I have always had affection for poetry...more specifically poetry on the shorter side so I thought that I might share a couple here and see how it goes. Langston Hughes is one of my favorite poets and I wanted to include one here so the first two come from poets of the Harlem Renaissance.
Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
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Claude McKay (1891-1948)
Heritage
Now the dead past seems vividly alive,
And in this shining moment I can trace,
Down through the vista of the vanished years,
Your faun-like form, your fond elusive face.
And suddenly some secret spring's released,
And unawares a riddle is revealed,
And I can read like large, black-lettered print,
What seemed before a thing forever sealed.
I know the magic word, the graceful thought,
The song that fills me in my lucid hours,
The spirit's wine that thrills my body through,
And makes me music-drunk, are yours, all yours.
I cannot praise, for you have passed from praise,
I have no tinted thoughts to paint you true;
But I can feel and I can write the word;
The best of me is but the least of you.
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Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.
~ohn Adams
Once again the Bush Administration is worse than I had imagined, even though I thought I had already taken account of the fact that the Bush administration is invariably worse than I can imagine.
~Brad DeLong
You're just babbling incoherently.
~C. Montgomery Burns