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  1. TopTop #2341
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Getting There


    You take a final step and, look, suddenly
    You're there. You've arrived
    At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
    This common ground
    Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
    What did you want
    To be? You'll remember soon. You feel like tinder
    Under a burning glass,
    A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
    Against the cracked horizon,
    Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
    In time with your heartbeats.
    Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
    On the self you were
    By having come all this way through all this welter
    Under your own power
    Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
    Meandering lifeline.
    What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
    Telling it haltingly
    Like a dream, that lost traveller's dream
    Under the last hill
    Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
    To unburden yourself
    Of elements along elementary paths
    By the break of morning.
    You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
    Called Here and Now.
    Now, what you make of it means everything,
    Means starting over:
    The life in your hands is neither here nor there
    But getting there,
    So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another journey without
    regret
    Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
    The end of endings.




    - David Wagoner
    Last edited by Larry Robinson; 02-19-2015 at 10:54 AM. Reason: MIsspelling
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  3. TopTop #2342
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I Know the Truth

    I know the truth – forget all other truths!
    No need for anyone on earth to struggle.
    Look – it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
    what will you say, poets, lovers, generals?

    The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
    the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
    And soon all of us will sleep beneath the earth, we
    who never let each other sleep above it.


    - Marina Tsvetaeva
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  5. TopTop #2343
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Give It Time


    The river is of the earth
    and it is free. It is rigorously
    embanked and bound,
    and yet is free. "To hell
    with restraint," it says.
    "I have got to be going."
    It will grind out its dams.
    It will go over or around them.
    They will become pieces.


    - Wendell Berry
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  7. TopTop #2344
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Eatin' With Sticks


    When you think about it,
    eatin’ with sticks
    is the natural thing to do;


    that is, without getting all
    sociological about it,
    it makes logical sense


    to handle your food
    with these smooth extensions
    of your fleshy fingers --


    that way, the hot
    is truly cool,
    bit by hit making its way


    south to your mouth
    as you choose
    what you chews,


    chowing down on, say,
    succulent shoots of bamboo
    with sticks of bamboo


    as you come full circle
    in the ecological
    sense of things,


    which makes good sense
    and shouldn’t
    bamboozle any bambino


    with a lick of sense,
    a lick of taste,
    and elders demonstrating


    the social, logical value
    of a world not to waste,
    slash, stab at random,


    not to just scoop around
    like so many grains
    of surplus and plenty.


    Moreover, sticks
    are never alone --
    as in “sticks together,”


    they are paired
    like the very stereo
    parts of the body --


    arms, hands, legs, feet,
    ears, eyes, molars,
    nostrils of the nose,


    with all of those
    working together ricely,
    in sync, as we eat. . .


    But wait -- what’s missing?
    Right -- a whole person
    does not a society make. . .


    Thus, as any unshaven sage
    in a mountain hermitage
    will instruct you,


    “You need a bowl, baby!”
    Which is to say,
    “You can’t go it alone!”


    And even a hermit
    wouldn’t be here
    if it weren’t for


    sticks and bowls,
    the whole enchilada
    of Yin and Yang,


    of boys and girls,
    of what makes the world
    worth sitting down with,


    wherever you are,
    blessing the bowl
    of food, community,


    collective memory,
    creative heritage,
    the grains, the noodles


    that wouldn’t have it
    any other way:
    “Eat us with STICKS!”


    - Lawson Fusao Inada
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  9. TopTop #2345

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This one is just pure fun--all the wordplay and luscious echoing sounds (without getting all / sociological about it, which I'd rather not, too). Thanks, Larry. Janet

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Eatin' With Sticks

    When you think about it,
    eatin’ with sticks
    is the natural thing to do;
    ...
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  11. TopTop #2346
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Difference


    The jellyfish
    float in the bay shallows
    like schools of clouds,
    a dozen identical — is it right
    to call them creatures,
    these elaborate sacks


    of nothing? All they seem
    is shape, and shifting,
    and though a whole troop


    of undulant cousins
    go about their business
    within a single wave's span,


    every one does something unlike:
    this one a balloon
    open on both ends


    but swollen to its full expanse,
    this one a breathing heart,
    this a pulsing flower.


