Temptation

Call yourself alive? Look, I promise you

that for the first time you'll feel your pores opening

like fish mouths, and you'll actually be able to hear

your blood surging through all those lanes,

and you'll feel light gliding across the cornea

like the train of a dress. For the first time

you'll be aware of gravity

like a thorn in your heel,

and your shoulder blades will ache for want of wings.

Call yourself alive? I promise you

you'll be deafened by dust falling on the furniture,

you'll feel your eyebrows turning to two gashes,

and every memory you have - will begin

at Genesis.

NINA CASSIAN (1924 - )

Warming Her Pearls

Next to my won skin, her pearls. My mistress

bids me wear them, warm them, until evening

when I'll brush her hari. At six, I place them 

round her cool, white throat. All day I think of her,

resting in the Yellow room contemplating silk

or taffeta, which grown tonight? She fans herself 

whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering

each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope.

She's beautiful. I dream about her

in my attic bed; picture her dancing

with tall men, puzzled by my faint persistent scent

beneath her French perfume, her milky stones.

I dust her shoulders with a rabbit's foot,

watch the soft blush seep through her skin

like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass 

my red lips part as though I want to speak.

Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see

her every movement in my head... Undressing,

taking of her jewels, her slim hand reaching

for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way

she always does... And I lie here awake,

knowing the pearls are cooling even now

in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night

I feel their absence and I burn

CAROL ANN DUFFY (1955 - )

A Nice Article about Love

I once had a friend who grew to be very close to me. Once when we were 

sitting at the edge of a swimming pool, she filled the palm of her hand with 

some water and held it before me, and said this:

"You see this water carefully contained on my hand? It symbolizes Love."

This was how I saw it: As long as you keep your hand caringly open and allow 

it to remain there, it will always be there. However, if you attempt to 

close your fingers round it and try to posses it, it will spill through the 

first cracks it finds.

This is the greatest mistake that people do when they meet love...they try 

to posses it, they  demand, they expect... and just like the water spilling 

out of your hand, love will retrieve from you . 

For love is meant to be free, you cannot change its nature. If there are 

people you love, allow them to be free beings.

Give and don't expect.

Advise, but don't order.

Ask, but never demand.

It might sound simple, but it is a lesson that may take a lifetime to truly 

practice. It is the secret to true love. To truly practice it, you must 

sincerely feel no expectations from those who you love, and yet an 

unconditional caring."

Passing thought... Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take; 

but by the moments that take our breath away.....

Life is beautiful!!!  Live it !!!

by SWAMI VIVEKANANDA 

Year On

I want you to feel

the unbearable lack of me.

I want your skin

to yearn for the soft lure of mine;

I want those hints of red

on your canvas

to deepen in passion for me:

carmine, buburgundy.

I want you to keep

stubbing your toe

on the memory of me;

I want your head to be dizzy

and your stomach in a spin;

I want you to hear my voice

in your ear, to touch your face

imagining it is my hand.

I want your body to shiver and quiver 

at the mere idea of mine.

I want you to feel as though 

life after me is dull, and pointless,

and very, very aggravating;

that with me you were lifted

on a current you waited all your life to find,

and had despaired of finding

as though you were wading

through a soggy swill of inanity and ugliness

every minute we are apart.

I want you to drive yourself crazy 

with the fantasy of me,

and how we will meet again, against all odds,

and there will be tears and flowers,

and the vast relief of not I,

but us.

I am haunting your dreams,

conducting these fevers

from a distance,

a distance that leaves me weeping,

and storming,

and bereft.

KATIE DONOVAN (1962 - )

To Fanny Brawne, 1819

I cannot exist without you - I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again - my life seems to stop there - I see no further. You have absorb'd me.

I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving... I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shudder'd at it - I shudder no more - I could be martyr'd for my religion - love is my religion - I could die for that - I could die for you. My creed is love and you are its only tenet - you have ravish'd me away by a power I cannot resist.

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821)