"I ❤️ You"
February, the month of Love. Share it, wear it, be it...and read it in this month's blog.
Featuring: "Justice for All or Libertry for None"
the1209gallery
If affordability is a hoax, I've got a statue called Liberty for sell!
Ohhh, "To be or not to be...that is the question!
Since we are in the month of love, I'm sharing one of my favorite Shakespeare Sonnets. It's just an excerpt, because our Bard certainly knew how to put down some words! I've been accused of being a little wordy myself, but hey...better out than in. LOL.
FEATURING: In The Sandbox
"Justice for All or Liberty for None!"
In 2024 and 2025, Creative's Cafe featured great minds, artists, educators, and pioneers. 2026, we're going to make it "your sandbox"! Therefore, we welcome your voice here.
You can comment on any of the pieces by going to the contact page and entering your comments there, and I will post them.
Sonnet 18 ~ William Shakespeare
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
There are more lovely and more temperate
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.
And summer’s lease has all too short a date:.
Sometime too hot the eye of Heaven shines
And often is his golden complexion dimm’d
And every fair from fair sometimes declines
By chance on nature’s changing course on trimmed.
This same piece was well read by a Creative on YouTube. She read it very beautifully. Click play and read along.
Linda Ellis has given *Free License* to share her work. You can access her website here, if you would like to read the story behind the poem.
by Linda Ellis
I read of a man who stood to speak
at the funeral of a friend.
He referred to the dates on the tombstone
from the beginning to the end.
He noted first came the date of the birth
and spoke the following date with tears.
But he said what mattered most of all
was the dash between the years.
For that dash represents all the time
that they spent life on Earth.
And now only those who loved them
know what that little line is worth.
For it matters not how much we own,
the cars, the house, the cash.
What matters is how we live and love,
and how we spend our dash.
So, think about this long and hard.
Are there things you’d like to change?
For you never know how much time is left
that can still be rearranged.
If we could just slow down enough
to consider what’s true and real,
and always try to understand
the way other people feel.
And be less quick to anger,
and show appreciation more,
and love the people in our lives
like we’ve never loved before.
If we treat each other with respect
and more often wear a smile,
remembering that this special dash
might only last a little while.
So, when your eulogy is being read
with your life’s actions to rehash,
would you be proud of the things they say
about how you spent your dash?
I was an English major in college, and one of my required classes was Women's Voices Through Time. We were required to read Susan Sontag, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde Hanan al-Shaykh, Virginia Woolf and so many more.
The lives of these female writer's were depressing. I only found delight and humor in one read where I was able to laugh out loud, from Perkins-Gilman ("The Yellow Wallpaper"), and it was a relief, but the sad under-breath was that the main female character she wrote about eventually went mad. I didn't know whether to thank my teacher for a bit of comic relief or ask her if there were any women writers in the 19th or 20th century that lived well while they wrote. Then she dropped the ultimate bomb.
Our next critical essay was on an autobiography by Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". We were given three days to read and write our essay. Twenty-four hours later, I was devastated. It was a book I couldn't put down. It was pasted to my hands.
~~~~~~
Except from Chapter 12~
I wasn't sick, but the pit of my stomach was on fire--how could I tell her that? Bailey came in later and asked me what the matter was. There was nothing to tell him. When mother called us to eat, and I said I wasn't hungry, she laid her cool hand on my forehead and cheeks. "Maybe it's the measles. They say they're going around the neighborhood."
PREACHER, DON'T SEND ME (From, I Shall Not Be Moved)
Preacher, don't send me
when I die
to some big ghetto
in the sky
where the rats eat cats
of the leopard type
and Sunday brunch
is grits and tripe.
I've known those rats
I've seen them kill
and grits I've had
would make a hill,
or maybe a mountain,
so what I need
from you on Sunday
is a different creed.
Preacher, please don't
promise me
streets of gold
and milk for free.
I stopped all milk
at four years old
and once I'm dead
I won't need gold.
I'd call a place
pure paradise
where families are loyal
and strangers are nice,
where the music is jazz
and the season is fall.
Promise me that
or nothing at all.
@composingEye ©1992 susand.
"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America"
~~~
The Preamble to the Constitution