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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2008 : 15:38:04
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This is the wallpaper in Cleveland in 1954 This is an October Sunday at Yankee Stadium in 1976
This is everything you wished I was and everything I wished I wasn't This is too hot to handle and too much to bare This is all I held back that you needed This is the love of a lifetime passing in the street
This is the letters I meant to write This is all the I'm sorrys we don't get to say This is an aching deep inside from need This is vanilla spice candles and the smell of cinnamon
This is tangible evidence of insanity This is dancing crazy alone without being drunk This is the poets trying to keep from drowning This is the soldier who wonders why
This is seeing God in a woman's eyes and looking for it again forever This is losing everything and starting over This is what it's come down to This is playing music and hearing the crowd applauding
This is perfect sex This is postcoital postpartum postnasal depression This is the off the beaten path without a paddle This is the side of the road with no destination
This is vanilla chocolate and strawberry This is going to the grocery store hungry This is running with the scissors This is tipping your cap to Don Quixote This is waiting for the Rapture in a black suit
This is most of what you needed and a little of what you wanted This is all you thought it would be This is what you made it...
Yeah,
That's what This is...
Hank Beukema - 2008
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2008 : 22:20:07
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DO NOT BE ASHAMED
You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty; you misread complex instructions, and you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their hands in your pockets, their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them. And once you say you are ashamed, reading the page they hold out to you, then such light as you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you. You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready. When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them: "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon will come around you. The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.
Wendell Berry |
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 17:58:41
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In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in the dark wood where the straight road was lost. --Dante |
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 19:57:12
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Crossing America in five days hitchhiking was a big deal to me...
We used to have a question when you'd meet another hitcher- How far'd you walk today? That trip was no walking, it was three rides in three days and then came the east. Took two days to get thru Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Thing was it was all backwards, sometimes. The places you thought you'd get rides, you didn't, and the places you thought you'd never get picked up, you usually met some nice folks and even got a meal or a room. I did it in five days another time, but it never counted with me cause I had a car. It was somebody else's that I didn't know and yeah, I drove all the way, straight thru myself, but, I still had a car, and a girl.
The best was the six week crossing... You get to See America that way; not like a tourist, but from the underside up, up the legs and across the belly, feeling the muscle and the fat, the back roads and the seldom scenes, the single school teachers in Illinois bored enough to pick up a stranger, the small town kids in Utah that think you're something out of television or movies, the families in Okie station wagons that take you home for a bath and a meal and a warm bed. The rotting side of the cities that only the trains see and the waves of grain that go on for days. I think sometimes that the rivers and the beaches and the highways were my college, and the hobos and the wise guys and the kind strangers of America were my teachers...
I'm still working on that diploma...
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 20:26:43
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Small flashes of life interspersed between long periods of just breathing make up our days... As time goes on, as we grow older and older, the flashes move together in our memories like one long tapestry, all as one piece... We learn, we prepare, we nourish ourselves for and from these flashes...
Everything else is just breathing...
Hank Beukema - 2006
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Craig
Firefly
    
Kyrgyzstan
3793 Posts |
Posted - 05/04/2008 : 20:45:55
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As we approach the latter years, we have reflections. Reflections of our lives, reflections of times past, reflections of ourselves...
These are the best times of our lives.
Craig |
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BarbraG
Windchimer
   
