its peculiar tint of yellow green: And still I gaze — and with how blank an eye! And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars; Those stars, that glide behind them or between, Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen: Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel how beautiful they are! III           My genial spirits fail;           And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?           It were a vain endeavour,           Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west: I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency. I am no one in existence but myself,

We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we ought to bear.

Spring-water in the green creek is clear Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white Silent knowledge—the spirit is enlightened of itself Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

...when the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again.

I don't know how to speak anymore. And with whom? I never found a soulmate. No one was a dream. They left me with open dreams, with my central wound wide open, with my heart torn. I mourn myself; this is my right. And yet I look down on those who take no interest in me. My only desire has been. I will not say it. Even I, or especially I, betray myself. Like a nursing boy, my soul has been soothed. I don't know how to speak anymore. I can't speak anymore. I have taken apart, what they never gave me, which was all I had. And it is death again. It closes in on me, it is my only horizon. No one resembles my dream. I have felt love and they mistreated it, yes, me, I who never loved. The deepest love will disappear forever. What can we love that isn't a shadow? The sacred dreams of childhood have already died, and with them, those of nature, which loved me.

que ferais-je sans ce monde que ferais-je sans ce monde sans visage sans questions où être ne dure qu'un instant où chaque instant verse dans le vide dans l'oubli d'avoir été sans cette onde où à la fin corps et ombre ensemble s'engloutissent que ferais-je sans ce silence gouffre des murmures haletant furieux vers le secours vers l'amour sans ce ciel qui s'élève sur la poussieère de ses lests que ferais-je je ferais comme hier comme aujourd'hui regardant par mon hublot si je ne suis pas seul à errer et à virer loin de toute vie dans un espace pantin sans voix parmi les voix enfermées avec moi Translation... what would I do without this world what would I do without this world faceless incurious where to be lasts but an instant where every instant spills in the void the ignorance of having been without this wave where in the end body and shadow together are engulfed what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die the pantings the frenzies towards succour towards love without this sky that soars above its ballast dust what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before peering out of my deadlight looking for another wandering like me eddying far from all the living in a convulsive space among the voices voiceless that throng my hiddenness

One day I will become a bird and unsheathe my existence out of my void. When the two wings burn I’ll near the truth and reincarnate from ash. I am the dialogue of dreamers. I turned away from my body and my self to complete my first journey toward meaning, but meaning burned me and disappeared. I am absence. The heavenly and the expelled from “Mural

Justice always finds the void that seeks it. Justice is a traveler through time.

Michelangelo wrote in a poem years later: Around my door, I find huge piles of shit since those who gorge on grapes or take a purge could find no better place to void their guts in.

If the mystery can be reduced to one solution, it lies in a simple coincidence: Rimbaud's interest in his own work had survived the realization that the world would not be changed by verbal innovation. It did not survive the failure of all his adult relationships. He had always treated poems as a form of private communication. He gave his songs to chansonniers, his satires to satirists. Without a constant companion, he was writing in a void.

all hopes there, so close to each other, are pulled into the void every night; when a band of pale twinkles milking the way across the divine breadth of sky where every heart belongs. - From the poem "The Universe In Blossom

Summer" Be of this brightness dyed Whose unrecking fever Flings gold before it goes Into voids finally That have no measure. Bird-sleep moonset, Island after island, Be of their hush On this tide that balance A time, for a time. Islands are not forever, Nor this light again, Tide-set, brief summer, Be of their secret That fears no other.

WHERE ONCE THE WATERS ON YOUR FACE Where once the waters of your face Spun to my screws, your dry ghost blows, The dead turns up its eye; Where once the mermen through your ice Pushed up their hair, the dry wind steers Through salt and root and roe. Where once your green knots sank their splice Into the tided cord, there goes The green unraveller, His scissors oiled, his knife hung loose To cut the channels at their source And lay the wet fruits low. Invisible, your clocking tides Break on the lovebeds of the weeds; The weed of love’s left dry; There round about your stones the shades Of children go who, from their voids, Cry to the dolphined sea. Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids Shall not be latched while magic glides Sage on the earth and sky; There shall be corals in your beds, There shall be serpents in your tides, Till all our sea-faiths die.

Poetry can be more eloquent than the most eloquent sermons, and it becomes a weapon more formidable than the sharpest of swords; whenever such a poem--which finds its correct tune and conveys the excitement of the heart--rings out, all the miserable, heaped drifts of words fly for shelter and bury themselves in ashamed silence. Whenever such a sword of poetry is drawn from its scabbard, all the false princes of words, who have set their thrones on a void, are thwarted and retreat into seclusion.

In meditation we experience the silence from which all creativity springs. The act of creation—whether from a blank page to a poem, an empty space to a building, a thought to a song or film—starts with a void. The more intimate a relationship we can build with that silent void, the more clearly the art can shine through and spring forth. Meditation is the vehicle to connect to that silence.” —Rick Rubin, Malibu 2013

To me, the ideological high wire is for fools to balance on with their illusions. It is better to leap into the void. Isn't that what we all want anyway?— to eliminate all pretense till like the oppressed who in the end identifies with the oppressor, we accept the worst in ourselves and are set free.

We Were Lonely My Valentine. along a pavement of loneliness you towards me and I towards you unknown celestial bodies eclipse at night we pass and our gravity of loneliness brings us together so close to touch but not close enough your presence draws my heart and I feel you can’t pull away from gravity we stargaze our loneliness orbits and companionship to fill the black void we touch and our solitude evaporates into the stratosphere and the night is secluded I take you as a lover and you take me as yours we enter the expanding universe at its core the night to linger in our arms we feel humanity as humans share we need each other as strangers share we feel included and wanted for one night only we are true lovers one last kiss my valentine celestial bodies continue on their extraterrestrial journeys as I walk in the breaking dawn along the pavement of loneliness I know loneliness can be confined

Yesterday I fell completely off the face of the earth Contemplating life, light and love in the darkness of the void Strangely it was in the dark that I found meaning for the light

Lotus a star of detachment sultry feverishness of a tawdry universe incense of rejected poems lie in the void of me a book of something else a book of nothing else

His solid flesh had never been away, For each dawn found him in his usual place, But every night his spirit loved to race Through gulfs and worlds remote from common day. He had seen Yaddith, yet retained his mind, And come back safely from the Ghooric zone, When one still night across curved space was thrown That beckoning piping from the voids behind. He waked that morning as an older man, And nothing since has looked the same to him. Objects around float nebulous and dim— False, phantom trifles of some vaster plan. His folk and friends are now an alien throng To which he struggles vainly to belong.

