ShiningKnight

"Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely." said by the deen of business administration department of the university of applied sciences Northeast Lower Saxony, Lueneburg, Germany.

The Germans got their first gold medal yesterday. At least a beginning. Good Job

Notice me Take my hand Why are we Strangers when Our love is strong Why carry on without me? Everytime I try to fly I fall without my wings I feel so small I guess I need you baby And everytime I see you in my dreams I see your face, it's haunting me I guess I need you baby I make believe That you are here It's the only way I see clear What have I done You seem to move on easy And everytime I try to fly I fall without my wings I feel so small I guess I need you baby And everytime I see you in my dreams I see your face, you're haunting me I guess I need you baby I may have made it rain Please forgive me My weakness caused you pain And this song is my sorry Ohhhh At night I pray That soon your face Will fade away And everytime I try to fly I fall without my wings I feel so small I guess I need you baby And everytime I see you in my dreams I see your face, you're haunting me I guess I need you baby

I hope so, Brad. Although I must say I liked the hyperboards design a bit better and it's a pity LC got taken down, I had no chance to save a bit ... quite a few lyrics I posted there. forgive me, Jan Let's hope for the best.

... The small wonders of life. Nothing is funnier than the truth. Only in America.... Can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. Only in America...... are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink. Only in America...... do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front. Only in America...... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke. Only in America...... do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters. Only in America...... do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage. Only in America...... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place. Only in America...... do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight. Only in America...... do we use the word politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'. Only in America...... do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering. In case you needed further proof that the human race is doomed through stupidity, here are some actual label instructions on consumer goods: On Sears hairdryer: "Do not use while sleeping". [Gee, that's the only time I have to work on my hair] On a bag of Fritos: "You could be winner! No purchase necessary. Details inside". [Evidently, the shoplifter special] On a bar of Dial soap: "Directions: Use like regular soap." [And that would be how...?] On some Swanson frozen dinners: "Serving suggestions: Defrost." [but it's *just* a suggestion] On Tesco's Tiramisu dessert (printed on bottom of box): "Do not turn upside down". [Oops, too late!] On Marks & Spencer Bread Pudding: "Product will be hot after heating". [As sure as night follows the day . .. ..] On packaging for a Rowenta iron: "Do not iron clothes on body". [but wouldn't this save even more time?] On Boot's Children's Cough Medicine: "Do not drive a car or operate machinery after taking this medication". We could do a lot to reduce the rate of construction accidents if we could just get those 5-year-olds with head-colds off those forklifts.] On Nytol Sleep Aid: "Warning: May cause drowsiness" [One would hope] On most brands of Christmas lights: "For indoor or outdoor use only". [As opposed to what?] On a Japanese food processor: "Not to be used for the other use". . On Sainsbury's peanuts: "Warning: Contains nuts". [NEWS FLASH] On an American Airlines packet of nuts: "Instructions: open packet, eat nuts." [step 3: Fly Delta] On a child's Superman costume: Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly". I don't blame the company. I do blame parents for this one!

Where did you get this one from, movieguy? Sounds VERY familiar to me... Tongue Out

Weak Forces I enjoy an accumulating faith in weak forces – a weak faith, of course, easily shaken, but also easily regained – in what starts to drift: all the slow untrainings of the mind, the sift left of resolve sustained too long, the strange internal shift by which there's no knowing if this is the road taken or untaken. There are soft affinities, possibly electrical; lint-like congeries; moonlit hints; asymmetrical pink glowy spots that are not the defeat of something, I don't think. Kay Ryan The Yale Review Volume 92, Number 3 July 2004

