ESO 3 y 4
y Bach 2

Nonsense poems created by students

If I don't eat torrijas, I won't know about all the gossip

If I don't eat torrijas, I will be very sad.

If I am very sad, my mother will be sad too.

If my mother is sad, my father will be upset with me.

If my father is upset with me, he won't let me chat with my friends

If I don't chat with them, they won't tell me all the gossip.

Thus, If I don't eat torrijas, I won't know about all the gossip.

by Lydia de Andrés

If I adopt a cat, I will die

If I adopt a cat, he will be lovely.

If my cat is lovely, I will be with him.

If I’m with my cat, my dog will be jealous.

If my dog is jealous, he will get angry with me.

If my dog is angry with me, he will kill my new cat.

If he kills my new lovely cat, he will eat it.

If my dog eats my cat, I will cry.

If I cry, I will get angry with my dog.

If I’m angry with my dog, I will try to kill him.

If I try to kill my dog, he will kill me first.

If he kills me, I will die.

Thus, If I adopt a cat, I will die.

By N. Scibak

If I cannot go outside, I will sleep well.

If I cannot go outside, I will have to stay at home.

If I stay at home, I will probably have to clean my room.

If I have to clean my room, I will find something I lost time ago.

If I find something important, I will be happy for the rest of the day.

If I am happy for the rest of the day, I will make pizza for dinner.

If I make pizza for dinner, i will sleep well.

Thus, if I cannot go outside, I will sleep well

By S. de la Cruz

If I see the truth, I won’t have had a life.

If I wear less clothes, I will be cold.

If I am cold, I’ll need heat.

If I need heat, I’ll need fire.

If I need fire, I’ll need heat.

If I need heat, I’ll have to look for it.

If I have to look for it, I’ll find it.

If I find it, I’ll have it very hot.

If I have it very hot, I’ll start to sweat.

If I start to sweat, I’ll start to suffocate.

If I start to suffocate, I won’t get air.

If I don’t get air, I’ll slowly die.

If I slowly die, I’ll think of it.

If I think of it, I’ll think about life.

If I think about life, I’ll get nostalgic.

If I get nostalgic, I’ll start to cry.

If I start to cry, I’ll think of my errors.

If I think of my errors, I’ll feel pain.

If I feel pain, I’ll fall to my knees.

If I fall to my knees, I’ll burn, once again, slowly.

If I burn, once again, slowly, I'll keep thinking.

If I keep thinking, I’ll ask myself.

If I ask myself, I’ll see the truth.

If I see the truth, I’ll see myself.

If I see myself, I’ll see a demon.

If I see a demon, I won’t have had a life.

Thus, if I see the truth, I won’t have had a life.

By A.L. Meijer

EDGAR ALLAN POE

The Tell-Tale Heart

“And now have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the senses?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.”

Selection made by A. Fernández-Bravo

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “ou there”. Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as greek temples are visible long before a traveller reaches them.

“In cold blood”, Truman Capote.

Excerpt selected by L. Cano

"“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”

Animal Farm - George Orwell"

Excerpt selected by Samuel Arroyo

My extract is from Macbeth, Shakespeare, and it is the scene of a murder. I personally love it for the apparently sophisticated, yet very vulgar insults between characters, and, in a very special place in my heart, the “What, you egg?” quote.

(It is old English because in the new versions it doesn’t say “What, you egg, and because I like a lot how insults sound)

(...)

Enter MURDERERS

What are these faces?

FIRST MURDERER

Where is your husband?

LADY MACDUFF

I hope, in no place so unsanctified Where such as thou mayst find him

FIRST MURDERER

He’s a traitor

SON

Thow liest, thou shag-haired villain

ACT 4 SCENE 2 PAGE 5

FIRST MURDERER

(Stabbing him) What, you egg?

Young fry of treachery!

SON

He has killed me, mother

Run away, I pray you!

He dies. Exit LADY MACDUFF, crying “Murder!”

Selection made by Santiago Sánchez de Bustamante

“Unless you know yourself as eternal beings, part of the whole, you will remain afraid of death. The fear of death is simply because you are not aware of your eternal source of life. Once the eternity of your being is realized, death becomes the greatest lie in existence. Death has never happened, never happens, never will happen, because that which is, remains always—in different forms, on different levels, but there is no discontinuity. Eternity in the past and eternity in the future both belong to you. And the present moment becomes a meeting point of two eternities: one going toward the past, one going toward the future. The remembrance of your aloneness has not to be only of the mind; your every fiber of being, your every cell of the body should remember it—not as a word, but as a deep feeling. Forgetfulness of yourself is the only sin there is, and to remember yourself is the only virtue. Gautama Buddha emphasized one single word continually for forty-two years, morning and evening; the word is sammasati—it means “right remembering.” You remember many things—you can become an Encyclopedia Britannica; your mind is capable of remembering all the libraries of the world—but that is not the right remembering. There is only one right remembering—the moment you remember yourself…”

Osho, Love, Freedom and Aloneness.

Excerpt selected by B. Bondía

“ I was very busy and did not want to go. Transylvania was far away and few English people had been there.

There was another reason too. I was going to get married in the autumn to my darling Mina. I did not want to leave England until we were married.

But Mina said that i should go.

‘The Count is a rich man,’ she said. ‘You may be able to do more business with him. You can travel most of the way by train. In two weeks, you will be home again.’

