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  1. TopTop #2071
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Forgetfulness


    The name of the author is the first to go
    followed obediently by the title, the plot,
    the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
    which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
    even heard of,
    as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
    decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
    to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
    Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
    and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
    and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
    something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
    the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
    Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
    it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
    not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
    It has floated away down a dark mythological river
    whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
    well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
    who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
    bicycle.
    No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
    to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
    No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
    out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


    - Billy Collins
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  3. TopTop #2072
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Someday I Will Tell a Great and Shining Truth

    Someday I will tell a great and shining truth
    that will buy back all my dignity.
    My silver words like coins will drop into the
    mouths of my enemies, killing their tongues like ancient
    poisons stilled the breasts of enemy kings, confounding
    their long-built case against me.
    These words will buy back my soul.
    Someday I will tell a great and shining truth, in whose
    deep structures will finally be exposed
    the war I come from: the war of babies fighting
    terrible battles, using weapons unparalleled on any field
    against foes disguised as friends,
    agents of mass destruction vomiting out of their little
    mouths: “I need, I need” they scream,
    undoing the universe.
    Frenzied flags of terror unfurl all around them, banners
    of the war: “Be quiet, be quiet” screams back the valiant
    army, meeting bravely the battle.
    Fists fly, penises stiffen, juices flow, fingernails furrow—
    but babies rally their unending forces,
    crying simply out their need, their need, O God, their need,
    unrelenting in the fray.
    In panic the defending troops deploy their only hope:
    they leave.
    The terrible enemy is defeated, finally, by silence,
    and the world is saved.
    Someday I will tell a great and shining truth, and
    all my burnt tribe, dragging their blankets behind them,
    will enter into my heart once again, making me whole.

    - Kalia Mussetter
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  5. TopTop #2073
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion


    An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
    And on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
    An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
    Both in their temporary failure.
    Our two voices met above
    The Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
    Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
    To get caught in the wheels
    Of the "Had Gadya" machine.

    Afterward we found them among the bushes,
    And our voices came back inside us
    Laughing and crying.

    Searching for a goat or for a child has always been
    The beginning of a new religion in these mountains.


    -Yehuda Amichai
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  6. TopTop #2074
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
    We aged a hundred years and this descended
    In just one hour, as at a stroke.
    The summer had been brief and now was ended;
    The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.


    The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
    Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
    And so I covered up my face, imploring
    God to destroy me before battle fell.


    And from my memory the shadows vanished
    Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.
    The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—
    A book of portents terrible to read.




    - Anna Akhmatova
    (Translated by Stephen Edgar)
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  7. Gratitude expressed by:

  8. TopTop #2075
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    "Mein Furhur, I Can Walk!"


    And what did Dr. Strangelove have in mind
    for border patrols and power struggles? His
    first concern was to survive, his one hand
    preventing the other from strangling him.
    And H.G.Wells, did he imagine the Martian
    invasion to be countered by a Islamic caliphate
    takeover? Chaos runs amok, there's nowhere it
    won't spread in this small world of conflicting
    factions. Held hostage to the "news", we can
    only expand our disbelief and threshold of pain.
    Vengeance and fear and greed are the harshest
    poisons that even blue-throat Vishnu, the preserver
    could not swallow. Can you see any Phoenix rising in
    this story? Words like "terrorist, insurgents, rebels,
    extremists" are the smokescreen vocabulary that keeps
    the dice rolling in the game with truth.
    Crisis after crisis swarm for attention. Drones
    and domes, spies and black boxes and be-headings and
    new bombs no one can detect, carnage and collateral
    damage-- the world is being shaved by a drunken barber.
    Whatever species, we're all endangered. Oceans spoiled,
    earth choked, abused, can a dream of a golden age and
    peace survive? Will the profit-dazed horsemen of this stark
    Epoch-collapse gallop faster into the nightmare?
    After the generals, the tanks, the cameras and the news
    teams move into fresh fields, the chorus of lament will
    be silenced in favor of forgetting. Rages,warnings, cries
    and prayers may whirl away into scenes in movies everyone
    can watch.


    - Rich Meyers
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  9. Gratitude expressed by:

  10. TopTop #2076
    tashee
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Rich Meyer has presented well the toxins of these times, the collective dementia arising from the "spectacular" world (described so preciently by Guy Debord). In contemplating his images of our deep suffering, a question arisies for me-- what is left to us here amid the detritus of a society gone so wrong, but each precious moment?