I am a curse on this world. For some time now my body has laid in darkness. My mind, haunted by the past. The agony… is never-ending. And amid all my pain, I recall a poem that whispers truth into the void: “I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears Night and morning with my tears, And I sunned it with smiles And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright, And my foe beheld it shine, And he knew that it was mine – And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning, glad, I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew With all her spirit and life the sunrise through And through her lips the keen triumphant air Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were, And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth Of wind and light that moved upon the earth, Making the spring, and all the fruitful might And strong regeneration of delight That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man, Since the first life in the first world began To burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins, And the first love with sharp sweet procreant pains To pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she felt Through her own soul the sovereign morning melt, And all the sacred passion of the sun; And as the young clouds flamed and were undone About him coming, touched and burnt away In rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day, The sweet veil of her body and corporal sense Felt the dawn also cleave it, and incense With light from inward and with effluent heat The kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet. And as the august great blossom of the dawn Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat, So as a fire the mighty morning smote Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour Her whole soul's one great mystical red flower Burst, and the bud of her sweet spirit broke Rose-fashion, and the strong spring at a stroke Thrilled, and was cloven, and from the full sheath came The whole rose of the woman red as flame: And all her Mayday blood as from a swoon Flushed, and May rose up in her and was June. So for a space her hearth as heavenward burned: Then with half summer in her eyes she turned, And on her lips was April yet, and smiled, As though the spirit and sense unreconciled Shrank laughing back, and would not ere its hour Let life put forth the irrevocable flower. And the soft speech between them grew again

I saw the body spread on that dank stone, And knew those things which feasted were not men; I knew this strange, grey world was not my own, But Yuggoth, past the starry voids—and then The body shrieked at me with a dead cry, And all too late I knew that it was I!

Before the Dawn In the darkest night the sun may seem like an extinguished match or an ember drowned by rain. A light forever lost. The cold world grows steadily colder and shrinks like the abused, closing in on all sides. Laughter, smiles, the glimmer of dancing eyes, and all else indicative of human brightness is gone. Colors leeched from everything leave shadows and emotion dull-gray in their absence. Time is a void. A moment feels eternal. Hope does not blossom in the darkness but withers fast, starving for what only the sun can offer. As its petals turn to dust, fear blows in and sweeps the remnants away. The soul succumbs by degrees to nightmares emboldened by the dead of night. All is lost! All is lost! The wretched sun, repulsed by our nothingness, has abandoned the lives in its care! And then the eyes open wide, seeing mountains take shape on the horizon.

Death brings with it a duty and devotion that cannot be explained to those who don’t know it. Why, after all, would you keep his crummy plaid shirts and give his good suits away? Why do material things matter at once less and more? Why, in the void, does ritual, both inherited and invented, rush in?

Landscape II Sun in the knifed horizon bleeds the sky, Spilling a peacock stain upon the sands, Across some murdered rocks refused to die. It is your absence touches my sad hands Blinded like flags in the wreck of air. And catacombs of cloud enshroud the cool And calm involvement of the darkened plains, The stunted mourners here: and here, a full And universal tenderness which drains The sucked and golden breath of sky comes bare. Now, while the dark basins the void of space, Some sudden crickets, ambushing me near, Discover vowels of your whispered face And subtly cry. I touch your absence here Remembering the speeches of your hair.

I’m just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it’s all okay because it’s just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they’re bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever.

In Zen Buddhist texts they say, “You cannot nail a peg into the sky.” And so, to be a man of the sky, a man of the void, is also called ‘a man not depending on anything’. And when you’re not hung on anything you are the only thing that isn’t hung on anything – which is the universe. Which doesn’t hang, you see. Where would it hang? It has no place to fall on, even though it may be dropping; there will never be the crash of it landing on a concrete floor somewhere. But the reason for that is that it won’t crash below because it doesn’t hang above. And so there is a poem, in Chinese, which speaks of such a person as having above, not a tile to cover the head; below, not an inch of ground on which to stand.

What was there to do? This place once seemed so great, but now so was the void left behind. The mine lied as an empty cage of ribs. Though the veins were now dried, their outline remained. They bleakly traced the titan and the town where it once rested its head. What was there to do when the heart had become just mineral dust staining the empty beds of trucks?

The artist abandoning his poem, exasperated by the indigence of words, prefigures the confusion of the mind discontented within the context of the existent. Incapacity to organize the elements—as stripped of meaning and savor as the words which express them—leads to the revelation of the void. Thus the rhymer withdraws into silence or into impenetrable artifices.

To quote Ms. Lauryn: i wrote these words for everyone who struggles in their youth... * * - Esther - * * "Don't worry that you'll be a copy The Maker had you on His mind the entire time Before a speckle of sand hit the darkness Before sound came from the void Before two drops of hydrogen And oxygen combined Before mama knew papa The vibrations in your voice are like thumbprints The fequency and wavelength your sound generates Reverberates in the universe Breaking and entering into souls A light house in a perfect storm Your siren song does not take but lends To safety To refuge To home Don't be afraid that its already been said - Speak Don't be afraid that its already been thought - Think In this generation This moment For this time

How clear she shines ! How quietly I lie beneath her guardian light; While heaven and earth are whispering me, " To morrow, wake, but, dream to-night." Yes, Fancy, come, my Fairy love ! These throbbing temples softly kiss; And bend my lonely couch above And bring me rest, and bring me bliss. The world is going; dark world, adieu ! Grim world, conceal thee till the day; The heart, thou canst not all subdue, Must still resist, if thou delay ! Thy love I will not, will not share; Thy hatred only wakes a smile; Thy griefs may wound–thy wrongs may tear, But, oh, thy lies shall ne'er beguile ! While gazing on the stars that glow Above me, in that stormless sea, I long to hope that all the woe Creation knows, is held in thee ! And, this shall be my dream to-night; I'll think the heaven of glorious spheres [Page 104] Is rolling on its course of light In endless bliss, through endless years; I'll think, there's not one world above, Far as these straining eyes can see, Where Wisdom ever laughed at Love, Or Virtue crouched to Infamy; Where, writhing 'neath the strokes of Fate, The mangled wretch was forced to smile; To match his patience 'gainst her hate, His heart rebellious all the while. Where Pleasure still will lead to wrong, And helpless Reason warn in vain; And Truth is weak, and Treachery strong; And Joy the surest path to Pain; And Peace, the lethargy of Grief; And Hope, a phantom of the soul; And Life, a labour, void and brief; And Death, the despot of the whole !

Just like last year, yes, between the 23rd And 24th of June, when I felt my heart Grow in me and glow, heart in solstice, In maximum expansion of light. All those rays then- I remember I was eating Huge cherries that were almost too sweet- Had a mooring, though distant And uncertain. What ill I invent now For this repeating heart Obeying seasons, Where will I send it now, into what void?

When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the self-contemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism. The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them. In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent - not especially - but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Lear-sized yet sonnet-precise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void. Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned.

