Love Song

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song. 

By:  Rainer Marie Rilke
Copied, pasted, and cried over after a few glasses of vino by:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

Grammar is Important

From a Teacher -- short and to the point.
 In the world of hi-tech gadgetry, I've noticed that more and more people who send text messages and emails have long forgotten the art of capital letters.

For those of you who fall into this category, please take note of the following statement: "Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse." 

Is everybody clear on that?

 

I can write the saddest lines tonight

                              XX From:’ Veinte poemas de amor’

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

Write for example: ‘The night is fractured

and they shiver, blue, those stars, in the distance’

The night wind turns in the sky and sings.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

I loved her, sometimes she loved me too.

On nights like these I held her in my arms.

I kissed her greatly under the infinite sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.

How could I not have loved her huge, still eyes.

I can write the saddest lines tonight.

To think I don’t have her, to feel I have lost her.

Hear the vast night, vaster without her.

Lines fall on the soul like dew on the grass.

What does it matter that I couldn’t keep her.

The night is fractured and she is not with me.

That is all. Someone sings far off. Far off,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

As though to reach her, my sight looks for her.

My heart looks for her: she is not with me

         

The same night whitens, in the same branches.

We, from that time, we are not the same.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.

My voice tried to find the breeze to reach her.

Another’s kisses on her, like my kisses.

Her voice, her bright body, infinite eyes.

I don’t love her, that’s certain, but perhaps I love her.

Love is brief: forgetting lasts so long.

Since, on these nights, I held her in my arms,

my soul is not content to have lost her.

Though this is the last pain she will make me suffer,        

and these are the last lines I will write for her.

By:  Pablo Neruda

Copied and pasted by:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is My Name

Lamento lento

En la noche del corazón
la gota de tu nombre lento
en silencio circula y cae
y rompe y desarrolla su agua.

Algo quiere su leve daño
y su estima infinita y corta,
como el paso de un ser perdido
de pronto oído.

De pronto, de pronto escuchado
y repartido en el corazón
con triste insistencia y aumento
como un sueño frío de otoño.

La espesa rueda de la tierra
su llanta húmeda de olvido
hace rodar, cortando el tiempo
en mitades inaccesibles.

Sus copas duras cubren tu alma
derramada en la tierra fría
con sus pobres chispas azules
volando en la voz de la lluvia.

Por:  Pablo Neruda

Pequeño poema infinito [Tiny infinite poem]

Equivocar el camino 
es llegar a la nieve 
y llegar a la nieve 
es pacer durante veinte siglos las hierbas de los cementerios. 

Equivocar el camino 
es llegar a la mujer, 
la mujer que no teme la luz, 
la mujer que no teme a los gallos 
y los gallos que no saben cantar sobre la nieve. 

Pero si la nieve se equivoca de corazón 
puede llegar el viento Austro 
y como el aire no hace caso de los gemidos 
tendremos que pacer otra vez las hierbas de los cementerios. 

Yo vi dos dolorosas espigas de cera 
que enterraban un paisaje de volcanes 
y vi dos niños locos que empujaban llorando las pupilas de un asesino. 

Pero el dos no ha sido nunca un número 
porque es una angustia y su sombra, 
porque es la guitarra donde el amor se desespera, 
porque es la demostración de otro infinito que no es suyo 
y es las murallas del muerto 
y el castigo de la nueva resurrección sin finales. 
Los muertos odian el número dos, 
pero el número dos adormece a las mujeres 
y como la mujer teme la luz 
la luz tiembla delante de los gallos 
y los gallos sólo saben votar sobre la nieve 
tendremos que pacer sin descanso las hierbas de los cementerios.

Por: Federico García Lorca 
Copiado por:  Sin Hogar con una Computadora Portátil, ese es mi Nombre

How few hairs must a man have to be bald?

As I exited a local mall, where I had been shopping for widgets, i.e., nothing of significance, I noticed a man standing on the corner. He was looking at the sky, but I didn’t look up.

What captivated my attention was his lack of hair: he was bald. Big deal you say. I would have thought the same except that he had a few strands of long hair carefully plastered in a forward direction; towards his forehead. Was he a bald guy? A guy going bald? Or a bald guy with some hairs plastered on his head?

It seemed that because he once had blond hair, he was likely considered bald. If his hair had been dark brown for example, he might not have been considered bald but rather going bald or perhaps having a bouffant hairdo—a crucial distinction.

On the other hand, it’s clear that from his point of view that he wasn’t. If he was, he wouldn’t have carefully plastered the few strands of hair on his head and combed them forward.