    Finding presence here and now, in the face of such fierce smoke and funhouse mirrors may be the most radical act of all. Let's breathe together, and know we are many, and take heart. There are cracks in the spectacular world. Love, Tashee
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  11. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  12. TopTop #2077
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Diameter Of The Bomb


    The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
    and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
    with four dead and eleven wounded.
    And around these, in a larger circle
    of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
    and one graveyard. But the young woman
    who was buried in the city she came from,
    at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
    enlarges the circle considerably,
    and the solitary man mourning her death
    at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
    includes the entire world in the circle.
    And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
    that reaches up to the throne of God and
    beyond, making
    a circle with no end and no God.


    - Yehuda Amichai


    (translated by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell)
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  13. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  14. TopTop #2078
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    ouch ...

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Diameter Of The Bomb


    The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
    and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
    with four dead and eleven wounded.
    And around these, in a larger circle
    of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
    and one graveyard. But the young woman
    who was buried in the city she came from,
    at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
    enlarges the circle considerably,
    and the solitary man mourning her death
    at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
    includes the entire world in the circle.
    And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
    that reaches up to the throne of God and
    beyond, making
    a circle with no end and no God.


    - Yehuda Amichai


    (translated by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell)
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  15. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  16. TopTop #2079
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Guy Davenport

    Within the circles of our lives
    we dance the circles of the years,
    we dance the circles of the seasons
    within the circles of the years,
    the cycles of the moon

    within the circles of the seasons,
    the circles of our reasons
    within the cycles of the moon.

    Again, again, we come and go,
    changed, changing. Hands
    join, unjoin in love and fear,
    grief and joy. The circles turn,
    each giving into each, into all.
    Only music keeps us here,

    each by all the others held.
    In the hold of hands and eyes
    we turn in pairs, that joining
    join each to all again.

    And then we turn aside, alone
    out of the sunlight gone

    into the darker circles of return.


    - Wendell Berry
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  18. TopTop #2080
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Colossus

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
    "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
    With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

    - Emma Lazarus
    New York City, 1883
    (Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 07-23-2014 at 12:19 PM.
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  20. TopTop #2081
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The song and the flaming sword

    Blue throated and beautiful
    I had carried the poison
    of war and ignorance for decades
    before I heard that one song
    that left me singing,
    knowing then,
    I could sing my way
    back to the garden,
    past the flaming
    sword.

    - Bill Denham
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  22. TopTop #2082
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ovid in Tears

    Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
    They asked him what he meant by garden.
    He explained about gardens. “In the cities,” he said,
    “there are places walled off where color
    and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
    Like a beautiful woman,” he said.
    How like a woman they asked. He remembered their wives
    and said garden was just a figure of speech,
    then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
    he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
    couldn’t read, but still had made a world. About Hagia
    Sofia and putting a round dome on a square
    base after nine hundred years of failure.
    The hand holding him slipped, and he fell.
    “White stone in the while sunlight,” he said
    as they picked him up. “Not the
    great fires burning at the edge of the world.” His voice grew
    fainter as they carried him away. “Both the melody
    and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
    in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all.”


    - Jack Gilbert
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  23. Gratitude expressed by:

  24. TopTop #2083
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Identity Card

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    And the number of my card is fifty thousand
    I have eight children
    And the ninth is due after summer.
    What's there to be angry about?

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    Working with comrades of toil in a stone quarry.
    I have eight children
    For them I wrestle the loaf of bread,
    The clothes and exercise books
    From the dry rocks
    And beg for no alms at your door,
    Nor lower myself at your doorstep.
    What's there to be angry about?

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    I am a name without a title,
    Patient in a country where everything
    Lives in a whirlpool of anger.
    My roots
    Took hold before the birth of time
    Before the burgeoning of the ages,
    Before cypress and olive trees,
    Before the proliferation of weeds.


    My father is from the family of the plough
    Not from highborn nobles.
    And my grandfather was a peasant
    Without line or genealogy.
    My house is a watchman's hut
    Made of sticks and reeds.
    Does my status satisfy you?
    I am a name without a surname.

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab.
    Color of hair: jet black.
    Color of eyes; brown.
    My distinguishing features:
    On my head the 'iqal cords over a keffiyeh
    Scratching him who touches it.
    My address:
    I’m from a village, remote, forgotten,
    Its streets without names
    And all its men in the fields and quarry.

    What's there to be angry about?

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab.
    You stole my forefather's vineyards
    And land I used to till,
    I and all my children,
    And you left us and all my grandchildren
    Nothing but these rocks.
    Will your government be taking them too?
    As is being said?

    SO!
    Put it on record at the top of page one:
    I don't hate people,
    I trespass on no one's property.

    And yet, if I were to become hungry enough
    I shall eat the flesh of my usurper.
    Beware.
    Beware of my hunger.
    And of my anger!


    - Mahmood Darwish
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  26. TopTop #2084
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    One Day


    One day after another -
    Perfect.
    They all fit.