To breathe! Oh poem we cannot see! Pure space exchanged continually For one’s own being. Counterpoise, In which I come to be, a rhythm. Unique wave, whose Gathering sea I am; Space won by that least expended Of all possible seas. How many of these locations of voids Were already inward, were within me. So many of the flows of air are Like a son to me. Do you apprehend me, Air? - You, Already full of my former places? You, who have been smooth bark, Curve and leaf of my words?

The Beginning Meet me back at the beginning. Where the stars lined up and parted the skies, drawing a line from me to you. Meet me in the space. Where we reached inside the darkness, touched hearts, and found each other. Meet me under the trees. Where we lay, spending countless hours retelling our pasts in grand detail. Meet me under the arch. Where we professed our love and promised for better or for worse. Meet me at worse. Where we chose to ignore the promises and the trees as we navigated the dark void of stars.

SHE IN THE OUTER WORLD The world took all her kindness away Left her empty, drained every single ray She was in despair when she disappeared With dry eyes, sore lips, raw hands and scars everywhere. She was too numb to do her care, or to fight with her nightmares Luckily, with her family she stayed They groomed her, armed her with more love and prayers  Finally she stepped out with more power, experience, faith and glare She found her way out of void Faced all those people she wanted to avoid And stood against the scare Because now she was  aware.

            Time stretched to dry on the rooftops I am in Mixcoac                           Letters rot in the mailboxes                         The bougainvillea against the wall’s white lime                                            flattened by the sun a stain a purple                         passionate calligraphy written by the sun I am walking back                             back to what I left or to what left me                              Memory edge of the abyss                             balcony over the void                     I walk and do not move forward from "Return

Dehumanization But despite it all, they were people like you and me. Who are you? The living thrown into the madness, Killed with clubs and stabbed, Here crucified and no cross for you. But O, you humans, Your bones in the bottomless pit, They were people like you and me, Killed in the golden freedom. As you pass by, stop for a while, Think of your wrists bleeding in the dark night, Barbed wire wrapped around them, As they, cursing, goad you on, Beaten, naked, a corpse still living, You can hear the blows of the rifle butts, The screams, the groans, the terror turning into the sweetness Of approaching death. The fear, the pain, are vanishing, The footsteps echoing towards the void. In the bottomless pit countless numbers of them lie, But despite it all: they were people like you and me. PS: A curse be upon anyone who might attempt to erase this record. Imagine yourself as victim, the poem orders its readers. Think yourself into the skin of another human, for then – sunk into a different being – you will surely find yourself unable to inflict suffering. It is as unsettling a text as I know: the vividness of the scene of execution it conjures, the curse it threatens as protection against its own erasure. The poem at once challenges and charges its reader, both forbidding and demanding response. Above all, it is a poem about compassion – about feeling as another feels. To the poem’s author, the darkness of the ‘bottomless pit’ represents the utter failure of empathy that characterized the war in those regions, as it must of necessity characterize war at all times and in all places.

It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality did not exist: because it was origin; where once she was there work and thought in causal and stumbling sequence did not exist, but only transcription: where the poem she knew but could not write existed, ready-formed, awaiting recovery in that moment when the writing down of it was impossible: because she was the poem. Her hand tipped toward the paper, black stroke the pen made there, but only that stroke, line of uncertainty. She called her memory, screamed for it, trying to scream through it and beyond it, damned accumulation that bound her in time: my memory, my bed, my stomach, my terror, my hope, my poem, my God: the meanness of my. Must the flames of hell be ninety-story blazes? or simply these small sharp tongues of fire that nibble and fall to, savouring the edges and then consume, swept by the wind of terror at exposing one's self, losing the aggregate of meannesses which compose identity, in flames never reaching full roaring crescendo but scorch through a life like fire in grass, in the world of time the clock tells. Every tick, synchronised, tears off a fragment of the lives run by them, the circling hands reflected in those eyes watching their repetition in an anxiety which draws the whole face toward pupiled voids and finally, leaves lines there, uncertain strokes woven into the flesh, the fabric of anxiety, double-webbed round dark-centered jellies which reflect nothing. Only that fabric remains, pleached in the pattern of the bondage which has a beginning and an end, with scientific meanness in attention to details, of a thousand things which should not have happened, and did; of myriad mean events which should have happened, and did not: waited for, denied, until life is lived in fragments, unrelated until death, and the wrist watch stops.

Creativity is alive And thriving in my body. The energy you bring out in me Is within me infinitely. My power is overflowing. My lips are soft and welcoming To the exhale, The new Braille, The silence that persists After our moans die away, I look at myself and say, "Root down so you can burn. Beautiful girl, it's your turn To create magic within yourself. This time, without his help. Find your roots and find your fire, Be mindful of what you desire, Persist in what you know is true, Stay focused on the endless route Toward your own potential. Allow the existential Void to swallow you whole. Take on your old role: The lone seeker. Become quieter. Become meeker. Become the beauty that you seek. Embody strength if you feel weak. Find love within the walls Of this sacred temple. Let yourself shake and tremble, But keep your eyes ever fixed On the horizon Where it's rising, No revising, Fears capsizing As you sail, sail, sail Toward the wail Of your siren spirit Beckoning you to bloom The flower in your womb, The seed of creativity, Your triumphant legacy." These words, I will carry Within me as I bury Grains of wisdom In the whispers of the wind. And when I arrive To the altar of our origin, I'll be dressed in white and black, And I'll cradle that exact Feeling left on our sheets. And you'll be on your knees, Ready to receive The wholeness of my broken mind, Pried open by The sparkle gleaming in your eyes. And your hands will be full Of supple fruit and you'll Smile at me, and I will see That you have fed your hunger. You'll ooze with courage and wonder. And then, we will know That we've already lost each other A thousand times before. And I have found you As clear water after mud settles. And you have found me As a bee deep in a flower's petals. We have danced before, Pulled art out of each other's spines. We have died and birthed and died. We've already kissed a million times. This wasn't our first five act play, And it will not be the last. So when I thirst for your hands, I will sit and chant. We will meet again. We will meet again.