    This one a rolled condom,
    or a plastic purse swallowing itself,
    that one a Tiffany shade,


    this a troubled parasol.
    This submarine opera's
    all subterfuge and disguise,


    its plot a fabulous tangle
    of hiding and recognition:
    nothing but trope,


    nothing but something
    forming itself into figures
    then refiguring,


    sheer ectoplasm
    recognizable only as the stuff
    of metaphor. What can words do


    but link what we know
    to what we don't,
    and so form a shape?


    Which shrinks or swells,
    configures or collapses, blooms
    even as it is described


    into some unlikely
    marine chiffon:
    a gown for Isadora?


    Nothing but style.
    What binds
    one shape to another


    also sets them apart
    — but what's lovelier
    than the shapeshifting


    transparence of like and as:
    clear, undulant words?
    We look at alien grace,


    unfettered
    by any determined form,
    and we say: balloon, flower,


    heart, condom, opera,
    lampshade, parasol, ballet.
    Hear how the mouth,


    so full
    of longing for the world,
    changes its shape?


    - Mark Doty
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  13. TopTop #2347

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hear how the poet, the real poet, so full/ of longing for the world, gives the world shape and sound, through the labor of love. Thank you, Mark Doty--and Larry. Janet

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Difference

    The jellyfish
    float in the bay shallows
    like schools of clouds,
    a dozen identical — is it right
    to call them creatures,
    these elaborate sacks

    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 02-23-2015 at 03:04 PM.
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  15. TopTop #2348
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Meditation on a Sonoma County Rose





    In February I'd tended to her rising buds

    and took only what she would give me.

    Then stepping back for a moment

    I stared long at her bare arms

    reaching skyward in solemn promise.


    Already, her awakening spoke of Spring,

    remembering deep roots, warm soil,

    a blue and future sky.


    Not until the first of May were my attentions

    rewarded full circle:

    ecstatic and irresistable,

    one delirously pink vortex burst open,

    sweeping me away

    in whispered crescendos of

    perfumed applause.


    - Larry Kenneth Potts
    Last edited by Barry; 02-24-2015 at 02:11 PM.
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  17. TopTop #2349
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    February

    Winter. Time to eat fat

    and watch hockey. In the pewter mornings, the cat,
    a black fur sausage with yellow
    Houdini eyes, jumps up on the bed and tries
    to get onto my head. It’s his
    way of telling whether or not I’m dead.
    If I’m not, he wants to be scratched; if I am
    He’ll think of something. He settles
    on my chest, breathing his breath
    of burped-up meat and musty sofas,
    purring like a washboard. Some other tomcat,
    not yet a capon, has been spraying our front door,
    declaring war. It’s all about sex and territory,
    which are what will finish us off
    in the long run. Some cat owners around here

    should snip a few testicles. If we wise
    hominids were sensible, we’d do that too,
    or eat our young, like sharks.
    But it’s love that does us in. Over and over
    Again, He shoots, he scores! and famine
    crouches in the bedsheets, ambushing the pulsing
    eiderdown, and the windchill factor hits
    thirty below, and the pollution pours
    out of our chimneys to keep us warm.
    February, month of despair,
    with a skewered heart in the centre.
    I think dire thoughts, and lust for French fries
    with a splash of vinegar.
    Cat, enough of your greedy whining
    and your small pink bumhole.
    Off my face! You’re the life principle,
    more or less, so get going
    on a little optimism around here.
    Get rid of death. Celebrate increase. Make it be spring.
    - Margaret Atwood
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  19. TopTop #2350
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cinnamon Peeler

    If I were a cinnamon peeler
    I would ride your bed
    and leave the yellow bark dust
    on your pillow.

    Your breasts and shoulders would reek
    you could never walk through markets
    without the profession of my fingers
    floating over you. The blind would
    stumble certain of whom they approached
    though you might bathe
    under rain gutters, monsoon.

    Here on the upper thigh
    at this smooth pasture
    neighbour to your hair
    or the crease
    that cuts your back. This ankle.
    You will be known among strangers
    as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

    I could hardly glance at you
    before marriage
    never touch you
    --your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
    I buried my hands
    in saffron, disguised them
    over smoking tar,
    helped the honey gatherers . . .