I walked up to him and said really loud, “Excuse me, but how few hairs must a man have to be bald?” He looked at me with surprise then anger. Other people walking by frowned at me, except for two young black kids who were laughing.

As I combed my deep brown hair on the store window, I reflected, “Which grain makes the noise when corn is tipped from a container?”

by Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

‘Perhaps not to be is to be without your being.’ Pablo Neruda

Perhaps not to be is to be without your being,
without your going, that cuts noon light
like a blue flower, without your passing
later through fog and stones,
without the torch you lift in your hand
that others may not see as golden,
that perhaps no one believed blossomed
the glowing origin of the rose,
without, in the end, your being, your coming
suddenly, inspiringly, to know my life,
blaze of the rose-tree, wheat of the breeze:
and it follows that I am, because you are:
it follows from ‘you are’, that I am, and we:
and, because of love, you will, I will,
We will, come to be. 

By:  Pablo Neruda
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It's Time

It’s time, my friend: it’s time! The heart wants rest

the days slip by, the hours take away

fragments of our life: and you and I

plan how to live and, – just like that – we die.

No happiness on earth, yet there’s freedom, peace.

I’ve long dreamt of an enviable fate –

I’ve long thought, a weary slave, to fly

to some far place of labour and true joy.

 

By:  Alexander Pushkin

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Invictus

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.

By:  William Ernest Henley

 

For solidarity by:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

On St. Valentine's Day ... to Someone Special

On St. Valentine’s Day
                I went to seek my love,
                                up one street
and down another.
                My heart was heavy
                                Because I had nothing to
                                give her.
What should I say?
                The streets were empty
                                so I met no one.

 

Yet I knew she could not be far

              for the sun was shining
                                merrily!
 

Old though you find me

                and penniless,
                                I said to the silence of
                                the garden,
I shall take courage
                for a snow-drop is about to blossom
                                smiling at me
from my own yard,
                smiling, smiling up at me
                                from my own yard.

 

I love you, I love you!
                I said to the flower
                                knowing my love shall not be
                                lost
knowing that I am not mistaken.


By: William Carlos Williams
Thought about, copied and pasted for someone special
by:  Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmpSWlVdKmo

Who is Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name?

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography. 

By: Pablo Neruda

Un camarada, verdad...

Shadows

Shadows cast by the street light
            under the stars,
                        the head is tilted back,
the long shadow of the legs
            presumes a world
                        taken for granted
on which the cricket trills.

            The hollows of the eyes
                        Are unpeopled.
Right and left
            climb the ladders of night
                        as dawn races
to put our the stars.

That

                        Is the poetic figure
But we know
            better: what is not now
                        will never
be.  Sleep secure,
            the little dog in the snapshot
                        keeps his shrewd eyes
pared.  Memory
            is liver than sight.

                        A man

looking out,
            seeing shadows—
                        it is himself
that can be painlessly amputated
            by a mere shifting
                        of the stars.
A comfort so easily not to be
            and to be at once one
                        with every man.
The night blossoms
            with a thousand shadows
                        so long
as there are stars,
            street lights
                        or a moon and
who shall say
            by their shadows
which is different
            from the other
                        fat or lean.
 

                        II

 
Ripped from the concept of our lives
            and from all concept
                        somehow, and plainly,
the sun will come up
            each morning
                        and sink again.
So that we experience
            Violently
                        every day
two worlds
            one of which we share with the
            rose in bloom
                        and one,
by far the greater,
            with the past,
                        the world of memory,
the silly world of history,
            the world
                        of the imagination.
Which leaves only the beasts and trees,
            crystals
                        with their refractive
                        surfaces
and rotting things
            to stir our wonder.
                        Save for the little
central hole
            of the eye itself
                        into which
we dare not stare too hard
            or we are lost.

                        The instant

trivial as it is
            is all we have
                        unless—unless
things the imagination feeds upon,
            the scent of the rose,
                        startle us anew.

By: William Carlos Williams
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In My Sky At Twilight

In my sky at twilight you are like a cloud
and your form and colour are the way I love them.
You are mine, mine, woman with sweet lips
and in your life my infinite dreams live.

The lamp of my soul dyes your feet,
the sour wine is sweeter on your lips,
oh reaper of my evening song,
how solitary dreams believe you to be mine!

You are mine, mine, I go shouting it to the afternoon's
wind, and the wind hauls on my widowed voice.
Huntress of the depth of my eyes, your plunder
stills your nocturnal regard as though it were water.