Not with more glories, in th' etherial plain, The sun first rises o'er the purpled main, Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams Launch'd on the bosom of the silver Thames. Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone, But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone. On her white breast a sparkling cross she wore, Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore. Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those: Favours to none, to all she smiles extends; Oft she rejects, but never once offends. Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride, Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide: If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. This nymph, to the destruction of mankind, Nourish'd two locks, which graceful hung behind In equal curls, and well conspir'd to deck With shining ringlets the smooth iv'ry neck. Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains, And mighty hearts are held in slender chains. With hairy springes we the birds betray, Slight lines of hair surprise the finney prey, Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair. - Erguvan deniz üstünde gökler katında, İhtişamla yükselir ya güneş, saltanatında Yoktur rahibesinden doğarak gümüş Renkli Thames'in göğsüne yayılan ışınlardaki cümbüş. Hoş giyimli delikanlılar, çok sayıda güzel kız Arasında tüm bakışlar onun üstünde yalnız. Ak gerdanından bir haç, öyle bir Haç ki Yahudi görse öper, hayran olur kafir. İşlek bir aklın işareti canlı bakışları Gözleri fıldır fıldır, uçarı mı uçarı: Kimseye iltifat yok, herkese gülümsüyor, Çoğunluk reddediyor ama kimse ona küsmüyor. Gözleri sanki güneş, değen gözün sahibi Çarpılıyor, herkese eşit parlıyor yine güneş gibi. Örtüyor kusurlarını o soylu rahatlık, O kibirsiz şirinlik, kızların kusurları olursa artık: Ama düşmüşse onun da payına bütün hanımlardan, Yüzüne bakın, hepsini unutursunuz o an. Bu perinin saçı insanlığın mahvı demek Olan iki zarif bukle halinde ve birbirine denk İki kavis çizerek dökülürdü, elbirliğiyle ışık oyunu İçinde halka halka süsleyerek fildişi boynu. Kölelerini Aşk işte bu labirentte bekletir, Dağ gibi kalpleri bağlar ip incesi bir zincir. Kuşları aldatmaya yarar kıldan tuzaklar, İncecik tüylere kanar kapılır balıklar, Bir kaküle teslim ederiz, erkekler, ülkemizi Ve güzellik tek bir saç teliyle boğar bizi.

By this unhinged craziness - I sing praises to dead rabbits. Embodied by the craven of sin, their whispers exist in me. No dawn can avert me, just leave me here in this forbidding place. All I want is this noesis to leave me on this crest of soaring Alps. The bliss of this nameless nightmare will make me dwell on its snow-covered form. All I can discern are gateways leading into the deepest frozen infernos. None of them are willing to torment me - as I am already disturbed. Is this the stead where God has died? It seems to be fervently so. No Moon has ascended here - only a pallid eye-like sun was staring down at me. Only this bitter cold shows me a real horror - a dreadful worry that no monster has to reside in it. Vacancy has made the surrounding atmosphere eerily still. All there was, was a weak hum of a chirping bird whistling in the obscurity. Every Tree was massless - nameless - shapeless confined to hostile spaces that grew ahead. This aeonian, a limitless eternity of interminable suffering, has a beckon to endure fourth. Indignant cries erupt from my flaccid throat - sounding for a sob that someone can hear. All there was a deafening hush, with that ominous bird tweeting in the distance; so I believed. Within a moment, a rumbling of a devastating howl was booming and crashing directly in front of me. It was indeed not a wolf, for this was something far more malicious than any canine species. I could not perceive it with my naked eyes, for it was just another aspect of the void that can not be witnessed. Its presence did not want to be detected, it just desired for me to know its existence is here. Inconceivably, I was not able to go face-to-face with this utterly horrific thing that was invisible before me. O’ the great madness and fright was ravaging me, rendering me psychotic and deranged. Discordantly, this nemesis splendor was starting to manifest its fondness for my presence. Barren and bleak when it invoked its cryptic witchcraft, withering away my insecurities to be frightened. The bottomless pit was eager for me to be eternal, wanting to enthrone my image as the coming Lucifer. I was conceived to become the supreme embodiment of blasphemy for the emergence of hell itself. My inner consciousness was being Plunged by the menacing screaming, as my hearing was being bombarded by piercing sounds of a violin shrieking. The God-awful screech of these horribly shrill screams where just the roar of hysterical laughter. Chaos - O’ that glorious disarray - I was condemned to be impelled with an absurd compulsion for madness.

The soul is a divider of hearts, a subtle harp its love forsakes the drunkards and debauchees love forgets nothing, but nothing somewhere in the nihilistic voids of unheard trilliums Aphrodite sees where we have found love a testament to despair a poem for what is fair there the road begins and endlessly ends with love

Esse" I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro stations flew by; I didn’t notice them. What can be done, if our sight lacks absolute power to devour objects ecstatically, in an instant, leaving nothing more than the void of an ideal form, a sign like a hieroglyph simplified from the drawing of an animal or bird? A slightly snub nose, a high brow with sleekly brushed-back hair, the line of the chin – but why isn’t the power of sight absolute? – and in a whiteness tinged with pink two sculpted holes, containing a dark, lustrous lava. To absorb that face but to have it simultaneously against the background of all spring boughs, walls, waves, in its weeping, its laughter, moving it back fifteen years, or ahead thirty. To have. It is not even a desire. Like a butterfly, a fish, the stem of a plant, only more mysterious. And so it befell me that after so many attempts at naming the world, I am able only to repeat, harping on one string, the highest, the unique avowal beyond which no power can attain: I am, she is. Shout, blow the trumpets, make thousands-strong marches, leap, rend your clothing, repeating only: is! She got out at Raspail. I was left behind with the immensity of existing things. A sponge, suffering because it cannot saturate itself; a river, suffering because reflections of clouds and trees are not clouds and trees.

It was through this imposed accumulation of chaos that she struggled to move now: beyond it lay simplicity, unmeasurable, residence of perfection, where nothing was created, where originality did not exist: because it was origin; where once she was there work and thought in causal and stumbling sequence did not exist, but only transcription: where the poem she knew but could not write existed, ready-formed, awaiting recovery in that moment when the writing down of it was impossible: because she was the poem. Her hand tipped toward the paper, black stroke the pen made there, but only that stroke, line of uncertainty. She called her memory, screamed for it, trying to scream through it and beyond it, damned accumulation that bound her in time: my memory, my bed, my stomach, my terror, my hope, my poem, my God: the meanness of my. Must the flames of hell be ninety-story blazes? or simply these small sharp tongues of fire that nibble and fall to, savouring the edges and then consume, swept by the wind of terror at exposing one's self, losing the aggregate of meannesses which compose identity, in flames never reaching full roaring crescendo but scorch through a life like fire in grass, in the world of time the clock tells. Every tick, synchronised, tears off a fragment of the lives run by them, the circling hands reflected in those eyes watching their repetition in an anxiety which draws the whole face toward pupiled voids and finally, leaves lines there, uncertain strokes woven into the flesh, the fabric of anxiety, double-webbed round dark-centered jellies which reflect nothing. Only that fabric remains, pleached in the pattern of the bondage which has a beginning and an end, with scientific meanness in attention to details, of a thousand things which should not have happened, and did; of myriad mean events which should have happened, and did not: waited for, denied, until life is lived in fragments, unrelated until death, and the wrist watch stops.

