From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">RennieLorca</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

jon~ <a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2003.08.15.23.29.9167">a thousand more</a> my sympathy to you, her family and friends ..... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=339">jack</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

love you and yours as well sweet lady misti<BR>
(blushing furiursly)<BR>
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and leamus this is a romance love site, dedicated toall the emotions and pains of that type of love. <BR>
and lol love poems date back to scrawls on the walls of egypt and far beyond and yet people are still trying to figure out the ramifications of that love.<BR>
<BR>

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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=1139">jwb71913</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Ah Dear Leamas,  As we embrace our pain and sink into the depths of despair, are we even capable of 'romantic love'?  Do not 'love' the pain, simply accept it as the price you pay for giving your heart to the wrong person.  Trust is so fragile, yet so necessary, that we often abuse it.<BR>
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Have a good weekend,   Jim
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=1172">Athena</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Jon, A Thousand More was beautiful.  Brought tears to my eyes.  My sympathies to you and to those who loved (love) your friend.
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=2">scqueen</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Jon ~ My thoughts are with you as well. You've always had the ability to touch the soul through your poetry. She was blessed to have known you.
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=1">Kirk, Blender-Keeper</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Leamas,<BR>
similar to that old "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" line, I actually think it's easier to write a more compelling poem about heartbreak than about happiness. <BR>
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You can take it too far, I guess, and get into awful stuff using lots of goth-like imagery of blackness and despair.<BR>
<BR>
Maybe I'm just an old cynic, I think that the best stuff reflects the complexity and ambiguity real relationships often have in 'em. 
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=900">RennieLorca</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Kirk~ sometimes the "happy" poem may actually be biting sarcasm to the ones involved. There is usually some message in each poem the writer uses if it is not outright journaling (or blogging today). In my own life, I've been the funniest to the public when I've often been the most miserable in that fine line between tragedy and comedy. <BR>
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What may seem a blissful life in written lines, leamas, may actually be an attempt by some writers to guide their lives into some happy and safe harbour. Personally, I've had every major life-altering event happen in my life that is called a major stressor except for divorce. Friends and family would rather "feel" I am okay by seeing me post the durned happy poems ad infinitum ad nauseaum. I usually humour them. <BR>
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MOST folks dont' want a steady overdose of misery out of ANY poet in this stressful world. Read Poe out the wazoo if you want a depressive poet. I grew up with a library that was filled with bleating poets. jeez, as a young woman I couldn't wait to afford some books from Don Marquis, Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein and other off-the wall, still dealing with editors poets (compared to these bluz-brothers long-suffering sad-eyed poets). I love to see folks like Misti put the spurs on a ride-out/write-out her feelings of the moment. It's real. Tacos for breakfast, not the farina chicken feed we are offered at booksellers much of the time. Bravo for writers like her! I write what I feel in that vein, I've got to listen to hours of drivel on each line on why I shouldn't have. The events that lead to me writing the lines above in 1997 would have most folks barfing in their Kix or Wheaties, so I don't relate them...I sugar-coat and water down with milk of human kindness. Makes me look like a piece of fluff when I could probably have made Dorothy Parker blush with my views. I'm a product of the 60's, just like you, so I'll never totally conform to what the world expects. Elsewhere, I get up in the morning, don flak jacket and write. I chew through the harness and say what I feel other places. One poem does not a poet make. The work of a poet on one website never gives us complete insight on that person. I am not fool enough to think I know anyone from just what they post here. <BR>
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In general, a great majority of poetry readers look for poetry to find something they can relate to in a poem. They look for a great overall poem and a few lines they can commit to memory. Poets are quoted more than politicians. Politicians quote poets. Poets anger politicians. Just look at what ole LeRoi did in NJ. A poet is remembered for being happy, sour, depressed or inspirational, et cetera. I don't believe I'll be remembered for much, but post so that folks today who read me will at least think I am worth having a cup of coffee or tea with at some point -- maybe not. After losing a child, then a husband, almost dying from cancer myself, most folks expected to meet a person wracked in pain and misery. I can't do that. The living have some lessons to share, but go on living. I lived with a career Marine and then 'Nam vet for 28 years who had chronic depression and PTSD. One of us had to live in balance to keep the world going around us. I never wrote love poetry to or about him during those years. Even though I share him some, I still don't care to scribble poems about him for the public. Same goes for my fella now. Hence, you most often get the other poor guys I knew. You can easily do the math and see that there were a whole lot of years used in writing other things. <BR>
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The focus of this site is romance and love poetry. We blur the edges, skirt them, and lift them to crawl under them with our lines here, leamas. We still stick to something resembling love poetry even when it looks like it is about critters and rivers that cry as waterfalls. It's all a release in feelings instead of keeping them bottled-up as we write each line. Even the mild verses may be infused with great passion as far as the writer is concerned. One reason I really enjoy a site like this IS because I have the ability to ask a living writer what they meant in lines they've written. I can't do that with dead poets. After years of study, I don't care to have some scholar translate or intrepret the works of poets for me anymore in my life. I want to go ask Misti, Jim, B.K. and others just what the hey they meant by a line and be satisfied if and when I get some answer because I feel they are honest in their replies. (Just like that run-on sentence): They don't have to be perfect with the periods and commas. I am perfectly able to edit IF I want to do that. I want to get the gist of what they are writing. I come read this site before the hardcovers on my shelves because of all the above, leamas. I seem to think that you also might do the same now. I share written lines now. In a few weeks, I'll be pulling them and cruising catalina with far more on my mind than submitting verses ..... Rennie
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=487">bp</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