    - Robert Creeley
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  28. TopTop #2085
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Looking Up

    The evening sky rolls in
    on open arms
    just as it has done for
    eons

    Like breath itself
    like water that holds light
    like a golden moment
    where we stop to
    breathe-in to ourselves
    that Sacred is here -
    Now

    In such moments
    all of life is seen
    our souls speak in a
    unifying and quiet
    tonal voice of the
    connections to all
    and the miraculous
    beauty of belonging to
    one another

    Look up -
    The clouds just might meet
    your loving gaze


    - P. Gregory Guss
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 07-28-2014 at 11:22 AM.
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  30. TopTop #2086
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Appellation Carneros
    for Judy White


    A good merlot is equal parts blood and dust
    and when the Alchemist sets his spigot
    into the throat of this valley’s mild behemoth
    the bloodline surges through an almost eternal fall.

    You and I climb the valley’s ridge and stone sober
    stand in the anteroom of an old wilderness— escarpments,
    low clouds, trails flooded with rain— but I mean
    the other wilderness, the one where so much
    can be suffered, though sometimes in a pleasant way*—
    ah the absolute voluptuousness of not
    knowing what the other one is thinking.

    And the wine-maker smiles & waits, and waits & smiles—
    finally he speaks: How would you like to fall blindly
    into the hands of one another’s fate? he asks; and
    In blindness you will taste your character and your dust.


    - Lee Perron
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  32. TopTop #2087

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You might value the connections made in a recent movie review by Ari Siletz: https://iranian.com/posts/quot-apes-...s-of-war-35963.

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

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    And the number of my card is fifty thousand
    I have eight children
    And the ninth is due after summer.
    What's there to be angry about?

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    Working with comrades of toil in a stone quarry.
    I have eight children
    For them I wrestle the loaf of bread,
    The clothes and exercise books
    From the dry rocks
    And beg for no alms at your door,
    Nor lower myself at your doorstep.
    What's there to be angry about?

    Put it on record.
    I am an Arab
    I am a name without a title,
    Patient in a country where everything
    Lives in a whirlpool of anger.
    My roots
    Took hold before the birth of time
    Before the burgeoning of the ages,
    Before cypress and olive trees,
    Before the proliferation of weeds...
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 07-30-2014 at 11:12 AM.
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  33. TopTop #2088
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Introduction to Poetry

    I ask them to take a poem
    and hold it up to the light
    like a color slide

    or press an ear against its hive.

    I say drop a mouse into a poem
    and watch him probe his way out,

    or walk inside the poem's room
    and feel the walls for a light switch.

    I want them to waterski
    across the surface of a poem
    waving at the author's name on the shore.

    But all they want to do
    is tie the poem to a chair with rope
    and torture a confession out of it.

    They begin beating it with a hose
    to find out what it really means.


    - Billy Collins
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  35. TopTop #2089
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Putting Out the Fire

    for John, who stocks the medicine cabinet of the heart

    Hearing children shriek at play,
    today, first time in 58 years,
    I don't hear that burning boy,
    Fire rising like vine, twining
    up his thin limb. My mother
    chasing him, racing flames
    and winning. Wrestling the boy
    She smothers the reason for
    screams with a sheet, ripped
    white from the line, fast as
    fire. The koan says

    Put out the fire across
    the river. Impossible,like
    this task of living,
    loving the unloveable
    in ourselves and each other.
    Chasing the screaming child
    who forever lives scarred,
    Impossible to fix the past.

    There is no fire, no river, only
    impossible demands—
    helping and healing while
    we burn. We are the flames.
    Every day, more of us
    burns, turns to ash. It
    is the world's way.

    There is no fire, no
    river. Only life
    ripping through us,
    a storm tide pushing
    the river upstream, muddy
    And roiling. Life,
    a slow burn, like sleeping love.
    Life, a burning river
    Within. No fire to fight,
    no fight.


    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 07-31-2014 at 11:47 AM.
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  36. Gratitude expressed by:

  37. TopTop #2090
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blood on the Wheel

    Ezekiel saw the wheel,
    way up in the middle of the air.
    TRADITIONAL GOSPEL SONG

    Blood on the night soil man en route to the country prison
    Blood on the sullen chair, the one that holds you with its pleasure

    Blood inside the quartz, the beauty watch, the eye of the guard
    Blood on the slope of names & the tattoos hidden

    Blood on the Virgin, behind the veils,
    Behind—in the moon angel's gold oracle hair

    What blood is this, is it the blood of the worker rat?
    Is it the blood of the clone governor, the city maid?
    Why does it course in s's & z's?

