The Muse

By Barbara Millar
Posted and loved by Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

You may hide before she sees you
But she will find you. She will
Call your name. You’ll hear
Her mad, bewitching moan, and,
You, a shipwrecked sailor, drown
In the undulating waves of her devotion
As she rides the tides of your emotion;
And when she’s gone,
She’ll haunt you
As the day is long,
And you will mourn.

She will wrap you in her long, blonde tresses
The way your ligaments coil round
Your bones and tendons,
Taut, yet yielding,
Moving where you move.

You must shed your skin
So she can feel the bare, attenuated sinew
And where the nerves begin and end.

Her laughter falls like tiny drops of mist
Upon your face and hands;
She hears the sound that pleasure makes
When pleasure aches
As only pleasure can.

You’ll wish your face were wet with kisses,
Her lips upon your lips and lashes
When dawn unties her golden tresses
And dresses her in morning mists.

And when the night softly undresses
Veil by veil her silk and laces,
The moon will smile her silver smile, her body
More lovely than her face is.

She’ll kneel before you on the ground
And ask the stars to wear her crown.
You lay her on a bed of down.

Her golden hair your hands caress
And you, your love, to her confess
With every wave of tenderness
That heaves from one who has been blessed.

And when you lay in deepest sleep
She’ll quietly retreat into the corners of your dreams.
She is more than what she seems.
Neither lover nor wife, she is the dawn that comes
In the middle of your life.

I Wish I Were an Echo

By Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña


Once, my wishes were selfless;
But I stopped wasting them on the world.

I only wish now to be an echo.

If I could give my words anything,
it would be fingers.

I can’t explain to you why
I prefer midwives to physicians.

But if I ever give birth again,
it will be upright,
holding on to the limb of a lotus.

The best prisons are those
in which a prisoner is given freedom,
for in confusion lies enslavement.

May I be your fiancé again?
Being a wife has turned my eyes gray.

I am in love with circles,
suspicious of corners, because
they are the first place
someone looks for you when you hide.

I am in love with clocks,
especially on towers,
I trust what they say.

I cannot trust mirrors or pictures.

It is difficult to gauge my own face.

For every bad thing I hear,
I must tell myself two good things.

If I were an echo,
I would become what I speak.

Moonlight

I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely head
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I like to listen to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and think of the moon’s reflection on a lake... dreaming... thinking of life and its possibilities... it is a feeling of beauty and wonderment at the majesty of it all...

Dining with Homeless

Lemon Grass Beef w/chili Bo Xao Xa Ot by Doug

Ingredients

2-3 pounds beef (or chicken)
4 cloves garlic
1 large yellow or white onion
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons minced lemon grass
1 teaspoon ground chilies (to taste)
4 tablespoon fish sauce (Nuoc Mam)
2-3 spring (green) onion stalks
2-3 tablespoons coarsely ground peanuts
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoons honey

Directions

Cut beef into small pieces (either "nuggets" or small strips).
Peel garlic and slice finely.
Cut onion into 1/2 inch strips.
Peel off the hard outer layers of lemon grass stalk and discard.
Peel off the medium layers of lemon grass stalk for stewing purposes
Mince the soft inner layers of the stalk.
Heat oil in large frying pan over medium heat.
Add salt, garlic and onion.
Fry over medium heat until onion is opaque.
Add lemon grass and chili.
Fry 1 - 2 minutes until fragrant.
Add beef and cook until lightly browned.
Mix in fish sauce, sugar and honey.
Cook until beef is the way you like it.
Stir occasionally and add water if necessary.
Remove the medium layers of lemon grass stalk before serving

Serving Instructions

Serve over white rice. Garnish with peanuts and thin slices of spring onion stalk. I like mine [the author of the recipe – not moi] with a Vietnamese chili-garlic sauce (Tuong Ot Toi Viet Nam: it's the best hot sauce EVER- I sometimes use it in the recipe instead of the garlic and pepper). (The above notes are provided by the recipe author)

Recipe by Doug [Didn't write down his last name]

Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name's version of the above recipe

Pop a frozen pizza into microwave oven, heat for 5 minutes on high, remove pizza from the microwave and begin eating

This post and the last paragraph by Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name