#Essential Poems

[edennill]

elured&elurin who died alone in the forest and elros&elrond who had their home destroyed over and over but survived to help build a new tomorrow and elladan&elrohir who were raised in peace and prosperity, and all of them star-twins. "shakes you by the shoulders" meme, do you understand

[katerinaaqu]

Epic the Musical:

Athena: Please dad help Odysseus! I realized he is my good friend and needs help!

Zeus: Who? That shameful man I made him choose to kill himself or his men? Why would I do that? It was so fun!You just seek attention! I'll tell you what though; if you convince others then I shall release him! Let's play

Athena: *does that*

Zeus: How DARE you!

Zeus: *strikes her*

The Odyssey:

Athena: Please father how could you forget on Odysseus who was always pious to the gods?

Zeus: Me? Forget about him? How can I? He is like one of the best when it comes to sacrifices and respecting the gods.

Athena: Then why won't you help him?

Zeus: I have nothing against the man. But my hands are tied! He committed hubris and nemesis had to find him and my brother is pissed off at him. I can't do much.

Athena: I cannot face him but now he is away please help Odysseus at least escape Ogygia! Send Hermes to bring the message and I shall go to help his son! The prophecy needs to be fulfilled!

Zeus: you speak the truth. Let us try.

[andrumedus]

To survive myself I forged you like a weapon, like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling. But the hour of vengeance strikes, and I love you.

Pablo Neruda, tr. & ed. by Mark Eisner, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems; from Twenty Love Poems: 1, "Body of woman"

[majestativa]

Yes, my sweetheart. The sea alters its colors. [...] It sometimes drinks the sunset’s blood.

— Nazik Al-Malaika, Listen to the Mourners: The Essential Poems of Nazik Al-Malaika, transl by Abdulwahid Lu'lu'a, (2021)

[toddtakefive]

few will understand demiromantic gay neil but i do

[isawhitney]

Mandarin

I peel it back:

Paring skin, tearing chalky tendons,

Baring orange flesh under my cat o’nine tails.

All I seek is wisdom:

Some small insight into the seasons’ turn,

How rot can bloom at the core of an orange.

All I find is silence:

My ripened stoic keeps its secrets

And the bureaucracy of nature breathes out.

[watermelonolemretaw]

i stand here

in a cozy shack by the gates of heaven

and something feels wrong

when i whispered the void's name

it was not what i was

it was a dark reflection

the space between fragments of my soul

an embodiment of every voice

insisting that he would leave me

but now

the angel's heavenly vision

has aligned us

the void is everything i am

i have merged with the voices

and in his glorious judgement

i have become the insistence

that i do not deserve heaven

i assume that the angel never meant to harm me

in all fairness

my words were murky and vague

and i do appreciate what the void has become

but clinging to it

feels wrong

now that i have risen to his side

i know the angel can hear me

perhaps he will listen

and we can work as one

to quell the voices forever

or

perhaps this was a sign

perhaps his alignment

of myself to the void

was an echo

of the void's words

perhaps i don't deserve heaven

perhaps i am not good enough for the angel

and perhaps he has come to realize that

[authenticity2025]

Take care not to invest all of your strength and energy on keeping up appearances or disguising your insecurities when what's really essential to projecting a secure, confident presence is developing a healthy self-esteem and a kind and courageous heart. Beau Taplin

[darisu-chan]

So after experiencing a terrible loss a few weeks ago, my brain decided to process my grief with some more IR thoughts bc of course it did

So y’know how people keep bitching about the poem “Can I keep up with it? The speed of the world without you in it” and saying it’s not about Rukia, but about Zangetsu? Even though we’ve established time and time again it makes no sense for it to be about just Ichigo’s powers?

Well, I was thinking that it’s not solely that Ichigo stopped seeing Rukia because he lost his powers. Let’s think about what that symbolizes. His powers involve seeing ghosts, spirits, dead people. Essentially, Ichigo lost Rukia to death. Because she’s dead and he’s not. Like he knows death is not the end, but without his powers, he won’t see Rukia again until he dies. And isn’t that just terribly painful? That horrible knowledge. He knows Rukia is okay, that she has a life in death, that she’s not alone. But the point still stands that he won’t see her. He’s stuck living his life until his heart stops beating and for all he knows, he might live a long life. Obviously if Rukia used a gigai, they could see each other and this is all a bit of a plot hole (what else is new in Bleach), but just the heart wrenching thought that he won’t see her again until he dies gives the poem a new meaning. Isn’t that what we all ask ourselves when our loved ones die? Beyond a breakup, or however else we can interpret it, this reads as “death parted them”. This is grief. Ichigo is mourning her.

And this isn’t the first time death has taken someone I love, but idk, I just really felt this poem in a whole another level. Can I keep going without this person I love? It’s terrifying when you just don’t see them anymore. This ache in your heart. And if you’re religious, you know you’ll see them again, or at least you hope for it, but seeing them again involves you dying and who knows when that’ll be. And I knew Ichigo was depressed, but putting this grief related to death into more perspective… he was destroyed, and that’s how that poem now feels for me. This extreme longing for someone who’s not alive. This great divide between them. They’ve always been about life and death in some ways, but now this very key relationship aspect seems even clearer to me.

