Quarter Mile

Past the busy sights of town
In the midst of dust and smoke
Come and ride
With me.

Octane burns inside your lungs
Headers rumble in your ears
Carburetors hiss
SS screams past.

Painted lady in her lane
Tires squeal and rubber burns
Mark your spot
And back.

Helmet strap against your jaw
Heartbeat rumbles in your chest
Lights flash down the pole
Red, red, red, green.

Heated rubber grabs the strip
Grip the wheel for thirteen ticks
Break the beam
And breathe.

Independence Day

Soft brown eyes staring
At fireworks exploding
In the dark sky
For our country.

Symbol of freedom,
Flowing red white and blue,
Star Spangled Banner,
America the Beautiful,
Yet no freedom for me
From thee.

Bright blue eyes teaching
Stories of serving
With those who fly
For our country

Symbol of freedom,
Flowing red white and blue,
Star Spangled Banner,
America the Beautiful,
Yet no freedom for me
From thee.

In memory today;
Independence Day.

Thalaba

How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven;
In full-orbed glory yonder moon devine
Rolls through the dark blue depths.
Beneath her steady ray
The desert-circle spreads,
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!

--- Samuel Taylor Coleridge ---

To__

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory--
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

---Percy Bysshe Shelley---

Memory, Hither Come

Memory, hither come,
And tune your merry notes:
And while upon the wind
Your music floats,
I'll pore upon the stream
Where sighing lovers dream,
And fish for fancies as they pass
Within the watery glass.

I'll drink of the clear stream,
And hear the linnet's song,
And there I'll lie and dream
The day along:
And when night comes, I'll go
To places fit for woe,
Walking along the darkened valley
With silent melancholy.

--- William Blake ---

Love's Philosophy

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion:
Nothing in the world is single:
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine?--

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another:
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

---Percy Bysshe Shelley---

Rain

A sad heart floats,
Solemnly on a cloud,
Drifting above the world
It had known.

Searching far and wide,
For the one thing
That would give it life,
It only found sorrow.

When the rains fall,
Lift your face to the sky,
And feel my tears
Upon your brow.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks,
And see the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies;
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair-lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy-buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may the move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shephard swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

---Christopher Marlowe---

Sweet stream, that winds through yonder glade,
Apt emblem of a virtuous maid--
Silent and chaste she steals along,
Far from the world's gay busy throng;
With gentle yet prevailing force,
Intent upon her destined course;
Graceful and useful all she does,
Blessing and blest wher'er she goes,
Pure bosom'd as that watery glass,
And heaven reflected in her face.

---William Cowper---

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in a sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

--Wordsworth--

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

---Lord Byron---

We are the music makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world forever, it seems.

---O'Shaugnessy---

And she dances with her shadow,
Staring out the window,
Silver moon, silhouette, shining in her eyes.
In her heart she knows that
He will never come back;
She dances with her shadow,
Alone again tonight.

---Blackhawk---