“To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.” - Osho 1931-90

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A STAR DEEP IN THE MIND

Dejan Stojanovic b.1959

I see a new star on the horizon; 

It's not the Morning Star; 

It's a star without light.

This star without the light is the brightest

Because its light stays within. 

The biggest star doesn't take any space; 

It lives within, 

Feeds all other stars, all other matter. 

Without space, there is no time, 

Without time, there is no ageing, 

Without ageing, there is no death.

A star without light never dies; 

It cannot be seen in the outer space; 

It can only be sensed in the mind. 

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John Dryden

DREAMS

John Dryden 1631-1700

Dreams are but interludes which Fancy makes;

When monarch Reason sleeps, this mimic wakes:

Compounds a medley of disjointed things,

A mob of cobblers, and a court of kings:

Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad;

Both are the reasonable soul run mad;

And many monstrous forms in sleep we see,

That neither were, nor are, nor e'er can be.

Sometimes forgotten things long cast behind

Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind.

The nurse's legends are for truths received,

And the man dreams but what the boy believed.

Sometimes we but rehearse a former play,

The night restores our actions done by day;

As hounds in sleep will open for their prey.

In short, the farce of dreams is of a piece,

Chimeras all; and more absurd, or less. 

Dryden was  poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who was made England's first Poet Laureate. He became so prominent that the period in which he wrote became known as "The Age of Dryden." Walter Scott referred to him as "Glorious John."

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Henry David Thoreau

THE MOON NOW RISES TO HER ABSOLUTE RULE 

Henry David Thoreau 1817-62

The moon now rises to her absolute rule, 

And the husbandman and hunter 

Acknowledge her for their mistress. 

Asters and golden reign in the fields 

And the life everlasting withers not. 

The fields are reaped and shorn of their pride 

But an inward verdure still crowns them; 

The thistle scatters its down on the pool 

And yellow leaves clothe the river -

And nought disturbs the serious life of men. 

But behind the sheaves and under the sod 

There lurks a ripe fruit which the reapers have not gathered, 

The true harvest of the year - the boreal fruit 

Which it bears forever, 

With fondness annually watering and maturing it. 

But man never severs the stalk 

Which bears this palatable fruit.

Thoreau was an American essayist, poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, and historian. His philosophy of civil disobedience later influenced the political thoughts and actions of people like Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

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THOSE ANNUAL BILLS

Mark Twain 1835-1910 (Samuel Langhome Clemens)

These annual bills! these annual bills!
How many a song their discord trills
Of 'truck' consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
Since I was skinned by last year's lot!

Those joyous beans are passed away;
Those onions blithe, O where are they?
Once loved, lost, mourned-now vexing ills
Your shades troop back in annual bills!

And so 'twill be when I'm aground
These yearly duns will still go round,
While other bards, with frantic quills,
Shall damn and damn these annual bills!

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"Only as far as I reach can I grow / Only as far as I seek can I go / Only as deep as I look can I see / Only as much as I dream can I be" - Karen Raven

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POETRY TO PLEASE IS UPDATED EVERY FRIDAY

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