Woe, the stony eyes of sister, when at the meal her madness entered upon the night-dark brow of her brother, under Mother's suffering hands the bread turned to stone. O to those perished, when they with silver tongues kept Hell in silence. Then the lamps went out in the cool chamber and through purple masks the suffering humans looked at one another in silence. All night long the rain plashed and refreshed the earth. Amidst thorny wilderness the man of darkness followed the yellowed paths through the corn, the lark's song and the gentle silence of green branches, that he might find peace. O, you villages and mossy steps, glowing aspect. But the footsteps waver bonily over sleeping snakes at the forest edge and the ear ever follows the rabid cry of the vulture. At evening, he came upon stony wasteland, escort to a dead man into the dark house of his father. A purple cloud wreathed his brow, that he fell upon his own blood and image in silence, a moon-like countenance; stonily sank into a void, when in a broken mirror there appeared a dying youth, his sister; night swallowed up the accursed race.

Moments hanging by a thread Tortured twisted memories Where angels fear to tread If I could put together the pieces Of the the puzzle in my mind I could finally become whole again And fill the void inside

A weary soul prepares to die, A tender heart, a shattered dream, Lost in the void, a silent scream.

In today’s world it’s easy to lose track of time & otherwise get caught up in what’s going on. So many families split up, so many loved ones Lose track of who they are. Why they came together. Divorcing a memory they can never truly run away from. In today’s world it’s a blessing to know you. To get facial recognition & assurance with your every smile. Not every moment can be as perfect as we expect it, Yet we are appreciative and try not to take the moment For granted. Just as the saying goes, “Not everyone knows what They have.” It’s those refreshing moments that remind us Of God’s praise. Not at all excusing us for the times we become Absentees when we’re needed most, or simply lose track Of time, there are so many things that factor into who we are,Our upbringing, things we experience, The shapeless void Of a missing father. While that effect is monumental, we respond without responding. Silence sometimes the most powerful form of toxicity In response to communication. In today’s world it’s not that uncommon, placing something else Instead as priority, forgetting the bigger if not biggest issue. For better or worse, the most memorable part of any union. We take it at face value forgetting that we’re all kids at some point Or another. It’s not impossible to revert back as we’re all human At the end of the day. That doesn’t at all excuse us for the times we aren’t present, not just for ourselves. But for our partners, our friends, our families the priority of accepting love as a walking and breathing testimony. Our hands the door of faith, as we journey to the alter our lips Have formed.In today’s world it’s a blessing to know you & to get facial recognition As well as reassurance every time I look at you. No matter how much we mumble or grumble. I am forever grateful to have met the love of my life. Everything I’ll ever need no matter how much time passes. You’re all I’ll ever need

There’s always been a part of me that is vast and empty. Though I have a vivid inner life and find so much meaning in books, art, writing, and relationships, there’s something deep inside me that feels like an insatiable pit. No matter the circumstances, there’s never enough. Maybe that’s one way to describe my depression: a bottomless desire for which I will destroy everything in my path in a fruitless attempt to satisfy. Beauty in its various forms is what makes me feel most complete—a poem that obliterates me, a painting that makes me gasp, a song that fills me with inexplicable wonder. But once that passes, it’s there again: the absence, the void, the need, the gaping hole of nothingness.

I’m looking out on the road the sky is bright the wind is cold. The wind my element it blows so hard, the sheer force of the world is felt in this air. I feel the life being ****** out and then in to my body at the same time such a beautiful sensation. This is the sensation right before you begin the Great Work when you feel the energy of the universe. The energy just whirling around in circles the path of lapis ruber or another path. But my journey if not for lapis philosophorum my journey is for blank, my mind is not for anything. The journey I travel is not for life it is not for death this journey is not for a **** thing in existence. My journey is for something much more what it is only one on the road will understand. So when I feel the wind blowing I ask myself is it time for me to move? Is it time to start? I am going to the center of the sun what will I do now that I’ve taken the first step has it all begun? It is not possible to turn back not in this particular journey. In this journey once you take a step, the platform you were walking on before is completely destroyed. It is swallowed up in the sea of what, the platform is consumed in the place of never-ending nothingness. Really it is not a place, it is swallowed in the void, so you can’t turn around even if you will it. Now I as I walk this path I sit here and I see the star, on it are five points. The five points of the star are all looking at me I just wonder if the look is inverted or upright. If it is observing me inverted what will I do? If it is watching me uprightly what can I do? These questions are both the same but which way is the star observing me. I couldn’t give a **** either way, but at certain points it seems I would give a ****, now why is that? See I’m on a spiraling path of this something, and it’s becoming clear, it’s not that I’m stepping forward. In this journey I am not stepping forward I am not stepping backwards I am doing much more. But I am stepping. That’s the beauty of this journey where time ceases to exist. It’s because at the end of this journey I might have explored the universe in its entirety. I may have went to the edge of this universe of motion and jumped off the edge. I would have slipped through the corners barely escaping the hound dogs of the barrier. And after facing the eternal beasts, I would have ended up back inside of the universe. It’s funny because after this timeless journey, I may have gained so much and time will have certainly passed. est ruber in terra, populous non est faciem in principia pater sol regnat in terra humanos est regnant. deus sol non est in oceanaia luna non est in caelum nocte quam quam non lux. non lux quam quam sol non est regnat. hominis the rise of the moon is so great that the light of the sun can be overtake. But the light of the moon come from the light of the sun there is nothing else that can actually and truly be done. What to be done is what to be given to all who want to go forward in the way of life. The path of love and the path of light leads to the same sources it is up to one of us to decide which one will be our tool. Back to what I was talking about the sand was awesome. The alpha and the omega a rise of the sun and the fall of the moon also rise of the moon and the fall of the sun.

I pulled myself Over the rim of my grim Void And saw two horses talking Closely In a green field, But they heard me watching And hid their secret faces In the grass, And then my glass Tear-splashed on the laughing Mirror.

Each day without you, pain takes its toll, a void in my heart that only you can console. Your voice, your passion, your radiant gleam, lost forever, haunting my every dream.

But I'm not a writer..." How many times have you thought that? How many times have you said it out loud? How many times have you read a beautifully worded book or a poem or an essay or a social media post and felt it take your breath away? Felt that yearning inside of you, that longing to do that or learn that or become that thing...the one that would let you find the words to share your story like that. If only you were brave enough. If only you were wise enough. If only you had all the right words. If only you were talented. If only you could speak the truth without being judged. If only you could write like her or him or them. If only you were a writer... Guess what. You are. You are a writer - and I promise you this. If you were not a writer you wouldn't be here. You are a writer because words dance in your brain and itch the tips of your fingers - begging you to pick up the pen or click the keyboard. Because a phrase on a page or the lyric of a song can steal your breath and remind you of all lines that live in your soul that long for release. Because you are pulled, again and again, and again to story. To the real and raw and the fantastically make-believe. You are a writer because of your willingness to stare into the void and face the demons and weave the beauty of the world around you into words. And even if those words don't ever make it to a page, they live inside of you. Because you couldn't stop, even if you wanted to. And you don't want to. Because the words are like your breath and the story - your story - that is the air. And the magic that happens when we come together to make stories - well, that's the universe. So the next time you're tempted to let that phrase or any other like it - slip into your brain or from your lips - shut that shit down. Immediately. You are a writer. Do you hear me? You said yes. You are here. You are showing up at the page and sitting in front of the screen. You are welcoming the muse. You are facing the fear. And you are writing. You are a writer. And that's the beginning and end of everything. Now, stop arguing with me, and go write already.