The New Intelligence After knowledge extinguished the last of the beautiful fires our worship had failed to prolong, we walked back home through pedestrian daylight, to a residence humbler than the one left behind. A door without mystery, a room without theme. For the hour that we spend complacent at the window overlooking the garden, we observe an arrangement in rust and gray-green, a vagueness at the center whose slow, persistent movements some sentence might explain if we had time or strength for sentences. To admit that what falls falls solitarily, lost in the permanent dusk of the particular. That the mind that fear and disenchantment fattens comes to boss the world around it, ugly as the damp- fingered guest who rearranges the cheeses the minute the host turns to fix her a cocktail. A disease of the will, the way the false birch branches arch and interlace from which hands dangle the last leaf-parchments and a very large array of primitive bird-shapes. Their pasted feathers shake in the aftermath of the nothing we will ever be content to leave the way we found it. I love that about you. I love that when I call you on the long drab days practicality keeps one of us away from the other that I am calling a person so beautiful to me that she has seen my awkwardness on the actual sidewalk but she still answers anyway. I say that when I fell you fell beside me and the concrete refused to apologize. That a sparrow sat for a spell on the windowsill today to communicate the new intelligence. That the goal of objectivity depends upon one's faith in the accuracy of one's perceptions, which is to say a confidence in the purity of the perceiving instrument. I won't be dying after all, not now, but will keep on living dizzily hereafter in reality, half-deaf to reality, in the room perfumed by the fire that our inextinguishable will begins. Timothy Donnelly CROWD Volume 4, Issue 2 2004

First Night Welcome Circle Cave Canem, Summer 2002 I fear this circle – beauty, warmth, comfort – that it will end before I've filled myself. – a member of Group A It will not end. Your body is a living tree of fire: coal in your belly, flint and steel below, wildfires spark then flare inside your mind, while your eyes recall the light of vanished stars; woodsmoke lends its richness to your throat; and bright foliage bearing every kind of fruit branches to and from your glowing heart. How could you imagine yourself cold? Close your eyes, summon those tender ones who chewed for you the first words of this world, one by one, placed them on your tongue. They have never left, will never leave you. Be in the comfort of your strong, clean bones. It will not end. This circle is a magic bowl, formed from the richest clay that could be culled from the seven ancient rivers turtle dreamed. Care and fierce devotion wedged this clay. Justice found dead center on the wheel. The turning hand pulsed love for you and me, for her and her and him . . . Come into this circle, Shoulder your way in. Without hesitation, take what's yours. Open your hand, dip it down and down. Eat; there is nourishment for all and ample time. One and the same, our fullness and our hunger; do not be afraid, it will not end. Constance Merritt Prairie Schooner Volume 78, Number 2 Summer 2004

