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  1. TopTop #3661
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Let History Be My Judge

    We made all possible preparations,
    Drew up a list of firms,
    Constantly revised our calculations
    And allotted the farms,

    Issued all the orders expedient
    In this kind of case:
    Most, as was expected, were obedient,
    Though there were murmurs, of course;

    Chiefly against our exercising
    Our old right to abuse:
    Even some sort of attempt at rising,
    But these were mere boys.

    For never serious misgiving
    Occurred to anyone,
    Since there could be no question of living
    If we did not win.

    The generally accepted view teaches
    That there was no excuse,
    Though in the light of recent researches
    Many would find the cause

    In a not uncommon form of terror;
    Others, still more astute,
    Point to possibilities of error
    At the very start.

    As for ourselves there is left remaining
    Our honour at least,
    And a reasonable chance of retaining
    Our faculties to the last.

    - W. H. Auden
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #3662
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Belief In Human Immortality

    Belief, in a kind of certainty may be all that keeps us sane,
    yet we know our houses are built on fragile cliffs,
    erected on fragile yellowing limestone rock and scree,
    bit by bit by bit, year by year by year,
    winter storms and summer’s desiccating droughts
    will undermine our man-made foundations,
    our fragile existence to be taken in due course,
    sometimes with ample warning,
    sometimes on apparent whim just as a sudden gust
    snaps a tree branch on the aged oak, or on the ancient maple;
    or when a fire engulfs mountain and town
    sparing little we thought of as permanent,
    sparing little we were sure was there to stay,
    sparing little of the world we knew.

    In the fullness of time there is an inevitability to an ending,
    even our minor solar system at the edge of the Milky Way
    will devour itself and be engulfed by our minor star, as our sun
    becomes a swollen white dwarf no longer able to sustain life,
    even our one universe itself, all its barely countable planets,
    all its hundreds of billions of stars
    all its tens of billions of galaxies
    and all the miscellaneous almost innumerable debris
    all left over from what we have called our beginning, ‘the big bang’,
    will in eons hence flee apart and become dark and inert.

    Still we persevere in the firm belief
    in our eternal being, our time without end,
    yet as surely as our one universe expands exponentially
    to end inert near absolute zero and in total darkness,
    so too will we sapiens end in darkness
    near absolute zero and become inert,
    still we live on and on for a time still undefined,
    for a time finite, for a time that must end,
    immortality a human myth, a foible of our species,
    maybe useful for its time, expedient for the moment,
    serving a purpose for the day to day, to day,
    sustaining us for a time uncertain,
    sustaining us till no longer possible,
    maybe our belief can help us through life’s difficulties,
    maybe gratitude for all that has been given us nourishes us,
    maybe our belief in truth and beauty can sustain us,
    maybe belief in community is what there is.


    - Sam Doctors
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  5. TopTop #3663
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Song of Wandering Aengus


    I went out to the hazel wood,
    Because a fire was in my head,
    And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
    And hooked a berry to a thread;
    And when white moths were on the wing,
    And moth-like stars were flickering out,
    I dropped the berry in a stream
    And caught a little silver trout.

    When I had laid it on the floor
    I went to blow the fire aflame,
    But something rustled on the floor,
    And someone called me by my name;
    It had become a glimmering girl
    With apple blossom in her hair
    Who called me by name and ran
    And faded through the brightening air.

    Though I am old from wandering
    Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
    I will find out where she has gone,
    And kiss her lips and take her hands;
    And walk among long dappled grass,
    And pluck till time and times are done
    The silver apples of the moon,
    The golden apples of the sun.