Jones had a dog; it had a chain; Not often worn, not causing pain; But, as the I.K.L. had passed Their 'Unleashed Cousins Act’ at last, Inspectors took the chain away; Whereat the canine barked ‘Hooray!’ At which, of course, the S.P.U. (Whose Nervous Motorists’ Bill was through) Were forced to give the dog in charge For being Audibly at Large. None, you will say, were now annoyed, Save, haply, Jones - the yard was void. But something being in the lease About ‘alarms to aid the police,’ The U.S.U. annexed the yard For having no sufficient guard. Now if there’s one condition The C.C.P. are strong upon It is that every house one buys Must have a yard for exercise; So Jones, as tenant, was unfit, His state of health was proof of it. Two doctors of the T.T.U.'s Told him his legs, from long disuse, Were atrophied; and saying ‘So From step to higher step we go Till everything is New and True.’ They cut his legs off and withdrew. You know the E.T.S.T.'s views Are stronger than the T.T.U.'s: And soon (as one may say) took wing The Arms, though not the Man, I sing. To see him sitting limbless there Was more than the K.K. could bear. 'In mercy silence with all speed That mouth there are no hands to feed; What cruel sentimentalist, O Jones, would doom thee to exist - Clinging to selfish Selfhood yet? Weak one! Such reasoning might upset The Pump Act, and the accumulation Of all constructive legislation; Let us construct you up a bit ­­- ' The head fell off when it was hit: Then words did rise and honest doubt, And four Commissioners sat about Whether the slash that left him dead Cut off his body or his head. An author in the Isle of Wight Observed with unconcealed delight A land of just and old renown Where Freedom slowly broadened down From Precedent to Precedent. And this, I think, was what he meant.

In that moment, she understands all the poems she has ever read; she grasps all the paintings and statues and photographs she has ever puzzled over; she sees the grace in every sidewalk crack, every wearily slumped shoulder, every tired face asking, What is this about? She understands it all, sees it all, accepts it all. Everyone is heroic, the protagonist of their story, the only story they’ll know from the inside out—true, unflinching, joyous in the face of the void. There is light in everything. It is all so beautiful.

God of the void, I don’t know how to go on. This void is cruel and relentless, and I don’t want to figure out how to exist with it haunting every room I enter. And I blame you. I won’t apologize for that. But if you’re real, have mercy on me. Hold me up because I can’t. Or lay me down to sleep so I can wake up from the nightmare of emptiness. I know I’ll never be myself again, but whoever this is—this hidden grief that now occupies my selfhood—help me to meet them. I’m a stranger to myself. Ground me. Steady me. And whatever mystery the one I love met on the other side of breathing, let it be kind and safe and loving. Amen.

Nothing could touch Will in the void: he knew somehow that he needed poetry, needed the power of his words, but in his jumbled consciousness he could not put one line of a poem with another.

If, at the end of the Atlantic, Columbus had found only an absence of water, this English tourist would have been there to capture that void with a wide-angle lens. Here, the wind blows from nowhere to nowhere across a plain transformed by salt into a vision of light. Sometimes a word is found so right it trembles at the slightest explanation. You start out with one thing, end up with another, and nothing’s like it used to be, not even the future.

All lives that remain unlived have to be lived at some point. All unwritten stories need to be completed at some point. All dreams that remain unfulfilled deserve to be fulfilled at some point. All unpaid debts ought to be repaid at some point, including the cosmic ones. More so when there are no future generations to carry them forward. Let it all end with me. All stories unsaid, all verses unwritten, all dreams unfulfilled, all lives unlived. Let all the noises die forever. Let all voids be filled permanently. Let there be no smiles that remain hesitant anymore

Don't Move" Don’t move. Don’t move at all. Let me do this. Tomorrow you can wheel your bones along the edge of time’s illustrious curves. Next week you can make your deliveries, manhandle your offerings, perform your acts of contrition. Mold your vessel. Drop your footsteps like fireflies into the void. But now, notice your torso in flames. The sunlight from the east rises at your thighs and cuts the eyes from your face. Your legs lie like shadows on the bottom of a forest, keeping their collected secrets, burying their swollen names. I’ll touch your legs. Don’t move. I’ll slide up your skin like a slow boat fights an iron current. I’ll navigate toward light, my fingertips burning in the new world, and capsize in the hottest part of you. Can you hold the sunken treasure – garlands of rubies choking your worded thoughts? Can you hold up? Can you fight? Can you fight the urge to run? — Jan Richman, Because the Brain Can Be Talked into Anything (Louisiana State University Press, 1995)

Let Let us go somewhere far, Let us be there where there is no war, Let us seek what peace seeks from all, Let us be there, if we try, there we can be afterall, Let us give life a chance, Let us allow innocent hearts to feel their moments of romance, Let us be there where you can be you and I can be who I am, Let us not worry about who he/she is, but only focus on who we are and who I am, Let us go there where seasons end and reappear in their cyclic recurrences, Let us collect their beautiful impressions, their essences and their fragrances, Let us follow no guiding star, but just our inner guidance, Let us only follow our heart’s native radiance, Let us believe in ourselves with firmness, Let us believe that before seeking anything outside us we should seek it within us, that true feeling of happiness, Let us harvest feelings true under this sky blue, Let you be you, let me be who I am, but always be true, Let us fill all emotional voids with moments of genuine adulations, Let us indulge in these acts and end all our tribulations, Let us wait for nothing, because time waits for nobody, Let us try, and I am sure we shall succeed if we truly love somebody, Let us let the sun set, because only then the moon will rise, Let us for someone’s sake stand and witness our own rise, Let us not flee when we should be participating in life’s dealings, Let us believe and we shall witness divine joys and healings, Let us give before we can take, Let us take only what we can recreate or make, Let us not fear repudiation of any sort, Let us know we shall always be the masters of the thing called “the last resort!” Let us not believe in aspersions because they might hurt someone, Let us before dying, love that special someone, Let us only deal with evinced hearts, for they know how heart breaks feel, Let us, before we deal with others, with our own hearts’ deal, Let me find this place for you and me, Let me lead you there, and let us forever then there be, Let me love you in the lap of time in that region, Let your feelings and you, then be my heart’s only succession, Let us then watch the setting sun and the rising moon, Let me then disappear in the horizon of your beauty before the sunset and before the rising moon, Let it be so then forever, Let love and time seek us then Irma, in this landscape called “your and my everywhere!

