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Moment of Youth Mantra

I am superstition like a black cat walking over cracked pavement and discarded four-leaf clovers under a ladder. There's a hat on my bed, another thing gone missing from my head.
Like a Jackson Pollack in white-lined notebook pages my words splatter
As if it didn't matter if they rhymed.
Or if the sounds and measure don't measure up to the beat you wanted to march to in that other guys eardrums. I can see my self clearer through shards of broken mirror
cuz I collect bad karma and save it for a hot sunny day just to cool off and stop sweating the small stuff
i think i've had enough, but whats one more? Here's to a world on fire and a frozen core.

I'm bad luck like an opened umbrella in the living room, i'm just dying to see what happens.
I wouldn't mind a little curse like the black cat in the last verse because the last seven years really bored me, a torturous fortune may relieve me, or at least grasp my attention.
I'm thinkin Everlasting truth is pretty sweet like a gobstopper and everlasting youth is always fleeting and unattainable like a shared vision. but we can still at least share our dreams with other numbered sheep while they creep through your doors and come in like Morrison, articulate yet dissociative, shed the asterisks and we'll associate ourselves with youthful slang like pound signs and ampersands, and we might get pounded, but even if they have the guns we still have those numbers and we're taking over like my favorite song bleeding through the radio as im speeding by a cop at 90 miles an hour on a deserted road in a deserted town and he doesn't notice because i don't want to be seen right now
I just need to be heard

I am solitude like solitary confinement, confined to a prison of my mind
Undoubtedly uncertain about the underlying factors of my cathartic lethargy. and my endless energy when head hits pillow and lingering languor when the wandering soles of my shoes touch the earth. the sun embraces another full rotation with unwavering indifference to the new day. Alone in a crowd gathered to show solidarity I salute to the flag I can't stand for, but stand under, in solitude. Summoned by summer to become one unified under the setting sun bringing the day to a brilliant and bloody end behind open eyes and closed doors. doorbells of perception ringing freedom in our forefathers ears. hoping that the hand on the other side isn't clenched in a fist like that last time. but it wouldn't be the first time.

I am revolution like the sun in orbit, circling my brain like a vulture. my insides turned out but held together by the centrifugal motion of my mind, going around and coming back around like a law, like a revolving door, back to the start of the circle. that which has no beginning or end, no corners or splits along the path. I am revolution like a revolver, revolt for the cause not against the stigma of standing stagnant, not against myself but with myself, for myself, not by myself but by my side, and by my brothers side do i spark revolution. revolting like a open wound my blood has been shed on my front step, the front lines lie in my front yard, my world is under siege and my rebel brothers and sisters await the resolution of evolution beyond revolution and absolution, and my constitution is strong, my will will endure. our will must endure.

I am youth, I am ideals at a time when the mind first develops the ability to develop ideals.
Every song speaks directly to me, about me. Every poem, every line invokes thoughts, promotes the ideals i have become. The worthy and unworthy. the meek shall inherit the mire man made, multiplied by multiplex motifs. moved by momentary matters, mindful of mundane madness. Marinated in the muck and molasses of monotonous malaise. Martyrs of mothers' misguided masochism. mirror images of moments past. Many miss the mark, misrepresented and misunderstood. Myopia materializes memories of mistakes made on mystic Monday mornings, malnourished and mutilated. Motivated by motionless morbidity. Moved by mortality, maneuvered and made moot. Passed over individually by those seeking to maintain the masses. Misinformed by massive media moguls and micromanaging missionaries. A myriad of mighty militant misfits, a million minutemen march on Metropolis. Masters of the meek must abdicate the authority, yield to the majority. I am multitudes of metaphors like a simile smiling smelling of sensimillia. Forgone conclusions, forgotten solutions, chosen paths laid by best intentions yet preventing invention, intervening introspection. Limitless options reduce limitations, increase expectations, subdue elevation. I am youth, thoughtful and distraught, spritely and tender, fearless and flag-less, no will to surrender.

poem by Les Wordsmore
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Tripoli

One to ten of you lesser men—these are the odds we crave:
For the ring of the sword, at the cry to board, is a song that befits the brave.
Board and burn, that ye well may learn, how American tars atone:
Borrow ye may, but there dawns a day when we come to claim our own!

Tripolitan pirate and Turkish thief, they had harried her there on the sunken reef,
Plundered, and robbed, and stripped her crew, for such was Tripoli law:
Lowered her barred and star-set flag, and run to her peak their pirate rag,
For the shaming of William Bainbridge and the fame of Jussuf Bashaw!
They had towed the wreck to the haven’s neck, and under the castle’s guns,
And bound and jailed all them that sailed as the Philadelphia’s sons:
So the frigate lay in Tripoli Bay, by the Molehead batteries pinned,
And along her flank, in a watchful rank, the guardian gunboats grinned!

Out of the Gulf of Sidra’s gales, a brig and a ketch, with flattened sails,
Slid toward Tripoli harbor as the sun ahead went down,
And, by the forts of Jussuf Bashaw pinned like prey in a panther’s paw,
The captured frigate at anchor saw, in the curve of the pirate town.
And one of the pair had the peaceful air of a merchantman landward led,
And one of the two a Maltese crew, in fezzes of flaming red;

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poem by Guy Wetmore Carryl from The Garden of Years and Other Poems (1902)
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The Exile of the Gael

IT is sweet to rejoice for a day,—
For a day that is reached at last!
It is well for wanderers in new lands,
Slow climbers toward a lofty mountain pass,
Yearning with hearts and eyes strained ever upward,
To pause, and rest, on the summit,—
To stand between two limitless outlooks,—
Behind them, a winding path through familiar pains and ventures;
Before them, the streams unbridged and the vales untraveled.

