Ah, yes, of course. Your writing. You’re not out yet? Is that why you left all that space there? I didn’t want to take away that space, especially if you make it out in a matter of minutes, you need somewhere you can ‘be’. And you see, women really are not the only ones enslaved. We are all capable of being, or becoming enslaved…we just all choose our own form of manacles. It is an individual thing. I know for myself that if I truly want to be free, there is that suffering that must come first and then I know that I must give up that suffering in order to be free. That alone can be a monumental task. But sometimes, we simply do not want to be free. There is something that holds more meaning than freedom obviously. Or perhaps it is because nothing holds meaning at times that we shackle ourselves. And truth to tell, freedom is not really the most important thing…sometimes suffering to become is…but that also needs to be tendered with love and mercy…and it goes on. I think I need coffee. 
Safe Despair it is that raves–
Agony is frugal.
Puts itself severe away
For its own perusal.
Garrisoned no Soul can be
In the Front of Trouble–
Love is one, not aggregate–
Nor is Dying double–
~Emily Dickinson
Friendship IXX by Khalil Gibran
And a youth said, “Speak to us of Friendship.”
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
What an awesome poem this is…and what a gift, to have such a friend.
Ah, Evening, that poem is so beautiful… such friends are a treasure, always.
As if the Sea should part
And show a further Sea –
And that – a further – and the Three
But a presumption be –
Of Periods of Seas –
Unvisited of Shores –
Themselves the Verge of Seas to be –
Eternity – is Those –
~Emily Dickinson
The Grace – Myself – might not obtain –
Confer upon My flower –
Refracted but a Countenance –
For I – inhabit Her –
~Emily Dickinson
That sacred Closet when you sweep –
Entitled “Memory” –
Select a reverential Broom –
And do it silently.
'Twill be a Labor of surprise –
Besides Identity
Of other Interlocutors
A probability –
August the Dust of that Domain –
Unchallenged – let it lie –
You cannot supersede itself
But it can silence you –
~Emily
Not One by Heaven defrauded stay –
Although he seem to steal
He restitutes in some sweet way
Secreted in his will –
~Emily
The tree
Often ponders on sunshine
And rain
Reflected their own
On pleasure and pain
Depth of experience may not
Follow size
That simplest perception
Alone
Renders wise
Within its own niche to
The tree life’s made
Known
May conceive the world’s depth
Such as no man has done
For to render an image
Or construct argument
Merely approximate
Crude to life’s touch
Imminent
Thus lacking reflections
Imagined up high
Added after the fact
By the human
Mind’s eye
How art we know different
'Tis for otherwise
Tree’s senses grander
Expounded of size?
Or man’s careful senses alone
Compare nigh
To dew quivered branches
Or leaves quiet
Sigh?
A Dying Brain
Do you recall how I was once your fire –?
And we, a regal cloud of unity
Meandering through the closing blues of night,
Commanding stars to glitter;
Dawn to blush?
Your answer comes in ever-blanking stares:
A wall that blocks the know,
Damping down the glow that used to emanate
From clear and lucid eyes.
They’ve lost the will to recognise.
But hear! We are fifty years together –
And once we writhed in pleasure –
Drowning in emotion,
That which was our prime.
You don’t recall.
You only lie as vegetation
Scattered on the ground:
A living mound of flesh,
Devoid of any neural mesh
To let you say ‘I’m sound.’
Don’t worry Dear,
For I’m aware with memory!
I’ll tell you how we were.
We have our right of history!
If you could just concur.
Mark R Slaughter 2009
All one ever has is the Now.
That is so, so sad…
…
Dominion lasts until obtained –
Possession just as long –
But these – endowing as they flit
Eternally belong.
How everlasting are the Lips
Known only to the Dew –
These are the Brides of permanence
Supplanting me and you.
~Emily
Her Bliss
Death is in the flower’s heart –
Why to cry for life of any petal?
Death in purple ink of weary pens
Betrays the written yearnings
On her scented paper.
Death is laughing in her cry;
Her broken heart forlorn upon the sleeve.
Death ignores the plight of any purity –
He doesn’t care or seem to be aware of
What her dewy eye desires,
For Death beckoned:
'Embrace the jar! ’
And yes, she did –
For Death, of course.
