My Name

I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind. 

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps it was raining very hard. 

That is my name. 

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,””—and you had to do something else. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps it was a game that you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window. 

That is my name. 

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened. 

That is my name. 

Or you heard someone calling from a great distance. Their voice was almost an echo. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps you were lying in bed, almost ready to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a joke unto yourself, a good way to end the day. 

That is my name. 

Or you were eating something good and for a second forgot what you were eating, but still went on, knowing it was good. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire tolled like a bell inside the stove 

That is my name. 

Or you felt bad when she said that thing to you. She could have told it to someone else: Somebody who was more familiar with her problems. 

That is my name. 

Perhaps the trout swam in the pool but the river was only eight inches wide and the moon shone on IDEATH and the watermelon fields glowed out of proportion, dark and the moon seemed to rise from every plant. 

That is my name. 

And I wish Margaret would leave me alone. 

Composed by Richard Brautigan; copied, pasted and posted, with love, of course, by Homeless with a Laptop, That is my name.

My Name

I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,””—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game that you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.
Or you heard someone calling from a great distance. Their voice was almost an echo.
That is my name.
Perhaps you were lying in bed, almost ready to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a joke unto yourself, a good way to end the day.
That is my name.
Or you were eating something good and for a second forgot what you were eating, but still went on, knowing it was good.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire tolled like a bell inside the stove
That is my name.
Or you felt bad when she said that thing to you. She could have told it to someone else: Somebody who was more familiar with her problems.
That is my name.
Perhaps the trout swam in the pool but the river was only eight inches wide and the moon shone on IDEATH and the watermelon fields glowed out of proportion, dark and the moon seemed to rise from every plant.
That is my name.
And I wish Margaret would leave me alone.

Composed by Richard Brautigan; copied, pasted and posted, with love, of course, by Homeless with a Laptop, That is my name.

We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are...

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,

By this still hearth, among these barren crags,

Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole

Unequal laws unto a savage race,

That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink

Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy'd

Greatly, have suffer'd greatly, both with those

That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when

Thro' scudding drifts the rainy Hyades

Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;

For always roaming with a hungry heart

Much have I seen and known; cities of men

And manners, climates, councils, governments,

Myself not least, but honour'd of them all;

And drunk delight of battle with my peers,

Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades

For ever and forever when I move.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

As tho' to breathe were life! Life piled on life

Were all too little, and of one to me

Little remains: but every hour is saved

From that eternal silence, something more,

A bringer of new things; and vile it were

For some three suns to store and hoard myself,

And this gray spirit yearning in desire

To follow knowledge like a sinking star,

Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

         This is my son, mine own Telemachus,

To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle,—

Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil

This labour, by slow prudence to make mild

A rugged people, and thro' soft degrees

Subdue them to the useful and the good.

Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere

Of common duties, decent not to fail

In offices of tenderness, and pay

Meet adoration to my household gods,

When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

         There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:

There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,

Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—

That ever with a frolic welcome took

The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed

Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:

The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,

'T is not too late to seek a newer world.

Push off, and sitting well in order smite

The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds

To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths

Of all the western stars, until I die.

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,

And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

 

By:  Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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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

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

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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

‘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

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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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Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя

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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Бездомные с ноутбуком, это мое имя

Conquest of Paradise

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

By:  Maya Angelou

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My Name

 I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.

 Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.

 Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.

 Perhaps it was a game that you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.

 Perhaps you stared into a river. There was somebody near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.
Or you heard someone calling from a great distance. Their voice was almost an echo. 
That is my name.

 Perhaps you were lying in bed, almost ready to go to sleep and you laughed at something, a joke unto yourself, a good way to end the day.
That is my name.

 Or you were eating something good and for a second forgot what you were eating, but still went on, knowing it was good.
That is my name.

Perhaps it was around midnight and the fire tolled like a bell inside the stove
That is my name.

 Or you felt bad when she said that thing to you. She could have told it to someone else: Somebody who was more familiar with her problems.
That is my name.

 Perhaps the trout swam in the pool but the river was only eight inches wide and the moon shone on IDEATH and the watermelon fields glowed out of proportion, dark and the moon seemed to rise from every plant.
That is my name.
And I wish Margaret would leave me alone.

 by: Richard Brautigan. That is my name

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