Lizziness, your "Routine Lives" is really excellent... I'm sure you got more stuff that should see the light of day Diseases that ooze from fingertips like smog... and all those identical stylized families... very cool imagery.

I looked up online some of your favorite poets/poetry, thanks for sharing! I'm such a dork, that was the first time I really read Ginsberg!

Drug use never really inspired me either. Though I remember trying to write a coherant "lab report" on the use of acid one night, while tripping. Wonder where that got to, ha! Probably lost in one of my moves. Or not... Boy, if I ever get hit by a truck or something, my family is going to have some interesting reading at their fingertips.

A few of my favorites are Pablo Neruda, Rumi, Mary Oliver. I really need to get back into exploring poetry. I got books just crying out to be read! Oh, and I love haiku too, so thank you Solar for yours!

Solar, the Deerfield archaeology dig was at the E.H. Williams home site. Have not seen the hermit holes, your "sweat lodge" theory sounds very reasonable though

Okay, you gals have inspired me to share some of my own. I wrote this one many years ago when I was high on love. Now, I'm just a cynical "spinster" but I think it's still my favorite work.

"Grow Old with Me"
Stay beside me
Hold my hand
Walk along through this troubled world
Hold me
Kiss me
Always keep me safe
Together
Two of us
Who knows what the future holds
Family
Wealth
Dreams come true
Rocking chairs
Front porches
A home of our own someday
Babies
Grandkids
Waking up to you every morning
Sickness & Health
And wrinkles
But you're still gorgeous
In my heart
In my soul
You'll always be
Love me
Til the end of time...

Grow old with me

That's lovely, Becqris. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Sarah... Gold in Darkness is very cool.

Ok, this isn't one of mine, but I love his imagery. His love poetry is stunningly gorgeous also, very tender and full of knowing details.

This is from Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon, translated by Stephen Mitchell. Nice copy since it has the English translation on one side and Neruda's original Spanish on the other.

Some Beasts
(from Canto General)

It was the twilight of the iguana.

From the rainbow-arched battlements
his tongue like a dart
plunged into the greenness,
the monastic ant-swarm walked
through the jungle with melodious feet,
the guanaco, thin as oxygen
in the wide gray heights,
moved wearing boots of gold,
while the llama opened his guileless
eyes in the transparency
of a world filled with dew.
The monkeys braided a thread
endlessly erotic
along the shores of the dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and scaring off the violet flight
of the butterflies of Muzo.
It was the night of the alligators,
the night pure and pullulating
with snouts emerging from the slime,
and out of the sleepy marshes
an opaque noise of armor
returned to the earth it came from.

The jaguar touched the leaves
with his phosphorescent absence,
the puma runs on the branches
like a devouring fire
while inside him burn
the jungle's alcoholic eyes.

The badgers scratch the feet
of the river, sniff out the nest
whose throbbing delight
they'll attack with red teeth.

And in the depths of the all-powerful water,
like the circle of the earth,
lies the giant anaconda,
covered with ritual mud,
devouring and religious.