He Paves the Road with Iron Bars "Get into the railroad car," wrote Waldo Emerson in 1832, "and the Ideal Philosophy takes place at once. Matter seems compromised." Emerson was a bel inconnu who "snickered at embarrassing moments." He had "the mouse in his chest." It was TB. The doctor was called Dr. Frisbie. Waldo "had no taste for comedy," wrote Gay Wilson Allen in the biography, and disliked complex trope. In Rome, he thought Pope Gregory XVI was "millinery and imbecility." Nature grew slowly out of letter and ser- mon and jour- nal, as when he saw "a trail of glowing cinder beside the track; the hissing steam made the traveler stand back." Passing freight cars full of timber "darted by like trout." Current history, art history, and historiography address material culture and see lies and myths, "objects and stories" in a thing such as a tea-kettle, which by contrast is also for Waldo Emerson a loco- motive. Where he wrote, "Hitch your wagon to a star," "wagon" may have meant "railway car" (OED 5b), while "trees and men whiz by you as fast as the leaves of a dictionary." Harriet Martineau wrote of Waldo, "In coaches or steamboats or any where else that he saw people of colour ill-used, he did what he could and said what he thought." Yet Duane Coltharp calls Emerson's train "a celebration of capitalist power." This detail can be found through libarts.wsu .edu /English/ Archive/Journals/ESQ /Index.hotmail. I sat in my auditor's seat listening to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Cather- ine Corman, and Jennifer Roberts holding forth on background to all this. I did the reading. ("Objects and stories" above is Ulrich's coining.) Waldo had a "bias toward the concrete," wrote Robert D. Richardson, Jr., in the biography; in the subject's words, the "din and craft of the street." In Liverpool, he "went to the railroad and saw Rocket and Goliath and Pluto and Firefly, the vulcanian generation," he said in Journal Q (1832). In this nation, where whistles soon blew twice a day for Waltham and for Boston, the first engine names were Best Friend, West Point, and E. L. Miller, although the cowcatcher patent, #8996, wasn't until 1852. As it were a house, a canal, a statue, a picture, here in America, the railroad creates "an American sentiment," Waldo wrote; the solid enough ground of Nature — we can't get out of it — is stuff: "He paves the road with iron bars"; but this material, or Commodity, alone is "mean and squalid"; while "the mind is a steam-shop where power is generated no matter for what uses." And, wrote Lee Rust Brown, "The transparency can see through the object to a whole of which the thing is a fragment," as Carlyle was shown the railway cars: rolling stock: flatbeds, passengers, cabooses — flanged vehicles along a stream of worker song all day "for the sugar in my tay" by the destitute. "These are our poems," Carlyle said. Indeed by 1849 Waldo under duress of writing lecture and essay himself surmised he had on the terrain of Nature become a train: "I am a literary runner and Lyceum Express." Caroline Knox He Paves the Road With Iron Bars Verse Press In line 29, the phrase, "objects and stories" is part of the subtitle of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's book The Age of Homespun (New York, 2001). Sam Knox provided a midrash on Commodity.

His Heart His heart keeps him awake while he's asleep. He listens to his heart while he falls asleep in bed. His artificial heart gives him insomnia. As long as I can hear the sound, I know I'm here. His heart keeps him alive while he's asleep. My heart helps me to sleep while I'm alive. Oh, patient, this Valentine is for you. I had no choice, I knew that I was dying. We are trying to survive. We are standing on the shoulders of the makers of the heart while we lie on our back in bed. They walk with their hearts on their sleeves and their noses to the grindstone. He listens to his heart while he falls asleep at night. Oh, Valentine, this contraption is for you, device of the scared, the sacred heart. It feels heavy to me — it makes a constant whir which keeps me awake when I'm trying to get to sleep. It has no heartbeat, only this constant whir. Several lines are quoted from an interview with Robert Tools, first recipient of the AbioCor artificial heart (Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times, August 22, 2001; A1, A16)

Returning Home Late Sunday Night Pale bulb. High sun. At Friday noon The porch lamp seemed a minor waste, But in the intervening days A darkness has replaced My bright backyard. The weed-cracked drive Advances into nothingness. It's queer, perhaps too simple, how, Returning home on Sunday night, That light burns like a stroke of genius now, Elucidating moths, a wicker chair, The gate that bears a jaw of shadowed fangs, And a spider's needlework in which The small, shriveled skeletons of flies Decay. Like props abandoned from a play, Two unread papers languish in the grass. Gravel. Latch. Hinge and lock. Each noise Grows amplified. And suddenly it seems Not just a weekend but a decade lost. There is the flavor of frost, a cloud-scrubbed moon, The rush of something dreadful yet to come, Not sleet nor snowflake on the mounting wind, But soon. Daniel Anderson The Yale Review Volume 92, Number 3 July 2004

Trilobite in the Wenlock Shales When the kingfisher flitted Under the hazels I entered again into boyhood Over a hurrying water. The church clock dropped the quarters nearby And from a little school Children hallooed like enchanted animals But I was watching a water that shipped the wild apples With all the time in the world Patient as a fisher bird In the hazel light to learn to be a finder Of life, its mark, on a black stone Opened like a butterfly, a soul that water, Swaling and swaling, had let be seen. David Constantine Poetry London Number 47 Spriing 2004

