POETRY FOR THE AGES

When you need some relaxation and want to lose yourself in words...

From "Dancers" - my first dramatic role...

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas

We both know this one...Need I say more than Whitman can muster about things?

I do not love you as if
You were a salt rose or topaz
Or the air o'er carnations
That fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark
Things are to be loved:
In secret 'tween the shadow and the soul.

I love you without knowing how, or when
Or from where...

I love you straightforwardly,
Without complexities or pride...

I love you because I know
No other way than this...

So close, that your hand on my chest
Is my hand....

So close, that when you close your eyes
I fall asleep.

- Walt Whitman.

Shakespeare Sonnet

So are you to my thoughts, as food to life.
Or as sweet season'd showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found:
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day.

- Will Shakespeare

Whitman had a pretty good interpretation of a woman - for a homosexual... LOL

This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a help-
less vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and
what was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are
now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the
response likewise ungovernable,
You are the gates of the body,
and you are the gates of the soul.

- Walt Whitman.

A Classic...

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all to short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

- Will Shakespeare

How I felt on June 28th....

"In my life, she has burst like the music of angels - the light of the sun...
And my life, seems to stop as if something were over and something has scarcely begun..."

- From "Les Miserables"

My outlook...

"If you're with me
Next year will be...
The perfect year..."

- From "Sunset Boulevard"

The truth of the situation...

"You alone can make my song take flight....
Help me make the music of the night..."

- From "The Phantom of the Opera"