=)

I'm reading Shakespeare's The Tempest nowadays, and I guess tonight my inner poet wants to come out and play.

Here's some of the poems/acts I love. Hope those of you who read my blog will enjoy ;) They're pretty long... So I'll start with one of my absolute favourites, Report of Health by John Updike. It's simply so raw... So passionate.

Enjoy.

I am alone tonight.

The wrong I have done you

sits like a sore beneath my thumb,

burns like a boil on my heart's left side.

I am unwell.

My viscera, long clenched in love if you,

have undergone a detested relaxation.

There is, withing, a ghostly maze

of phantom tubes and nodules where

those citizens, our passions, flit; and here

like sunlight passing from a pattern of streets,

I feel your bright love leaving.

2

Another night. Today I am told,

dear friend, by another,

you seem happy and well.

Nothing could hurt me more.

How dare you be happy, you,

shaped so precisely for me,

my cup and my mirror -

how dare you disdain to betray,

by some disarray of your hair,

my being torn from you?

I would rather believe

that you knew your friend would come to me,

and so seemed well-"not a hair out of place"-

like an actress blindly hurling a pose

into the fascinated darkness.

As for me, you are still the eyes of the air.

I travel from point to point in your presence.

Each unattended gesture hopes to catch your eye.

3

I may not write again. My voice

goes nowhere. Dear friend,

don't let me heal. Don't

worry, I am well.

I am happy

to dwell in a world whose Hell I will:

the doorway hints at your ghost

and a tiger pounces on my heart;

the lilac bush is a devil

inviting me into your hair.

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I by Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day

I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

your hands the color of a savage harvest,

hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,

the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,

hunting for you, for your hot heart,

like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

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"Strange fits of passion have I known, and I will dare to tell,

But in the lover's ear alone, what once to me befell."

--William Wordsworth

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On death, by John Keats

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,

And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?

The transient pleasures as a vision seem,

And yet we think the greatest pain's to die.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,

And lead a life of woe, but not forsake

His rugged path; nor dare he view alone

His future doom which is but to awake.

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(Macbeth Act V, Scene V)

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

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Caliban, The Tempest Act III, Scene II

--Be not afraid; the isle is full of noises,

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments

Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices

That, if I then had waked after long sleep,

Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,

The clouds methought would open and show riches

Ready to drop upon me that, when I wak'd,

I cried to dream again.

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Lol... =X Got carried away. Gotta love Keats, Yeats, Wordsworth, Blake, Neruda and Shakespeare etc ;)

If you guys have got great poetry books or poems to introduce to me, do leave a message in my tagboard! I'm off to read again. 'Ta.

Quote of the night:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.