Universal Studios StarWay
All the Same to Me
Fiction or real.
It’s all the same.
All the same to me.
All the Same to Me
by Jonella Allen
Fiction or real.
It’s all the same.
All the same to me.
Searching, or is it stalking,
this vicarious heart in pieces.
The love was never mine so I
cannot claim this pain as my own.
Of course, perfect love doesn’t exist.
There is no such thing as love unconditional.
There are rules, loyalties, lines you,
under no circumstance, cross.
Stalking, or is it searching,
since Tramp shared a plate of
spaghetti in an alley with Lady.
I learned from the best.
Watched how it was done.
So few can emulate
Bud & Jean.
Sixty years from Greek pins
linked with a gossamer chain
‘til death they did part.
There were others I circled
all as real to my mind
as they were fabricated.
They were searching for
Bud & Jean.
George & Gracie
Kermit & Piggy
Paul & Joanne
Johnny & June
Han & Leia
Jack & Diane
Tommy & Gina
Wesley & Buttercup
Mr. Darcy & Ms. Bennet
They circled
Bud & Jean
pair by pair
searching for,
if not forever romance,
because really who
could put up with that,
stalking forever together like
a tattooed bicep or a ring
grown over with flesh.
These pairs survive.
Not all, however idealized, do endure.
I Love Lucy, but
Desi was kind of an ass.
Pair by pair
they crumbled
and fell.
Fiction or real.
It was all the same.
All the same to me.
Photos in an album,
the same as pictures
on a magazine cover,
the same as images
projected on some screen
large or small.
All the same to me.
Luke & Laura
Frisco & Felicia
Charles & Diana
Emilio & Demi
Kiefer & Julia
Emilio & Paula
Jason & Julia
Lyle & Julia
Ben & Julia
Even Paul & Jamie
couldn’t keep their shit together.
Let’s not even go into
Hank & Helen.
Dammit people!
Scribes of the universe take note!
Hark back,
back to when it was right,
back to when it was
secure however uneasy.
Not meant to be.
Fought to be.
If you can’t love now,
right now,
lie until you can again.
Because you will again.
Love again.
I mean Harry & Sally,
they made it right?
Don’t tell me.
I probably don’t want to know.
My love
couldn’t follow
the model of
Bud & Jean.
I tried.
Or maybe I didn’t.
I thought I did.
He had other ideas.
Now I’m left with
second-hand love.
Bud & Jean
are gone.
Searching, circling, stalking,
down for the count.
There can be no expectation
for the days gone by to further shadow
events of now.
Fiction or real.
It is all the same.
All the same to me.
Alarms
Time to go.
I've got to go.
Alarms
Harps wake me from fretful sleep.
Quacking ducks nip at my ankles and hurry me along.
Church bells clang my coming and going.
Crickets fill the silence letting me know
it's time to go.
Time to go.
I've got to go.
Horns honk and tell me to move.
I've got to go.
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Spring and Fall
by Gerard Manley Hopkins
to a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie:
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
My Symphony
William Henry Channing
My Symphony
To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury, and
refinement rather than fashion; to be
worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich;
to study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars and birds,
babes and sages, with open heart, to
bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await
occasions, hurry never; in a word
to let the spiritual, unbidden and
unconscious, grow up through the common
this is to be my symphony.
The Hanging of the Crane
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Oh fortunate, O happy day,
When a new household finds its place
Among the myriad homes of earth,
Like a new star just sprung to birth,
And rolled on its harmonious way
Into the boundless realms of space!
To Autumn
To Autumn
by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
October
October
by Robert Frost
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
The Kraken
The Kraken
by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep,
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides: above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumbered and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant fins the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by men and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
The World Is Too Much with Us
The World Is Too Much with Us
by William Wordsworth
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. —Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Music Swims Back to Me
Music Swims Back to Me
by Anne Sexton
Wait Mister. Which way is home?
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room,
four ladies, over eighty,
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.
Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better;
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November;
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.
They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way,
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la,
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister?
To Thomas Moore
(Lord Byron)
To Thomas Moore
My boat is on the shore,
And my bark is in1 the sea;
But, before I go, Tom Moore,
Here's a double health to thee!
Here's a sigh to those who
love me,
And a smile to those who
hate;
And, whatever sky's above
me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
Tho2 the ocean roar around
me,
Yet it still shall bear me on;
Tho3 a desert should surround
me,
It hath springs that may
be won.
Were't the last drop in
the well,
As I gasped4 upon the brink,
Ere my fainting spirit fell,
Tis to thee that I would drink.
With that water, as this wine,
The libation I would pour
Should be -peace with thine and mine,
And a health to thee, Tom Moore!
1 Bryon used “on”
2 & 3 Byron used “Though”
4 Byron used “gasp'd”