    - William Butler Yeats
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  7. TopTop #3664
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Glove of War

    His nightmares are
    of war forty year ago.
    Dreamt the asbestos glove
    hanging at his left side,
    gone, hands seared
    on the red-hot fluted
    gun barrel.
    Changed out the M60 barrel
    on a moving Huey
    in thirteen seconds,
    hail pouring down,
    killing all that stood,
    crawled before him.
    “I killed every mother jumper I saw,
    that’s what they told me to do.”
    The asbestos glove let him kill
    quicker.
    Two tours Vietnam,
    door gunner, nighttime strolls in the jungle,
    LRRP sniper.
    No sleep now,
    this nightmare like the last:
    angry,
    blood red,
    bodies,
    dead young men,
    smells,
    sounds,
    rapid streams of lead
    splayed
    into living forms.
    Body whole,
    countenance unshaken,
    soul ripped asunder.
    We forget what they gave,
    what war serves back.
    Why not our guilt,
    not his or hers.
    The glove of war envelopes
    in its searing grasp.
    Cannot
    shake it free,
    nor put it down
    nor push it away.
    Burnt by that hot
    heat once again.

    - Ernie Carpenter
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  9. TopTop #3665
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Zone

    I spent the day
    differentiating
    and wound up
    with nothing
    whole to keep:

    tree came apart from tree,
    oak from maple, oak
    from oak, leaf from leaf,
    mesophyll cell
    from cell
    and toward dark
    I got lost between
    cytoplasm’s grains
    and vacuoles:

    the next day began
    otherwise: tree
    became plant, plant
    and animal became
    life: life & rock,
    matter: that
    took up most of
    the morning: after
    noon, matter began
    to pulse, shoot, to
    vanish in and out of
    energy and

    energy’s invisible
    swirls confused, surpassed
    me: from that edge
    I turned back,
    strict with limitation,
    to my world’s
    bitter acorns
    and sweet branch water.

    - A. R. Ammons
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  11. TopTop #3666
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Layers


    I have walked through many lives,
    some of them my own,
    and I am not who I was,
    though some principle of being
    abides, from which I struggle
    not to stray.
    When I look behind,
    as I am compelled to look
    before I can gather strength
    to proceed on my journey,
    I see the milestones dwindling
    toward the horizon
    and the slow fires trailing
    from the abandoned camp-sites,
    over which scavenger angels
    wheel on heavy wings.
    Oh, I have made myself a tribe
    out of my true affections,
    and my tribe is scattered!
    How shall the heart be reconciled
    to its feast of losses?
    In a rising wind
    the manic dust of my friends,
    those who fell along the way,
    bitterly stings my face.
    Yet I turn, I turn,
    exulting somewhat,
    with my will intact to go
    wherever I need to go,
    and every stone on the road
    precious to me.
    In the darkest night,
    when the moon is covered
    and I roamed through wreckage,
    a nimbus-clouded voice
    directed me:
    "Live in the layers,
    not on the litter."
    Though I lack the art
    to decipher it,
    no doubt the next chapter
    in my book of transformations
    is already written.
    I am not done with my changes.


    - Stanley Kunitz
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  13. TopTop #3667

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Lovely; and for me, timely.
    Maybe a poem like this is always timely...

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  15. TopTop #3668
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sorrow and Joy

    Sorrow and joy, alternating
    like water and vapor and ice,
    sorrow and joy in the same substance.
    We knew.

    Love and unlove, two colors
    in a single rose, it’s wonderful,
    an achievement of the rose’s cultivator
    whose name stays with the rose.

    Many years later we met again
    without pain, each of us with our own tranquility.
    That was the Garden of Eden
    but it was also hell.

    - Yehuda Amichai
    (Translated by Robert Alter)
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  17. TopTop #3669
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Populist Manifesto #1

