[Whatever Became of Me]
by Richard Shelton
because the moon comes
straight up from the mouuntain
like the hidden possibility of madness
escaped for everyone to see
and the wandering stars
who are said to rule our lives
wander on in darkness
I feel a need to lie down among the stones
and caress any of them
who have survived
I always looked for what I wanted
in the wrong places
until the desert
taught me to want what I found
now on summer nights
I sit in the garden
where it is hot and dry
and young stones grow like weeds
when the moon turns
a mad white face upon me
having nothing to offer I hold up
my empty hands
it is so easy to be happy
this morning a woodpecker woke me
practicing on his drum
and all afternoon cicadas rang
like the telephones I haven't answered
I am what has become of me
a man who lives in the desert
where coyotes wail more skillfully
than hired mourners
at the funeral of an Eastern king
where every night the stars
whose light I have not earned
and will never deserve
return as if to keep a promise
and even the rain
when it falls is coming home
 | Shimizu
Member Since: 2007-08-20 08:24:28
Active playing time: 514 Days, 4 Hours, 19 Minutes
Member Number: 0000002813
Character Experience: 55,319,368
Character Level: 86
Highest Skill: Cooking Level 105
Nationality: Erfdarian
Guild: Border Patrol
Guild Position: Leader
|
Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
- The Buddha
Now Playing : Rift : Sparkwing Server (Guardian)
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From the essays of Ran Prieur
www.ranprieur.com
Humans became fire,
burned the earth down. Without fuel,
what will we become?
– Ran Prieur
~
Cooking ~ I check my xp here, pay no attention.
| Rank | Player | Level | Exp | Gained Today (Since Yesterday) |
|---|
| 1 | Chey [X] | 108 | 139,426,629 | +8,864 (+24,448) |
| 2 | Shimizu [I10Mafia] | 105 | 125,949,704 | +20,700 (+44,500) |
| 3 | kenraz [Alive!] | 95 | 82,256,596 | |
| 4 | Sister Mary J [Sin Inc.] | 87 | 58,339,110 | +29,500 (+29,500) |
| 5 | Dya [X] | 83 | 49,667,084 | (+48,130) |
15118 people came to visit Shim.
My conscience speaks to me in letters...
You should take better care of yourself,
you know I worry for you, Par Avion
snail mail never was your taste, scratching
laboriously under restraint for what ideas
may take wildly unhinged flight at the time:
so vulnerable, yet so aloof you are.
It's an introspective shell you've built,
hoping only for those beautiful people
to see through to your fragile interior;
Alma was right: you never say how much
a friend means, how important they are
to your sense of security in this world.
Blossoms grow and bloom, only to drop
if left unnourished and deprived of light:
that watering-can you hold is unused
most of the time; and you broke, yet
you hid it well, after coming to that point
when nothing holds the same vibrancy.
Taste becomes artificial, other senses
drown in rolling seas of loss and longing;
and in that eternal flight of sparrows
left to their own device, I can only say
you need to write me back : to tell me
everything you need to heal yourself.
I asked for strength to carry on with burnished shoulders
in this ruby silence, which follows tears given only
to a corpus of letters quenched in fire:
the prose-touch of lips on coverlets, asking
for this season to roll over and over
Like this soil I hold in my hands, these velvet follicles,
dust-strewn over empty fields of reason, no quarter:
this beached love, bleached sun of silvered
promises, curled hollows with your name
undone button by button .