    When we swam once
    I touched you in water
    and our bodies remained free,
    you could hold me and be blind of smell.
    You climbed the bank and said

    this is how you touch other women
    the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
    And you searched your arms
    for the missing perfume

    and knew
    what good is it
    to be the lime burner's daughter
    left with no trace
    as if not spoken to in the act of love
    as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

    You touched
    your belly to my hands
    in the dry air and said
    I am the cinnamon
    peeler's wife. Smell me.

    - Michael Ondaatje
    Last edited by Barry; 02-26-2015 at 03:12 PM.
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  21. TopTop #2351
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Coming of Light


    Even this late it happens:
    the coming of love, the coming of light.
    You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
    stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
    sending up warm bouquets of air.
    Even this late the bones of the body shine
    and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.


    - Mark Strand
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  23. TopTop #2352
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Soldiers in the Garden



    Isla Negra, Chile, September 1973

    After the coup,
    the soldiers appeared
    in Neruda’s garden one night,
    raising lanterns to interrogate the trees,
    cursing at the rocks that tripped them.
    From the bedroom window
    they could have been
    the conquistadores of drowned galleons,
    back from the sea to finish
    plundering the coast.

    The poet was dying;
    cancer flashed through his body
    and left him rolling in the bed to kill the flames.
    Still, when the lieutenant stormed upstairs,
    Neruda faced him and said;
    There is only one danger for you here: poetry.
    The lieutenant brought his helmet to his chest,
    apologized to senor Neruda
    and squeezed himself back down the stairs.
    the lanterns dissolved one by one from the trees.

    For thirty years
    we have been searching
    for another incantation
    to make the soldiers
    vanish from the garden.


    - Martin Espada
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  25. TopTop #2353
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Kyoto: March
    A few light flakes of snow
    Fall in the feeble sun;
    Birds sing in the cold,
    A warbler by the wall. The plum
    Buds tight and chill soon bloom.
    The moon begins first
    Fourth, a faint slice west
    At nightfall. Jupiter half-way
    High at the end of night-
    Meditation. The dove cry
    Twangs like a bow.
    At dawn Mt. Hiei dusted white
    On top; in the clear air
    Folds of all the gullied green
    Hills around the town are sharp,
    Breath stings. Beneath the roofs
    Of frosty houses
    Lovers part, from tangle warm
    Of gentle bodies under quilt
    And crack the icy water to the face
    And wake and feed the children
    And grandchildren that they love.


    - Gary Snyder
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  27. TopTop #2354
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    True North


    That other compass

    you bought in the city
    is no good to you now.
    Before darkness comes
    give it away.


    Pause in your confusion.
    Stand quiet in the fading light.


    Say, "I am lost."
    Say, "Where is my life waiting?"
    Say, "I want an answer!"


    Then, in the gathering dusk,
    some quiet part of you
    may begin to open.


    Call it your inner compass rose.


    Call it the home of your true north,
    as constant as Polaris
    in the night sky.


    If there is an aroma
    faint in the evening breeze
    take a grateful breath and
    move in that direction.


    Your road will be there,
    glowing in the moonlight.


    Say, "Thank you for this blossom."

    Your compass rose has opened.
    You must go north.


    - Doug Von Koss
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  29. TopTop #2355
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You are cordially invited to join us for a soul-nourishing afternoon of poetry read and recited by your friends and neighbors.

    The Sebastopol Center for the Arts is hosting its annual Favorite Poems gathering this coming
    Sunday, March 8 from 2:00 to 4:00 PM.

    Sebastopol Center For the Arts


    Last edited by Barry; 03-02-2015 at 01:24 PM.
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  31. TopTop #2356
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Language in the Mouth of the Enemy


    I am afraid that this poem
    will contribute to the destruction of Israel.
    I am afraid that if I visit Adel Handal and his family
    in Bethlehem one more time
    I am betraying the Jewish state.
    If I go to Daher's Vineyard and plant an olive tree,
    if I teach the women of Nahalin poetry,
    if I give voice to their rage,
    what great-aunt of mine shot in the back
    before an unmarked grave will have died then,
    again for nothing?
    If I love the suffering of the Palestinians - it is so bright -
    more than the suffering of my own,
    if I work for a better life for that dark-eyed boy
    in Aida refugee camp who chased after our bus with arms
    spread like a hawk's wing-span - who lifted a finger
    to save the child in Warsaw, Lodz, Berlin? -
    If that boy grows strong and straps a bomb
    or worse, writes an article, a play, the perfect
    argument against the Jewish state
    then what have I done? What have I
    done? What have
    I done?


