Words Much Like Poetry

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. it was never my intent to give silence sovereignty, dominion over my kingdom hub. nor did I mean to gather self-pity and lay it about, a moat to the castle of my heart. I assigned no consequence, gave no thought to the betrayal my quiescence would become to those who had constructed— in dedicated manner— majestic tower rooms, placed at loving heights distinctly for my solace, if ever I had need of them. but know also, that I did not wish to place a strain upon the unstinting love proffered me— friendships nurtured through years that exist now only in memory— by tendering the account of my trials as they occurred. I thought my tragedies best told in the sullen aftermath, when the sound of their relation would have come across as nothing more than muted noises to ears that were ringing with the livid memories of my misery. on...

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance , 1841

“Dusk, is just an illusion, because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are; there cannot be one without the other, yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel, I remember wondering to be always together, yet forever apart?” ~ Unknown

"Love has no desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving." ~ Kahlil Gibran

"The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it. You and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough." ~ George Moore

"It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others.... One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." ~ W.E.B. DuBois, The Souls of Black Folk , 1903

"Evolution made civilization steward of this planet. A hundred thousand years later, the steward stood before evolution not helper but destroyer, not healer but parasite. So evolution withdrew its gift, passed civilization by, rescued the planet from intelligence and handed it to love." ~ Richard Bach

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. William Blake.

Failure is not falling down, but refusing to get up. An old Chinese saying.

"You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought..." ~ William Shakespeare There is nothing sweet or silent about my thoughts. They are as a cacophony of thunderous emotion which boom against the brick walls of hindrance and despondency that I've built in my wage against an uncertain destiny. Am I bound for the immortality that is akin to rapacious craving in my terminable coil? Or am I bound for dust and the ash that I am namesake? A forgotten form that will dwell in the tide of longing that for eons has swallowed whole those that do not ever manage more than to live. In my mind, I shine brighter than the nova sun. In reality, very few look beyond the sullen shell that carries inside it my luminous core.

"Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something, it makes me incapable of doing it. But when I believe I can, then I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn't have it in the beginning." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

"Someone may have stolen your dream when it was young and fresh and you were innocent. Anger is natural. Grief is appropriate. Healing is mandatory. Restoration is possible." ~ Jane Rubietta I stole away my own dreams with the mistakes that I made, but I am not uncommon in that respect. The majority of the women in my circle of friends are single moms, like myself, and I'm sure the world over knows the trials and tribulations of women as us very well. Forgive my anger, but what right does that then give a stranger to disparage me? I've done the best that I could with the resources available to me, longing for more, but never asking for it. Poverty is not an easy thing to overcome, though, and I tire of the struggle of redefining my station. I wish I could turn away from the world at times, bury myself in the hot sand and bask in that ceaseless warmth, but I can't. Who would take care of my children if I did? What a saving grace they are, little human forms wrapped...

"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." ~ Richard Wright, American Hunger , 1977

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." ~ Dr. Seuss

"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." ~ Thomas Sowell