So I accepted Count Dracula’s invitation. I left England at the end of April. Mina gave me a book about Transylvania to read on the train.

On the morning of May 4th, I reached Bistritz, a small town in Transylvania. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining on the great Carpathian Mountains. “

Dracula- Bram Stoker

Excerpt selected by E. Ramos

“When we hate someone, we are hating something that is within ourselves, in his image. We are never stirred up by something which does not already exist within us."

Pistorius had never said anything which had a deeper effect upon me. I could not reply. What had moved me most and in the strangest way was the similarity of this exhortation to Demian's words, which I had been carrying round with me for years. They knew nothing of each other and yet both had given me the same message.

"The things we see," said Pistorius gently, "are the things which are already in us. There is no reality beyond what we have inside us. That is why most people live such unreal lives; they take pictures outside themselves for the real ones and fail to express their own world. One can of course live contentedly enough in that situation. But once you know about the other you no longer have the choice of following the majority way. The way of the majority, Sinclair, is easy, ours is hard ... But now we must go."

Demian - Hermann Hesse

Excerpt selected by Ilia Concha

“He found himself remembering how on one summer morning they two had started from New York in search of happiness. They had never expected to find it, perhaps, yet in itself that quest had been happier than anything he expected forevermore. Life, it seemed, must be a setting up of props around one - otherwise it was disaster. There was no rest, no quiet. He had been futile in longing to drift and dream, no one drifted except to maelstroms, no one dreamed, without his dreams becoming fantastic nightmares of indecision and regret.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned.

I’d also like to add my favourite poem, which speaks to me from the bottom of my heart, ever since the first time I read it.

Now that my ladder’s gone,

I must lie down where all my

ladders start,

In the foul rag-and-bone shop

of the heart.

W. B. Yeats, The Circus Animal’s Desertion.

Excerpts selected by C. Alcaide

“(...) The old woman smiled, and answered in the same low, mysterious voice, ‘It is the blood of Lady Eleanore de Canterville, who was murdered on that very spot by her own husband, Sir Simon de Canterville, in 1575. Sir Simon survived her nine years, and disappeared suddenly under very mysterious circumstances. His body has never been discovered, but his guilty spirit still haunts the Chase. The blood-stain has been much admired by tourists and others, and cannot be removed. (...)”

The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde

Excerpt selected by S. Ciaroni

"Music soothes us and stimulates us, moves us to dance with abandon or settle down in quiet contemplation. It is part of every culture and touches people from infancy to old age. Our multifarious psychological, emotional, and physical responses to music are mirrored by an equally extensive neurological reaction: modern medical imaging show that that listening to music—or even just imagining it—activates almost every part of the brain".

Oliver Sacks - Musicophilia, tales of music and the brain

Excerpt selected by L. De Dompablo

"The troops were returning from manoeuvres; it was so early in the morning that the whole village was still asleep. A few women woke with a start. They leaned out of the windows and laughed. It was such a fresh, gentle morning! The roosters crowed huskily after the cold night. The peaceful sky was tinged with pink and silver. It’s innocent light played on the happy faces of the men as they marched past. The women watched them for a long time: these tall, well built men with their hard faces and melodious voices. They were beginning to recognize some of the soldiers. They were no longer the anonymous crowd of the early days, the flood of green uniforms indistinguishable from each other, just as no wave in the sea is unique but merged with the swells before and after it."

Irène Némirovsky- Suite Française

Excerpt selected by A. Sánchez Arroyo

"She raised an eyebrow. "You got something to say to me, Seaweed Brain?" "You'd probably kick my butt." "You know I'd kick your butt." I brushed the cake off my hands. "When I was at the River Styx, turning invulnerable . . . Nico said I had to concentrate on one thing that kept me anchored to the world, that made me want to stay mortal." Annabeth kept her eyes on the horizon. "Yeah?" "Then up on Olympus," I said, "when they wanted to make me a god and stuff, I kept thinking—" "Oh, you so wanted to." "Well, maybe a little. But I didn't, because I thought—I didn't want things to stay the same for eternity, because things could always get better. And I was thinking . . ." My throat felt really dry. "Anyone in particular?" Annabeth asked, her voice soft. I looked over and saw that she was trying not to smile. "You're laughing at me," I complained. "I am not!" "You are so not making this easy." Then she laughed for real, and she put her hands around my neck. "I am never, ever going to make things easy for you, Seaweed Brain. Get used to it." When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body. I could've stayed that way forever, except a voice behind us growled, "Well, it's about time!" Suddenly the pavilion was filled with torchlight and campers. Clarisse led the way as the eavesdroppers charged and hoisted us both onto their shoulders. "Oh, come on!" I complained. "Is there no privacy?" "The lovebirds need to cool off!" Clarisse said with glee. "The canoe lake!" Connor Stoll shouted. With a huge cheer, they carried us down the hill, but they kept us close enough to hold hands. Annabeth was laughing, and I couldn't help laughing too, even though my face was completely red. We held hands right up to the moment they dumped us in the water. Afterward, I had the last laugh. I made an air bubble at the bottom of the lake. Our friends kept waiting for us to come up, but hey—when you're the son of Poseidon, you don't have to hurry. And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time."

The Last Olympian -Rick Riordan

Excerpt selected by I. Bistuer

“Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen.”

The Steppenwolf, by Hermann Hesse.

Selection made by D. Cañada

“It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.”

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves it's own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.”

J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Selection made by Karen Scibak