Overlay I was tired of the shouting and the celery, the ignitions and navels and telephones. I moved to a country where everything happened abstractly. I had heard about this place in some translated poems: a country filled with suffering and death and hope and politics, and minds to ponder them constantly. But I was shocked by the new place, which proved to have many actual things: mating turtles, good cheap bread, homeless four-year-olds walking the streets, a museum filled with gold objects worth more than all the governments of South America, and clouds that offered fog four months per year, though never rain. I learned that the translators were not there, but back in my own country amid sofas and taxis and loud music and slaughtered chickens, wishing for the misery and chance this other country's poets might provide by turning dusty shoes to sorrow, potatoes to faith, loud music to notes that would lay over ours — doubling our worlds or canceling them out. Stephen Corey Mid-American Review Volume XXIV, Number 2

The Moon Speaks of the Imposition of Morals In the beginning they were pebbles wedged within thin shoes, the distraction of flint to hinder the mind from the radiance of what men would one day call the natural world. At other times they came as gadflies presiding over the salt of human effort and as crickets or crows or thunder that spoke the great vowels of the separation of man and god. Later men began to embrace the beauty of the whip, the beauty of the curve of a naked arm raised against arced sky, fallen slap of leather and the roselike scent emanating each dusk from the pale, blistered skins and rotten backs of saints. But in the end it was language that mastered the soul. The establishment of words as truth, as tenable fact, heard first within the soft pall of mid-night, susurrations of a flinching heart. Hailey Leithauser Antioch Review Volume 62, Number 3 Summer 2004

The Winter Visitor There's something living underneath our floor. We aren't sure what it is, or if it wants to scratch its way up to where we are. We drown it out sometimes. Sometimes we can't. But nights, up from the floorboards, in the dark it starts again, the rough, irregular thump and rasp — the creature hard at work in some crevice, god knows, of the old house. In some dark place the mind is loathe to venture, it comes and goes without any permit. And that its force cannot consider us, is wholly ignorant of who we are, seems monstrous in its total independence. It is not trapped: It cannot be let out. Tess Taylor 2003 Morton Marr Poetry Prize Southwest Review Volume 89, Number 1

This "Keep this," my father writes. "It's the last card you'll get from me." I have a collection – from Christmas, Easter, my summer birthday. He empties his house, gives furniture to strangers. "Take this," he says, offering me frozen food that must keep two hundred miles. He stuffs suits in my car, fills the front seat with shoes. "Wear this," he says, meaning old ties and a sweatshirt abandoned years ago. He's proud to show two bare rooms, a garage without tools. The newspaper passes in the carrier's sack; magazines expire. Behind us, the sun slides to memory. The shadows we cast slip into our shoes. "I'm ready for this," he says, but doesn't follow me to the driveway. As if he means me to see how everything will look without him, he's vanished when I reach my car. Gary Fincke Prairie Schooner Volume 78, Number 2 Summer 2004

The Eulogy Roughly the size of a grain of rice, the scar is barely visible now. Touching it brings back my mother's mouth saying nothing before I left that evening and my sister's saying "lemon juice" when I returned. She was up, not waiting, watching TV. I sliced a lemon and rubbed its juice into the ink stamped on my hand at the first of a string of bars. Fifteen years gone, I'd been more guest than family tagging along with cousins — my first time ever bar-hopping in Honolulu. Unwilling to offend with my "good English," I'd mostly listened, nodded and sipped as they drank, and we made small talk and made our money talk, one-upping each other by flashing bills for the next round. At the Korean bar, when conversation flagged, we sang karaoke. Half of me wishes I'd gotten wasted with them. And the part of me struggling to stay awake wonders what made me say yes in the first place. At the kitchen sink, I'd traded lemon juice first for soap, then for soap and the light scraping of my thumbnail, then thumbnail and running water, then soap and a nylon scouring pad. Afterwards, with my sister, I sat in the dark till the movie ended. The next morning I dressed for the funeral, where because not one among the 500 gathered could speak as a friend, on behalf of the family, my mother had asked me to speak. And simply because I could I spoke of my grandmother's life and read a few poems. The spot I'd rubbed raw glistened and stung like flesh under a freshly broken blister. Debra Kang Dean Precipitates BOA Editions, Ltd.