It’s funny that in my darkest times, I find myself understanding another layer of this ship, one of the most painful ones, because the same can be said when Rukia was taken to the SS. Ichigo lost Rukia to death then too. It gives more perspective to the knowledge Ichigo’s second worst experience was Rukia going to the SS. It’s not quite death as he knew it, but it might as well have been without being able to see her, and then knowing she was going to be executed, dying yet again.

[toadboatt]

I want to take out my heart

Rip it out of my chest and lay it on a table for display

See me.

Feel my emotions, hear the pumping, the thumping, the beating of my heart.

Watch me

It'll bleed out onto the table

The red dancing and painting my memories, my thoughts

Beautifully dark pictures of my life, my very essence

Exposed to the world

Painted out on the table

The floor

And the bottom of your shoe.

[urlocalwormtoday]

In every orchard

There is a tree

Bares rotten fruit

Drops dying leaves

And legend says

If one dies young

Bury them close

And they'll come back wrong

[andrumedus]

you look like the world in your attitude of surrender.

Pablo Neruda, tr. & ed. by Mark Eisner, The Essential Neruda: Selected Poems; from Twenty Love Poems: 1, "Body of woman"

[majestativa]

I dream, I dream, but do not wake Except to dream another dream.

— Nazik Al-Malaika, Listen to the Mourners: The Essential Poems of Nazik Al-Malaika, transl by Abdulwahid Lu'lu'a, (2021)

[emo-child1234]

yes i’m making an anthology of my favorite poetry at 10 pm. yes i’m gay and what of it??

[creatediana]

"A Midsummer Night's Swing" - a poem written 7/17/2024

[wonder-worker]

Margaret of Anjou’s visit to Coventry [in 1456], which was part of her dower and that of her son, Edward of Lancaster, was much more elaborate. It essentially reasserted Lancastrian power. The presence of Henry and the infant Edward was recognised in the pageantry. The ceremonial route between the Bablake gate and the commercial centre was short, skirting the area controlled by the cathedral priory, but it made up for its brevity with no fewer than fourteen pageants. Since Coventry had an established cycle of mystery plays, there were presumably enough local resources and experience to mount an impressive display; but one John Wetherby was summoned from Leicester to compose verses and stage the scenes. As at Margaret’s coronation the iconography was elaborate, though it built upon earlier developments.

Starting at Bablake gate, next to the Trinity Guild church of St. Michael, Bablake, the party was welcomed with a Tree of Jesse, set up on the gate itself, with the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah explaining the symbolism. Outside St. Michael’s church the party was greeted by Edward the Confessor and St. John the Evangelist; and proceeding to Smithford Street, they found on the conduit the four Cardinal Virtues—Righteousness (Justice?), Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude. In Cross Cheaping wine flowed freely, as in London, and angels stood on the cross, censing Margaret as she passed. Beyond the cross was pitched a series of pageants, each displaying one of the Nine Worthies, who offered to serve Margaret. Finally, the queen was shown a pageant of her patron saint, Margaret, slaying the dragon [which 'turned out to be strictly an intercessor on the queen's behalf', as Helen Maurer points out].

The meanings here are complex and have been variously interpreted. An initial reading of the programme found a message of messianic kingship: the Jesse tree equating royal genealogy with that of Christ had been used at the welcome for Henry VI on his return from Paris in 1432. A more recent, feminist view is that the symbolism is essentially Marian, and to be associated with Margaret both as queen and mother of the heir rather than Henry himself. The theme is shared sovereignty, with Margaret equal to her husband and son. Ideal kingship was symbolised by the presence of Edward the Confessor, but Margaret was the person to whom the speeches were specifically addressed and she, not Henry, was seen as the saviour of the house of Lancaster. This reading tips the balance too far the other way: the tableau of Edward the Confessor and St. John was a direct reference to the legend of the Ring and the Pilgrim, one of Henry III’s favourite stories, which was illustrated in Westminster Abbey, several of his houses, and in manuscript. It symbolised royal largesse, and its message at Coventry would certainly have encompassed the reigning king. Again, the presence of allegorical figures, first used for Henry, seems to acknowledge his presence. Yet, while the message of the Coventry pageants was directed at contemporary events it emphasised Margaret’s motherhood and duties as queen; and it was expressed as a traditional spiritual journey from the Old Testament, via the incarnation represented by the cross, to the final triumph over evil, with the help of the Virgin, allegory, and the Worthies. The only true thematic innovation was the commentary by the prophets.

[...] The messages of the pageants firmly reminded the royal women of their place as mothers and mediators, honoured but subordinate. Yet, if passive, these young women were not without significance. It is clear from the pageantry of 1392 and 1426 in London and 1456 in Coventry that when a crisis needed to be resolved, the queen (or regent’s wife) was accorded extra recognition. Her duty as mediator—or the good aspect of a misdirected man—suddenly became more than a pious wish. At Coventry, Margaret of Anjou was even presented as the rock upon which the monarchy rested. [However,] a crisis had to be sensed in order to provoke such emphasis [...].

— Nicola Coldstream, "Roles of Women in Late Medieval Civic Pageantry", Reassessing the Roles of Women as 'Makers' of Medieval Art and Culture