Your Egypt

[Winky]

A Box of Dreams


Here’s a box with someone's dreams.
They look a little dusty.
Some of them are hardly used,
and some of them are rusty.
But they’re pretty good dreams-wipe one off.
It almost looks brand new.
I don’t suppose that any of these dreams belong to you?
If they do then clean them up, this dust will make you sneeze.
And when you find a good one, could you share it with us please?
Some dreams are meant for sharing, some are meant just for yourself-
but none of them are meant for sitting dusty on a shelf.


Author; J Thompson







"But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet;Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), Irish poet, playwright.




Dreams---- Who is to say where reality lies....and if reality lies...what is the truth?"
Kristin Joy Bender, dancer/choreographer

"Dreams are often most profound when they seem the most crazy." Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1900.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?"
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Italian artist, scientist, architect, genius!

" Now Allah has created the dream not only as a means of guidance and instruction, I refer to the dream, but he has made it a window on the Unseen. "
Words of the Prophet Mohammed, Arabia, 7th century A.D.

Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream."
Anatole France, French novelist.


"Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top."
A Room of One's Own.Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), English writer.

"You see things and you say 'Why?'. But I dream things that never were, and I say 'Why Not?'"
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic.

"If a little dream sharing is dangerous, the cure for it is not to share dreams less, but to share dreams more, to share dreams all the time." Richard Catlett Wilkerson (1955-2075), Global Cyber-Dream Pioneer.


Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
sorry dont know who the author is

[alna]

Winky wrote:
Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
sorry dont know who the author is

Winky, the author is Langston Hughes:

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.


"Langston Hughes (February 1, 1902 - May 22, 1967)
Born in Joplin, Missouri, James Langston Hughes was a member of an abolitionist family.

Hughes is particularly known for his insightful, colorful portrayals of black life in America from the twenties through the sixties. He wrote novels, short stories and plays, as well as poetry, and is also known for his engagement with the world of jazz and the influence it had on his writing, as in "Montage of a Dream Deferred." His life and work were enormously important in shaping the artistic contributions of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Hughes refused to differentiate between his personal experience and the common experience of black America. He wanted to tell the stories of his people in ways that reflected their actual culture, including both their suffering and their love of music, laughter, and language itself."

more here :arrow:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/hughes.html
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83

[Winky]

Alna Thank you for the info I had not heard of this prolific writer
I spend a little time this morning reading his poems while having a cup of coffee

I searched for his poems and found that most don't grab me, but this one" As I grew older" did

What I understand is that when he was still young and ignorant of this cruel world he still had his hopes and aspirations
but as he grew older he understood he was literally tainted and restrained by his skin ,
that he would never be considered equal to the dominant whites I think its so sad the more often I read it... , poor man, poor poor people.

What do you think
is there a poem of him you particular like ?

As I Grew Older


It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun--
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky--
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!


This one I also liked "Cross"
I have known many mulatto's or coloured people (I grew up in the Caribbean) and many feel they don't belong to either world
yet the women are highly sought after by the white men .


Cross


My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

[alna]

I particular like "As I grew older " and "Justice"

Justice
That Justice is a blind goddess
Is a thing to which we black are wise:
Her bandage hides two festering sores
That once perhaps were eyes


Most of Hughes's poetry is about the racism but it is rarely violent or aggressive. I think he believes, beyond the colour, White and Black are human beings, with their qualities and defects, their joys and sorrows. With emotion, he calls upon the conscience of those who want to be his enemies

The White Ones
I do not hate you,
For your faces are beautiful, too.
I do not hate you,
Your faces are whirling lights of loveliness and splendor, too.
Yet why do you torture me,
O, white strong ones,
Why do you torture me?

[Winky]

I'll keep searching in the deepest ocean,
I'll keep looking everywhere I go,
I'll keep hoping for that ray of light;
the one that'll brighten my days and nights.
I'll keep dreaming, for maybe one day
I'll reach a long sought dream
And turn abstract into concrete

Hala Mahmoud El Banna
Cairo, Egypt
http://ambassadors.net/archives/issue6/poem.htm
http://www.poetry.com/poets/HalaElBanna.html

[Explorer the eighth]

I wrote a poem called "Dream"