The Road not Taken

by Robert Frost - 1916

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, 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 traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Reflections on Ice-Breaking

by Ogden Nash

Candy,
Is Dandy.
But liquor,
Is quicker.

Eldorado

by Edgar Allan Poe -1849

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight,
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of Eldorado.

But he grew old-
This knight so bold-
And o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like Eldorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow-
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be-
This land of Eldorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied-
"If you seek for Eldorado!"

Because I Could Not Stop For Death

by Emily Dickinson

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

I Have It On Good Authority

by Ogden Nash

There are two kings of people who blow through life like a breeze,
And one kind is gossipers, and the other kind is gossipees,
And they certainly annoy each other,
But they certainly enjoy each other,
Yes, they pretend to flout each other,
But they couldn't do without each other,

Because gossipers are lost without a thrill and a shock,
Because they like to sit in rocking chairs and gossip and rock and rock and gossip and rock,
And if the gossipees weren't there to give them a thrill and shock their life would be rocking and no gossip,
Which would be a flat as music without people named Sacha and Yehudi and Ossip,
While on the other hand everybody errs
If they think the gossipees could be happy without the gossipers,
Because you don't have to study under Freud or Adler or Coué,
To know that it isn't any fun being a roué if nobody notices that you are a roué,
And indeed connoisseurs agree
That even gossipers don't know anything about gossip until they have heard one gossipee gossiping about another gossipee.
Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach,
And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech,
Because suppose you eschew gossip and just say ,br> Mr. Smith is in love with his wife.
Why that disposes the Smiths as a topic of conversation for the rest of their life,
But suppose you say with a smile, that poor little Mrs. Smith thinks her husband is in love with her, he must be very clever,
Why then you can enjoyably talk about the Smiths forever.
So a lot of people go around determined not to hear and not to see and not to speak any evil,
And I say Pooh for them, are you a man or a mouse, are you a woman or a weevil?
And I also say Pooh for sweetness and light,
And if you want to get the most out of life, why the thing to do is to be a gossiper by day and gossipee by night.

Untitled

by Emily Dickinson

My life closed twice before its close--
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH

by Maya Angelou

We, this people on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through causal space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we discover
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseums
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign lands
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze
When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged may walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse
When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Not the Garden of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled in delicious color
By Western sunsets
Not the Danube flowing in its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fugi
Stretching to the rising sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world
When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade, the dagger
yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this moat of matter
in whose mouths abide cantankerous words
Which challenge our existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Can come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe
We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can tough with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils or divines
When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
And without crippling fear
When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonders of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

The Wise

by Countee Cullen

Dead men are wisest, for they know
How far the roots of flowers go,
How long a seed must rot to grow.

Dead men alone bear frost and rain
On throbless heart and heatless brain,
And feel no stir of joy or pain.

Dead men alone are satiate;
They sleep and dream and have no weight,
To curb their rest, of love or hate.

Strange, men should flee their company,
Or think me strange who long to be
Wrapped in their cool immunity.

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost - 1914

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say '.Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Just a Psychedelic Man

by Jarad Sneed

There was a man with psychedelic eyes
And at McDonald's he got psychedelic fries
Don't you think he knows exactly where he stands
He's forced to be the psychedelic man
And when he gets his psychedelic fight
He runs into the psychedelic night
And when people would tell him lots of lies
He could tell cause of his psychedelic eyes
Until he got a birthday surprise
His eyes were normal in disguise

The Litter Bug

by Jarad Sneed

The Litter Bug
is a nasty thug
while down the road he dashes
For on this road
he empties his load
of his miscellaneous trashes

A paper bag
a dirty rag
and a rusty broken fan
Two metal tongs
that all belong
inside the nearest trash can

Don't be a bug
or a nasty thug
and pick up his trash without fuss
Pass on these words
tell what you have heard
make it a better place for us

Impossible

by Jarad Sneed

How I long to hold you in my arms
To seduce you with my manly charms,
To feel your strong and loving embrace,
and trace the outline of your beautiful face.
If only I could hold you near,
Cherish you and bring you cheer.
To run my fingers through your hair,
to gently kiss you everywhere;
It's all a sweet dream that can't come true,
It's impossible for me to be with you.

Goldfish

by Jarad Sneed

What do goldfish do all day?
Do they ever play?
Why do they swim up and down?
Isn't there anything to be found?
Wouldn't being a fish be a bore?
Do they ever wish to soar?
Why do they wonder if they'll drown?
Are they happy in that slimy skin?
Do they wonder how to get out of this prison they're in?
Do they have a wife or mother?
Or do they ever call their brother?
Do they have a life to live?
Do they know how to forgive?
I would like to tell you something before I'm done:
A fish would answer these either "Yes" or "cause it's fun"

The Weirdom Wall

by Jarad Sneed

For many years
as you can see
a strict law remained
banning informality

It was to most
a fight no to be formal
a mission, a quest
just to be normal

You must wear a suit
but "we wanna wear jeans"
this law was right
by no means

So a vote was cast
and it was won
a legalized lunacy
the fight was done

A memorial was placed
it is a long wall
with many names on it
who participated in it all

My name is there
it has been since formality's fall
the memorial is now known as
The Weirdom Wall

Valentine