a turquoise flower

Defeated

When the last fight is lost, the last sword broken;
The last call sounded, the last order spoken;
When from the field where braver hearts lie sleeping,
Faint, and athirst, and blinded, I come creeping,
With not one waving shred of palm to bring you,
With not one splendid battle-song to sing you,
O Love, in my dishonor and defeat,
Your measureless compassion will be sweet.

Sophia Jewett

From: poetryfoundation.org
----------------------------------------

She Put on Her Lipstick in the Dark

I really did meet a blind girl in Paris once.
It was in the garden of a museum,
Where I saw her touching the statues.
She had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.

It was in the garden of the museum.
I told her I was a thief disguised as a guard.
She had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.
She told me she was a student from Grenoble.

I told her I was not a thief disguised as a guard.
We had coffee at the little commissary.
She said she had time till her train to Grenoble.
We talked about our supreme belief in art.

We had coffee at the little commissary,
Then sat on a bench near the foundry.
We talked about our supreme belief in art.
She leaned her head upon my chest.

We kissed on a bench near the foundry.
I closed my eyes when no one was watching.
She leaned her head upon my chest.
The museum was closing. It was time to part.

I really did meet a blind girl in Paris once.
I never saw her again and she never saw me.
In a garden she touched the statues.
She put on her lipstick in the dark.

I close my eyes when no one is watching.
She had brown hair and an aquamarine scarf.
The museum was closing. It was time to part.
I never saw her again and she never saw me.

Stuart Dischell

From: www.theatlantic.com

-------------------------------------------

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,
Known by the knoll,
Next to the robin
In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,
Bedecked with thee,
Nature forswears
Antiquity.

Emily Dickinson

From: Poems of Emily Dickinson selected by Helen Plotz

-------------------

Fantasia

The old grand piano-
no one here can play it
or one can, but not well.
She's very shy.

Once I returned early and heard inside
a faltering little spray of notes.
But that was meant for her own soul
like a secret between sisters.

I coughed a little outside the door.
She pretended to be dusting.
When she ran the rag hard
over the treble keys

they yelped in pain.

Leonard Nathan

From: Pocket Poems selected by Paul B. Janeczko

------------------------

Paris, After

Helen, why have you come? To hear your name
Possess the harbor like a hymn again?
Your ships are ages gone, nothing's the same:
The seas stand empty of our gods and men.
You wear the easy gown I favored most;
See there, my blood yet clings at breast and thigh-
O, that my wild blood were alone the cost
Of all we set in motion, you and I!
Ten years your lover, I will tell you this:
You loved your legend only. And when soot
Was all that loomed at Troy, and the shore's hiss
The one sane sound, fields smoking to the root,
You took the morning tide, sailing apart,
Resting your case on a blind poet's heart.

Moore Moran

From: poemtree.com

----------------------------------

So, I'm really ecstatic about this Star Wars story I'm writing. It's a prompt response to the theme 'song' at the_circlet, except I'm 1,592 words (and that's a LOT for me to write in a mere week) into the story, and the theme hasn't shown up yet. I'm kinda worried, but not really. I'm thinking of how to tie in the song theme at the end, so hopefully it'll all get worked out in the end. *crosses fingers* (However, if it doesn't, then I'll just start writing something new for the theme.)

I'm just SO happy because it's the kind of story, that as a Padme/Anakin shipper, I'd like to read. And I've managed, somehow, to include Obi-Wan and Bail Organa, which also makes me happy because they're awesome characters. Y/Y? The only thing is I've had to be vague about somethings (particularly the main plot which inspired me), but hopefully the vagueness won't hurt the story?

My muse has been exceptionally good to me this week. I will hopefully be able to finish it all up and post it during the weekend.

Anyway, just wanted to document this rare occurrence of where a story actually goes the way I plan, and makes me all giddy just thinking about it. (Who knows when it'll happen again...)
------

Remembering

Soft grey ghosts crawl up my sleeve
to peer into my eyes
while I within deny their threats
and answer them with lies.

Mushlike memories perform
a ritual on my lips
I lie in stolid hopelessness
and they lay my soul in strips.

Maya Angelou

From: Pocket Poems selected by Paul B. Janeczko
--------------------------

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five-pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

II
Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?"
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-Tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.

III
"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
You ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Edward Lear

From: poetryfoundation.org
-----------------------------------------

The Sleeper

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!-and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

Oh, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully-so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged pannels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls
Of her grand family funerals-

Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portals she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Edgar Allan Poe

From: poetryfoundation.org

--------------------------------------------------

Eros

Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;
Yea, and that standest in thy youth
An image of eternal Truth,
With thy exuberant flesh so fair,
That only Pheidias might compare,
Ere from his chaste marmoreal form
Time had decayed the colours warm;
Like to his gods in thy proud dress,
Thy starry sheen of nakedness.

Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen'd smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence.

O king of joy, what is thy thought?
I dream thou knowest it is nought,
And wouldst in darkness come, but thou
Makest the light where'er thou go.
Ah yet no victim of thy grace,
None who e'er long'd for thy embrace,
Hath cared to look upon thy face.

Robert Bridges

From poetryfoundation.org
----------------------------

We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.

Emily Dickinson

From: Poems of Emily Dickinson selected by Helen Plotz

--------------------------------------------------