    Poets, come out of your closets,
    Open your windows, open your doors,
    You have been holed-up too long
    in your closed worlds.
    Come down, come down
    from your Russian Hills and Telegraph Hills,
    your Beacon Hills and your Chapel Hills,
    your Mount Analogues and Montparnasses,
    down from your foothills and mountains,
    out of your teepees and domes.
    The trees are still falling
    and we’ll to the woods no more.
    No time now for sitting in them
    As man burns down his own house
    to roast his pig
    No more chanting Hare Krishna
    while Rome burns.
    San Francisco’s burning,
    Mayakovsky’s Moscow’s burning
    the fossil-fuels of life.
    Night & the Horse approaches
    eating light, heat & power,
    and the clouds have trousers.
    No time now for the artist to hide
    above, beyond, behind the scenes,
    indifferent, paring his fingernails,
    refining himself out of existence.
    No time now for our little literary games,
    no time now for our paranoias & hypochondrias,
    no time now for fear & loathing,
    time now only for light & love.
    We have seen the best minds of our generation
    destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
    Poetry isn’t a secret society,
    It isn’t a temple either.
    Secret words & chants won’t do any longer.
    The hour of oming is over,
    the time of keening come,
    a time for keening & rejoicing
    over the coming end
    of industrial civilization
    which is bad for earth & Man.
    Time now to face outward
    in the full lotus position
    with eyes wide open,
    Time now to open your mouths
    with a new open speech,
    time now to communicate with all sentient beings,
    All you ‘Poets of the Cities’
    hung in museums including myself,
    All you poet’s poets writing poetry
    about poetry,
    All you poetry workshop poets
    in the boondock heart of America,
    All you housebroken Ezra Pounds,
    All you far-out freaked-out cut-up poets,
    All you pre-stressed Concrete poets,
    All you cunnilingual poets,
    All you pay-toilet poets groaning with graffiti,
    All you A-train swingers who never swing on birches,
    All you masters of the sawmill haiku in the Siberias of America,
    All you eyeless unrealists,
    All you self-occulting supersurrealists,
    All you bedroom visionaries and closet agitpropagators,
    All you Groucho Marxist poets
    and leisure-class Comrades
    who lie around all day and talk about the workingclass proletariat,
    All you Catholic anarchists of poetry,
    All you Black Mountaineers of poetry,
    All you Boston Brahmins and Bolinas bucolics,
    All you den mothers of poetry,
    All you zen brothers of poetry,
    All you suicide lovers of poetry,
    All you hairy professors of poesie,
    All you poetry reviewers
    drinking the blood of the poet,
    All you Poetry Police -
    Where are Whitman’s wild children,
    where the great voices speaking out
    with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
    where the great new vision,
    the great world-view,
    the high prophetic song
    of the immense earth
    and all that sings in it
    And our relations to it -
    Poets, descend
    to the street of the world once more
    And open your minds & eyes
    with the old visual delight,
    Clear your throat and speak up,
    Poetry is dead, long live poetry
    with terrible eyes and buffalo strength.
    Don’t wait for the Revolution
    or it’ll happen without you,
    Stop mumbling and speak out
    with a new wide-open poetry
    with a new commonsensual ‘public surface’
    with other subjective levels
    or other subversive levels,
    a tuning fork in the inner ear
    to strike below the surface.
    Of your own sweet Self still sing
    yet utter the word en-masse -
    Poetry the common carrier
    for the transportation of the public
    to higher places
    than other wheels can carry it.
    Poetry still falls from the skies
    into our streets still open.
    They haven’t put up the barricades, yet,
    the streets still alive with faces,
    lovely men & women still walking there,
    still lovely creatures everywhere,
    in the eyes of all the secret of all
    still buried there,
    Whitman’s wild children still sleeping there,
    Awake and walk in the open air.

    - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  19. TopTop #3670
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Grandmother’s Hair

    I wash and comb her hair
    Sweep up long gray strands,
    an old world bun
    reminiscent of a former life
    She leaves her family,
    her home
    her country
    her language
    A wife, she births five children
    A widow, she raises them through a depression and a war
    She never returns
    Never sees the family she left behind
    She sits quietly on a kitchen stool
    Head downcast, hands folded
    I wash and comb her hair
    Long gray strands
    Fall silently at my feet
    Like the sorrows of her life
    A life of leaving and loss
    A life of living and loving
    Now I weave this legacy into my life
    As long gray strands of hair
    Fall silently at my feet

    - Rebecca Evert
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  21. TopTop #3671
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What We Did While We Made More Guns