Living Cloisters They raise themselves around us, sudden shelters within the larger outpour, courtyards sprung from currents of a brighter force, palmful of another's hand, voice rung down the spine, stringing archways within a space that shapes nothing but its own dimensions, a rhythm without song, a corrugated darkness hewn to colonnades and bells by our names, meals, momentary vows, sanctums opening around a fountain, its waters illuminated like figurated calligraphy in a root, arterial language. Megan Harlan Beloit Poetry Journal Volume 54, Number 4 Summer 2004

Y'all ready? Can't hear you! (ooh) What you want (ooh) Baby, I got (ooh) What you need (ooh) Do you know I got it? (ooh) All I'm asking for (ooh) Is respect (Just a little bit) Hey (Just a little bit) Respect (Just a little bit) (Just a little bit) (ooh) I ain't gonna do you wrong (ooh) While you're gone (ooh) I ain't gonna do you wrong (ooh) 'Cause I don't wanna (ooh) All I'm asking for (ooh) Is respect (Just a little bit) Baby (Just a little bit) Respect (Just a little bit) (Just a little bit) (ooh) I'm about to give you (ooh) All my money (ooh) But all I'm asking (ooh) In return, honey (ooh) Is to give me (ooh) My propers When you get home (re re re re re re re 'spect) Baby When you get home (Just a little bit) Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah (Just a little bit) instrumental (ooh) Ooh, your kisses (ooh) Sweeter than honey (ooh) But guess what (ooh) So is my money (ooh) All I want you to do (ooh) for me Is give it to me when you get home Yeah (re re re re re re re 'spect) When you get home When you get home (Just a little bit) Yeah Eh (Just a little bit) I said R-E-S-P-E-C-T Find out what it means to me R-E-S-P-E-C-T Take care, TCB Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me) Respect (sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me) I said: Show me (just a little bit) A little respect (just a little bit) I ain't lyin' (re re re re re re re 'spect) I ain't cryin' (just a little bit) You're runnin' out of foolin' (just a little bit) And I ain't lyin' (just a little bit) Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me respect) When you come home (just a little bit) Or you might walk in (respect, just a little bit) And find out I'm gone (re re re re re re re 'spect) I got to have (just a little bit) A little respect (just a little bit) I got to have (just a little bit) A little respect (just a little bit) It's your turn (Just a little bit) I said R-E-S-P-E-C-T Your turn here we go with me R-E-S-P-E-C-T Alright now come on party Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, respect Just a little bit Just a little bit re, re, re, re, re, re, re, 'spect Just a little bit Just a little bit Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me, respect Just a little bit Just a little bit re, re, re, re, re, re, re,re 'spect Just a little bit Just a little bit RESPECT Come on girls

All my life I've been waiting For you to bring a fairy tale my way Been living in a fantasy without meaning It's not okay I don't feel safe Left broken empty in despair Wanna breath can't find air Thought you were sent from up above But you and me never had love So much more I have to say Help me find a way And I wonder if you know How it really feels To be left outside alone When it's cold out here Well maybe you should know Just how it feels To be left outside alone To be left outside alone All my life I've been waiting For you to bring a fairytale my way Been living in a fantasy without meaning It's not okay I don't feel safe I need to pray Why do you play me like a game? Always someone else to blame Careless, helpless little man Someday you might understand There's not much more to say But I hope you find a way Still I wonder if you know How it really feels To be left outside alone When it's cold out here Well maybe you should know Just how it feels To be left outside alone To be left outside alone I'll tell you All my life I've been waiting For you to bring a fairytale my way Been living in a fantasy without meaning It's not okay I don't feel safe I need to pray And I wonder if you know How it really feels To be left outside alone When it's cold out here Well maybe you should know Just how it feels To be left outside alone To be left outside alone All my life I've been waiting For you to bring a fairytale my way Been living in a fantasy without meaning It's not okay I don't feel safe I need to pray

