you should never live
for others’ expectations
yours are hard enough
Author: zdunno03
A Song of “Hand-in-Hand” by Ou-yang Hsiu
The sun sets on the dike where I walk,
As I sing alone the song of “Hand-in-hand.”
Then I remember the one whose hand I once held,
And everywhere I look, spring is radiant and green.
The Quarrel by Paul Blackburn
Dried green leaf on the door
Blackened leaf below it
Under that a metal leaf, blackened also
Below that the leafy ace of clubs
Outside the window the tree I thought a friend
has undressed all its branches & is ugly to me
Returning home defenseless
even a stray dog barked at me
I could not even declare my love to him
much less my innocence. Branches
of frozen breath writhed from both our mouths
into the air.
Even the room is cold
& here I sit and stare
& barely move
from Sand of Silk-washing Stream, Five Lyrics by Wei Chuang
Every night I think of you until the water clock fades;
Sadly, under the bright moon, I lean against the balcony;
I think you too feel the cold in your lonely quilt.
A short foot away, the painted hall is as deep as the sea;
In remembrance I have only your old letters to read;
When can we be together, hand in hand, in Ch’ang-an?
translated by Lois M. Fusek
old wounds: for RK
old wounds resurface
there is no peaceful life
they come in the light
numbers roll off oily tongues
grease marks along the corridors
the same old logic in the air
reduce this
cut back that
be mediocre rather than right
little ordinary men in touring caps
the enemy is not so easily perceived
but the casualities are always visible
when education takes second place
to the bottom line
and those with principles
lose heart
Six O’Clock by Nazim Hikmet
Morning, six o’clock.
I opened the door of the day and stepped in–
a taste of young blue greeted me in the window,
the lines on my forehead remained in the mirror from yesterday,
and behind me a woman’s voice came softer than peach fuzz
and, on the radio, news from my country,
and now, my greed filling and overflowing,
I’ll run from tree to tree in the orchard of the hours,
and the sun will set, my love,
and I hope that beyond the night
the taste of a new blue will await me, I hope.
translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk
from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.
untitled poem2 by A.E. Housman
The rainy Pleiads wester,
Orino plunges prone,
The stroke of midnight ceases
And I lie down alone.
The rainy Pleiads wester
And seek beyond the sea
The head that I shall dream of
That will not dream of me.
advice on being a writer from William Saroyan
The most solid advice, though, for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep, really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell, and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
a haiku: color
a black and white world
color dissolves into space
ever since you left
Leonard Durso 