    Prayed.
    Dug mass graves.
    Raped the daughters of the enemy, who,
    in their terror,
    turned back into swans.
    Placed war orphans in loving homes.
    Pinned honorifics
    to field-dressed shadows,
    recruited hommes noirs
    to fill empty jail cells and swans
    with their coruscating metallic cries
    to lend comic grace
    to memorial fountains.
    The exchange of gifts, the games, the tilts, the jousts
    the masques,
    proceeded without irony.
    The year’s cotillion was elegantly attended
    by debutantes in a glowing
    orange and red silk tent
    before an amputated audience
    of officers, some crying,
    some propped on tiny
    keepsake pillows.
    We prayed.
    Prayed for peace
    through victory.
    Sang the old hymns—
    It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh Lord….
    Planted winter wheat. Let it rot,
    the alcohol smell sweet and scouring.
    Planted corn.
    Ate the mice that overran the field
    instead, blood and small hides
    in our cupped hands, and
    purpose,

    our hair
    dripping as though we had just stepped
    from a bath with our beloved.
    The dead we have with us always.
    Livestock were fed broken chocolate bars
    to fatten provisions
    quickly.
    Guts ruined, they bellowed all night
    but we were sleeping
    only two or three hours now,
    there was so much to do—
    tunnels to torch,
    missile silos to polish with our hair.
    Cops and
    students of political science
    orated like gods in parking lots
    decorated with thousands of yellow ribbons,
    red searchlights
    scalded the possible flight paths
    of our urgency, everyone useful, finally, everyone
    making corrections
    to sacrifice,
    beauty to conviction.
    Paying prisoners of war
    one bucket of water
    for the truth.
    Two if it wasn’t any good.

    - Dorothy Barresi
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  23. TopTop #3672
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Moment

    The moment when, after many years
    of hard work and a long voyage
    you stand in the centre of your room,
    house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
    knowing at last how you got there,
    and say, I own this,

    is the same moment when the trees unloose
    their soft arms from around you,
    the birds take back their language,
    the cliffs fissure and collapse,
    the air moves back from you like a wave
    and you can't breathe.

    No, they whisper. You own nothing.
    You were a visitor, time after time
    climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
    We never belonged to you.
    You never found us.
    It was always the other way round.

    - Margaret Atwood
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  24. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  25. TopTop #3673
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tula [”Books are door-shaped”]

    Books are door-shaped
    portals
    carrying me
    across oceans
    and centuries,
    helping me feel
    less alone.

    But my mother believes
    that girls who read too much
    are unladylike
    and ugly,
    so my father's books are locked
    in a clear glass cabinet. I gaze
    at enticing covers
    and mysterious titles,
    but I am rarely permitted
    to touch
    the enchantment
    of words.

    Poems.
    Stories.
    Plays.
    All are forbidden.
    Girls are not supposed to think,
    but as soon as my eager mind
    begins to race, free thoughts
    rush in
    to replace
    the trapped ones.

    I imagine distant times
    and faraway places.
    Ghosts.
    Vampires.
    Ancient warriors.
    Fantasy moves into
    the tangled maze
    of lonely confusion.

    Secretly, I open
    an invisible book in my mind,
    and I step
    through its magical door-shape
    into a universe
    of dangerous villains
    and breathtaking heroes.

    Many of the heroes are men
    and boys, but some are girls
    so tall
    strong
    and clever
    that they rescue other children
    from monsters.

    - Margarita Engle
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  27. TopTop #3674
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Norwegian Grandfathers

    My grandfather lived under the viaduct
    Seattle’s postmodern Skid Row
    Salt air softened his dark face;
    Eyes like the Aleut
    Cheekbones like the Chinook
    He drank under the viaduct fast and furious
    Like the trucks rumbling on concrete above his head

    He was the Underground Seattle.
    One of its dark knights
    He ate smoked fish
    That scented his jacket the day
    we met;
    Brown eyes like mine
    Round face like mine
    Missing teeth like mine