1825 Posts |
Posted - 05/08/2008 : 22:51:49
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Her footprints were heavy in the sand as she walked out to the ocean's waves rolling in from thousands of miles away. Just to dip her toes in the water connected her somehow to those faraway lands, unknown to her, but still there. Almost out of her mind with excitement, her Golden Retriever romped and splashed, always looking back at her to make sure she was still there. Her world would be truly lonely without this wonderful creature that she called Goldie. She looked back toward the house and stopped. A car was pulling into the driveway. She wasn't expecting anyone. Goldie sprinted toward the house like a young filly. "GOLDIE !! STOP !! ... GOLDIE !! "
BarbraG AKA BGee
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2008 : 19:40:19
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Edited by - buckman on 05/16/2008 14:14:27 |
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2008 : 20:50:20
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HELLO?
After hours, entering a space he only knows by day. The lock opening louder than before.
He punches in the code to stifle the alarm, hoping it works. Otherwise, the police will come and he will be nervous explaining.
When he flicks the switch upward, the light comes on suddenly, fully, and he squints, raising one arm to shield his eyes.
Where eight hours earlier there was a cacaphony of workplace sounds, now there is silence and the click of his shoes on the tiled floor.
He stands there, peering at the photographs of co-workers who have died. They look right at him, their smiles still alive. He touches their faces.
A different scent here at night. The Mexican family has done its cleaning, and he smells the wax they have put on the cafeteria floor.
He is startled when the phone rings, uncertain whether to answer. The message machine comes on. A woman's voice, Indian in cadence, says hello.
Hello?
He wonders if it is the wife he's never found, if she has tracked him down at last this Friday night here on the coast. Hello? she asks again.
As he goes to pick up the phone there is a dial tone. The machine clicks off. No name, no number, just that round, sincere question. Like a small bell.
He reaches in his coat pocket for the flask, takes a drink and turns on the radio in the manager's office, finds the late night jazz program on CBC.
It's an old Bill Evans number, Peace Piece. Solo piano. He turns out all the lights, sits back in the manager's big chair, feet on the desk.
Bill plays the piano shyly, as if touching a girl's hands for the first time. As if the sensation has taken all language from him except for touch.
There is a darling soul that waits in each of us, waits for a moment to come like a hand to touch our cheek, say small important things.
It is a hand that already knows the imperfect places, the scar, the fallen fruit. It touches us with a knowing, and we breathe toward our tears.
Hello?
It is almost two in the morning when he wakes up. Radio Sweden has taken over the CBC. He presses the button to hear her voice one more time.
DL
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2008 : 07:02:41
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Visiting Cloud Peak with Priest Tenge in Fall
Human existence in this world: Duckweed cast adrift on the water. Who can ever feel secure? That is the reason I took up a monk's staff, left my parents, And bade farewell to my friends. A single patched robe And one bowl have sustained me all these years. I'm fond of this little hut And often spend time here- We are two kindred spirits, Never worrying about who is guest or host. The wind blows through lofty pines, Frost chills the few mums that remain. Arm in arm we stand above the clouds; Bound as one, roaming in the far beyond.
-Ryokan (1758-1831)
-"Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf" |
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/10/2008 : 07:53:41
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We had a plan.
We were going to catch up for the first time since we'd been together. Took a three year bank loan, invested in some coke, alot of coke. The plan was to step on it, sell it, pay our bills, catch up, get out from under, start again.
We sat at that table for a long time, hours, days, back and forth to the bedroom, then back to the white mountain on the table. In a week it was gone. The loan lived on for the three years.
Make The Gods laugh.
Make a plan...
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2008 : 18:27:23
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"You are broken only if you break."
~Mickey Newbury~ |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2008 : 18:33:28
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A snub of candle between them when he turned the hour glass upside down. His long shadow already in crisis. His cherished face, harrowed, but not distraught. "Tell me a story," he said, "make it last the night." Time passed. A century or three. The power on Cielo Azul flickered but never went out. They looked up at the sizzling stars. The squadrons of Angels, the legions of Saints. "Listen," he said, "sometimes I get tired of flying above the clouds and I look for a warm corner to lie down in. The dreamsleep is as much a miracle as the flight." |
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 15:13:16
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LATE FRAGMENT
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
Raymond Carver
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 18:51:52
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"It wasn't for music you came to me, but for daring - mine and yours."
~Tess Gallagher~ |
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 19:21:28
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Once I lay on the bank with my eyes closed, listening to the sound the water made, and to the wind in the tops of the trees. The same wind that blows out on the Strait, but a different wind, too. For a while I even let myself imagine I had died -- and that was all right, at least for a couple of minutes, until it really sank in: Dead. As I way lying there with my eyes closed, just after I'd imagined what it might be like if in fact I never got up again, I thought of you. I opened my eyes then and got right up and went back to being happy again. I'm grateful to you, you see. I wanted to tell you.
Raymond Carver (from "For Tess") |
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Ailinn
Windchimer
   
2217 Posts |
Posted - 05/15/2008 : 19:40:34
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"Soooo... Dream and fly. I'm holding your heart out of harm's way."
~Mickey Newbury~ |
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/16/2008 : 14:14:51
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That first year married, we lived in a shack...
No kidding, a shack. Your garage is probably bigger than this was. And it was for two families. A deluxe shack. But, at that point, both of us fresh off the road and twenty years old, it was better than a cave, on a beach or the parents basement. We'd met on the road in California and came back to NY to get married; just for the Hell of it... and alot of it was, Hell, caused by both, to be fair and generous to, well, me... But, there was a fair amount of Heaven, too, those twenty years.
I'm sorry, DD, wherever you are, for the shacks and the bad jobs and mostly for you never getting to see me all grown up, finally... [almost] It's been a long road without you.
You know, that first year married I don't think we ever slept...
~*~
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Doug L
Firefly
    
Canada
5446 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2008 : 00:05:24
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He said it doesn't look good he said it looks bad in fact real bad he said I counted thirty-two of them on one lung before I quit counting them I said I'm glad I wouldn't want to know about any more being there than that he said are you a religious man do you kneel down in forest groves and let yourself ask for help when you come to a waterfall mist blowing against your face and arms do you stop and ask for understanding at those moments I said not yet but I intend to start today he said I'm real sorry he said I wish I had some other kind of news to give you I said Amen and he said something else I didn't catch and not knowing what else to do and not wanting him to have to repeat it and me to have to fully digest it I just looked at him for a minute and he looked back it was then I jumped up and shook hands with this man who'd just given me something no one else on earth had ever given me I may have even thanked him, habit being so strong
Raymond Carver
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buckman
Firefly
    
USA
2829 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2008 : 07:18:07
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Duke Ellington riding in the back of his limo, somewhere in Indiana. He is reading by lamplight. Billy Strayhorn is with him, but asleep. The tires hiss on the pavement. The Duke goes on reading and turning the pages.
-Carver |
Edited by - buckman on 05/17/2008 07:18:37 |
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