Phoenyx Flames• Show poetry

Well, I'm a fairly diverse poet, I guess you could say. I write in different styles, different structures, sometimes rhyming and sometimes not. I love reading poems by Edgar Allen Poe, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, and many others - but I also like reading the poems on here, because most are very excellent stuff!

Well, I have to change this part 'cause things have changed a bit over the past few months, lol. As of May, 2007 I now live in Nevada and am working, preparing to start up college again at the beginning of the year. After some hard decision making and some new revelations, I've changed my career goals from Forensic Anthropologist to high school History teacher. Quite a big change, I would say, but I have good reasoning behind it.

Also, I want to add that I love writing stories, and am currently in the process of writing a couple different books. Hopefully, I can get over my writer's block and finish one of them soon so I can get them published! Wish me luck on that...

I'm also very interested in Politics, and Social issues that currently plague our society. I prefer to be outspoken about my views and opinions, but I do like listening to other viewpoints and learning from others in debates, discussions and the like. I'm very open-minded to almost anything, though there are a few places where I draw the line. I don't appreciate people putting others down, judging others based on sexual preference or appearance, talking about people behind their backs, or anything like that. Otherwise, I'm a very nice person who loves meeting new people, many of which have different views than mine ^_^, and enjoy the company of other lots.

Please, read and hopefully enjoy my poetry, and feel free to leave critical comments and such. Though, constructive criticism only, please. Thanks, and thank for reading my stuff and leaving comments, I really appreciate it!

Here's some quotes that I like:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing even more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

“Does this darkness have a name? This cruelty, this hatred, how did it find us? Did it steal into our lives, or did we seek it out and embrace it? What happened to us? That we now send our children into the world like we send young men to war... Hoping for their safe return... But knowing that some will be lost along the way. When did we lose our way? Consumed by the shadows, swallowed whole by the darkness. Does this darkness have a name? Is it your name?” – One Tree Hill

"Going to war over religion is like having an argument over whose imaginary friend is better." --Richard Jeni

"On doit se regarder soi-méme un fort long temps, I Avant que de songer á condammer les gens. - One should examine oneself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others." - Jean-Baptiste Pouelin

"I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.
I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.
I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.
We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.
I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.
I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.
I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.
I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.
We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.
I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.
I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.
I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.
I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.
I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.
I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.
I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.
I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.
I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love."

"Any belief worth having must survive doubt."

"The church still wonders why any Infidel should be wicked enough to endeavor to destroy her power.
I will tell the church why.
You have imprisoned the human mind; you have been the enemy of liberty; you have burned us at the stake -- wasted us upon slow fires -- torn our flesh with iron; you have covered us with chains -- treated us as outcasts; you have filled the world with fear; you have taken our wives and children from our arms; you have confiscated our property; you have denied us the right to testify in courts of justice; you have branded us with infamy; you have torn out our tongues; you have refused us burial. In the name of your religion, you have robbed us of every right; and after having inflicted upon us every evil that can be inflicted in this world, you have fallen upon your knees, and with clasped hands implored your God to torment us forever.
Can you wonder that we hate your doctrines -- that we despise your creeds -- that we feel proud to know that we are beyond your power -- that we are free in spite of you -- that we can express our honest thought, and that the whole world is grandly rising into the blessed light? Can you wonder that we point with pride to the fact that Infidelity has ever been found battling for the rights of man, for the liberty of conscience, and for the happiness of all? Can you wonder that we are proud to know that we have always been disciples of Reason, and soldiers of Freedom; that we have denounced tyranny and superstition, and have kept our hands unstained with human blood?" -Robert Green Ingersoll

"These religions teach the slave virtues. They make inanimate things holy, and falsehoods sacred. They create artificial crimes. To eat meat on Friday, to enjoy yourself on Sunday, to eat on fast-days, to be happy in Lent, to dispute a priest, to ask for evidence, to deny a creed, to express your sincere thought, all these acts are sins, crimes against some god. To give your honest opinion about Jehovah, Mohammed or Christ, is far worse than to maliciously slander your neighbor. To question or doubt miracles is far worse than to deny known facts. Only the obedient, the credulous, the cringers, the kneelers, the meek, the unquestioning, the true believers, are regarded as moral, as virtuous. It is not enough to be honest, generous and useful; not enough to be governed by evidence, by facts. In addition to this, you must believe. These things are the foes of morality. They subvert all natural conceptions of virtue." - Robert Ingersoll

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." - Steven Weinberg

"The clergy converted the simple teachings of Jesus into an engine for enslaving mankind and adulterated by artificial constructions into a contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves...these clergy, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ." - Thomas Jefferson


"Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity [of opinion]. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites." - Thomas Jefferson

"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it." - Mark Twain

"Hands that help are far better than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll

"Why," they say to me, "suppose [our religion] should turn out to be true, and you should come to the day of Judgment and find all these things to be true. What would you do then?"
I would walk up like a man, and say, "I was mistaken."
"And suppose God was about to pass judgment upon you, what would you say?"
I would say to him: "Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." Why not? I am told that I must render good for evil. I am told that if smitten on one cheek I must turn the other. I am told that I must overcome evil with good. I am told that I must love my enemies; and will it do for this God who tells me to love my enemies to damn his? No, it will not do. It will not do." - Robert Green Ingersoll

"Intelligent design is not an argument of the same character as these controversies. It is not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one. It might be worth discussing in a class on the history of ideas, in a philosophy class on popular logical fallacies, or in a comparative religion class on origin myths from around the world. But it no more belongs in a biology class than alchemy belongs in a chemistry class, phlogiston in a physics class or the stork theory in a sex education class. In those cases, the demand for equal time for "both theories" would be ludicrous. Similarly, in a class on 20th-century European history, who would demand equal time for the theory that the Holocaust never happened?"