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| Throughout history, man has expressed his thoughts on this thing called "love", sometimes perceiving it as something wonderful, beautiful, and intense, and other times, expressing the sorrow and anger caused by love scorned. Whatever the case, no one can deny that love is a powerful energy and emotion, so awesome in fact, that no man can exist without it. |
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| When love beckons you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you, yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you, believe in him, though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you, so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth, so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth. ~ "The Prophet" ~ by Gibran Kahlil Gibran |
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| HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY |
| Click on the links below to see how compatible you and your valentine are: |
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| "Love is not what makes the world go 'round...love is what makes the trip worthwhile." ~ Franklin Jones "When two people are at one in their innermost hearts, they shatter even the strength of iron or bronze, and when two people understand each other in their inner- most hearts, their words are sweet and strong like the fragrance of orchids." ~ I Ching "Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven." ~ Bertrand Russell "Who would give a law unto lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law..." ~ Boethius "Love is the only gold." ~ Tennyson "When the heart sings and the spirit soars, the music of life is complete." ~ anonymous "Love is the music that the heart sings best." |
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| "If you want to be loved by somebody who isn't already in your family, it doesn't hurt to be beautiful." - Anita C., age 8 "It isn't always just how you look. Look at me. I'm handsome like anything, and I haven't got anybody to marry me yet." - Brian, age 7 "Beauty is skin deep. But how rich you are can last a long time." - Chris, age 9 REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF LOVE: "Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too." - Greg, age 8 HOW DO PEOPLE IN LOVE BEHAVE? "Mooshy...like puppy dogs...except puppy dogs don't wag their tails nearly as much." - Arnold, age 10 "When a person gets kissed for the first time, they fall down and they don't get up for at least an hour." - Wendy, age 8 "All of a sudden, the people get movies fever so they can sit together in the dark." - Sherman, age 8 "On the first date, they just tell each other lies, and that usually gets them interested enough to go for a second date." - Martin, age 10 "They should never kiss in front of other people. It's a big embarrassing thing if anybody sees you. I might be willing to try it with a handsome boy, but just for a few hours." - Kally, age 9 |
| WHAT KIDS HAVE TO SAY ABOUT LOVE: |
| WHY DO LOVERS HOLD HANDS? "They want to make sure their rings don't fall off 'cause they paid good money for them." - Gavin, age 8 "They are just practicing for when they might walk down the aisle someday and do the holy matchimony thing." - John, age 9 CONFIDENTIAL OPINIONS ABOUT LOVE: "Love is foolish...but I still might try it sometime." - Floyd, age 9 "Yesterday I kissed a girl in a private place..we were behind a tree." - Carey, 7 "Love will find you, even if you are trying to hide from it. I been trying to hide from it since I was five, but the girls keep finding me." - Dave, age 8 "I'm not rushing into being in love. I'm finding fourth grade hard enough." Regina, age 10 QUALITIES YOU NEED TO BE A GOOD LOVER: "Sensitivity don't hurt." - Robbie, age 8 "One of you should know how to write a check. Because, even if you have tons of love, there is still going to be a lot of bills." - Ava, age 8 HOW TO GET A PERSON TO FALL IN LOVE WITH YOU: "Tell them you own a bunch of candy stores." - Del, age 6 "Shake your hips, and hope for the best." - Camille, age 9 "Yell out that you love them at the top of your lungs...and don't worry if their parents are right there." - Manuel, age 8 "Don't do things like have smelly green sneakers. You might get attention, but attention ain't the same thing as love." - Alonzo, age 9 "One way is to take the girl out to eat. Make sure it's something she likes to eat. French fries usually works for me." - Bart, age 9 |
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| LOVE QUOTES |
| "your perfect astromate" |
