The Warning

Barthel Bruyn the Elder 
Vanitas

The Warning

For love – I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.
Love is dead in us
if we forget
the virtues of an amulet
and quick surprise.

~ Robert Creeley ~

Echoes and Memories

Philip Evergood  
Woman at the Piano

Echoes and Memories

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory-
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Between the Clock and the Bed

Edvard Munch 
Self Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed











Jasper Johns 
Between the Clock and the Bed

Let Me Grow Lovely

Joan Miro  Nude with Mirror

Let Me Grow Lovely

Let me grow lovely, growing old--
So many fine things do:
Laces, and ivory, and gold,
And silks need not be new;
And there is healing in old trees,
Old streets a glamour hold;
Why may not I, as well as these,
Grow lovely, growing old?

~ Karle Wilson Baker ~

I Am the People, the Mob

Francesco Guardi 
Nighttime Procession in Piazza San Marco, Venice

I Am the People, the Mob

I am the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.

Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?

I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.

I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.

Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.

When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.

The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

~ Carl Sandburg ~