Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st; So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
it's only fair i give Maya Angelou poems to two of my favorite women in the lobby
Woman Work by Maya Angelou
I've got the children to tend The clothes to mend The floor to mop The food to shop Then the chicken to fry The baby to dry I got company to feed The garden to weed I've got shirts to press The tots to dress The can to be cut I gotta clean up this hut Then see about the sick And the cotton to pick.
Shine on me, sunshine Rain on me, rain Fall softly, dewdrops And cool my brow again.
Storm, blow me from here With your fiercest wind Let me float across the sky 'Til I can rest again.
Fall gently, snowflakes Cover me with white Cold icy kisses and Let me rest tonight.
Sun, rain, curving sky Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone Star shine, moon glow You're all that I can call my own.
The prince leans to the girl in scarlet heels, Her green eyes slant, hair flaring in a fan Of silver as the rondo slows; now reels Begin on tilted violins to span
The whole revolving tall glass palace hall Where guests slide gliding into light like wine; Rose candles flicker on the lilac wall Reflecting in a million flagons' shine,
And glided couples all in whirling trance Follow holiday revel begun long since, Until near twelve the strange girl all at once Guilt-stricken halts, pales, clings to the prince
As amid the hectic music and cocktail talk She hears the caustic ticking of the clock.
excerpt from "On the Night of the Election" by Franny Choi
I tried to touch myself in the hotel room when the bar closed before I’d had enough, while, on the news stations I never watch because everyone talks too loud and doesn’t seem all that bothered by the state of things, everyone was giving up hope of a brand I’d never cared much for anyway, wanting to be cold- blooded and over all that hopey-changey stuff, wanting not to believe in a broken thing, broken on purpose, I know, to keep my loved ones drowning or dead. I wasn’t numb exactly, under the covers, naked, touching the linoleum sheets with all of my skin, everything close and far away at once . . .
I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees. I say, It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost. you probably know this if you read The Outsiders by S E Hinton
Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
