Fleas-
There is a pain in life
which visits us all.
Of course, we want to know why.
Why?
If this
pain be unjust,
then actions are futile,
living is a joke
and the world is bad.
If our
pain reflects justice,
then it follows to spend our lives
rooting out our faults
one by one without end,
like street dogs forever
with fleas.
~ Iggy
Pop
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If
we take-
if we take what we can see-
the engines driving us mad,
lovers finally hating;
this fish in the market
staring upward into our minds;
flowers rotting, flies web-caught;
riots, roars of caged lions,
clowns in love with dollar bills,
nations moving people like pawns;
daylight thieves with beautiful
nighttime mives and wines;
the crowded jails,
the commonplace unemployed,
dying grass, 2-bit fires;
men old enough to love the grave.
These things,
and others, in content
show life swinging on rotten axis.
But they've
left us a bit of music
and a spoiked show in the corner,
a jigger of scotch, a blue necktie,
a small volume of poems by Rimbaud,
a horse running as if the devil were
twisting his tail
over the bluegrass and screaming, and then,
love again
like a streetcar turning the corner
on time,
the city waiting,
the wine and the flowers
the water walking across the lake
and summer and winter and summer and summer
and winter again.
~ C. Bukowski
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Before
Parting-
A month or twain to live on honeycomb
Is pleasant; but ones tires of scented time,
Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme,
And that strong purple under juice and foam
Where the wine's heart has burst;
Nor feel the latter kisses like the first
Once yet,
this poor one time; I will not pray
Even to chance the bitterness of it,
The bitter taste ensuring on the sweet,
To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay
All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise
Over my face and eyes.
And yet
who knows what end the scythed wheat
Makes of it's foolish poppies' mouths of red?
These were not sown, these are not harvested,
They grow a month and are cast under feet
And none has care thereof,
As none has care of a divided love.
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I know
each shadow of your lips by rote,
Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows;
The fashion of fair temples tremulous
With tender blood, and colour of your throat;
I know now how love is gone out of this,
Seeing that all was his.
Love's likeness there endures upon all these:
But out of these one shall not gather love.
Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough
To make love whole and fill his lips with ease,
As some bee-builded cell
Feels at filled lips and heavy honey swell
I know
not how this last month leaves your hair
Less full of purple colour and hid spice,
And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes
Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care;
And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet
Worth patience to regret.
~ A.C.
Swinburne
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