WHEN YOU KISS ME Written by Twain/Lange This could be it, I think I'm in love It's love this time It just seems to fit, I think I'm in love This love is mine I can see you with me when I'm older All my lonely night are finally over You took the weight of the world off my shoulders (the world just goes away) Chorus: Oh, when you kiss me I know you miss me -- and when you're with me The world just goes away The way you hold me The way you show me that you adore me -- oh, when you kiss me Oh, yeah You are the one, I think I'm in love Life has begun I can see the two of us together I know I'm gonna be with you forever Love couldn't be any better Repeat Chorus [instrumental Solo] I can see you with me when I'm older All my lonely nights are finally over You took the weight of the world off my shoulders (the world just goes away) Repeat Chorus And when you kiss me I know you miss me Oh, the world just goes away When you kiss me : :

"Thank You Baby! (For Makin' Someday Come So Soon)" Written by Twain/Lange Oh, Thank You baby for lovin' me like you do I didn't like datin' -- and trying to find someone I gave up waitin' -- for love to come along There had to be someway -- I knew I'd find it someday Chorus: Yeah, Thank You baby! For makin' someday come so soon Yeah, Thank You baby! For lovin' me the way you do So many numbers -- so many guys to call Is it any wonder -- I got nowhere at all Oh, well it had to be someway (it had to be someway) I knew I'd find it someday Repeat Chorus Thank You baby (check it out) Instrumental Solo Oh, Uh, uh, uh, yeah There had to be someway -- I knew I'd find it someday Repeat Chorus (Thank You baby) Thank You baby! (Thank You baby) For lovin' me the way, me the way you do Baby someway, someday, somewhere Yeah, yeah Oh, Thank You baby! For lovin' me like you do Oh, Thank You baby :blink:

KA-CHING! Written by Twain/Lange We live in a greedy little world -- that teaches every little boy and girl To earn as much as they can possibly -- then turn around and Spend it foolishly We've created us a credit card mess We spend the money that we don't possess Our religion is to go and blow it all So it's shoppin' every Sunday at the mall All we ever want is more A lot more than we had before So take me to the nearest store Chorus: Can you hear it ring It makes you wanna sing It's such a beautiful thing -- Ka-ching! Lots of diamond rings The happiness it brings You'll live like a king With lots of money and things When you're broke go and get a loan Take out another mortgage on your home Consolidate so you can afford To go and spend some more when you get bored All we ever want is more A lot more than we had before So take me to the nearest store Repeat Chorus Let's swing Dig deeper in your pocket Oh, yeah, ha Come on I know you've got it Dig deeper in your wallet Oh All we ever want is more A lot more than we had before So take me to the nearest store Repeat Chorus Can you hear it ring It makes you wanna sing You'll live like a king With lots of money and things Ka-ching!

IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I'M BREATHING Written by Twain/Lange Hope life's been good to you since you've been gone I'm doin' fine now -- I've finally moved on It's not so bad -- I'm not that sad I'm not surprised just how well I survived I'm over the worst, and I feel so alive I can't complain -- I'm free again Chorus: And it only hurts when I'm breathing My heart only breaks when it's beating My dreams only die when I'm dreaming So, I hold my breath -- to forget Don't think I'm lyin' 'round cryin' at night There's no need to worry, I'm really all right I've never looked back -- as a matter of fact Repeat Chorus It only hurts when I breathe Mmm, no, I've never looked back -- as a matter fact Repeat Chorus Hurts when I'm breathing Breaks when it's beating Die when I'm dreaming It only hurts when I breathe EX