burgundypoplartrees-blog

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Days

by Philip Larkin

What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. They are to be happy in: Where can we live but days? Ah, solving that question Brings the priest and the doctor In their long coats Running over the fields.

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Vincent Price recites John Keats' “Ode To A Nightingale”

(…) Was it a vision, or a waking dream?     Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Ode To A Nightingale - J. Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains      My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,  Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains      One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:  'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,      But being too happy in thine happiness, -          That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,                  In some melodious plot      Of beechen green and shadows numberless,          Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been      Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,  Tasting of Flora and the country green,      Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!  O for a beaker full of the warm South,      Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,          With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,                  And purple-stained mouth;      That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,          And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget      What thou among the leaves hast never known,  The weariness, the fever, and the fret      Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;  Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,      Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;          Where but to think is to be full of sorrow                  And leaden-eyed despairs,      Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,          Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,      Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,  But on the viewless wings of Poesy,      Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:  Already with thee! tender is the night,      And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,          Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;                  But here there is no light,      Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown          Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,      Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,  But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet      Wherewith the seasonable month endows  The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;      White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;          Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;                  And mid-May’s eldest child,      The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,          The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time      I have been half in love with easeful Death,  Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,      To take into the air my quiet breath;  Now more than ever seems it rich to die,      To cease upon the midnight with no pain,          While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad                  In such an ecstasy!      Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -          To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!      No hungry generations tread thee down;  The voice I hear this passing night was heard      In ancient days by emperor and clown:  Perhaps the self-same song that found a path      Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,          She stood in tears amid the alien corn;                  The same that oft-times hath      Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam          Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell      To toll me back from thee to my sole self!  Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well      As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.  Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades      Past the near meadows, over the still stream,          Up the hill-side; and now ‘tis buried deep                  In the next valley-glades:      Was it a vision, or a waking dream?          Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Can we please stop making fun of people who are over 20 and are still virgins

Can we please stop making fun of people who are not interested in sex/are repulsed by sex

Can we please stop making fun of people who aren’t interested in a sexual or romantic relationship

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Committing blasphemy for reasons of principle seems an oddly childish act in a society as secular and as safe as our own. More than a million Canadians say they are of the Muslim faith; more than 600,000 are Ontarians. Many recent immigrants have issues with underemployment and concerns about the future prospects of their children. They are doubly vulnerable in a period of protracted economic sluggishness because they are both a small and a very visible minority. And they feel that events far away have put them under suspicion. We could run the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. There is a strong news rationale for doing so. But there are important reasons of principle not to do it. Just as we would not publish racist or pornographic images, we will exercise our judgment not to print the cartoons. We will not print them because we have too much respect for fellow Canadians of Muslim background. We will not send a message that their way of being Canadian is less acceptable or less valuable than that of any other citizen. We stand by our legal right to free speech. But we won’t exploit it to commit a moral wrong.

Toronto Star, "Why the Star won’t run the Charlie Hebdo cartoons" (via)

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Say their names: Lamia Beard. Ty Underwood. Goddess Edwards. May they rest in power.

KaeLyn via Already Three Black Trans Women Have Been Brutally Murdered in 2015 (via autostraddle)

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

(canadian voice) awesome, it’s warm enough to snow outside

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

night time would be so beautiful and fun if all men had a curfew

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Joey Bada$$ - Born Day (Prod by Statik Selektah) (New)

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

idk why i’m so obsessed with samurai champloo

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

January 28

Jeff Roorda, Missouri State Representative and head of the STL Police Officers Association, wears “I Am Darren Wilson” bracelet and shoves woman during the #CivilianOversight/Public Safety Committee meeting.

Livestreams of the meeting (1, 2, 3)

More on Jeff Roorda here.

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

Here, above, cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat. It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on, and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon. He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties, feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold, of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers. But when the Man-Moth pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface, the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings. He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky, proving the sky quite useless for protection. He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb. Up the façades, his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage to push his small head through that round clean opening and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light. (Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.) But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt. Then he returns to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits, he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly. The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed, without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort. He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards. Each night he must be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams. Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window, for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison, runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers. If you catch him, hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil, an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips. Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over, cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

The Man-Moth, Elizabeth Bishop (via androgynend)

[burgundypoplartrees-blog]

PLEASE DONT PARTICIPATE IN #BellLetsTalk!!!!!!

CAMH (the organization that does #BellLetsTalk) is partnered with a psychologist who performs trans conversion therapy. Over 500 trans preadolescent and adolescent transgender children have been treated by the doctor who works there. Please do not participate in this as the money raised will continue to support trans conversion therapy. Thank you.

sources: (x)(x)