| "LOVE: A DEFINITION" When I was a child, I watched love being defined in the living out of every day; two people who loved each other unequivocally, who could be angry with each other, who could afford to be angry at times, for they had made themselves open and vulnerable to each other and saw in each other their own limitations, their own completion. Two people who needed each other to overcome themselves, to fulfill their humanity, who found in each other's eyes a promise, a vision, a recognition of what each was -- flawed, imperfect, bumbling, hurtful, foolish, vulnerable -- yet loved and accepted, encircled by the profound compassion each had for the other. I knew without them saying it that they loved deeply. But real life was too immediate to rest on verbal definition. And life, painful, frustrating, gritty, grinding life was made bearable because love was bonded to it. What would have been difficult for one alone to face - the little improbable dreams, the modest hopes that did not come true, the part of life that was broken and forever beyond fixing - could be accepted with a shrug because of love. Their views were folded together and contained in "we" and "us" and "ours" -- viewing life from a single perspective. There was never a hint that either felt lessened or confined by this relationship, although often it was hard to tell who was dominate, who subordinate. Authority was often an issue and struggles occurred, disagreements and conflicts; but none of this touched the rock of their foundation..their togetherness..their love. The two of them together, part of the "isness" of existence, belonging to each other, meant to be partners in life. There was a terrible price to pay for the love that merged these two souls; they needed each other with a desperate need. For each of them the other was simply irreplaceable. Their love was large enough to encompass three daughters, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren, their neighbors and friends, but no one else could replace either of them for the other. When he died, as all must die, her death began...a terrible long and lingering death...the death of half a whole, of beginning a sentence and discovering there is no one there to complete it; of remembering joys and griefs, dreams and dreads that no one else remembers, of feeling a desolation that no word can communicate. In her mind she would listen to hidden voices, hearing distant echoes; re-visit a private past, conclude unfinished conversations, and daily invite death to complete it's work, while a family of dear strangers struggled to comfort and console, trying to fill a void that only death could fill. And before we were ready to say goodbye to her, she left us and crossed that wide expanse between the stars to join him, her love , flesh of his flesh, bone of his bone, bound together in inescapable unity, and destined to be together for eternity. |
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| Okay, all you guys out there...Valentine's Day is almost here. Are you going to forget like you did last year, and rush out at the last minute to buy a card? Take her out to eat when she reminds you what day it is? Yeah, right..that's romantic. Why not surprise her this year to let her know she's an important part of your life...sure..go ahead and get that box of chocolates (like she really needs them!), but place them on her pillow when she wakes up in the morning. Deliver flowers to where she works with a love poem attached. Instead of a movie, take her out dancing. Take her to a park for a picnic and push her swing. Men..it's the little things that you do that you didn't have to do, but you did just because you thought of her and wanted to please her, that touches a woman's heart and will endear you to her forever. This February 14th, be her valentine. |
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| I have two favorite gentlemen poets who melt my heart with their words...one is a young man by the name of Romus, who I met on-line in a poetry room. He describes himself on his poetry web site, ROMUSTHEPOET, as a "black man, poet, singer, thinker, social critic, lover, friend, citizen and power lifter". His passion is pure. And then there is Richard, who works at the 911 Center where I do. I knew him for some time before I discovered his love of poetry. Richard is also a member of Shreveport Regional Artists Association and plays in a local band. Both these men, as I have told them, will be famous some day. Read their magic below and see why I love them: |
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| LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY The fountains mingle with the river and the rivers with the ocean; the winds of Heaven mix forever with a sweet emotion; nothing in the world is single, all things by a law divine in one spirit meet & mingle: why not I with thine? See the mountains kiss high Heaven and the waves clasp one another; no sister-flower would be forgotten if it disdained it's brother. And the sunlight clasps the earth and the moonbeams kiss the sea -- what is all this sweet work worth if thou kiss not me? - Percy Byshe Shelley |
| LOVE ARRIVES Touched by an Angel we, unaccustomed to courage, exiles from delight, live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves it's high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us in life. Love arrives and in it's train come ecstasies, old memories of pleasure, ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity. In the flush of love's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. And yet it is only love which sets us free. - Maya Angelou |
