Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
...
Beloved,
In what other lives or lands
Have I known your lips
Your Hands
...
O mistress mine, where are you roaming?
O stay and hear! your true-love's coming
That can sing both high and low;
Trip no further, pretty sweeting,
...
I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.
...
shot in the eye
shot in the brain
shot in the ****
shot like a flower in the dance
...
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
...
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
...
Then a woman said, 'Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.'
And he answered:
...
Did the people of Viet Nam
use lanterns of stone?
Did they hold ceremonies
to reverence the opening of buds?
...
When Beauty and Beauty meet
All naked, fair to fair,
The earth is crying-sweet,
And scattering-bright the air,
...
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
...
The essence of true beauty
Lingers in all-encompassing rainbows
Of your joy and laughter
...
Only one cell in the frozen hive of night
is lit, or so it seems to us:
this Vietnamese café, with its oily light,
its odors whose colorful shapes are like flowers.
...
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
...
I hear an army charging upon the land,
And the thunder of horses plunging, foam about their knees:
Arrogant, in black armour, behind them stand,
Disdaining the reins, with fluttering whips, the charioteers.
...
Can you not see the sorrow, in someone's tearful eyes,
Or see the dread, in someone's weary frown.
Can you not see the fear, when someone's telling lies,
Or feel the sadness, in the laughter of a clown.
...
Lonely is just one word chosen to represent so much
To tell of feelings inside that the senses cannot touch
Lonely can be in the teardrops on a bereaved person's cheek
...
Most near, most dear, most loved and most far,
Under the window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,
Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,
...
O gather me the rose, the rose,
While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
And winter waits behind it.
...
Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There's always laughter and good red wine.
At least I've always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!
...
It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light
...
I do not want to be reflective any more
Envying and despising unreflective things
Finding pathos in dogs and undeveloped handwriting
And young girls doing their hair and all the castles of sand
...
The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness
...
In the stillest hour of the night, as I lay half asleep, my seven selves sat together and thus conversed in whisper:
...
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
...
The tempest calmed after bending the branches of the trees and leaning heavily upon the grain in the field. The stars appeared as broken remnants of lightning, but now silence prevailed over all, as if Nature's war had never been fought.
At that hour a young woman entered her chamber and knelt by her bed sobbing bitterly. Her heart flamed with agony but she could finally open her lips and say, 'Oh Lord, bring him home safely to me. I have exhausted my tears and can offer no more, oh Lord, full of love and mercy. My patience is drained and calamity is seeking possession of my heart. Save him, oh Lord, from the iron paws of War; deliver him from such unmerciful Death, for he is weak, governed by the strong. Oh Lord, save my beloved, who is Thine own son, from the foe, who is Thy foe. Keep him from the forced pathway to Death's door; let him see me, or come and take me to him.'
...
A little fun keeps you young;
A little laughter keeps you bright.
...
My hands have not touched pleasure since your hands, --
No, -- nor my lips freed laughter since 'farewell',
And with the day, distance again expands
Voiceless between us, as an uncoiled shell.
...
The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky
Burned like a heated opal through the air;
We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.
...
Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is overworn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
...
Light, my light, the world-filling light,
the eye-kissing light,
heart-sweetening light!
...
Most near, most dear, most loved, and most far,
Under the huge window where I often found her
Sitting as huge as Asia, seismic with laughter,
Gin and chicken helpless in her Irish hand,
...
It is not death
Without hereafter
To one in dearth
Of life and its laughter,
...
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
...
Oh day of fire and sun,
Pure as a naked flame,
Blue sea, blue sky and dun
Sands where he spoke my name;
...
Because my faltering feet may fail to dare
The first descendant of the steps of Hell
Give me the Word in time that triumphs there.
I too must pass into the misty hollow
...
As you have come,
Birds sing in my mind
Creepers blossom
With numerous smells unknown….
...
O EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
...
The sound of laughter is a thing of beauty for laughter spreads the very gift of joy
That people they are drawn to happy people is not that hard for to understand why
Since everybody wishes to be happy and laughter it spreads happiness around
And only the heartless could not like the sound of laughter for laughter is a very happy sound,
...
Though I am down and bear a frown
Because words of sword are always painful
And rejection is always sorrowful.
...
The week after the funeral the house was cleared
Memories taken to the auctioneers to be sold off,
The polished sideboard and dining room table,
The picture frames now empty of smiling faces.
...
April, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
...
The years roll by from girl to woman,
The years roll by from boy to man,
Then one of them will find the other,
A 'fusion' part of God's great plan.
...
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
...
I hid the love within my heart,
And lit the laughter in my eyes,
That when we meet he may not know
My love that never dies.
...
O generation of the thoroughly smug
and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
...
Now at last I have come to see what life is,
Nothing is ever ended, everything only begun,
And the brave victories that seem so splendid
Are never really won.
...
WHERE the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,
Through echoing forest and echoing street,
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,
All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
...
A rose grows in the night
Lit beneath the diamond lights
Petals smooth in silken magic
Blossom crimson shaded fabric
...
Your friend is one who answers to your needs:
the field you sow with love, and reap with thanks;
you seek him for your peace, to hear his heart;
and when he's silent - still his heart you hear:
...
Your dextrous wit will haunt us long
Wounding our grief with yesterday.
Your laughter is a broken song;
And death has found you, kind and gay.
...
I am a copper wire slung in the air,
Slim against the sun I make not even a clear line of shadow.
Night and day I keep singing--humming and thrumming:
It is love and war and money; it is the fighting and the
...
