And if you ever tried to step in my shoes, they'd never be quite as soft as they seem.

Incubus

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of the day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow'd wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre for your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Walt Whitman-Leaves of Grass

You left me all alone in this darkened room, you left me with tears, and no lending ears, no one to run to, and no one to hold, I shut my eyes in despair alone again in this darkened lair.

Drath Poetry

My Image: As I sit here in the dust of wonder, And look as the years pass me by, I ask you, Where are the peices of my heart and soul? I seem to be unbroken, Yet I'm torn apart inside. They're right when they say I have problems, And it hurts me too. I'm not as bad as you may think, And your not as perfect as it seems.

Beth Mcgraa

Though we are not now at that strength which in better days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; one equal temper of heroic hearts made weak by time and fate but not in will; To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Not all distance is absence, nor is all silence forgetfulness.

You said you didn't want to see me get hurt... So does that mean you closed your eyes when I cried?

C. Yerkes

I walked a mile with Pleasure
She chattered all the way,
But there was nothing I could learn
From all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow
And never a word said she;
But, oh, all the things I learned
When Sorrow walked with me.

Sleep. Those little slices of Death. How I loathe them.

Edgar Allan Poe

So often times it happens that we live our lives in chains and we never even know we have the key.

Don Henley

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange, eventful history,
Is second childishness, and mere oblivion,
sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Shakespeare

I'm beyond your peripheral vision so you might want to turn your head, and some day you're gonna get hungry and eat most of the words you just said.

Ani Difranco

These days are still painful to think about...

I sit alone struggling not to cry. Yesterday my life shattered before my eyes. Almost everything I hold dear. The object of my obsession over the course of time. The love of my life. The one I hold above anyone else. For now has been all but lost completely. Shattered I sit alone with only one thing on my mind. If you love something let it go. If it comes back to you it always has been and always will be yours. If it doesn't than it never has been and never will be yours. I have let you go. I pray that one day you will return. Still I sit alone trying to retrieve the pieces of my so-called life. I am crying now. Crying for what I have lost for the moment. Crying for fear that I may never love another quite like I loved you. Crying for fear that I may never find another quite like you. I sit lying in wait for a chance to regain what I have lost. Close I will stay to you. Waiting for your choice to go astray and cause you to fall. I will be waiting right there to catch you. but for now I am the sad shell of a man who once was. I feel as though a part of me has died deep inside. Sitting alone for yesterday my life as I know it was shattered.

John Main

I'm standing on the outside of your shelter looking in, While the bombs around are falling everywhere, Inside you look so warm and safe and oh so happy, Have I ever told you that I care? Have I ever told you that you're wonderful? And it hurts me so that we have grown apart. I'm standing on the outside of your shelter, dear, But I hope I'm on the inside of your heart.

Shel Silverstein

Waiting for the moon to come and light me up inside
And I am waiting for the telephone to tell me I'm alive
Well, I heard you let somebody get their fingers into you
It's getting cold in California I guess I'll be leaving soon
Daylight fading, come and waste another year
All the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear
Moonlight creeping around the corners of our lawn
When we see the early signs that daylight's fading
We leave just before it's gone...

-Anon

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found?
The same old fears
Wish you were here

"How I wish you were here" by Pink Floyd

My Relationships.

I choose to suffer for those I care; I will sacrifice myself as long as you are there.

Amy Kleer

In an age of nothing, at a time when we stand on the brink of our own destruction - strengthen your belief in yourself, in the future of humanity. in the things of this world which cannot easily be perceived, awaken that which lies dormant now within your soul, re-ignite the flame of your consciousness, and measure the strength of your conviction. Reveal the lie. Renounce your hatred. Seek, find and embrace the truths you are fortunate enough to discover. Cherish them, use them to anchor you in the sea of chaos that is the world we live in. When twilight draws near, when you are pushed to the very limits of your soul, when it seems that all you have left are the dead remnants of the fabric of your life - believe

Come to the edge He said. They said: 'We are afraid.' Come to the edge He said. They came. He pushed them, and they flew.

Guillaume Apollinaire

We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea breakers, And sitting by desolate streams. World-losers and world-forsakers, On whom the pale moon gleams: Yet we are the movers and the shakers Of the world forever, it seems.

Arthur O' Shaughnessy

There are two days in every week about which we should not worry,
Two days which should be kept free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is Yesterday, with all its mistakes and cares,
Its faults and blunders, its aches and pains.

Yesterday has passed forever beyond our control.
All the money in the world cannot bring back Yesterday.

We cannot undo a single act we performed;
We cannot erase a single word we said.
Yesterday is gone forever.

The other day we should not worry about is Tomorrow
With all its possible adversities, its burdens,
Its large promise and its poor performance;
Tomorrow is also beyond our immediate control.

Tomorrow's sun will rise,
Either in splendor or behind a mask of clouds, but it will rise.
Until it does, we have no stake in Tomorrow,
For it is yet to be born.

This leaves only one day, Today.
Any person can fight the battle of just one day
It is when you and I add the burdens of those two awful eternities
Yesterday and Tomorrow that we break down.

It is not the experience of Today that drives a person mad,
It is the remorse and bitterness of something which happened Yesterday
And the dread of what Tomorrow may bring.

Let us, therefore, live but one day at a time.

The P L A I D Dress.

Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;

All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

We sailed from the port of indecision,
Young and wild with, oh, so much to learn,
And days turn into years,
As we try to fool our fears,
But, to the port of indecision I return.

-Jimmy Buffett

Polite Yet Speedy Exit

The sun will kiss the afternoon sky,
and the moon will kiss the stars so high.
The morning dew will kiss the grass,
but you, my friend, can kiss my ass.

Unknown.

Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'maybe we should just be friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

-Winnie the Pooh (A.A. Milne)

Read This Daily.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it's a real possession in the changing fortunes of time. Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantement, it is as perrenial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth. Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

-Desiderata, Max Ehrmann 1927

Siiiigh

Oh, how one wishes sometimes to escape from the meaningless dullness of human eloquence, from all those sublime phrases, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long grinding labor, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding, rendered speechless by emotion!

-Dr. Zhivago

With understanding come to know
what laughing lips will never show
how pain and torturing distress
can masquerade as happiness.

-Michael Denison

Happiness is to see the world in a grain of sand, and Heaven in a wild flower, to hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in a single hour.

-William Blake

All I do is act on my passions and they call it sin.
All I do is tell the truth and they call me a hypocrite.
All I feel is pain and sorrow and they call it love.
All I do is pour my heart out to empty pages and they call it poetry.

-Benito Behar

When you come to the end of everything you know, and the next step is into the depths of darkness of the great unknown, you must believe one of two things: Either you will step out onto firm ground or you will be taught to fly.

-Claire Norris

What is that you express in your eyes? It seems to me more than all the words I have read in my life.

-Walt Whitman

Open Senses.

To open your eyes and see the sky is not enough. To open your ears is still not enough. For only if you open your mind will you hear the clouds whispering love's sweet songs and dancing together accross the noisy sea.

Blue.

On the view of earth from 3.7 billion miles away:

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home, That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. [...] There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

-Carl Sagan, "Pale Blue Dot"

I Won't Be Your Violet.

Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it

-Mark Twain

Thrill Me.

It happens so suddenly. We are going about our own mundane tasks when - a phrase of music, a shaft of sunlight on a snowy roof, a handful of yellow butterflies, or the arc of a bird diving to the earth, pierces us. For one brief moment, we are lifted out of our daily routine into the untold realms of light and beauty. Then the moment is gone. We are back on Earth - but we are not the same.

Soul Mates.

"I do my thing, and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful."
-Frederick E. Perl