May 2012
“My amorous passions were reborn
At the moment I most wanted them gone
Time had washed away desires
The seasons had extinguished the fires
But sparks came alight, and longevity’s efforts were outdone.” —
At the moment I most wanted them gone
Time had washed away desires
The seasons had extinguished the fires
But sparks came alight, and longevity’s efforts were outdone.” —
April 2012
Elegy
I bid April a sweet farewell
A lover I only had for 30 days
She threw me into the winds of verse
And I thus penned odes celebrating her gaze
Such was the challenge I accepted from her
To prove what ever worth I was, I acquiesced to this whim
But this surrender had its frequent frustrations
And the occasions numbered pass one when my love grew dim
But this was an amity I could not have done without
Its benefits to my spirit are hardly expressible in note
They were of such forms as to wholly better my soul
Passions and blessings which only her affections could dote
But as it is said, all things come to an end
A most despairing falling of the curtain
And so I lose a part of me that was her sole creation
One that could only draw air while It her warmth sustain
Hence it is gone forever, along with her smiles
I thus recall the days of rain when in bed we laid
Frolicking through perfumed sheets
While reciting amorous verses we made
So, tenderest April, I once again bid adieu
For though you brought me feelings of pain and bliss
I cherish all we suffered and loved
My darling so rest in peace.
“Reading and sauntering and lounging and dosing, which I call thinking, is my supreme Happiness.”
—David Hume
Listen
One Sweet Day, Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men
“How does one become such wonderful friends and kindred souls with a person they’ve never once met, with an ocean between to boot? I don’t know. What matters is, I formed such a bond.”
—
Girl X
The evening breeze was cool as it whizzed past
I sat aboard the train ever nearing her station
Such moments are always ones of blissful despair
Fearful of all that could go awry, yet seized by anticipation
Our meeting was cordial: salutations and a hug
And we boarded the coming carriage
A beautiful city beckoned us to visit
Thus to it we merrily rode, speeding past the foliage
What lovely hues and romantic tones a city assumes at night
The beautiful shadows and myriad glows wonderfully illumine
Her face, her limbs, her pretty frame draped in a splendid apparel
All the while as I watched her move I deeply wished she was mine.
“A dictatorship without a dictator……….A dictatorship with term limits.”
—Evan Osnos (The New Yorker) and Fareed Zakaria (CNN) on China’s political system.
“There are some truths that cease to be so once uttered.”
—
Sometimes, it is not until a man is standing on the very precipice of his own existence and staring just over the edge of the cliff that is his own death, that he find himself at his most enlightened. The clarity can be stark; for suddenly, every query he ever sought, even if still devoid of answers, nonetheless becomes meaningful in some way. Such is perhaps the final illumination before unending darkness. And it might simply be so because he reaches peace with not just himself but those he has injured.
“If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.”
—Epicurus
“I exhaled and felt tremors of
Despair depart from my aching frame
The lungs were free from heavy breaths
Of thoughts too dark to bear.
But this respite was brief, for the air that
Broke the pieces of happiness was one
Badly needed to go on living, and I thus
Inhaled again; not just sustenance
But the ingredients that result in
A dish of slow and unyielding pain.” —
Despair depart from my aching frame
The lungs were free from heavy breaths
Of thoughts too dark to bear.
But this respite was brief, for the air that
Broke the pieces of happiness was one
Badly needed to go on living, and I thus
Inhaled again; not just sustenance
But the ingredients that result in
A dish of slow and unyielding pain.” —
“Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein is at once a treatise on the possible dangers of man’s scientific advancements (and in this present epoch for instance, the horrible specter of nuclear warfare and annihilation is with us), and a meditation on what it means to be human - our growth and understandings of our fellow creatures and our environments; but I also gather from it, a discourse on the theological arguments of god and his creation that is humankind.”
—
