Hard Parts
We eat the flesh down to the bone,
We enjoy ice cream to the cone
We go to school and have some fun
But teacher’s questions put us on the run.
Part of life is a breeze, just turning a page
The rest of it isn’t easy and makes us age
The hard parts must come along with the soft
The hay is given to us but we must put it in the loft
We drive our car and the road is smooth as silk
Then along come the bumps like lumps in sour milk
Come with me where life is easy as pie
Every day is like the one before, just a pretty blue sky
There is no place, you say to me,
There is one place and you will see,
It’s the playground in my mind
Pick all your pleasures of every kind
Store them in your mind and close the door
Cast off your ship, set your sail, plus more
Our armada of ships is sailing for the eternal mind
With our compass and a little luck that mind we’ll find.
– Charles E. Houchins
Green Frog
Green frog
is your body also
freshly painted?
– Rynosuke Akutagawa
Burning the Letters
Sonnet 20
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all “hues” in his controlling,
Which steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
– William Shakespeare