(A collab write with Kayte, a fellow poet)
We're going to ride the Ferris Wheel of Life
And when it gets to the top,
...
Laughter is a pleasant sound, it spreads joy all around
Whether you're young or old, laughter can be like
Magic to our souls, whenever we're feeling sad
Laughter can sustain us so that things don't seem
...
The working girls in the morning are going to work--
long lines of them afoot amid the downtown stores
and factories, thousands with little brick-shaped
lunches wrapped in newspapers under their arms.
...
Close your eyes, my angel,
For now, you will see,
The wonderful, peaceful world
That once used to be.
...
One constant in a world of variables
- A man alone in the evening in his patch of vegetables,
and all the things he takes down with him there
...
Have you been to the land of happy,
Where everyone's happy all day,
Where they joke and they sing
...
Chatter of birds two by two raises a night song joining a litany of running water--sheer waters
showing the russet of old stones remembering many rains.
And the long willows drowse on the shoulders of the running water, and sleep from much music;
...
"She can't be unhappy," you said,
"The smiles are like stars in her eyes,
And her laughter is thistledown
Around her low replies."
...
I see it as it looked one afternoon
In August,-by a fresh soft breeze o'erblown.
The swiftness of the tide, the light thereon,
A far-off sail, white as a crescent moon.
...
I dream of a world called paradise,
Where there's no such things as tears
I dream that no one is harmed,
Because of beliefs or other reasons
...
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping-place
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.
...
Your days will be full of cares, if you must give me your heart.
My house by the cross-roads has its doors open and my mind is
absent, -for I sing.
I shall never be made to answer for it, if you must give me
...
.
.
She looks all moonspun
as fragile as butterfly wings
...
If all the skies were sunshine,
Our faces would be fain
To feel once more upon them
The cooling splash of rain.
...
Your white shoulders
I remember
And your shrug of laughter.
...
I shall never forget you, Broadway
Your golden and calling lights.
I’ll remember you long,
...
BEING out of heart with government
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring;
...
The pine-trees bend to listen to the autumn wind as it mutters
Something which sets the black poplars ashake with hysterical laughter;
While slowly the house of day is closing its eastern shutters.
...
I gave my first love laughter,
I gave my second tears,
I gave my third love silence
Thru all the years.
...
No, my friends, I shall never be an
ascetic, whatever you may say.
I shall never be and ascetic if she
does not take the vow with me.
...
I could never have dreamt that there were such goings-on
in the world between the covers of books,
such sandstorms and ice blasts of words,,,
...
The darkened street was muffled with the snow,
The falling flakes had made your shoulders white,
And when we found a shelter from the night
Its glamor fell upon us like a blow.
...
About Soho we went before the light;
We went, unresting six, craving new fun,
New scenes, new raptures, for the fevered night
Of rollicking laughter, drink and song, was done.
...
APRIL, April,
Laugh thy girlish laughter;
Then, the moment after,
Weep thy girlish tears!
...
The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky
Burned like a heated opal through the air;
We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.
...
To the guests that must go bid
God's speed and brush away all traces
of their steps.
Take to your bosom with a smile
...
Undertakers, hearse drivers, grave diggers,
I speak to you as one not afraid of your business.
You handle dust going to a long country,
...
Acrust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
...
In my young years I took pride in the fact that luck was called a lady. In fact, there were so few public acknowledgments of the female presence that I felt personally honored whenever nature and large ships were referred to as feminine. But as I matured, I began to resent being considered a sister to a changeling as fickle
...
To all of my friends
The old with the new
Elderly and young
At Poem Hunter
...
Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band,
The crowd's good laughter, the loved eyes of men,
I am drawn nightward; I must turn again
...
Lightly come or lightly go:
Though thy heart presage thee woe,
Vales and many a wasted sun,
Oread let thy laughter run,
...
Love of friendship, most elevating!
Lifts the spirits above the dark clouds,
Letting it permeate in the bright starry skies,
Levitating with jolly wings, most rejuvenating!
...
Infectious smile has infected tears
The laughter strikes with spears
I am not dear and they are not sincere
Feeling fear
...
When the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
...
WILD, wild the storm, and the sea high running,
Steady the roar of the gale, with incessant undertone muttering,
Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing,
Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing,
...
Sometimes we remember kisses,
Remember the dear heart-leap when they came:
Not always, but sometimes we remember
The kindness, the dumbness, the good flame
...
I promise
To give you a shoulder to lean on
A hand to guide your way
A whisper, a soft whisper
...
Bright cap and streamers,
He sings in the hollow:
Come follow, come follow,
All you that love.
...
For the gladness here where the sun is shining at evening on the weeds at the river,
Our prayer of thanks.
For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and bareheaded in the summer grass,
...
An old shoe box under the bed,
filled with mementoes of years gone by.
Faded love letters stained with tears,
I used to cry.
...
Back, in my fifties, fatter that I was then,
I step on the sand, belch down slight horror to walk
a wincing pit edge, waiting for the pistol shot
laughter. Long greening waves cash themselves, foam change
...
Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
We drenched the altars of Love's sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the colored moths of Love.
...
There was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn
...
And then came Science with her torch red-lit
And cosmic marvels round her glowing head—
The primal cell, the worm, the quadruped—
...
WHEN the two sisters go to fetch water, they come to this spot and they smile.
...
I'm the boss
You do not cross
The king of my domain
For the day
...
One of a kind this cheerful sound
A child's laughter wherever it's found
From the giggling of a baby in a playpen
To the laughter of a toddler again and again
...