Addiction to the written word

There are things that I read, books, papers, poems, quotes... that just hit me. Deep somewhere in my core. Some things are so hilarious, I have tears coming out of my eyes from laughing, so many parts of the written word hit me in my soul. I decided to just post some of my favorites~

Robert Hicks Widow of the South

Sometimes you read something that just gives you goosebumps, it hits you deep in your core with the beauty of the words or the strength of them. this is one such excerpt that has stuck with me...
Chpt. 6
What I saw was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen, and I wish to never see it again. In the distance the entire Confederate Army of Tennessee stood on line. All of them. We'd been fighting out here in the west, in Alabama and Mississippi and Tennessee, always hemmed in by rivers and forests and tight little winding roads, and I had never thought about what thousands of men would look like if they stood out and faced us. But there they were. They shimmered in the distance, the warming air making them look wavy like a dream, something from another world. There were flags of all sorts snapping in the wind ~ the red and blue cross on their battle flag, the odd faded blue and white flags of one of the divisions in the center. Sounds of brass bands, one playing "The Girl I left Behind Me." I wanted them to stay there always, forzen in their splendor. An odd happiness possessed me then, and I can only explain it by saying that I had fought them so long and they had fought so hard, I was proud that such an army, a vibrating mass of butternut gray and sharp metal, screeching that strange wail of theirs, was arrayed against me and my men. I was proud that we were worthy of that. And though I knew not one of them would hesitate to shoot me in the head as I stood there watching with Weiss, who was muttering curses in a strange tongue, I didn't take it personal. I wish it could all end right there and that the Rebels could see themselves as I saw them in that moment. But such things never happen and such sights are bound to disappear. And so they began to move.


The Lion in Winter
Katherine Hepburn & Peter O'toole

"I'd hang you from the nipples, but I would shock the children"
(Katherine Hepburn, in her room, staring in her mirror, talking to herself)



Camelot

"Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot"
Musical ~ Camelot


The Jewels

My well-beloved was stripped. Knowing my whim,
She wore her tinkling gems, but naught besides:
And showed such pride as, while her luck betides,
A sultan's favoured slave may show to him.
When it lets off its lively, crackling sound,
This blazing blend of metal crossed with stone,
Gives me an ecstasy I've only known
Where league of sound and lustre can be found.
She let herself be loved: then, drowsy-eyed,
Smiled down from her high couch in languid ease.
My love was deep and gentle as the seas
And rose to her as to a cliff the tide.
My own approval of each dreamy pose,
Like a tarned tiger, cunningly she sighted:
And candour, with lubricity united,
Gave piquancy to every one she chose,
Her limbs and hips, burnished with changing lustres,
Before my eyes clairvoyant and serene,
Swarmed themselves, undulating in their sheen;
Her breasts and belly, of my vine the clusters,
Like evil angels rose, my fancy twitting,
To kill the peace which over me she'd thrown,
And to disturb her from the crystal throne
Where, calm and solitary, she was sitting.
So swerved her pelvis that, in one design,
Antiope's white rump it seemed to graft
To a boy's torso, merging fore and aft.
The talc on her brown tan seemed half-divine.
The lamp resigned its dying flame. Within,
The hearth alone lit up the darkened air,
And every time it sighed a crimson flare
It drowned in blood that amber-coloured skin.
— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)