    - Elana Bell
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  33. TopTop #2357
    wingpoet
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Elana is one of my favorite poets, and this one of my favorite poems. Thanks for giving it a wider audience, Larry.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Language in the Mouth of the Enemy

    I am afraid that this poem
    ...

    - Elana Bell
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  34. TopTop #2358
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    i keep trying

    i can’t

    my pen keeps tearing the paper

    anger
    hurt
    grief

    bears down

    were I using a quill
    my paper would be
    a failed sumi painting

    the sun shines through our breakfast window

    isis atrocities continue unabated
    not just the beheadings
    but the everyday killing of old ones and children
    infants

    my wife loves me

    no longer a democracy
    america prioritizes
    the fortunes of a few
    above the rest of us
    crumbling roads and bridges
    no jobs for desperate youth

    i love my parents

    steve,
    you’ve wrought
    elegant white earbuds
    covering brains
    that craze
    when exposed to 30 minutes




    of silence



    faulkner said
    man will prevail

    over flooded cities
    drought
    firestorms
    famines

    our young buckeye trees
    leaf out
    in bright green

    what
    i scream
    am I to do
    with this pen


    - Trout Black
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  35. TopTop #2359
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    If You Knew

    What if you knew you’d be the last
    to touch someone?
    If you were taking tickets, for example,
    at the theater, tearing them,
    giving back the ragged stubs,
    you might take care to touch that palm,
    brush your fingertips
    along the life line’s crease.

    When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
    too slowly through the airport, when
    the car in front of me doesn’t signal,
    when the clerk at the pharmacy
    won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember
    they’re going to die.

    A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.
    They’d just had lunch and the waiter,
    a young gay man with plum black eyes,
    joked as he served the coffee, kissed
    her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.
    Then they walked half a block and her aunt
    dropped dead on the sidewalk.

    How close does the dragon’s spume
    have to come? How wide does the crack
    in heaven have to split?
    What would people look like
    if we could see them as they are,
    soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
    reckless, pinned against time?

    - Ellen Bass
    Last edited by thedaughter; 03-05-2015 at 02:26 PM.
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  36. TopTop #2360

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Oh! Such wisdom, its images & narratives so strong they might actually stick, for once.
    If We Knew. (If we remembered.) Thank you, Larry. Janet

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    If You Knew...
    Last edited by Barry; 03-05-2015 at 02:58 PM.
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  38. TopTop #2361
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour


    Light the first light of evening, as in a room
    In which we rest and, for small reason, think
    The world imagined is the ultimate good.

    This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
    It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
    Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

    Within a single thing, a single shawl
    Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
    A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

    Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
    We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
    A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

    Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
    We say God and the imagination are one...
    How high that highest candle lights the dark.

    Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
    We make a dwelling in the evening air,
    In which being there together is enough.


    - Wallace Stevens
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  40. TopTop #2362
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Elegy for the Living

    We wash up side by side
    to find each other

    in the speakable world,
    and, lulled into sense,

    inhabit our landscape;
    the curve

    of that chair draped
    with your shirt;

    my glass of  water
    seeded overnight with air.

    After this bed
    there’ll be another,

    so we’ll roll
    and keep rolling

    until one of  us
    will roll alone and try to roll

    the other back — a trick
    no one’s yet pulled off — 

    and it’ll be
    as if   I dreamed you, dear,

    as if   I dreamed this bed,
    our touching limbs,

    this room, the tree outside alive
    with new wet light.

    Not now. Not yet.

    - Kathryn Simmonds
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  42. TopTop #2363
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Being a Person


    Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
    the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
    Let any season that wants to come here to make its own
    call. After that sound goes away, wait.

    A slow bubble rises through the earth
    and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
    even the outracing, expanding thought.
    Come back and hear the little sound again.

    Suddenly this dream you are having matches
    everyone's dream, and the result is the world.
    If a different call came there wouldn't be any
    world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

    How you stand here is important. How you
    listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.

