Is anyone here?

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today!
I wish, I wish he'd stay away!
--Hughes Mearns

I'm not.

Any comments from the ghosts in the crowd? Let's see some e-mule spirit!
Les

I'm nobody! Who are you?
by Emily Dickinson

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary to be somebody!
How public like a frog
To tell one's name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

E. E. Cummings

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Les

Good post, Les!

The ED poem posted by Glenda reminds me of the dialogue between two men in a bar in an old Doonesbury cartoon:
"You're someone, aren't you?"
"No."
"Sorry, I thought you were someone."
"I am thinking of getting an agent."

I be here laddie!

~Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to the light.~

"Show me a hero and I shall write you a tragedy."

I LOVE YOU! (God does too.)

The House with Nobody in It
by Joyce Kilmer

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

Les

Nobody - Sylvia
Sittin' in a restaurant she walked by
I seemed to recall that certain look in your eye
I asked "who's that?" you said with a smile:
"Oh it's Nobody... Nobody."

Well maybe that explains the last two weeks
You call me up, dead on your feet
Working late again, I ask who with
You say "Nobody... oh Nobody."

Well your Nobody called today
She hung up when I asked her name
Well I wonder does she think she's being clever? (clever...ooh ooh)
You say Nobody's after you
The fact is what you say is true
But I can love you like Nobody can... even better.

Late last night we went for a ride
You were miles away I asked "who's on your mind?"
You said, "Nobody... Nobody. Why do you ask?"
Oh, her again, I could have told you that.

We went back home got ready for bed
I said to myself I've got one shot left
You're still mine and I won't stand in line
Behind Nobody... oh Nobody!

Well your Nobody called today
She hung up when I asked her name
Well I wonder does she think she's being clever? (clever...ooh ooh)
You say Nobody's after you
The fact is what you say is true
But I can love you like Nobody can... even better.

RADIOHEAD

Lyrics:

Anyone can play guitar

destiny, destiny protect me from the world
destiny, hold my hand protect me from the world
here we are with our running and confusion
and i don't see no confusion anywhere

and if the worm does turn
and if london burns i'll be standing on the beach with my guitar
i wanna be in a band when i get to heaven
anyone can play guitar
and they won't be a nothing anymore

grow my hair, grow my hair
i am jim morrison
grow my hair
i wanna be wanna be wanna be jim morrison
here we are with our running and confusion
and i don't see no confusion anywhere

and if the world does turn
and if london burns i'll be standing on the beach with my guitar
i wanna be in a band when i get to heaven
anyone can play guitar
and they won't be a nothing anymore

Les

Where, exactly, is here? I might be here, but then I might not. I think I may be confused.

Frank Zappa

from Help I'm a Rock

It can't happen here
It can't happen here
I'm telling you, my dear
That it can't happen here
Because I been checkin' it out, baby
I checked it out a couple a times, hmmmmmmmm
And I'm telling you
It can't happen here
Oh darling, it's important that you believe me
(Bop bop bop bop)
That it can't happen here


Les

I'm still here

You haven't looked at me that way in years
You dreamed me up and left me here
How long was I dreaming for
What was it you wanted me for?

You haven't looked at me that way in years
Your watch has stopped and the pond is clear
Someone turn the lights back off
I'll love you til all time is gone

You haven't looked at me that way in years
But I'm still here


Tom Waits

Are we there yet? (said in a whiny, five year-old kicking the back of the front seat kind of voice)

pam

Dirge: Written November 1808
by Anna Lætitia Barbauld

1 Pure spirit! O where art thou now!
2 O whisper to my soul!
3 O let some soothing thought of thee,
4 The bitter grief control!

5 'Tis not for thee the tears I shed,
6 Thy sufferings now are o'er;
7 The sea is calm, the tempest past,
8 On that eternal shore.

9 No more the storms that wrecked thy peace
10 Shall tear that gentle breast;
11 Nor Summer's rage, nor Winter's cold,
12 Thy poor, poor frame molest.

