English Poetry

Lalitha : ) pleasure to see you here, or for that matter anywhere. Hope to see more of you around.
It indeed is a lovely poem. Reminds me of one I read long ago. Don't remember the poet's name.. but it kind of stuck with me.

Don't look at me with so much love
Don't hold me back with those eyes
I have to leave now before it is too late
Love you.. offcourse I do
that is why I have to leave now
before you know how much.

-Unknown


That is a lovely thought : ).

The Dance
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I have sent you my invitation, the note inscribed on the palm of my hand by the fire of living. Don't jump up and shout, "Yes, this is what I want! Let's do it!" Just stand up quietly and dance with me.

Show me how you follow your deepest desires, spiralling down into the ache within the ache. And I will show you how I reach inward and open outward to feel the kiss of the Mystery, sweet lips on my own, everyday.

Don't tell me you want to hold the whole world in your heart. Show me how you turn away from making another wrong without abandoning yourself when you are hurt and afraid of being unloved.

Tell me a story of who you are, And see who I am in the stories I am living. And together we will remember that each of us always has a choice.

Don't tell me how wonderful things will be . . . some day. Show me you can risk being completely at peace, truly OK with the way things are right now in this moment, and again in the next and the next and the next. . .

I have heard enough warrior stories of heroic daring. Tell me how you crumble when you hit the wall, the place you cannot go beyond by the strength of your own will. What carries you to the other side of that wall, to the fragile beauty of your own humanness?

And after we have shown each other how we have set and kept the clear, healthy boundaries that help us live side by side with each other, let us risk remembering that we never stop silently loving those we once loved out loud.

Take me to the places on the earth that teach you how to dance, the places where you can risk letting the world break your heart. And I will take you to the places where the earth beneath my feet and the stars overhead make my heart whole again and again.

Show me how you take care of business without letting business determine who you are. When the children are fed but still the voices within and around us shout that soul's desires have too high a price, let us remind each other that it is never about the money.

Show me how you offer to your people and the world the stories and the songs you want our children's children to remember, and I will show you how I struggle not to change the world, but to love it.

Sit beside me in long moments of shared solitude, knowing both our absolute aloneness and our undeniable belonging. Dance with me in the silence and in the sound of small daily words, holding neither against me at the end of the day.

And when the sound of all the declarations of our sincerest intentions has died away on the wind, dance with me in the infinite pause before the next great inhale of the breath that is breathing us all into being, not filling the emptiness from the outside or from within.

Don't say, "Yes!" Just take my hand and dance with me.

Wow, that's a fantastic piece. Never come across an invitation so inviting.
Could I have the pleasure of this dance?

The Invitation
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.

Dance in the shadows

Dance in the shadows my love
Dance till the sun lurks behind the night
Dance in the shadows my love
I know the mourning of the dove
Sounds in your ears
The time is near
Never never waver
Just hold on to me
Dance with me
Never never leave
Hold on if you let go the world shall wane
And I shall bleed my crying pain
Dance in the shadows my love
Don't greet the morning
It only brings the end
It's light shall only affront
It is the whisper of sorrow
Dance my love forever in the shadow
Never stopping ever wallow.
Please just dance in the shadows my love
Dance in the shadows my love

Lylyanna Pilewski

Thanks Catch and Shiv for sharing

From my side -
one of E B B 's verses..

Change Upon Change


Five months ago the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed within the sedge,
And we were lingering to and fro,
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah, Sweet, be free to love and go!
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute,
The flowers have dried down to the root:
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they.


And slow, slow as the winter snow
The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my poor cheeks, five months ago
Set blushing at thy praises so,
Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah, Sweet, be free to praise and go!
For if my face is turned too pale,
It was thine oath that first did fail, --
It was thy love proved false and frail, --
And why, since these be changed enow,
Should I change less than thou.

Arey Unknown, uska dil khush ho jaata aur tu kanjoosi dikhata hai. I hate this particular thought. Love is one good thing U can never have too much of.

