Voices in the Night

By Dan Hoeweler
Voices, voices in the night
I hear you speaking
About my plight
“Going to have fun
My puppet my toy
As I steal your thoughts
As I play with your head
I’m eager to feed
As you lie in bed”
Voices please
Stay away
I don’t want trouble
This very day
“I am here
To play with your soul
As you listen to me
You are under my control
My voices come
From within
The device I implanted
Under your skin”
Voices, voices
Threatening me
I beg and plea
Let me be
“An idea can begin
A deadly game
Of cat and mouse
That is insane
Think hard now
At the thought
In your head
Now run for your life
Or just be dead”
Voices, voices
Don’t unleash the beasts
That chase after me
“It’s too late my friend
They are after you
You’d better hurry
They know where you are
So run along
Or you won’t get far

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

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.
2. The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost (1874-1963)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, 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 travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Monogram – Odysseus Elytis

III
In this way I speak of you and of me. 
Because I love you and in love I know
always to approach like the full moon
toward your tiny feet under the endless covers.
I know to pluck the jasmine
And to take you asleep and show you
Moondrenched paths and the sea’s hidden caves
and enchanted trees, silvered by spiders. 

The waves know you, 

how you caress, how you kiss, 
how you whisper your ‘what’ and your ‘oh?’
around the neck of the bay, 
we are forever the light and the shadow. 

You ever the little star and I ever the dark ship,
you ever the harbour and I the strong-side lantern, 
the damp sea wall and the glimmer above the oars, 
high up in the house, the climbing vine, 
the bound roses and the water growing cold, 
you the marble statue and I its lengthening shadow, 
You the tilting shutter, I the air that forces it open, 
because I love you and I love you, 
you ever the coin and I the worship that cashes it in: 

So much is night, the cry in the wind, 

so much the dewdrop in the air, the stillness, 
the tyrannous sea all round, 
the starry vaults of sky, 
so much for your Lilliputian breath

that I have nothing to call

in these four walls, the ceiling, the floor, 
but you, and my voice strikes me, 
I catch your scent and men begin to rage
Because mankind cannot stand the untested
Or the foreign, and it’s early, do you hear me, 
It’s still early in this world my love

It’s early to speak of you and of me.

Love by Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us,

what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you

and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world

like a wheat-coloured jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
Elizabeth Barrett Browning - 1806-1861

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
When Great Trees Fallby Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.

When great trees fall

in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

When great souls die,

the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

Great souls die and

our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof
dark, cold
caves.

And when great souls die,

after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
 BECAUSE YOU LOVED ME
I only sing because you loved me
in the past years.
And in sun, in summer’s prediction
and in rain and snow,
I only sing because you loved me.

Only because you held me in your arms

one night and you kissed my lips,
only for this I’m beautiful as wide open lily
and I still have a shiver in my soul,
only because you held me in your arms.

Only because your eyes looked at me

with the soul in the glance,
proudly I dressed the supreme
crown of my existence,
only because your eyes looked at me.

Only because as I was passing you noticed me

and from your glance I saw to pass
my lissome shadow as a dream
to play, to suffer,
only because as I was passing you noticed me

Because you called me shyly

and you reached after my hand
and you had in your eyes the blurring
– a complete love,
because you called me shyly.

Because, it liked only to you

that’s why my passing remained beautiful.
It was like you were following me where I was
as if you were passing somewhere close to me.
Because it liked only to you.
 I was born only because you loved me,
my life was given for this.
In the graceless, unfulfilled life
my life was fulfilled.
I was born only because you loved me.

Only for your unique love

dawn gave to my hands roses.
So that I light your way for a moment
night filled my eyes with stars,
only for your unique love.

Only because you loved me so well

I lived in order to increase
your dreams, beautiful man that you set
and thus sweetly I die
only because you loved me so well.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert ... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
No Leaders Please – By Charles Bukowski

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,

change your tone and shape so often that they can
never
categorize you.

reinvigorate yourself and

accept what is
but only on the terms that you have invented
and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must;

it is your life and
its history
and the present
belong only to
you.
 If  RUDYARD KIPLING

(‘Brother Square-Toes’—Rewards and Fairies)

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
    But make allowance for their doubting too;   
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
    And treat those two impostors just the same;   
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
    And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
    If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   
    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!