You are taken in the net of my music, my love,
and my nets of music are wide as the sky.
My soul is born on the shore of your eyes of mourning.
In your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin. 

By: Pablo Neruda
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I dreamed of you last night

I dreamed of you last night, Kara.  I saw you walking in a red dress and looking at me…

Remember when you became angry and I laughed.  You asked:  “Are you laughing because I’m angry?”  When I said yes, you also started laughing and said “Don’t make me laugh when I’m angry”… 

Remember when we loved…

Remember when I told that I had reached the end… you told me: “Don’t I get a say in this?”  Then you said…  “Teach me how to let go.”  How could I teach you what I still don’t know… Yet I remember the poem you sent me… Love is two souls in one body…

In a mirror

There is a stranger

Who claims to be me.

“You are not me” said I.

The stranger said nothing

I cannot trust mirrors or pictures.

So I dream of you, Kara mía… I hope that you live a happy life… and that sometimes you think or perhaps dream of a very stupid and solitary man …

As I reflect of my dream of you I remember the words of Federico García Lorca’s sad poem:  “I sing of [your] elegance with words that groan, and I remember a sad breeze through the olive trees.”

By: Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

All Fallen Things

So I declare myself

            queen of the surf,

            queen of the rain,

of all fallen things;

            angels,

                        breasts,

            teeth and leaves.

Glory to the unknown,

to Ecclesiastes,

for in wisdom

is much grief.

Glory to tiki lamps, bikinis,

the intensity of being,

rails on which bladers

have nutted themselves,

Lahaina, all islands,

the power

with which they were formed—

violent earth,

angry soil—

the womb that will swallow

queens, rooks,

            my wooden chess set,

post it notes, refrigerators,

            alligators, coupons,

excuses and dogs.

This is my revelation;

This is my

contribution to dust.

By:  Gabriela Anaya Valdepeña

Typed into Word, copied, pasted and loved by:

Homeless with a Laptop, that is my Name

Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя

Chopin’s Etudes at Midnight

In the beginning understanding

Enters through the ear and eye.

Then when your soul is touched

For the first time like fire and ice

Together at the same time

You know the fullness and eternity of Spring.

In that instant, you know the old life is dull

And offers no kindling for your heat.

There is no turning back now.

An insurgency of music tumbles free

Inviting you to wonder

And to see more than you can ever know

From asking all those puzzling

Whys and hows: when the earth began

And what the future holds,

What will become of man,

His works and praises to an unseen god.

Choreographies of chords remain,

Make us aware that life is but a tattered garden

Of withered seed without your tender rain. 

By:  Barbara Millar

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A Comment on 'Waging Heavy Peace' by Neil Young

I’ve always loved Neil Young’s music so I eagerly awaited and picked up this book by Neil Young himself.  As former military, I loved the title of the book ‘Waging Heavy Peace.’ It reminded me of the Strategic Air Command’s motto, ‘Peace is our profession.’  Anyway, I expected some kind of philosophic revelation or some grandiose poetical insight into the universe hitherto unknown to all or at least to me anyway.  There is none… Neil is a just regular guy, a bit self-absorbed and arrogant, which he admits, and which definitely comes across in the book.

On the positive side, I cannot help but like a guy who obviously loves his family and especially his quadriplegic son, Ben Young.  He refers to his kids by their first and last names which I find likable.  I also cannot help but to smile when 65-year-old Neil refers to his father as "Daddy."  That’s really nice.

On the negative side, he does not talk about his songs other than to say he wrote a bunch of them together when he was either stoned or drunk or both… and I expected some out-of-the-world vision from a guy who wrote and sings “Heart of Gold”, “Down by the River” , etc.   Nada...

While I still like Neil Young’s music after reading ‘Waging Heavy Peace’ it now has lost some of its… mystical qualities at least for me.  Except for the positive points that I noted above, for the most part I don’t like Neil Young the person.  Sad but True…

By:  Homeless with a Laptop, That is my Name

For Those Who Fail ... Yet Fight On

"All honor to him who shall win the prize" 
The world has cried for a thousand years; 

But to him who tries and who fails and dies, 
I give great honor and glory and tears. 

great is the hero who wins a name, 

But greater many and many a time 
Some pale-faced fellow who dies in shame, 

And lets God finish the thought sublime. 

And great is the man with a sword undrawn, 
And good is the man who refrains from wine; 

But the man who fails and yet fights on, 
Lo, he is the twin-born brother of mine! 

By:  Joaquin Miller 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. 

By:  Theodore Roosevelt

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Conquest of Paradise