Writing was my godsend, my treatment, my way of digging myself out of a depressive hole. That’s not an outlet a lot of working-class kids had. But because I’d been exposed to books from an early age, this method came naturally. I’d write lots of poems to expel negative feelings. Though I didn’t show them to anybody—they contained the kind of stuff you’d hesitate to tell even a psychiatrist—they became the seeds for the lyrics that would come to define my career.

Her sensation There I was inspecting the landscape of my emotions, Most of them appeared to be conduit sensations, With layers of feelings that definitely were a part of me, And in this place for a moment I wanted to be, For it reminded me of her, The feelings made me miss her, The emotions made me once again fall in love with her, And it was only in this landscape that I felt I was with her, Although it sometimes begot me sensations unknown, They never prevented me from recreating her beauty so fresh and so well known, It was a world where her beauty’s precision filled every void, The only place where to throb and then feel, my heart never toiled, Because here everything brought me closer to her, The feelings, the emotions, all reminded me of her, And my memories too, because they all carried a part of her, Here no time existed, no present, no past, no beginning and no end, because everything had converged into her, Her landscape of beautiful smiles, Her feelings that stretched for million miles, It was she who ruled this universe, And it was only here my heart with her mind whispered and could easily converse, Nothing could be as beautiful as her, All summer flowers, all the blue skies, seem to emerge from her, When you look at her, you realise everything belongs to her, So why shouldn't I too belong to her and love her? These inviolable feelings possess me gradually, And I take my last glance at this landscape lovingly, For now I too have become a part of it, And now the vision is clear, sensations aren't conduit, Because the landscape that represents her, I am a part of it now as I keep seeping deeper into her, Into her permeable heart, into the world that exists only because of her, And as my last cell sinks into her, I now feel the sensation that belongs to her, The landscape may have vanished now forever, But my love for her has experienced no sort of waiver, Because I love her for no reasons, for no interests, I love her for who she is, And in this long disappeared landscape I still find her there, because that is where my heart is, Even if it is a credulity that my mind suffers from, but as long as it is about her, My heart shall derive from it intelligible strings, just to love her, Because then nothing feels like this sensation, the sensation that belongs to her, Her name mabe Irma, but I love the woman in her, that beautiful sensation in her!

Her sensation There I was inspecting the landscape of my emotions, Most of them appeared to be conduit sensations, With layers of feelings that definitely were a part of me, And in this place for a moment I wanted to be, For it reminded me of her, The feelings made me miss her, The emotions made me once again fall in love with her, And it was only in this landscape that I felt I was with her, Although it sometimes begot me sensations unknown, They never prevented me from recreating her beauty so fresh and so well known, It was a world where her beauty’s precision filled every void, The only place where to throb and then feel, my heart never toiled, Because here everything brought me closer to her, The feelings, the emotions, all reminded me of her, And my memories too, because they all carried a part of her, Here no time existed, no present, no past, no beginning and no end, because everything had converged into her, Her landscape of beautiful smiles, Her feelings that stretched for million miles, It was she who ruled this universe, And it was only here my heart with her mind whispered and could easily converse, Nothing could be as beautiful as her, All summer flowers, all the blue skies, seem to emerge from her, When you look at her, you realise everything belongs to her, So why shouldn't I too belong to her and love her? These inviolable feelings possess me gradually, And I take my last glance at this landscape lovingly, For now I too have become a part of it, And now the vision is clear, sensations aren't conduit, Because the landscape that represents her, I am a part of it now as I keep seeping deeper into her, Into her permeable heart, into the world that exists only because of her, And as my last cell sinks into her, I now feel the sensation that belongs to her, The landscape may have vanished now forever, But my love for her has experienced no sort of waiver, Because I love her for no reasons, for no interests, I love her for who she is, And in this long disappeared landscape I still find her there, because that is where my heart is, Even if it is a credulity that my mind suffers from, but as long as it is about her, My heart shall derive from it intelligible strings, just to love her, Because then nothing feels like this sensation, the sensation that belongs to her, Her name may be Irma, but I love the woman in her, that beautiful sensation in her!

I. An Agnostic (__of his religious friend__) He often gazes on the air And sees quite plain what is not there Peopling the wholesome void with horrid shapes Which he manoeuvres in religious japes. And yet he is more gracious than I, He has such a gracious personality. II. A Religious Man (__of his agnostic friend__) He says that religious thought and all our nerviness Is because of the great shock it was for all of us Long, long ago when animal turned human being Which is more than enough to account for everything... And yet he is more gracious than I, He has such a gracious personality.

Our current cosmic address is a small flying piece of rubble travelling through an endless black void, surrounded inexplicably by seven other pieces of flying rubble. All of these pieces harmoniously rotate around the same giant fireball without ever crashing into each other, or hurtling themselves into said fireball. And if that isn’t random enough, out of all those pieces of rubble ours is the only one that sustains an environment that gives life to billions of different life forms, including a multitude of flowering plants and oxygen-giving trees, a plethora of wildlife, and eight billion human beings. And somehow, you still genuinely think that magic does not exist, that fairytales aren’t real, that the way people find each other at just the right time at just the right moment isn’t the most powerful sorcery.

Poems are memories of cries that none could hear, and when they do, it’s already late. History already devoured the name and worms will take care of the rest that remains.

The fragment, we know, is the infinite promise of Romanticism, the enduringly potent ideal of the modern age, and poetry, more than any other literary form, has come to be associated with the pregnant void, the blank space that breeds conjecture. The dots, like phantom limbs, seem intertwined with the words, testify to a lost hole. Intact, Sappho's poems would be as alien to us as the once gaudily painted classical sculptures.

The Ludicrous Pragmatic by Stewart Stafford Love is anaesthesia, Of the human condition, Honeyed, layman's nostrum, healing body and mind. An auction won unbidden, Self-created, human-sustained, Unlike energy, destructible, morphing into vicious hatred. Convalescing in a void, baby steps towards others, a sentient river to the sea, Until love's exhumed again. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

I thank you, friend, from all my heart; The one you shaped, gently and smart. For all you’ve seen And all you've been For every fight and every pain, And every tear that fell in vain For every how, and every why, For all the times you had to cry For everything that you have taught And all the battles, you have fought. Without your grace, without you calm, I know not what I would become. A beast at best, at worst a thug, Insecure, frightened and smug. You filled the void the best you could And really, who could ask for more? And though, at times, misunderstood; You’ve come out stronger than before. As such, this piece has been to date, The toughest thing I had to write. But out of every rhyme I’ve made, I hope this brings you most delight. And I hope that you do laugh, And when you cry, it is of joy, And I hope that you do smile, For your laughter and your bliss, Has always calmed my worried mind. This poem is for you, mom,

Just because the world is filled with sadness and void of compassion it doesn't mean I gotta follow suit. I wasn't born to fit in.

