As requested, starting a poetic thread celebrating the beauty of the dark side. Life isn’t always sunshine and roses, sometimes we are challenged to embrace the darkness.
So come on, get your glum on, and join the sohbet – heck, that’s practically a poem right there. Anyway here’s my contribution to get us started:
Nightly fires a brief respite from the cold in my heart the cold in my bonesNightly fires burn brightly in darkness. .
Valerie Roney 
Define “dark side” cause I could go so many different ways on that one….
;o)
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It’s a fertile field for sure: fear, rage, anger, bitterness, melancholy, loneliness, grief, pain, hopelessness…
Just pick whatever’s clamoring to the top of the heap, or write 8 poems… bonus points for finding something that rhymes with despondency.
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Thanks for the poem Val! Darkness too is my middle name. For what it’s worth, the following by Orhan Pamuk, in “Other Colors”:
“Is it vulgar to be happy? I’ve often wondered about this. Now I think about it all the time. Even though I’ve often said that people who are capable of happiness are either evil or stupid, from time to time, I think this too: No, to be happy is not rude, and it takes brains.”
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Mmm…meaty idea Malcolm. Gonna think on that a while.
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okay, finally got a poem on this idea Malc:
You may laugh if you’re simple minded,
no understanding of what you play.
Skimming at the surface
of a lovely jollity.
But laugh you will, I promise,
through the darkness of the day.
When at last you see your role:
straight-man — Divine Comedy
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Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.
MeisterEckhart
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Until I can process this luscious topic enough to write my own poetic contribution here’s some quotations from the book “How to Befriend your Shadow”:
“It is not by looking into the light that we become luminous, but by plunging into the darkness. However, this is often unpleasant work, and therefore not very popular.” Carl G. Jung
“It is better to be complete than perfect.” Carl G. Jung
“I need to welcome myself unreservedly and humbly love myself, my whole self, shadow and light, sweetness and anger, laughter and tears, humiliation and pride. I need to reclaim all of my past, my unadmitted … inadmissible … past.”
Jacques LeClercq
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a link to my corner of darkness
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=257868911125
Hugs
Patti
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Sometimes the darkness is your friend. It allows you to feel some things that the light doesn’t, but it can also trap you into a downward spiral. I visit my darkness from time to time, but I’m wary of the slippery slope. Without the darkness, how would you know what the light looks and feels like?
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it seems i’m doing everything except what i should be doing today! on of the things i did was to more or less finish writing a poem i started a couple of years ago. then when i checked out your blog it seems appropriate to this thread so i’ll post it (untitled as usual).
dead rabbit across the median
on the other side of the road
my car glides silently to a stop
a clan of ravens seem suspended
waiting for the light to change
companions with relaxed intent
they are full of grace, interested, orderly
their nourishment not taken for granted
in these easy days of late summer
i sit there silently
and in my heart see only beauty
a man pushes a cart climbing the long up-hill
garbage bags hung all around and piled high, high
his own life a blessing to the world
summer bounty too, these bottles
and today i see only beauty
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