What shall they do nobler than mark their passage,
With kindly hearts, mayhap for kindred to follow?
What shall they do wiser than pile a cairn
With stones from the wayside, that their tracks and names
Be not blown from the hills like sand, and their story be lost forever?

'Hither,' the cairn shall tell, 'Hither they came and rested!'
'Whither?' the searcher shall ask, with questioning eyes on their future.

Hither and Whither! O Maker of Nations! Hither and Whither the sea speaks,

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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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Through Liberty To Light

Fixed is my Faith, the lingering dawn despite,
That still we move through Liberty to Light.
The Human Tragedy.

When God out of chaos primeval divided the day from the night,
And moved on the face of the waters, ordaining,
``Let there be Light!''
And commanded the creatures that perish to people wave, wood, and wind,
Then fashioned Man after His image, and gave him the godlike mind,
He said, ``I, the Lord, now make you lord of the earth, and the air, and sea,
And I lend you My will to work My will, and now behold! you are free!

``Free to be strong or feeble, free to be false or true,
To withhold you from evil-doing, or, what I shall ban, to do;
Free to be crooked and craven, or fearless, and frank, and brave,
To love as yourself your brother, or make him your bond and slave;
To hallow the world with freedom, or fetter your fellow-men;
But, as you shall do, at the Judgment Day My
Justice will judge you then.''

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poem by Alfred Austin
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On Board the Cumberland

Stand to your guns, men!" Morris cried.
Small need to pass the word;
Our men at quarters ranged themselves,
Before the drum was heard.

And then began the sailors' jests:
"What thing is that, I say?"
"A long-shore meeting-house adrift
Is standing down the bay! "

A frown came over Morris' face;
The strange, dark craft he knew;
"That is the iron Merrimac,
Manned by a Rebel crew.

"So shot your guns, and point them straight;
Before this day goes by,
We'll try of what her metal's made."
A cheer was our reply.

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poem by George H. Boker (1862)
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The Silent Victors

MAY 30, 1878,

Dying for victory, cheer on cheer
Thundered on his eager ear.
--CHARLES L. HOLSTEIN.

I

Deep, tender, firm and true, the Nation's heart
Throbs for her gallant heroes passed away,
Who in grim Battle's drama played their part,
And slumber here to-day.--

Warm hearts that beat their lives out at the shrine
Of Freedom, while our country held its breath
As brave battalions wheeled themselves in line
And marched upon their death:

When Freedom's Flag, its natal wounds scarce healed,
Was torn from peaceful winds and flung again

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poem by James Whitcomb Riley
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A Corymbus For Autumn

Hearken my chant, 'tis
As a Bacchante's,
A grape-spurt, a vine-splash, a tossed tress, flown vaunt 'tis!
Suffer my singing,
Gipsy of Seasons, ere thou go winging;
Ere Winter throws
His slaking snows
In thy feasting-flagon's impurpurate glows!
The sopped sun--toper as ever drank hard -
Stares foolish, hazed,
Rubicund, dazed,
Totty with thine October tankard.
Tanned maiden! with cheeks like apples russet,
And breast a brown agaric faint-flushing at tip,
And a mouth too red for the moon to buss it,
But her cheek unvow its vestalship;
Thy mists enclip
Her steel-clear circuit illuminous,
Until it crust
Rubiginous

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poem by Francis Thompson
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The New Year

THE wave is breaking on the shore,
The echo fading from the chime;
Again the shadow moveth o'er
The dial-plate of time!
O seer-seen Angel! waiting now
With weary feet on sea and shore,
Impatient for the last dread vow
That time shall be no more!
Once more across thy sleepless eye
The semblance of a smile has passed:
The year departing leaves more nigh
Time's fearfullest and last.
Oh, in that dying year hath been
The sum of all since time began;
The birth and death, the joy and pain,
Of Nature and of Man.
Spring, with her change of sun and shower,
And streams released from Winter's chain,
And bursting bud, and opening flower,
And greenly growing grain;

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Blue-Flag In The Bog

God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise and fall
All day long above the fire!"—
Red with heat was every wall,
Rough with heat was every wire—

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poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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Ultima Verba (My Last Word)

... Quand même grandirait l'abjection publique
A ce point d'adorer l'exécrable trompeur ;
Quand même l'Angleterre et même l'Amérique
Diraient à l'exilé : - Va-t'en ! nous avons peur !

Quand même nous serions comme la feuille morte,
Quand, pour plaire à César, on nous renîrait tous ;
Quand le proscrit devrait s'enfuir de porte en porte,
Aux hommes déchiré comme un haillon aux clous ;

Quand le désert, où Dieu contre l'homme proteste,
Bannirait les bannis, chasserait les chassés ;
Quand même, infâme aussi, lâche comme le reste,
Le tombeau jetterait dehors les trépassés ;

Je ne fléchirai pas ! Sans plainte dans la bouche,
Calme, le deuil au coeur, dédaignant le troupeau,
Je vous embrasserai dans mon exil farouche,
Patrie, ô mon autel ! Liberté, mon drapeau !

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poem by Victor Hugo
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