“Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.”
~Howard Aiken
Ideas
Time, Decisions, and Opportunity
Consider what you think justice requires, and decide accordingly. But never give your reasons; for your judgment will probably be right, but your reasons will certainly be wrong.
~Lord Mansfield
Opportunity is a bird that never perches.
~Claude McDonald
The flower that you hold in your hands was born today and already it is as old as you are.
~Antonio Porchia
Experimental Haiku
Perceptions
Divinity in a smile
These eyes, like stars alight
To stoke the fires of this passionate
Elation, embrace of thought
That tickles yet the nervous breath
Coiling through the nerves—
Sensory serendipity.
–
Watching this Mirage
Deception of romance
Serpentine coils of medusan gaze
Wrapping around this memory
Of a man, once knowing
These lines, unrestricted,
Entwining about his heart.
–
The portrait and the face
Smiling through the frown
Of this imaginary madness
We’ve come to call a life
Will this define
Or refine
Your perception of meaning?
–
What dreams we greet
To hide the nightmare
Of reality.
We the People
The following poem was inspired by this article recently written by the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11288744.
We the People
Have come to the conclusion
Hunger
Madness
Agony
This cycle of destruction
Is all too much for us
Unacceptably inflated
We must rise to put it down.
Ideas? Why
Whatever do you mean?
It is wrong,
So bitter wrong
But that is all to say
We wish that it were
But have nothing to insist
The prices rise
The people die
And here we sit
These desks, emaciated lie
Between us and
The world.
An Idea, A Muse
I dub thee Goddess Moon,
Patron of the painter’s boon
Mistress of the writer’s swoon
–
The world could circumnavigate
This trait, you call thy state
But they would only desecrate—
–
That holy word, this blurred
In bitter flight, bird
I am certain they should call absurd
–
But here you are, a smile
Resting yet upon the winds of wile
Of your fertile guile
–
Merest notion
Of my dearest heart’s devotion—
This world is not yet ready for your motion.
My latest contribution to the wonderful One Shot Poetry Wednesdays! Once you’ve had a look, check out some of the other One Shot Poets as well– they’re a skilled bunch of poets, looking to form a community and support one another. Enjoy!
Summer Reading
Between everything I’ve had going on this summer I would say that’s a respectable bit of reading to have done, lo these past couple months of warmth and sunlight, no? From vibrant and mystical fantasy to gritty, nihilistic dramas of the modern age, these books have carried me healthily through a good bit of summer.
Of course, it’s still not over. But I’m running out of my summer stack–just a couple more to go!
Currently reading “The Surrendered,” by Chang-rae Lee.
Fascinating read. It’s Lee’s fourth book, and this one takes place in the aftermath of the Korean War, following three characters specifically and how they are dealing with different aspects of that aftermath. You see the horrors of the war, as well as decisions made following it, and how those decisions have followed certain characters all the way into the 1980s. Not for the squeamish or the faint-hearted.
Yet as I work my way through this novel, I find myself wondering what might come next. Any of you have any suggestions of must-reads?
A month of summer lies yet ahead, and I am always looking for more reading material to greedily devour. Believe me, I’m easy–I read any and all types.
The Imagination’s the Limit
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ~Jack London
“Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.” ~Charles Kettering
“An idea is salvation by imagination.” ~Frank Lloyd Wright
“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.” ~George Bernard Shaw