13 Thy peace is sealed, thy rest is sure,
14 My sorrows are to come;
15 Awhile I weep and linger here,
16 Then follow to the tomb.

17 And is the awful veil withdrawn,
18 That shrouds from mortal eyes,
19 In deep impenetrable gloom,
20 The secrets of the skies?

21 O, in some dream of visioned bliss,
22 Some trance of rapture, show
23 Where, on the bosom of thy God,
24 Thou rest'st from human woe!

25 Thence may thy pure devotion's flame
26 On me, on me descend;
27 To me thy strong aspiring hopes,
28 They faith, thy fervours lend.

29 Let these my lonely path illume,
30 And teach my weakened mind
31 To welcome all that's left of good,
32 To all that's lost resigned.

33 Farewell! With honour, peace, and love,
34 Be thy dear memory blest!
35 Thou hast no tears for me to shed,
36 When I too am at rest.

Les

Consolation
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Belovèds, tender looks to bring
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind:
But if it were not so—if I could find
No love in all this world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring
Where 'dust to dust' the love from life disjoin'd;
And if, before those sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)
Crying 'Where are ye, O my loved and loving?'—
I know a voice would sound, 'Daughter, I AM.
Can I suffice for Heaven and not for earth?'

Les

Are we there yet?

Don't MAKE me turn this phorum around!

Hugh, if you turn it around, we'll have to use mirrors!

A Hand-Mirror
by Walt Whitman


HOLD it up sternly! See this it sends back! (Who is it? Is it you?)
Outside fair costume--within ashes and filth,
No more a flashing eye--no more a sonorous voice or springy step;
Now some slave's eye, voice, hands, step,
A drunkard's breath, unwholesome eater's face, venerealee's flesh,
Lungs rotting away piecemeal, stomach sour and cankerous,
Joints rheumatic, bowels clogged with abomination,
Blood circulating dark and poisonous streams,
Words babble, hearing and touch callous,
No brain, no heart left--no magnetism of sex; 10
Such, from one look in this looking-glass ere you go hence,
Such a result so soon--and from such a beginning!


Les

Moments of Vision
by Thomas Hardy

That mirror
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?

That mirror
Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror
And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
Until we start?

That mirror
Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror
Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?

That mirror
Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror
May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it--where?

Les

This Day, O Soul
by Walt Whitman

THIS day, O Soul, I give you a wondrous mirror;
Long in the dark, in tarnish and cloud it lay--But the cloud has
pass'd, and the tarnish gone;
... Behold, O Soul! it is now a clean and bright mirror,
Faithfully showing you all the things of the world.


pam

mirror
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike .
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

-- Sylvia Plath

Is there anybody out there?

Pink Floyd

"I "Love Summer more than I hate Winter"

looks like we're all here, together, until the light goes out and on again.

Any poems you'd like to share
About anyone being there?

Les

Tell everyone
by Sappho

Tell everyone
now, today, I shall
sing beautifully for
my friends' pleasure


Les

We Have Been Here Before

I think I remember this moorland,
The tower on the tip of the tor;
I feel in the distance another existence;
I think I have been here before.

And I think you were sitting beside me
In a fold in the face of the fell;
For Time at its work'll go round in a circle,
And what is befalling, befell.

"I have been here before!" I asserted,
In a nook on a neck of the Nile.
I once in a crisis was punished by Isis,
And you smiled. I remember your smile.

I had the same sense of persistence
On the site of the seat of the Sioux;
I heard in the teepee the sound of a sleepy
Pleistocene grunt. It was you.

The past made a promise, before it
Began to begin to begone.
This limited gamut brings you again. Damn it,
How long has this got to go on?

-- Morris Bishop (1893-1973)

I am a nobody, and nobody is perfect; therefore, I am perfect.

There are many variations on the slogan:

BE HERE NOW.

