Poem medicating.

...and on such a night, progressing from the last post, it's best to wear multiple pairs of socks, listen to impressively howling wind, and wistfully read poems.  I often get made fun of for keeping my books in my office, but select favorite poetry books in my nightstand drawers... I counter that only the most important stuff gets stored in nightstand drawers ;)

Poetry safety words = mandated stop before reading too much Sylvia Plath or going the other direction and drowning in Shakespeare sonnets. For now, though, as I haven't got that far, a few easy favorites.

i love you much(most beautiful darling) more than anyone on the earth and i like you better than everything in the sky -sunlight and singing welcome your coming although winter may be everywhere with such a silence and such a darkness noone can quite begin to guess (except my life)the true time of year- and if what calls itself a world should have the luck to hear such singing(or glimpse such sunlight as will leap higher than high through gayer than gayest someone's heart at your each nearness)everyone certainly would(my most beautiful darling)believe in nothing but love  -e.e. cummings If you can keep your head when all about you  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,  But make allowance for their doubting too;  If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,  Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,  Or being hated, don't give way to hating,  And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;  If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster  And treat those two impostors just the same;  If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken  Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,  Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,  And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings  And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,  And lose, and start again at your beginnings  And never breathe a word about your loss;  If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew  To serve your turn long after they are gone,  And so hold on when there is nothing in you  Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!' If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  ' Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,  if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,  If all men count with you, but none too much;  If you can fill the unforgiving minute  With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,  Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,  And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son! -Rudyard Kipling And finally a link to some Keats, to make the faintest of faint connections to the cursed Urns piece, at http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html, because that's where my head should be at.   And/and an end to this blog post because I cannot figure out how to switch the formatting out of columns.