Poetry Meditations

Poetry Meditations

By Easton EArtsBooks
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Poetry Meditations episodes

  • When You Are Old by William Butler Yeats
    When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
    And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
    And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
    Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
     
    How many loved your moments of glad grace,
    And loved your beauty with love false or true,
    But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
    And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
     
    And bending down beside the glowing bars,
    Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
    And paced upon the mountains overhead
    And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
    1 min
  • Shook Ones Part II by Mobb Deep
    I got you stuck off the realness, we be the infamous
    You heard of us, official Queensbridge murderers
    The Mobb comes equipped for warfare, beware
    Of my crime family who got 'nough shots to share
    For all of those, who wanna profile and pose
    Rock you in your face, stab your brain with your nose bone
    You all alone in these streets, cousin
    Every man for they self in this land we be gunning
    And keep them shook crews running, like they supposed to
    They come around but they never come close to
    I can see it inside your face, you're in the wrong place (yo, who that?)
    Cowards like you just get they whole body laced up (who that right there? I don't know, son)
    With bullet holes and such (we gon' get 'em though)
    Speak the wrong words, man, and you will get touched (you see him? Aight)
    You can put your whole army against my team and
    I guarantee you it'll be your very last time breathing
    Your simple words just don't move me, you're minor, we're major
    You're all up in the game and don't deserve to be a player
    Don't make me have to call your name out
    Your crew is featherweight, my gunshots'll make you levitate
    I'm only nineteen but my mind is old
    And when the things get for real my warm heart turns cold
    Another- deceased, another story gets told
    It ain't nothing really, ayo Dun, spark the Philly
    So I can get my mind off these yellowbacked-
    Why they still alive? I don't know, go figure
    Meanwhile back in Queens the realness and foundation
    If I die, I couldn't choose a better location
    When the slugs penetrate, you feel a burning sensation
    Getting closer to God in a tight situation
    Now, take these words home and think it through
    Or the next rhyme I write might be about you
    Son, they shook
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Scared to death and scared to look, they shook
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Scared to death and scared to look
    Living the live that of diamonds and guns
    There's numerous ways you can choose to earn funds (funds)
    Some brothers get shot, locked down and turn nuns
    Cowardly hearts and straight up shook ones, shook ones
    He ain't a crook, son, he's just a shook one
    For every rhyme I write it's twenty-five to life
    Yo, it's a must, in gats we trust, safeguarding my life
    Ain't no time for hesitation, that only leads to incarceration
    You don't know me, there's no relation
    Queensbridge and we don't play, I don't got time
    For your petty thinking mind, son, I'm bigger than those
    Claiming that you pack heat but you're scared to hold
    And once the smoke clears you'll be left with one in your dome
    Thirteen years in the projects, my mentality is what, kid?
    You talk a good one but you don't want it
    Sometimes I wonder, "Do I deserve to live
    Or am I gonna burn in Hell for all the things I did?"
    No time to dwell on that 'cause my brain reacts
    Front if you want, kid, lay on your back
    I don't fake jax, kid, you know I bring it to you live
    Stay in a child's place, kid, you outta line
    Criminal minds thirsty for recognition
    I'm sipping, E&J got my mind flipping
    I'm bugging, digging my ways out of holes by hustling
    Get that loot, kid, you know my function (function)
    'Cause long as I'm alive I'ma live illegal
    And once I get on I'ma put on all my people (yo, yo)
    React quick, spit lyrics like MACs, I hit your dome up
    When I roll up, don't be caught sleeping 'cause I'm creeping
    Son, they shook
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Scared to death and scared to look, they shook (he just a shook one)
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Scared to death and scared to look, they shook
    (We live the life that of diamonds)
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Scared to death, scared to look, they shook
    'Cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
    Living the live that of diamonds and guns
    There's numerous ways you can choose to earn funds (funds)
    Some brothas get shot, locked down and turn nuns
    Cowardly hearts and straight up shook ones, shook ones
    He ain't a crook, son, he's just a shook one
    5 min
  • The Cactus by Randy Lundy
    You sit in the forgotten bone-dry hills
    surrounded by sand and sagebrush
    above Buffalo Pound Lake.
    A day and a night, and then
    three more days and nights.
    Do not mark the hours. Just sit
    until the prickly pear raises its bloom.
    A pale thing, translucent moon, sea anemone,
    the first thin veil of a cataract that will lead a man
    to the necessity of seeing with another kind of eye.
    Can you birth a thing like this flower?
    Elemental, composed of water and light.
    The concentrated effort of pure will.
    The blossom wilts and drops
    without sadness, nothing resembling
    nostalgia or regret.
    1 min
  • Self-Portrait by Robert Creeley
    He wants to be
    a brutal old man,
    an aggressive old man,
    as dull, as brutal
    as the emptiness around him,
    He doesn’t want compromise,
    nor to be ever nice
    to anyone. Just mean,
    and final in his brutal,
    his total, rejection of it all.
    He tried the sweet,
    the gentle, the “oh,
    let’s hold hands together”
    and it was awful,
    dull, brutally inconsequential.
    Now he’ll stand on
    his own dwindling legs.
    His arms, his skin,
    shrink daily. And
    he loves, but hates equally.
    1 min
  • Pride by Dane Swan
    A half-hour.
    Thirty minutes.
    One thousand eight hundred seconds.
    They sat.
    Protest is not supposed to be comfortable.
    Civil disobedience does not
    fit into pristine conformist ideals
    of opposition.
    You are supposed to feel something.
    Upset?
    Was your perfect day ruined?
    Good.
    That's the point.
    1 min
  • Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
    Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
    Weep, and you weep alone;
    For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
    But has trouble enough of its own.
    Sing, and the hills will answer;
    Sigh, it is lost on the air;
    The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
    But shrink from voicing care.
    Rejoice, and men will seek you;
    Grieve, and they turn and go;
    They want full measure of all your pleasure,
    But they do not need your woe.
    Be glad, and your friends are many;
    Be sad, and you lose them all,—
    There are none to decline your nectared wine,
    But alone you must drink life’s gall.
    Feast, and your halls are crowded;
    Fast, and the world goes by.
    Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
    But no man can help you die.
    There is room in the halls of pleasure
    For a large and lordly train,
    But one by one we must all file on
    Through the narrow aisles of pain.
    More About this Poem
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    2 min
  • Thoughtless Cruelty by Charles Lamb
    There, Robert, you have kill'd that fly — ,
    And should you thousand ages try
    The life you've taken to supply,
    You could not do it.
    You surely must have been devoid
    Of thought and sense, to have destroy'd
    A thing which no way you annoy'd —
    You'll one day rue it.
    Twas but a fly perhaps you'll say,
    That's born in April, dies in May;
    That does but just learn to display
    His wings one minute,
    And in the next is vanish'd quite.
    A bird devours it in his flight —
    Or come a cold blast in the night,
    There's no breath in it.
    The bird but seeks his proper food —
    And Providence, whose power endu'd
    That fly with life, when it thinks good,
    May justly take it.
    But you have no excuses for't —
    A life by Nature made so short,
    Less reason is that you for sport
    Should shorter make it.
    A fly a little thing you rate —
    But, Robert do not estimate
    A creature's pain by small or great;
    The greatest being
    Can have but fibres, nerves, and flesh,
    And these the smallest ones possess,
    Although their frame and structure less
    Escape our seeing.
    2 min

About Poetry Meditations

From the publisher's feed

Welcome to Poetry Meditations where I read you short stories and poems about whatever I like. Narrated by Easton E.