    I was six when we found him
    Our father driving four curious grandchildren
    To meet a quiet man who out of respect
    Wore a gray suit that hung
    Limp on bent-over bones
    Who couldn’t make his eyes meet mine
    A weathered half smile was his hello

    Descendants of the logging men
    The failed gold miners
    The daring men who once sailed from Oslo
    Who knew the sea
    Who knew the salmon
    Who knew how to shape logs into homes
    And children’s bed boards
    Grandfathers, all of them
    Who slept outside now
    Smelling of salt brine aroma;
    The Puget Sound

    I met my grandfather living on skid row
    Who still remembered when giant cedars
    Came skidding down the mountain
    Crashing overhead to the lumber ships below
    Living under those trestles was desperate then,
    Still is.
    He lived near the sea
    Drank near the sea
    Died near the sea

    Norwegian eyes like the Snohomish
    Quinalt his forehead
    The Athabaskan face
    Of lost men.

    - Kristy Hellum
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  29. TopTop #3675
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Just Because

    Just because the Robins are trading places
    on the telephone wire
    Just because the sky now smiles blue
    after a tussle with the morning fog
    Just because the calla lilies are raising a toast
    to their shy mustard seed neighbors
    Just because the gnarled Pepper tree is sprinkling leaves
    and seeds on my front steps
    Just because it's peaceful and quiet
    outside my front door
    Just because I’m alive
    to know one more spring
    Just because I’ve made more room
    for beauty to find a home
    Just because I can
    I’m opening my front door


    - Doug von Koss
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  31. TopTop #3676
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Illustrated with original art.

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

    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 02-25-2018 at 10:28 PM.
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  33. TopTop #3677
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Parable

    First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
    in order that our souls not be distracted
    by gain and loss, and in order also
    that our bodies be free to move
    easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
    whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
    should we have a purpose, against which
    many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
    corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
    whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
    pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
    a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
    glimmering among the stones, and not
    pass blindly by; each
    further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
    so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
    like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
    which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
    and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
    so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
    Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
    some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
    to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
    hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
    (after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
    preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
    we could see this in one another; we had changed although
    we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
    from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
    in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
    believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
    in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.

    - Louise Gluck
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  35. TopTop #3678
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild

    A group of grandmothers is a tapestry, A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: a
    bewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of artists is a
    bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of
    musicians is - a band.

    A resplendence of poets.
    A beacon of scientists.
    A raft of social workers,

    A group of first responders is a valiance. A group of peaceful protesters is a dream.
    A group of special education teachers is a transcendence. A group of neonatal ICU
    nurses is a divinity. A group of hospice workers, a grace.

    Humans is the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a
    target.

    A target of concert-goers.
    A target of movie-goers.
    A target of dancers.

    A group of schoolchildren is a target.

    - Kathy Fish
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  37. TopTop #3679
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Nero Tells All


    I smelled the smoke first—
    wood fire wafting on the wind

    then the sky darkened
    like the angry face of Jove

    and bright spears of flame
    shot to the heavens.

    Why look to me?
    It was not I
    who sparked the blaze.

    Blame those others
    with their foreign ways,
    and the fools who built
    their hovels out of wood.

    When the refugees
    from the city drew near

    with their shrieks and moans,
    their stink of charred flesh

    I barred the door
    and taking the fiddle from the table

    as was my habit
    began to play.

    - Lisa Shulman
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  38. Gratitude expressed by:

  39. TopTop #3680
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Ancestry DNA results came in

    Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
    was a monarch butterfly.
    Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
    I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
    There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
    My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
    Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
    but I didn't get his dimples.
    My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
    but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
    My uncle is a mastodon.
    There are traces of white people in my saliva.
    3.7 billion years ago I swirled in the golden dust,
    dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
    More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
    I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
    joining Sweden to Botswana.
    I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
    I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
    I am made of your grandmother's tears.
    You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
    chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
    and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
    I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
    I was the chain.
    Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
    like mine, like mine.
    You have sweat, black and salty,
    like mine, like mine.
    You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
    like mine, like mine.
    Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
    Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
    Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
    Don’t pretend we didn't come here to forgive.

