She enjoys the latent power of her own hands; she knows she can always stop in time. It excites and gratifies her to be able to do this, go to the edge and almost jump. (There's something else, too. The boys, any boys, any mouth and pair of arms, contain a possibility; some quality she can only guess at, some hope.)

Life Before Man by Margaret Atwood

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/05/17.html

latitudinarian: having or expressing broad and tolerant views.

The windows, burned by the sun, shone like shields. The smell of glue and felt-tip pens turned his head hazy, his tongue floated in his mouth. He watched the scraggy elm outside waving it's bony branches backwards and forwards until he was stunned. The fur-lined drone of a faraway voice hummed through the heat, filtering into his blood, buzzing up and down his bones. This was school. Like being put to death: a lethal experiment dose.

&.

She moves away. "Spaz." and the sun lands in his face. He feels her body falling next to his. The air feels cooler in spite of the glare. He has her smile, though, he has held it in his mind, trapped it under glass so he can look at it any time.

&.

As soon as the neck was broken Sankey loosened the rabbit's body between his fingers. Once they were limp he stroked them tenderly down their long backs, like he was easing out their souls. Death is always a surprise, even when you see it coming.

--
All from "Cryers Hill" by Kitty Aldridge. :)

Work and boredom.- Looking for work in order to be paid: in civilized countries today almost all men are at one in doing that. For all of them work is a means and not an end in itself. Hence they are not very refined in their choice of work, if only it pays well. But there are, if only rarely, men who would rather perish than work without any pleasure in their work. They are choosy, hard to satisfy, and do not care for ample rewards, if the work itself is not the reward of rewards. Artists and contemplative men of all kinds belong to this rare breed, but so do even those men of leisure who spend their lives hunting, traveling, or in love affairs and adventures. All of these desire work and misery if only it is associated with pleasure, and the hardest, most difficult work if necessary. Otherwise, their idleness is resolute, even if it spells impoverishment, dishonor, and danger to life and limb. They do not fear boredom as much as work without pleasure: they actually require a lot of boredom if their work is to succeed. For thinkers and all sensitive spirits, boredom is that disagreeable "windless calm" of the soul that precedes a happy voyage and cheerful winds. They have to bear it and must wait for its effect on them. Precisely this is what lesser natures cannot achieve by any means. To ward off boredom at any cost is vulgar, no less than work without pleasure. Perhaps Asians are distinguished above Europeans by a capacity for longer, deeper calm; even their opiates have a slow effect and require patience, as opposed to the disgusting suddenness of the European poison, alcohol. - Friedrich Nietzsche (The Gay Science (tr. W. Kaufmann) - Book I, 42)

Although they are
Only breath, words
Which I command
Are Immortal

'...but as soon as I saw that he was dead, I burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.'

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Jean Toomer - Face

Hair --
silver-gray,
like streams of stars,
Brows --
recurved canoes
quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
Her eyes --
mist of tears
condensing on the flesh below
And her channeled muscles
are cluster grapes of sorrow
purple in the evening sun
nearly ripe for worms.

Two A Scanner Darkly quotes for you. Because I've pretty much just had the movie on continuous repeat for the best part of a week.

"The pain so unexpected and undeserved and for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. I realized I didn't hate the cabinet door, I hated my life my house, my family. My backyard, my power mower. Nothing would ever change, nothing new would ever be expected; it had to end, and it did. Now in the dark world where I dwell ugly things and surprising things, and sometimes little wonderous things spill out at me constantly, and I can count on nothing."

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."

-Philip K Dick.

So I realized today the next time June 21st, Midsummer's Day, will be on a Saturday is in 2014.

This means if we have the renewal of vows then, it'll be our 11th year married. Kind of a cockeyed year to renew vows...

Plus, that's a good 6 years away. At that point I'm not sure I'll still care about having a decent ceremony. Actually at that point it'll be old enough news that I doubt I *should*.

Dammit, I wanted it this year...5-year anniversary, Midsummer on a Saturday, it would've been GREAT...if we'd had the money. *sighs*

Murphy thinks he's funny, obviously.

I had begun to see a new map of the world, one that was frightening in its simplicity, suffocating in its implications. We were always playing on the white man's court, Ray had told me, by the white man's rules. If the principal, or the coach, or a teacher, or Kurt, wanted to spit in your face, he could, because he had power and you didn't. If he decided not to, if he treated you like a man or came to your defense, it was because he knew that the words you spoke, the clothes you wore, the books you read, your ambitions and desires, were already his. Whatever he decided to do, it was his decision to make, not yours, because of that fundamental power he held over you; because it preceded and would outlast his individual motives and inclinations, any distinction between good and bad whites held negligible meaning.

Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama

Republicans have called for a National African-American Museum.
The plan is being held up by finding a location that isn't in their neighborhood.

 Conan O'Brien quotes

http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/05/12.html

cavil: to raise trivial objections; also, a trivial objection.

You are the skipped sentence in the book I'm reading.
You are the kitchen knife that slips into the thumb.
Memory: the autonomous twitch of an aching muscle.
You are the word that is always mistyped.
And, erased, defaces the page.

[PS, the book is not entirely poetry, only partly-- and only a small part, come to that.]

     (I)
THE BAMBOO GROVES

Sitting alone
in a recess of the bamboo groves,
I play the lute,
and then whistle a long tune.

No one else is visible
in the depth of the woods.

The bright moon
moves over, shining.


Translated by Qiu Xiaolong

( Two more translations )

Boys don't want to be princes.
Boys want to be shepherds who slay dragons,
maybe someone gives you half a kingdom and a princess,
but that's just what comes of being a shepherd boy
and slaying a dragon. Or a giant. And you don't really
even have to be a shepherd. Just not a prince.

I thought this would be an excellent follow-up to the (equally excellent) previous poem 'E-Mail'. It's taken from Duffy's collection Rapture.

Text

I tend the mobile now
like an injured bird.

We text, text, text
our significant words.

I re-read your first,
your second, your third,

look for your small xx,
feeling absurd.

The codes we send
arrive with a broken chord.

I try to picture your hands,
their image is blurred.

Nothing my thumbs press
will ever be heard.

http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/05/16.html

subfusc: dark or dull in color.

(I apologise for the bad quality. I am no photographer.)