"What is an Epigram? A dwarfish whole,
Its body brevity, and wit its soul."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 buddy wrote:

yep. 100-fold

 Manbird wrote:
This is a better place whenever you rise to the occasion.

☮️

Rise

A fugue more powerful than deepening distance

Every mile tattooed with the beating of bone on skin

Every minute passing amplifies that carmine rhythm

The sound of a wind spreading gently over sky blue pain

Base violet rising beyond smoking sleeping graphite

I catch my breath with a cold air hook and exhale

Ashamed of my faded henna stains and simple iron filings

Still I light up and become sanguine and content

I feel my own red rising as sodium arc lamps drown

In the bluing of the soft blown sky in the sea-window

Above me and above the black people shaking seeds

Over cool clay and the brown people in the vineyards

Over shipyards reflecting tones of broken steel and grey

And spreading white blankets of warmth over graves

And stones where insects sleep until heat re-animates

I have brewed sumatra lintong and washed my face

The window opens wide my face is washed with light

The mint the golden poppies the cala lilies grow quickl

Breathing with me growing shadows as the day ignites

– Manbird 2015

Screw spring.
 I'm the only thing not blooming. 
The arrowhead plant, so carelessly plotted,
 is growing godammit. 
Even the jonquils, 
brought for one dinner, 
are not quite dead. 
Under the bed the dust is as thick
as wool on spring sheep, 
which are undoubtedly 
grazing where 
grass is growing 
at an enviable rate.

Screw spring. 
My boyfriend's taken
to getting up early. 
He goes out 
to see plants pushing their way 
out of the ground, 
and flowering, 
and sits by some chartreuse tree 
in the sun, breathing air
 as sweet as berry wine, 
watching girls pass. 
Their faces are rested 
from sleeping alone all winter. 

Screw spring. 
I wish it were winter, 
when the world's 
this one room. 
These walls, this bed 
do 
not 
grow.

William M. Hoffman

 SeriousLee wrote:

Shameless bump. Happy Spring!

The New Species - Voiceover Red Voters: A Case Study in Backward Evolution

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I waterd it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears:
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night.
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine.

And into my garden stole,
When the night had veild the pole;
In the morning glad I see;
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

William Blake

 Antigone wrote:
I was ready to post this, but thought I better check first. A flock of geese just flew overhead, heading south.

 oldviolin wrote:
I know. It's incredibly profound and spooky.

 Isabeau wrote:

It's a poem about the futility of trying to navigate the space between God and Godless without oxygen.

 oldviolin wrote:
Heavy heavy fuel.  

Kendrew Lassales

War Does Not Evolve

The Continuous Life  — excerpt

...

Explain that you live between two great darks, the first

With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest

Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur

Of hours and days, months and years, and believe

It has meaning, despite the occasional fear

You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing

To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,

That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,

A family album that fell from its own small matter

Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,

You don't really know. Say that each of you tries

To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear

The careless breathing of earth and feel its available

Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending

Small tremors of love through your brief,

Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond.

Mark Strand