Books – Page 40 – commonplacebook.com

Cat Haiku

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1996
Post category:Jokes Poems

Author Unknown

You never feed me.
Perhaps I’ll sleep on your face.
That will sure show you.

You must scratch me there!
Yes, above my tail!
Behold, elevator butt.

The rule for today
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.

In deep sleep hear sound
cat vomit hairball somewhere
will find in morning.

Grace personified.
I leap into the window.
I meant to do that.

Blur of motion, then-
silence, me, a paper bag.
What is so funny?

You’re always typing.
Well, let’s see you ignore my
sitting on your hands.

My small cardboard box.
You cannot see me if I
can just hide my head.

Terrible battle.
I fought for hours. Come and see!
What’s a ‘term paper’?

Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitoes
Fear vacuum cleaner

I want to be close
to you. Can I fit my head
inside your armpit?

Wanna go outside.
Oh, crap! Help! I got outside!
Let me back inside!

Oh no! Big One
has been trapped by newspaper!
Cat to the rescue!

Humans are so strange.
Mine lies still in bed, then screams
My claws are not that sharp.

Cats meow out of angst
"Thumbs! If only we had thumbs!
We could break so much!"

The Big Ones snore now
Every room is dark and cold
Time for "Cup Hockey"

We’re almost equals
I purr to show I love you
Want to smell my butt?

She Walks In Beauty

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1996
Post category:Poems

George Gordon, Lord Byron
From the Book: The Essential Byron

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 mellowed to that tender light
    Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
    Had half impaired 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!

Sonnett XLIII

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1996
Post category:Poems

Elizabeth Barrett Browning
From the Book: Sonnets from the Portuguese

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Unbosoming

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1996
Post category:Poems

Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper

From the Book: Chloe Plus Olivia

The love that breeds
In my heart for thee!
As the iris is full, brimful of seeds,
And all that it flowered for among the reeds
Is packed in a thousand vermilion-beads
That push, and riot, and squeeze, and clip,
Till they burst the sides of the silver scrip,
And at last we see
What the bloom, with its tremulous, bowery fold
Of zephyr-petal at heart did hold:
So my breast is rent
With the burthen and strain of its great content;
For the summer of fragrance and sighs is dead,
The harvest-secret is burning red,
And I would give thee, after my kind,
The final issues of heart and mind.

Annabel Lee

Post author:HFM
Post published:December 28, 1996
Post category:Poems

Edgar Allan Poe
From the Book: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love–
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me–
Yes!–that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out a cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we–
Of many far wiser than we–
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling–my darling–my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Subject: Re: The Vicarious Thrill Is Gone…

Post author:HFM
Post published:February 10, 1995
Post category:Books Gay Jokes

A funny post reprinted from the rec.arts.comics.misc newsgroup:

From: slieber@compuserve.com (Steve Lieber)

Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc

fiction, for me, provides a vicarious thrill. I assume the mantle of super-human being and in my mind i fly with the heros. but recently in a main stream comic book it is made all too clear that two of the male characters have more than friendly feelings for each another. and that is something i have no desire to experience, vicarious or no. i know in this age of acceptance i’m a caveman for saying so but it just ruins the comic for me. i wished mr. e had chosen not to express this lemming like opinion in the comic. comic book heros kick a**, they don’t suck it.

I’ve always loved reading this sort of thing. I can’t help it– ‘phobes crack me up. Whenever a gay character appears in a mainstream book you get eloquence like what mister p offers above, and it always seems to carry that familiar subtext. "I do not like reading about the homosexuals in the comics because they interfere with my enjoyment of the pictures of handsome, muscular men, flexing and posing in their tight, tight clothing and leather boots."