~Hey Leamas, i'm probably way off target here, but i think that apart from any poem's universal appeal on any general subject, the subject will have amazingly the exact number of different facets or inturpretations (sp), as it does readers.<BR>
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and this will probably be all the ignorance i chose to display on this wonder day. <BR>
<BR>
bp
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=220">wolfscreamer</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Rennie..Saturday night here and I,ve just read your last tome ,several glasses of wine have been consumed but I agree totally with your comments.Although some of my scribblings here have been on a somewhat DOWN tone occasionaly I try to inject a little humour along the way.Life goes on ,we have a choice ,we go on or we don,t.This site does indeed give people(me)a chance to lessen the load of what we consider life has dumped on us by putting fingers to keys, if what we write helps others then HEY we get a bonus.Catalina,remember that being mentioned in Neil Diamonds Jazz Singer,sounded nice but I can,t swim , why are all the nice places on the water . Ah well back to the wine. Enjoy your trip princess.  
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=1103">ladyinwaiting</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

jon ~ I feel your pain through your words in ~ a thousand more ~ embracing you with words of comfort love...so sorry for your loss...wishing you and family strength...
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=2">scqueen</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

wolfscreamer, my wine friend,<a href="/blend/wv.cgi?id=2003.08.14.14.35.21043">Shadows</a> drew me right in. October is my favorite month, fall my season. Soon, we'll toast to the harvest moon ;-)
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=1320">GoatgirlGeorge</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Star of David,<BR>
Thank you very much!  It's my first submission here and I'm glad people actually appreciate it! And it also helps me express my real feelings. I want everything to turn out all right...well, thank you very much for reading it, I know it was long^^'
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=2">scqueen</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Long live the Cowboy Junkies. Margo Timmins, you're my favorite misguided angel~ ever.
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From: <a href="/blend/av.cgi?id=909">leamas</a><BR>
Date: 16 August 2003<P>

Rennie,<BR>
I agree and understand.  To know one, one must recognize the other.  To be able to write about love (contrary to popular belief hate is not the opposite of love) one must understand anguish.  Death for a lifetime, that is pain.  The opposite side of the coin, but still part.  Hate is the avoidance of love, not the opposite.  Pain, depression, rending of flesh, hurt... it all ranks on the same spectrum, but floats the other way.  <BR>
I have come to this site like "a bull in a china shop" not to harass, antagonize (I don't care if its mispelled), but it wasn't to cause discord.  I was just trying to call attention to something that I see is so obvious.<BR>
Everyday lights go out in my town.  They go out because people have to wake up to go to work the next day.  They go to work the next day to make money for someone, or something else.  They finish the job to come home, watch an hour of TV, eat a meal, and then go to bed to start the cycle over.  Why live?  Why try?  Is it so that we can surround ourselves with some makeshift reality of what life really has become?  What is the point (hey philysophical-again I do not even care if that is mispelled-even though that was my major).  I pain for the amount of passive and complacent (guess what I think of my spelling) thoughts that plague our daily lives..  I thought this site would understand, yet I fell to the wasteside.  I just don't understand.  To know love you must understand it's opposite.  Granted some here know pain, not the she broke up with me pain, but the tear your flesh off, dry tears, Toppled Hour Hour Glass pain.  I was wrong.  You and and few others were the only ones that truly understand PAIN.  It hurts, but it still defines.  Without it your wouldn't have the concept of love (when I say "you" it's a sweeping statement).  To know your allies you must first know your enemies.<BR>
Poe is my alllllllll time favorite author.  He and I, lyrically, understand each other.<BR>
I guess that I don't fit the mold.  The reality of what I see as the "love blender" is different than most.  I now know that.  This is why I never harassed another for their works.  I love the written work.  I just feel that life is comprimised and forgotten when the reality of pain is real.  Love doesn't have to deal or be consumed by romance.  I feel love and pain when I pick up a rock on the Columbia River bank and throw it into the river, knowing that no other human will (more than likely ever) touch that rock again.  Or that fact that no matter how much your husband, friend or sibling knows you, they will never know your true emotions.  they will never see the moon the way you do.  They will never see how that tree bends in such a sad way.  They will never see.......<BR>
That is poetry.  To express what others won't see.  "Love" is a dime a dosen, but love IN ALL IT'S ASPECTS AND FACITS is rare and divine.  It is like a diamond.  I just wish that people would understand the love that I know.  To see things the way I do, but I don't think that will happen anytime soon.<BR>
I know some will say "take meds".  I understand that, and frankly (opening myself to criticism) I do.  Most, I take that back, NOBODY can understand the pain I go through daily.  Yet I love.  I love everything.  Sure it's not always romantic or giddy, but it is real.  I love life with it's ridiculous joys and romances, along with it's nauseaus pains.  I believe pain to be the more realistic and honest part of love, but you know what ....that is just me.<BR>
No offense to anyone.  Thank you everybody who wrote back.  Kirk thank you as well, actually I am quite honored (in truth I expected to be sent packing), [whisper]: i hate goth.......<BR>
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---LEAMAS
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