| HOW DO I LOVE THEE? How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of everyday's most quiet need, by sun & candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints -- I love thee with the smiles, tears, of all my life -- and if God so choose, I shall but love thee better after death. -Elizabeth Barrett Browning |
| SHALL I COMPARE THEE? 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 has all too short a date. Sometimes too hot the eye of Heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimmed, and every fair from fair sometimes declines, by chance or nature's changing course untrimmed. But thy eternal summer shall not fade nor lose pos-session of that fair thou art, nor shall death brag thou wander in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou grow. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee. - William Shakespeare |
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| Richard |
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| IN HER EGYPT DREAMS In her Egypt dreams, I nestle in the nape of her twisting river and lay my head on her sun-warmed sands, to lie as one with the ageless lands of her bedouin heart. In her carved colonnades, I mark her love's ages by the shadow's fall and lifetimes across each heartached stone where lover's limbs turn to bleached bone beneath her wind-torn sky. In her tangled ruins, I set flame for the gods of her sensual depths, and wrest cryptic treasures from her labyrinth heart to be thereafter, ever alone when apart from her templed love. And in her Nile flooded fields, I cleave love's plough until her hot desert quakes and her muffled moans trail into sated sighs, deep in her ages, to echoe and die in her valley of the kings. - copyright, Richard Stewart |
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| Romus |
| Romus can be emailed at: "Revems1@aol.com" |
| "becuz she wrote me" if I were a prisoner, i'd be free in my cell today the warden would be called come stomping down the corridor angrily he would ask how did u grow flowers in here? where did the contraband originate? who conspires to heal u? I would stand looking out my finger strip of fiberglass window over the asphalt & dirt prison yard, where may refuses each year to come, all the men positioning themselves for the arbitrary small wars each man a knife and an open wound each heart a siren the warden would demand why do u smile? are u high? are u plotting something? he would remind me i am a number cattle convicted of egregious sins & of all the things I stole my youth my childhood frozen in my mother's throat & my brothers whose silences bear my shame. but today she wrote me & i am citizen in the mayfilled world i see boundless sky without error earth tumbling through space a hemisphere of hope blooming warden would insist why are u alive? what right do you have to stand erect? he would sarcastically say what god loves u? by whose authority do u exist other than mine? & what light I would own what morning came to me flowering warden she smelled like rain the first minutes of light rain slowing the senses to a trot where the sinews let go & the face turns upward & greets the rain great body of rain coming to tint the day that small place where everything exhales & memory & rain coming to town like a crystal season of silence, coming like a nation of monks committed to silence, fragrant az peaches & mangoes carted by my tourist soul in a nameless hamlet out-side cairo or her perfume when I unbuttoned her blouse & kissed her forehead her hair & rain when she found the afternoon shadow of my embrace & hid there u know warden? can u understand warden? like may in boston early at the docks before the aggregate of yawning men set the day in motion first morning in Birmingham shattered by rain oregon state during winter break shawled in showers san francisco in a mosque of fog |
| (page two) echoing out to bay january in the water color running mosaic georgia warden but spring haz found me a hemisphere of bright green spring she wrote me warden she wrote me and it waz rain then after rain shrill light columns of light & heavy linger-ing water the prison moved through a maine hayfield east towards the sea with all its cargo of dawn & roses all the attendant kisses & sleepy lovers drifting into spring van gogh still lifes draped in the morning trees & in my small cell with the tumult of each dry season all the streams caulked at the edge of my vision blunt men thudding against reason & beauty today in the reeds of the morning sky infinite az mathmatics and that slow risen sun resting on its elbows, how could I not want to kiss her? warden, she wrote me in the season of desperate hunger laughed in her letter spoke of god warden, spoke my nominal name into the universe lifted my face from a monsoon of malice chanted spring here to the pro-hibited places & becuz her letter came floating in the morning currents, becuz the hudson flows from her hand becuz the day elaborate with free faces & languages & possibility rose all over the world & called my name... oh warden oh warden i love i love i love i love, oh i love |
| - copyright, Romus Simpson |
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| February 14, 2002 |
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| from me to you.. |
| love, Peanut Patti |