    - Fred LaMotte
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  41. TopTop #3681

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love it! Great lines!
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  42. Gratitude expressed by:

  43. TopTop #3682
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Glen and Paul
    At Stewart Municipal Campground in British Columbia
    bordering Alaska


    Two happy middle aged men and
    a white jeep station wagon

    On top, a pop up tent for sleeping
    a small ladder down the side of the car

    One man went for a walk
    while the other made dinner

    A campsite picnic table
    just a few steps from their car

    A shake of a checkered table cloth
    smoothed out by strong hands

    A wine and beer glass, colorful plates
    a small portable grill

    The man returned from his walk
    to a well thought out dinner

    They ate together under the coniferous
    trees in the warm glow of the evening light

    When dinner was over they bundled it all up
    put it carefully back into the jeep

    They climbed up the ladder and went off to bed

    The next morning fresh pressed coffee, orange juice
    with scrambled eggs and toast

    Two heads together studying a map
    folding it back slowly, section by section

    They pushed down the pop up tent
    retrieved the ladder, and drove away

    - Patricia LeBon Herb
    Last edited by Barry; 03-02-2018 at 01:01 PM.
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  44. TopTop #3683
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    We are all Strangers

    Crisps of sleet slash my face walking to yoga
    in the morning of the bomb cyclone
    of wind and snow.

    A bomb cyclone conjures WW2 pilots
    releasing carnage on cities, dropping explosives
    on medieval churches--erasing history
    for the sake of preserving civilization.

    The yoga teacher never shows up,
    leaving three students outside a bodega shivering
    in the morning of the bomb cyclone, while a tattered lady,
    face eclipsed by a woolen batman mask,
    drags a suitcase through the storm.

    We are all strangers in the snow-- herky-jerky
    memento mori, dreaming transformation
    and repose towards an opening,
    neither weapon nor cyclone.

    For me, coffee and croissant in a diner,
    warmth and sustenance
    filling in the dots.

    - Barry Denny


    ** A bomb cyclone is basically a winter hurricane. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it "occurs when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies," or quickly drops in atmospheric pressure, marking the strengthening of the storm.
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  45. Gratitude expressed by:

  46. TopTop #3684
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rebirth

    Primordial, primal, intuitive
    ancient knowing eyes — that are
    looking out onto a vast sea
    of pinkish lotus flowers
    each year rising unrestrained
    from their dense and murky muddy floor
    patient — arriving into the sunlit air
    leaves appear, then the flowers bloom
    to view the dark green forest
    ancient as the fossil flower
    both here long before man

    i have come to listen to this place
    that i somehow seem to know
    to put my cold feet into the water
    that warms them like the sun
    soul has told me
    i have been here before
    running naked through the woods
    placing lotus seeds in wooden bowls
    feeling the gentle rain at night
    just being human — ancient and modern
    in many different skins

    - Karen Gunderson
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  48. TopTop #3685
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rooms

    1.

    Some of us wake up
    to rooms and brewed coffee

    and the low clatter of spoons
    filling up the kitchen

    while the voice
    of an elderly

    pacing
    the street below

    our balcony
    begs

    allah
    allah
    allah

    like a drifting tune
    till we no longer hear him.

    2.

    Here comes the fruit cart
    selling tangerines like tiny fists.

    Here comes the man who measures
    the weight

    of chestnuts only to burn them
    on a low fire.

    Everywhere, children
    are breastfeeding other children.

    3.

    War within
    earshot
    and the sea
    the size of our lungs

    we choke on the bones of those
    who drowned and never arrived
    or never left/

    /this Mediterranean overpass to
    nowhere.

    Sabah el khair are two words
    of a prayer.

    We used to think that refugees
    were of one kind

    and we never knew
    that we were too.

    4.

    My aunt says a woman
    is like the soil, like the land,

    el maraa mitil el ard

    giving back despite
    the pounding of army

    boots and the blue fists
    of men on our skin.