    - William Stafford
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  44. TopTop #2364
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Great Blue Heron


    As I wandered on the beach

    I saw the heron standing
    Sunk in the tattered wings
    He wore as a hunchback’s coat.
    Shadow without a shadow,
    Hung on invisible wires
    From the top of a canvas day,
    What scissors cut him out?
    Superimposed on a poster
    Of summer by the strand
    Of a long-decayed resort,
    Poised in the dusty light
    Some fifteen summers ago;
    I wondered, an empty child,
    “Heron, whose ghost are you?”


    I stood on the beach alone,
    In the sudden chill of the burned.
    My thought raced up the path.
    Pursuing it, I ran
    To my mother in the house
    And led her to the scene.
    The spectral bird was gone.
    But her quick eye saw him drifting
    Over the highest pines
    On vast, unmoving wings.
    Could they be those ashen things,
    So grounded, unwieldy, ragged,
    A pair of broken arms
    That were not made for flight?
    In the middle of my loss
    I realized she knew:
    My mother knew what he was.


    O great blue heron, now
    That the summer house has burned
    So many rockets ago,
    So many smokes and fires
    And beach-lights and water-glow
    Reflecting pinwheel and flare:
    The old logs hauled away,
    The pines and driftwood cleared
    From that bare strip of shore
    Where dozens of children play;
    Now there is only you
    Heavy upon my eye.
    Why have you followed me here,
    Heavy and far away?
    You have stood there patiently
    For fifteen summers and snows,
    Denser than my repose,
    Bleaker than any dream,
    Waiting upon the day
    When, like grey smoke, a vapor
    Floating into the sky,
    A handful of paper ashes,
    My mother would drift away.


    - Carolyn Kizer
    Last edited by Barry; 03-09-2015 at 02:56 PM.
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  46. TopTop #2365
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Note to Self: How to Receive Love


    Do not shrug off

    the gift of the
    stranger’s smile,
    the friend’s embrace,
    the grandchild’s hand
    in yours.
    There are so many ways
    to receive love.
    All of the offerings,
    small and not-so-small,
    together could fill
    and nourish
    your hungry heart,
    if only you would
    recognize and
    welcome them in.

    All your life
    you have wished to be
    one of those regarded as
    open-hearted and loving,
    The truth is,
    it is not that
    you give insufficiently.
    It is that you do not
    replenish the supply
    by accepting fully
    and consciously
    all that is offered
    to you.


    - Maya Spector
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  48. TopTop #2366
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shakespeare’s Flowers

    Now in February Alstroemeria repossesses spring.
    One day the scholars will not pour these words.
    The command of nature was never mine.
    But that is not to say these flowers, here,
    now, alive in their glass, whose waters
    their green leaves sully, are not as these poems,
    cut, stripped, placed in this glass of verse and
    do not speak with what my whole life knows.
    - Bruce Moody
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #2367
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Animals Are Passing From Our Lives


    It's wonderful how I jog
    on four honed-down ivory toes
    my massive buttocks slipping
    like oiled parts with each light step.


    I'm to market. I can smell
    the sour, grooved block, I can smell
    the blade that opens the hole
    and the pudgy white fingers


    that shake out the intestines
    like a hankie. In my dreams
    the snouts drool on the marble,
    suffering children, suffering flies,


    suffering the consumers
    who won't meet their steady eyes
    for fear they could see. The boy
    who drives me along believes


    that any moment I'll fall
    on my side and drum my toes
    like a typewriter or squeal
    and shit like a new housewife


    discovering television,
    or that I'll turn like a beast
    cleverly to hook his teeth
    with my teeth. No. Not this pig.


    - Philip Levine
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  52. TopTop #2368
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Desire


    A woman in my class wrote that she is sick

    of men wanting her body and when she reads
    her poem out loud the other women all nod
    and even some of the men lower their eyes

    and look abashed as if ready to unscrew
    their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads
    with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none
    would think of confessing his hunger

    or admit how desire can ring like a constant
    low note in the brain or grant how the sight
    of a beautiful woman can make him groan
    on those first spring days when the parkas

    have been packed away and the bodies are staring
    at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;
    and there was a man I knew who even at ninety
    swore that his desire had never diminished.

    Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
    telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
    yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
    and the world flares up in an explosion of light?

    Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
    of their desire, as if each were a criminal
    out on parole, a desperado with a long record
    of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes

    each one from all but the worst company,
    and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
    Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
    were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?

