James Kavanaugh - There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves [1970]

There are men too gentle to live among wolves

Who prey upon them with IBM eyes

And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.

There are men to gentle for a savage world

Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween

And wonder if leaves will change their color soon.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves

Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws

And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain.

There are men to gentle for a corporate world

Who dream instead of candied apples and ferris wheels

And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves

Who devour them with eager appetite and search

For other men to prey upon and suck their childhood dry.

There are men too gentle for an accountant's world

Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass

And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.

There are men to gentle to live among wolves

Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove.

Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world

Unless they have a gentle one to love.

Robert Frost - Nothing Gold Can Stay [1923]

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

Langston Hughes - Juke Box Love Song

I could take the Harlem night

and wrap around you,

Take neon lights and make a crown,

Take Lenox Avenue busses,

Taxis, subways,

And for your love song tone their rumble down.

Take Harlem's heartbeat,

Make a drumbeat,

Put it on record, let it whirl,

And while we listen to it play,

Dance with you till day-

Dance with you, my sweet brown Harlem girl.

Emily Dickinson - #315 [1862]

He fumbles at your Soul

As Players of the Keys

Before they drop full Music on-

He stuns you by degrees-

Prepares your brittle Nature

For the Ethereal Blow

by fainter Hammers- further heard-

Then nearer- Then so slow

Your Breath has time to straighten-

Your Brain- to bubble Cool-

Deals- One- imperial- Thunderbolt-

That scalps your named Soul-

When Winds take Forests in their Paws-

The Universe- is still-

e. e. Cummings - maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Kahlil Gibran - Children [1923]

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Langston Hughes - Necessity

Work?

I don't have to work.

I don't have to do nothing

but eat, drink, stay black, and die.

This little old furnished room's

so small I can't whip a cat

without getting fur in my mouth

and my landlady's so old

her features is all run together

and God knows she sure can overcharge-

Which is why I reckon I does

have to work after all.

Emily Dickinson - #254

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

and never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of Me

Gene Lees - Sonnet

Music is a strange and useless thing.

It doesn't offer cover from the storm.

It doesn't (really) ease the sting

of living; nor nourish us, nor keep us warm.

And men expend their lives in search of sound,

learning how to juggle bits of noise,

and by their swift illusions to confound

the heart with fleeting and evasive joys.

Yet I am full of quaking gratitude

that this exalted folly still exists,

the in an age of cold computer mood,

a piper still can whistle in the mists.

His notes are pebbles falling into time.

How sweetly mad it is, and how sublime.