Sometimes you have to let go
of all the love and desire and wishes
and all the dreams woven together
you have to let go

Sometimes you have to go away
and never look back, not even a glance
not because you did not care, but too much
you have to go away

Sometimes you have to hurt
and break the heart you cherish most
and walk carelessly all over him
just have to hurt

Sometimes love must die
and you have to kill it yourself
and still keep living without complains
but it must die.


MY love it should be silent, being deep —
And being very peaceful should be still —
Still as the utmost depths of ocean keep —
Serenely silent as some mighty hill.

Yet is my love so great it needs must fill
With very joy the inmost heart of me,
The joy of dancing branches on the hill
The joy of leaping waves upon the sea.

-Uknown


Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.
-Emily D

These.. are lovely Lalitha : ).



: ).



What If I tell that
my hips dont sway
in tune with the rhythm
would you go away

Or that I dont know
my left foot from right
and I falter a lot
would you still be in sight

My nerves get jitters
on mere mention of beat
and I hide behind the crowd:
would you stay or fleet

But I wish to dance tonight
and not care who sees
even when I cannot..
would you dance with me

ZZZZ!!!! No wonder Ur Unknowns remained unknown. Horrid creatures!!!!

Have I posted this before in some other thread? I must have. I am so fond of it.

By WB Yeats.

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloth
Enwrought with golden and silver light
The blue and the dim and the dark cloth
Of night and light and the half light
I would spread that cloth under your feet
But I being poor have only my dreams
I've spread my dreams under your feet
Tread softly for you tread on my dreams.

This is love for me. Not all that hoarding and walking away.
It expresses the depth and vulnerability of love. Better to drown in love than keep someone parched and thirsting.

In one of my own melodramatic poems I speak of love as a sea reaching out with the waves and the lover splashing his feet and playing and being afraid to reach out and drown and the sea turning into desert waste.

Uniformed brutality

Love is an instinct, noble and sublime

In the eyes of many, it is a fad

Some think, love is sheer madness

They call all lovers majnu or mad.

Ours is a pseudo-modern country

Can we deny this patent fact?

Here even slightest display of love

Is regarded as an obscene act!

Meerut police raided a public garden

To put a few majnus on the mat

They thrashed every boy and every girl

Who went there to sit and chat!

The town where war of Independence began

That liberated us from foreign yoke

In that very town, the brutal cops

Throttled the liberty of innocent folk.

(Courtesy: G.C. Bhandari, Meerut)

..these always have been my favourite lines Priya.. did not know where or when or how long ago I read them.. about 20 years maybe..
Thanks for posting again : ).



If you do not agree with someone's expression, must you whine and fret and make them feel that yours is the only fair expression?
Isn't that tthe mistake we make in love..
Start thinking in "we" by embracing someone else's idea... and you will see that it is possible as well. Life is not only white or black or grey.. there are whole lot of other shades as well.

And please post your melodramatic poem : ). Would love to read it.

Longing

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!

Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth;
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say: My love! why sufferest thou?

Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For then the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.

(by Matthew Arnold)


One more...

Edgar Allen Poe

A Dream within a Dream

Take this kiss upon thy brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, to deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Shiv
..
yet another from ED


You left me, sweet, two legacies,—
A legacy of love
A Heavenly Father would content,
Had He the offer of;

You left me boundaries of pain
Capacious as the sea,
Between eternity and time,
Your consciousness and me.

U read this when U were 9!!!!!!!




I guess I should keep my mouth shut from now on. Everyone seems to get me wrong or think the opposite of what I am saying. Even friends get the wrong vibes from me. I am not asking others to change the way they view things.
I am not talking about the poet's expression or poetry out here. I am referring to hoarding love. Not in a relationship that cannot work for instance where U may have to bury Ur feelings but in ordinary daily life. U can cause a lot of pain by not letting another person know that U love them. If U do, why hide it?



Na. I write bad poetry. All emotion in the raw. And I was in college when I wrote it in all innocence and my friend who was more worldly wise read sexual innuendos in it. So let it be.