[“This poem is not addressed to you”] This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids. It is not sad, really, only empty. Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why. It prefers to remember nothing. Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago. Your type of beauty has no place here. Night is the sky over this poem. It is too black for stars. And do not look for any illumination. You neither can nor should understand what it means. Listen, it comes without guitar, Neither in rags nor any purple fashion. And there is nothing in it to comfort you. Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon. You will forget the poem, but not before It has forgotten you. And it does not matter. It has been most beautiful in its erasures. O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned! Nor is one silence equal to another. And it does not matter what you think. This poem is not addressed to you.

[This poem is not addressed to you.]" This poem is not addressed to you. You may come into it briefly, But no one will find you here, no one. You will have changed before the poem will. Even while you sit there, unmovable, You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter. The poem will go on without you. It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

Worthy Soul I fell into the void, the dark night of the soul. I lost the life that I used to know, succumbed by the karmic cold. I was searching for success, while my heart was in distress. I couldn’t believe that rest, was the way to heal my past. I kept a wall up, made of glass. And when it shattered, I cried at last. A life spent searching for gold will not define you, worthy soul.

In tribunal, Mother held a funeral. Fake condolers spread, A debate they held For here I was, Behind bars, Her heart I took stealthily, And she… Fell for me, Unwillingly. Silence! the judge said to audience: Mother, defense, Reporters, radio agents, The girl's father; the wronged. Plead your case, judge says, to the father, my prosecutor, to guillotine, pushing me closer. "This boy is but a thief, Stealing a heart from my daughter. His poetry starting a war within her, Between his charm and care For her and another, Between his eloquence and fear, And how much closer she went. On love she came to reflect. And his way a choice she sent: Love not the rhyme, but me… repent. Or let poetry be enough, throw away my love. Of quitting poetry, he reported then betrayed her heart and stole it. Now without him she is With her love he lives And caused his madness her death This, your honor is the case. I now demand Justice, And the guillotine." "Silence! Defense." This boy, your honor, A poet and a sweet-talker, Both things, inevitable and meritless. He, I say, shall be sold To the unemployed, And those who of hope are void, Or to radio agents To break him apart And be, for entertainment, sold in a gallery of yearning and joining, specially or renouncement and criticism, alternately, or love unescapable. Money, it shall yield, a compensation to the girl and her lost heart that is now ancient." "Silence! The Mother." "Your honor, If him you must kill, Include me in the will. Let the pond of his blood Water the crops Let its source be my heart and his unpublished poems and the starved bellies and the nibs of birds the branch inhabitants That should be rather the middle Between his memory and the kill Rather fearless Not a hunger filled injustice" The father, "I object, It is all of him I want A compensation for my daughter and her heart" The defense, "Rather to pieces be fractioned, Between the ill, the unemployed and the runaway; Divided." A humming noise, In his honor's chest, In my rhymes, Rather… in the entire court. "Silence!", he said. He a man who is free His heart telling him to revolt The only power he's got Is but a plea to God To be by the revolution killed not And by karma hit not. What I now see fit, Is for him to be executed, by what to his nature is opposite. Deny him the pen And the flag Tell him every detail of the girl and her lost heart No way to reach her will be allowed he This is my decree Allowed not his poetry Is but death to the free To be by his words suffocated To love stealthily "All Rise!" "Case dismissed." Oh, la la la Oh, la la la

The Divine Feminine Tao Invites Us to Act The Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching portrays the Tao as “mother,” “virgin,” and “womb.” She is the “immortal void” who endlessly “returns to source” to renew life again and again. Quoting from my own translation of Poem 6 (Anderson, in press), the Tao is The immortal void Called the dark womb, the dark womb’s gate From her Creation takes root An unbroken gossamer That prevails without effort. From her “dark womb,” all life flows. To align with the Tao as mother, virgin, and womb is to discover her path to peace and wellbeing with ourselves, each other, the earth, and the natural world. At a time in history when human greed and aggression are out of control and threatening life as we know it, her message to us is also a warning. The great message of the Tao Te Ching is the ordinariness of peace and wellbeing that arises from spontaneous action that seeks no gain for the self. This is to enact the path of wei wu wei, meaning to act without acting or do without doing. Wei wu wei does not mean doing nothing, not thinking, not traveling, not initiating projects, not cooking dinner, not planting a garden in the spring, and so on. To the contrary. For in leaving self-gain aside, our actions arise naturally and spontaneously to meet concrete situations and events without plotting or maneuvering in advance or expecting to be liked, appreciated, or rewarded for what we do. Aligning with the Tao is to seek what is lowest and most needy like a mother might act naturally and spontaneously on behalf of a child in danger. Quoting from my translation of Poem 8 (Anderson, in press): The highest good is like water Bringing goodness to all things without struggle In seeking low places spurned by others The Tao resembles water. In so doing, we attend to what matters most—not tomorrow but right now. Per the situation, our actions may be swift or slow, but they will in time resolve obstacles at their source in the same way that water carves out canyons and moves mountains. What matters most will vary for each of us. This is wei wu wei in action. Over time, enacting this feminine path to peace will impact all our relations with others, including animals and other species, each other, our families and communities, the conduct of governments, relationships between nations and peoples, and with planet Earth. The wisdoms of the Divine Feminine Tao may be applied to our personal initiatives and our response to personal and modern crises, including meeting the challenges of the current coronavirus pandemic. Wei wu wei invites us to act spontaneously and naturally like water, determining its own course and leaving self-gain aside.

I want to be held, and the things that hold me down do half a job. Some days, I can't even fix it. Some days, I rot on the inside and refuse to cut myself down. Some days, my fruits hit pavement, explode with seeds meant for soil; and only I understand what a wreckage my smile is. Joy is a weight. It's heavy. Can't you carry it for me while I dance around the void, run my nails down its spine? Put a hand on each hip, square your shoulders, grip tightly. The future is trying to take me. Hold me back. Hold me down. Hold on until you're done and forget that I've drifted away before you reach for your pants. Because you knew, didn't you? A blindfold knows its job. And at the end of the day, the most selfish thing is trying to help another person.

The Clock Cell A Poem by Rosa Jamali Something happens to die And the sunlight which has been soaking is wet and obscure If I carry on the lines The frozen object which has been captured in your hands will drop Otherwise, the day has come to an end. Void When I get home; staring at all those cubical shapes; Standstill current of water And the sunlight which is never damp On the blank sheets of writing bursting into tears over old sheets on my bed. The elements Its essence has been painted by my blood The rain of cats and dogs on my field The moon is encompassing the land! Here with the frostbite on the iron post, I left the time on the river bank Time was a whim slipped away from my fingers The moments have been cleaned and cleared. The wall has turned blue Me and the black gown Have taken the flow of the river. It's a calf death breast-fed. What is it? Sediments on a neutral background It could be in a different colour It's been many days since I started walking on the rope The creased moon is hanging down the ceiling. Blizzard A flimsy stone The frostbite on the window glass The bridge has fallen down Silence on a metal tape Ending to a blind full stop. (TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI)