Suicide Is Painless

by Mike Altman

Through early morning fog I see
Visions of the things to be
The pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see...

That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it, if I please

The game of life is hard to play 
I'm gonna lose it anyway 
The losing card I'll someday lay 
So this is all I have to say

The sword of time will pierce our skins
It doesn't hurt when it begins
But as it works its way on in
The pain grows stronger: watch it grin

A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
'Is it to be or not to be?'
And I replied, 'Oh, why ask me?'

'Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it, if I please
And you can do the same thing, if you please

somewhere i have never travelled

by e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Winter

by Norman Blake

The summer was out of sight
We couldn't sleep at night
Shadows were closing in
Back in the dark again

Basement we didn't own
Cut off the telephone
Ceiling was falling down
Winter was underground

There are worlds
We can find
A hidden place
Is in our minds

Place where the water falls
Nobody ever calls
Sky is forever clear
Road never made it here

Forests are deep and green
Like nothing we've ever seen
Heavens revolving sin
Seasons change everything

Do You Love Me?

by Sheldon Harnick

Golde, do you love me?
Do I what?
Do you love me?
Do I love you?
Well?

With our daughters getting married
And this trouble in the town
You're upset, you're worn-out
Go inside, go lie down
Maybe it's indigestion!

Golde, I'm asking you a question!
Do you love me?
You're a fool!
I know! But do you love me?
Do I love you?
Well?

For 25 years I've washed your clothes
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house
Given you children, milked your cow
After 25 years, why talk about love right now?

Golde, the first time I met you
Was on our wedding day
I was scared
I was shy
I was nervous
So was I

But my father and my mother
Said we'd learn to love each other
So now I'm asking, Golde

Do you love me?
I'm your wife!
I know! But do you love me?
Do I love him?
Well?

For 25 years I've lived with him
Fought with him, starved with him
25 years my bed is his
If that's not love, what is?

Then you love me!
I suppose I do
And I suppose I love you, too

It doesn't change a thing
But even so
After 25 years
It's nice to know

Ash Wednesday (Pt. V)

[Pt. IV here]
by T.S. Eliot

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season, time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

[Pt. VI here]

Snow

by Randy Newman

Snow fills the fields we used to know
And the little park where we would go
Sleeps far below in the snow

Gone, it's all over and you're gone
But the memory lives on
Although our dreams lie buried in the snow

Sometimes the wind blows through the trees
And I think I hear you calling me
But all I see is...

Snow everywhere I go
As the cold winter sun sinks low
I walk alone through the snow

You Do Something to Me

by Cole Porter

You do something to me
Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be
You have the power to hypnotize me

Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
For you do something to me
That nobody else could do

Spoils of the Dead

by Robert Frost

Two fairies it was
   On a still summer day
Came forth in the woods
   With the flowers to play.

The flowers they plucked
   They cast on the ground
For others, and those
   For still others they found.

Flower-guided it was
   That they came as they ran
On something that lay
   In the shape of a man.

The snow must have made
   The feathery bed
When this one fell
   On the sleep of the dead.

But the snow was gone
   A long time ago,
And the body he wore
   Nigh gone with the snow.

The fairies drew near
   And keenly espied
A ring on his hand
   And a chain at his side.

They knelt in the leaves
   And eerily played
With the glittering things,
   And were not afraid.

And when they went home
   To hide in their burrow,
They took them along
   To play with to-morrow.

When you came on death,
   Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
   I remember that I did.

But I recognised death
   With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
   The spoils of the dead.