A friend of mine has a bumper-sticker that says:

I'D RATHER
BE HERE NOW

Here's one for those of us who'd rather NOT be here:

Tewkesbury Road
by John Masefield

IT is good to be out on the road, and going one knows not where,
Going through meadow and village, one knows not whither or why;
Through the grey light drift of the dust, in the keen cool rush of the air,
Under the flying white clouds, and the broad blue lift of the sky.

And to halt at the chattering brook, in a tall green fern at the brink
Where the harebell grows, and the gorse, and the foxgloves purple and white;
Where the shifty-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink
When the stars are mellow and large at the coming on of the night.

O, to feel the beat of the rain, and the homely smell of the earth,
Is a tune for the blood to jig to, and joy past power of words;
And the blessed green comely meadows are all a-ripple with mirth
At the noise of the lambs at play and the dear wild cry of the birds

Les

Les

How can we know if we're really here? How do we know what is real?

"If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain."
~ Morpheus, "The Matrix"

Alrighty then, how about some existential poetry:

Alone

For me another night is here,
Filled with loneliness, isolation and fear.
Throughout the day,
I wished to leave the fray;
Pack my soul and fly away.
But alas: I'm still here;
I want to go, but don't know where.
My convictions have waned,
My heart is tired;
And my meaning has all...
But expired.

Simon Moses

How do I know you all exist as separate people, ilza, the Marians, Hugh, Les, glenda, Pam.......... You could all be the little person in the back of my monitor who makes the letters appear on the screen. I'm sure I'm not you, but you could all be one.

The "little person in the back of [your] monitor" is obviously VERY well read and has a great sense of humor. So how much does it matter whether we are We?

Well, I'd prefer it if you weren't the person inside the supermarket checkout who reads the bar codes, goes Bleep and displays the prices. That one has no sense of humour, and asks if I'm old enough to buy glue, scissors or beer.

Scissors, hmmm? Must be a real cut-up that one.


This poem was posted in the Sacramento newspaper.

Night Scissors
Lynn Smith

why do crows
at random
scissor jagged caws at three a.m.
through misting globes
on poles aglow
and asphalt swishing
black and white


Les

Glue? I'd say that it has a sense of humor, if somewhat twisted, if it asks if you're old enough to buy glue. What exactly are you doing with the glue? I'd put 911 on speed dial and keep the number for the Poison Control Center handy, if I were you.

GLUE BOTTLE

A cheetah can run 60 miles an hour,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

A man can be put into space,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

A cure was found for polio,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

Tony can make a float,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

The grass is turning green which means spring,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

The weather is warm, it's time for summer,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

The leaves are falling, its time for autumn,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

The snow is fallin, it's time for winter,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

100 years pass, the glue is useless,
but Pat still can't open the glue bottle.

The bottle disintegrates,
but Pat can't open the glue bottle.

©copyright Ian Ashley

Kids don't huff glue in Appalachia any more?

From Charles Stuart Calverley's poem 'Beer'-

81 What would that lone and labouring soul have given,
82 At that soft moment for a pewter pot!
83 How had the mists that dimmed his eye been riven,
84 And Lycidas and sorrow all forgot!
85 If his own grandmother had died unshriven,
86 In two short seconds he'd have recked it not;
87 Such power hath Beer. The heart which Grief hath cankered
88 Hath one unfailing remedy -- the Tankard.

[www.emule.com] />
pam

I liked the Nietsche and God exchange! The graffiti master at Debevic's must be a woman, or a very bitter transvestite.


Les

Its a nanny state here in Britain, you might sniff the glue, you might drink the booze and you have to be 16 before you can buy a manicure set or a herb chopper in case you cut someone's head off. People like chefs or foresters have been arrested for carrying the tools of their trade in their car. And woe betide you if a burgler hurts himself in your house, he'll get you arrested for the injury and loss of illegal earnings.

Bumpo