    Giving back in orange
    groves and children

    even though her body
    couldn’t
    her land lost

    eighteen and forced to walk
    the length

    of exile to get here.

    5.

    Here the streets are stray
    cats. The streets are gossip

    in the mouths of men.
    /Minarets creaking like

    old forgotten beds./

    You say these men kill
    with their hands, their teeth,

    their swords, this is the way
    they open countries.

    You say you have no
    idea who their god is

    and why
    but you know exactly

    how only some of us
    wake up to rooms

    and brewed coffee
    to the low clatter of spoons filling up

    the kitchen
    like a cruel laugh in our chest—

    - Rewa Zeinati
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #3686
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The End

    Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
    Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
    When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
    Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

    When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
    When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
    No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
    When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

    Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
    And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
    Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
    When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

    - Mark Strand
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  52. TopTop #3687
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Timber


    Fortunate is the hour
    when you stumbled and fell down
    into this.

    Never stand again.
    On your knees remain
    where the earth is,

    where the fire is ever-ready
    and the air ever-clear,
    water, and the stones of God.

    For the Woods Of Error are
    the wood of the real,
    chosen for us as

    the color of your soul.
    Lie where forgiveness lies,
    make love to that.

    For there is nothing else
    but gratitude, which is what
    all your longing was for.

    - Bruce Moody
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  54. TopTop #3688
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thanks, Mark (and Larry). I think I'm ready.
    rj


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

    Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
    Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
    When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
    Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

    When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
    When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
    No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
    When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

    Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
    And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
    Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
    When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

    - Mark Strand
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  55. Gratitude expressed by:

  56. TopTop #3689
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Phenomenal Woman

    Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
    I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
    But when I start to tell them,
    They think I'm telling lies.
    I say,
    It's in the reach of my arms
    The span of my hips,
    The stride of my step,
    The curl of my lips.
    I'm a woman
    Phenomenally.
    Phenomenal woman,
    That's me.
    I walk into a room
    Just as cool as you please,
    And to a man,
    The fellows stand or
    Fall down on their knees.
    Then they swarm around me,
    A hive of honey bees.
    I say,
    It's the fire in my eyes,
    And the flash of my teeth,
    The swing in my waist,
    And the joy in my feet.
    I'm a woman
    Phenomenally.
    Phenomenal woman,
    That's me.
    Men themselves have wondered
    What they see in me.
    They try so much
    But they can't touch
    My inner mystery.
    When I try to show them
    They say they still can't see.
    I say,
    It's in the arch of my back,
    The sun of my smile,
    The ride of my breasts,
    The grace of my style.
    I'm a woman
    Phenomenally.
    Phenomenal woman,
    That's me.
    Now you understand
    Just why my head's not bowed.
    I don't shout or jump about
    Or have to talk real loud.
    When you see me passing
    It ought to make you proud.
    I say,
    It's in the click of my heels,
    The bend of my hair,
    the palm of my hand,
    The need of my care,
    'Cause I'm a woman
    Phenomenally.
    Phenomenal woman,
    That's me.

    - Maya Angelou
    Last edited by Barry; 03-08-2018 at 01:20 PM.
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  58. TopTop #3690
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Mother as the Voice of Kahlo

    I am fourteen & feeling ugly

    looking at a unibrow
    like the one I’d like to get rid of

    when my mother says
    Yes it’s supposed to be a bird
    See she did it on purpose
    See she didn’t care
    what people thought of her
    only what they were made of
    which animals were inside & why
    Here she’s a stag in mid-leap

    with nine arrows in her body
    alive bleeding

    Her grief is constant & irreparable

    like the crown of fresh flowers
    she killed each day

    See the instinct for painting is the instinct for power
    Women don’t
    choose work over love
    but it’s not the same for men

    See all men are in love with themselves

    Like Diego & your father

    & even an artist
    will leave his wife behind

    but he can’t if she runs harder
    if she’s both hunter & sacrifice

    - Analicia Sotelo
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  59. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

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