    But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,
    the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
    from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
    eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve

    of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
    and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
    and fat possibility swaggers into the world
    like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes

    the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
    in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
    sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
    for closure, for the completion of the circle,

    as if each of us were born only half a body
    and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
    What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
    the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X

    across its bald head, to hold out a hand
    for each passing woman to slap? Better
    to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
    each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous

    or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
    The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
    Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
    Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination

    and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
    relief from the self, the prisoner let out
    into a small square of sunlight with a single
    red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back

    against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
    to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
    to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming
    in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?

    - Stephen Dobyns
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  53. TopTop #2369
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Born Again Poet

    I feel like a born again poet viewing

    the world with fresh enthusiasm.
    Inertia has lifted and my fingers
    type with vigor and readiness.
    Thoughts deluge the page like a
    downpour after a drought and
    poems, like spring buds, emerge
    with curiosity and longing for
    fullness, for expansion. I fantasize
    being a word wizard, wearing a sorceror’s
    cloak, & pointed hat replete with moon
    and stars, depicting whole galaxies
    yet to be explored, extending my
    arms and, shazam! flowery phrases
    shooting out of my fingertips and
    dancing on the page. It’s a thought-
    stream love affair, a sacred marriage,
    and I have been carried over a threshold
    from which I may never return.

    - Constance Miles
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    Last edited by Barry; 03-14-2015 at 12:03 PM.
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  55. TopTop #2370
    Califoon
    Guest

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Gosh, I really appreciate the subjects raised here. Thank you Larry. I wish I were comfortable passing it on to my facebook stream, I'd like to stimulate more conversation on the subject.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Desire


    A woman in my class wrote that she is sick

    of men wanting her body and when she reads
    her poem out loud the other women all nod
    and even some of the men lower their eyes

    and look abashed as if ready to unscrew
    their cocks and pound down their own dumb heads
    with these innocent sausages of flesh, and none
    would think of confessing his hunger

    or admit how desire can ring like a constant
    low note in the brain or grant how the sight
    of a beautiful woman can make him groan
    on those first spring days when the parkas

    have been packed away and the bodies are staring
    at the bodies and the eyes stare at the ground;
    and there was a man I knew who even at ninety
    swore that his desire had never diminished.

    Is this simply the wish to procreate, the world
    telling the cock to eat faster, while the cock
    yearns for that moment when it forgets its loneliness
    and the world flares up in an explosion of light?

    Why have men been taught to feel ashamed
    of their desire, as if each were a criminal
    out on parole, a desperado with a long record
    of muggings, rapes, such conduct as excludes

    each one from all but the worst company,
    and never to be trusted, no never to be trusted?
    Why must men pretend to be indifferent as if each
    were a happy eunuch engaged in spiritual thoughts?

    But it's the glances that I like, the quick ones,
    the unguarded ones, like a hand snatching a pie
    from a window ledge and the feet pounding away;
    eyes fastening on a leg, a breast, the curve

    of a buttock, as the pulse takes an extra thunk
    and the cock, that toothless worm, stirs in its sleep,
    and fat possibility swaggers into the world
    like a big spender entering a bar. And sometimes

    the woman glances back. Oh, to disappear
    in a tangle of fabric and flesh as the cock
    sniffs out its little cave, and the body hungers
    for closure, for the completion of the circle,

    as if each of us were born only half a body
    and we spend our lives searching for the rest.
    What good does it do to deny desire, to chain
    the cock to the leg and scrawl a black X

    across its bald head, to hold out a hand
    for each passing woman to slap? Better
    to be bad and unrepentant, better to celebrate
    each difference, not to be cruel or gluttonous

    or overbearing, but full of hope and self-forgiving.
    The flesh yearns to converse with other flesh.
    Each pore loves to linger over its particular story.
    Let these seconds not be full of self-recrimination

    and apology. What is desire but the wish for some
    relief from the self, the prisoner let out
    into a small square of sunlight with a single
    red flower and a bird crossing the sky, to lean back

    against the bricks with the legs outstretched,
    to feel the sun warming the brow, before returning
    to one's mortal cage, steel doors slamming
    in the cell block, steel bolts sliding shut?

    - Stephen Dobyns
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  56. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

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