After all, no other man would
Open up her hand and bid her with a kiss,
So Death became her bliss.
-Mark Slaughter
…wow… silence…
Juno Gave the Summer
A sun for hearts – tempered rhythm in her flares;
The naked tan – bikini line a cry for stares;
Gregarious green, beguiled by colours en rapport –
The park’s alive! So what’s to hanker after more?
Children scream while parents dream their fantasies,
Igniting under brilliance –
They think they share resilience to the
Ultraviolet hues –
To lie displayed au naturel
Is what they’d rather choose!
And Helios peers at lovers in their
Heady worlds: vibrant leas to
Roam in hand; calming seas –
Satin sand insensible as
Water runs her ripples cross the
Shore – so like the park, it really
Cries for very little more!
In the garden, roses clamber for attention –
Pouting blooms, wafting scent –
Our floral monarch June’s event!
And fingers green receive the praise
From toiling hard for coloured blaze.
Compelled, I walk the countenance of sunny June
As Mother Nature danced amok in her saloon
Of roaring life, that came of youth in early spring
And nurtured in maternal warmth beneath her wing.
Eyes bedewed, I mellow in a reverie
– Hope renewed –
As Juno saw to suckle me with
Quintessential summer.
-Mark Slaughter
Yes, this guy’s imagery is beautiful…and it’s so haunting. He can really write poetry.
Death is so deeply within the very flow of life. And reminds us to LIVE Deeply.
I was looking for some Native American poetry and found this. It is so moving…it gave me the shivers.
I LIVE AS MAN
I have run as the wolf, on through the night
over many terrain, past tree at knee height.
I have felt the warmth of his fine shaggy coat,
I have howled the cold breath from his deep throat.
I have flown as the Eagle over waters and land,
Felt the feeling of freedom from my winged hands.
Soared high above vibrant valleys below,
Through rainbows and sunsets and clouds of snow.
I have swam as the Dolphin in seas deep and blue,
Over coral reefs and wonders so wild and so new,
Raced with ships and with fish then dived down deep,
Played as an angel in a watery sleep. I have galloped as
Horse with wind in my mane,
Stood high on the mountains over a golden plain,
Whinnied to skies, and bowed to the ground,
Rumbled my hoofs echoing thunder sounds.
I have fought as the Bear, so mighty and bold,
Felt the power of my swing on foes of old,
I have hunted with skill and speed of paw,
Then rested in caves through winters so raw.
I have traveled as Man mile upon mile,
By road, sea and air in various style,
I have dreamed through the eyes of lives so unique,
But these dreams humble me…
for it is as Man that I am weak…
J. Saunders©1998
That is a great poem
Those not live yet
Who doubt to live again –
“Again” is of a twice
But this – is one –
The Ship beneath the Draw
Aground – is he?
Death – so – the Hyphen of the Sea –
Deep is the Schedule
Of the Disk to be –
Costumeless Consciousness –
That is he –
~Emily
The Convergence of the Twain
Thomas Hardy (1912)
(Lines on the loss of the “Titanic”)
I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls – grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
V
Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .
VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything
VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her -- so gaily great --
A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.
VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
IX
Alien they seemed to be:
No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history.
X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,
XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Wow…that is so cool. almost suspensefully giving me the shivers this morning as i read it in my poetry book…5 times. I loved it. So much food for thought there…about our lives, our so-called destinies (not really destinies until they occur 
)
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one August event,
…
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
Wow…such imagery…alll of it. 
(An excerpt of this poem):
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
-Khalil Gibran
TO THE RISING FULL MOON.
Goethe
WILT thou suddenly enshroud thee,
Who this moment wert so nigh?
Heavy rising masses cloud thee,
Thou art hidden from mine eye.
Yet my sadness thou well knowest,
Gleaming sweetly as a star!
That I’m loved, 'tis thou that showest,
Though my loved one may be far.
Upward mount then! clearer, milder,
Robed in splendour far more bright!
Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,
Fraught with rapture is the night!
…
Ah, this is beautiful. As i read these words, I someone sensed from each of Goethe’s lines, that I was speaking more to wisdom, than the rising moon.
Perhaps wisdom may be compared to the rising of the moon. 
I have, for some reason, always liked this poem. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the original document that makes it so appealing?
What poem…the image doesn’t come through. 