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I always like summer
best
you can eat fresh corn
from daddy's garden
and okra
and greens
and cabbage
and lots of
barbecue
and buttermilk
and homemade ice-cream
at the church picnic
and listen to
gospel music
outside
at the church
homecoming
and go to the mountains with
your grandmother
and go barefooted
and be warm
all the time
not only when you go to bed
and sleep
~Nikki Giovanni

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on days i could not move
it was women
who came to water my feet
until i was strong enough
to stand
it was women
who nourished me
back to life
Sisters- Rupi Kaur

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fog on her glasses
from the still steaming tea.
a book in her hand
as she casually reads.
a catch in her breath
as the climax grows near.
she's death to the world
the book's all she can hear.
she's completely lost now
or perhaps she is found
in this strange paper world
that is far from the ground.
-unknown writer

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i carry your heart with me by E.E. Cummings

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i carry your heart with me by E.E. Cummings

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"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)"

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What is stronger
Than the human heart
Which Shatters over and over
And still lives

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If you dissect a bird
To diagram the tongue
You'll cut the chord
Articulating the song.

If you flay a beast
To marvel at the mane
You'll wreck the rest
from which the fur began.

If you pluck out the heart
To find what makes it move,
You'll halt the clock
That syncopates our love.

-Sylvia Plath

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - Wallace Stevens

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird - Wallace Stevens

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I

Among twenty snowy mountains,

The only moving thing

Was the eye of the blackbird.

II

I was of three minds,

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.

It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman

Are one.

A man and a woman and a blackbird

Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window

With barbaric glass.

The shadow of the blackbird

Crossed it, to and fro.

The mood

Traced in the shadow

An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,

Why do you imagine golden birds?

Do you not see how the blackbird

Walks around the feet

Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;

But I know, too,

That the blackbird is involved

In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,

It marked the edge

Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds

Flying in a green light,

Even the bawds of euphony

Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut

In a glass coach.

Once, a fear pierced him,

In that he mistook

The shadow of his equipage

For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.

The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing

And it was going to snow.

The blackbird sat

In the cedar-limbs.

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What a world this is, a world run by fools.
My intelligence was known to all,
But despite my royalty I was used
As just a political pawn.
Because of my gender I was a thing
To be admired but barely seen,
A silent prize vied for by princes,
To be married for my riches,
To be courted, showcased, and bragged about,
A chess piece moved around for gain.
What a world of fools when one's gender can cause
One to be made a pawn in a game.
- Jade Bright

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If you think that you are sane,
you should know that life is pain.
And in that pain we have to choose,
most of us seem to lose.
but what it is most of us don't see,
is that life brings nothing kind to me.
All I feel day by day,
as my stability fades away.
is that my life is a death in agony.

-Poet of the river

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Lana- i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)

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Lana- i carry your heart with me (i carry it in)

# data[].attributes.body
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
- E.E. Cummings

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Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
- Robert Frost

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BY WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

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Reagan Littreal -The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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Reagan Littreal -The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

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From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were -- I have not seen
As others saw -- I could not bring
My passions from a common spring --
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow -- I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone --
And all I lov'd -- I lov'd alone --
Then -- in my childhood -- in the dawn
Of a most stormy life -- was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still --
From the torrent, or the fountain --
From the red cliff of the mountain --
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold --
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by --
From the thunder, and the storm --
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view --

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I can love both fair and brown,

Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,

Her who loves loneness best, and her who masks and plays,

Her whom the country formed, and whom the town,

Her who believes, and her who tries,

Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,

And her who is dry cork, and never cries;

I can love her, and her, and you, and you,

I can love any, so she be not true.

Will no other vice content you?

Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?

Or have you all old vices spent, and now would find out others?

Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?

O we are not, be not you so;

Let me, and do you, twenty know.

Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.

Must I, who came to travail thorough you,

Grow your fixed subject, because you are true?

Venus heard me sigh this song,

And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore,

She heard not this till now; and that it should be so no more.

She went, examined, and returned ere long,

And said, Alas! some two or three

Poor heretics in love there be,

Which think to ’stablish dangerous constancy.

But I have told them, Since you will be true,

You shall be true to them who are false to you.
-John Donne

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Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices

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Every time I speak,
I fear my voice is too loud.
I listen to the walls for an echo
every time I take a breath.

something in me feels like
I am not allotted this much existence—
I am taking up space
that does not belong to me.

this universe is infinite,
and still,

I occupy too much of it.

- Caroline Kaufman

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you treat them as if
they have a heart like yours
but not everyone can be
as soft and as tender as you
you don't see
the person they are
you see the person
they have the potential to be
you give and give till
they have taken everything
out of you and leave
you empty

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They see the Form of Air, but mortals breahting it
Drink the whole summer down to the breast
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.