    Blood on the couch, made for viewing automobiles & face cream
    Blood on the pin, this one going through you without any pain

    Blood on the screen, the green torso queen of slavering hearts
    Blood on the grandmother's wish, her tawdry stick of Texas

    Blood on the daughter's breast who sews roses
    Blood on the father, does anyone remember him, bluish?

    Blood from a kitchen fresco, in thick amber strokes
    Blood from the baby's right ear, from his ochre nose
    What blood is this?

    Blood on the fender, in the sender's shoe, in his liquor sack
    Blood on the street, call it Milagro Boulevard, Mercy Lanes #9
    Blood on the alien, in the alligator jacket teen boy Juan

    There is blood, there, he says
    Blood here too, down here, she says
    Only blood, the Blood Mother sings

    Blood driving miniature American queens stamped into rage
    Blood driving rappers in Mercedes blackened & whitened in news
    Blood driving the snare-eyed professor searching for her panties
    Blood driving the championship husband bent in Extreme Unction

    Blood of the orphan weasel in heat, the Calvinist farmer in wheat
    Blood of the lettuce rebellion on the rise, the cannery worker's prize

    Blood of the painted donkey forced into prostitute zebra,
    Blood of the Tijuana tourist finally awake & forced into pimp sleep again

    It is blood time, Sir Terminator says,
    It is blood time, Sir Simpson winks,
    It is blood time, Sir McVeigh weighs.

    Her nuclear blood watch soaked, will it dry?
    His whitish blood ring smoked, will it foam?
    My groin blood leather roped, will it marry?
    My wife's peasant blood spoked, will it ride again?

    Blood in the tin, in the coffee bean, in the maquila oración
    Blood in the language, in the wise text of the market sausage
    Blood in the border web, the penal colony shed, in the bilingual yard

    Crow blood blues perched on nothingness again
    fly over my field, yellow-green & opal
    Dog blood crawl & swish through my sheets

    Who will eat this speckled corn?
    Who shall be born on this Wednesday war bed?

    Blood in the acid theater, again, in the box office smash hit
    Blood in the Corvette tank, in the crack talk crank below

    Blood boat Navy blood glove Army ventricle Marines
    in the cookie sex jar, camouflaged rape whalers
    Roam & rumble, investigate my Mexican hoodlum blood

    Tiny blood behind my Cuban ear, wine colored & hushed
    Tiny blood in the death row tool, in the middle-aged corset
    Tiny blood sampler, tiny blood, you hush up again, so tiny

    Blood in the Groove Shopping Center,
    In blue Appalachia river, in Detroit harness spleen

    Blood in the Groove Virus machine,
    In low ocean tide, in Iowa soy bean

    Blood in the Groove Lynch mob orchestra,
    South of Herzegovina, south, I said

    Blood marching for the Immigration Patrol, prized & arrogant
    Blood spawning in the dawn break of African Blood Tribes, grimacing
    & multiple—multiple, I said

    Blood on the Macho Hat, the one used for proper genuflections
    Blood on the faithful knee, the one readied for erotic negation
    Blood on the willing nerve terminal, the one open for suicide

    Blood at the age of seventeen
    Blood at the age of one, dumped in a Greyhound bus

    Blood mute & autistic & cauterized & smuggled Mayan
    & burned in border smelter tar

    Could this be yours? Could this item belong to you?
    Could this ticket be what you ordered, could it?

    Blood on the wheel, blood on the reel
    Bronze dead gold & diamond deep. Blood be fast.


    - Juan Felipe Herrera
    Last edited by Bella Stolz; 08-01-2014 at 01:32 PM.
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  38. TopTop #2091
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Flare


    1.
    Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

    It is not the sunrise,
    which is a red rinse,
    which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

    it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

    it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,

    or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

    it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,
    will go on sizzling and clapping
    from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,
    that are billowing and shining,
    that are shaking in the wind.


    2.

    You still recall, sometimes, the old barn on your
    great-grandfather's farm, a place you visited once,
    and went into, all alone, while the grownups sat and
    talked in the house.
    It was empty, or almost. Wisps of hay covered the floor,
    and some wasps sang at the windows, and maybe there was
    a strange fluttering bird high above, disturbed, hoo-ing
    a little and staring down from a messy ledge with wild,
    binocular eyes.
    Mostly, though, it smelled of milk, and the patience of
    animals; the give-offs of the body were still in the air,
    a vague ammonia, not unpleasant.
    Mostly, though, it was restful and secret, the roof high
    up and arched, the boards unpainted and plain.
    You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner,
    on the last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed
    empty, but wasn't.
    Then--you still remember--you felt the rap of hunger--it was
    noon--and you turned from that twilight dream and hurried back
    to the house, where the table was set, where an uncle patted you
    on the shoulder for welcome, and there was your place at the table.


    3.
    Nothing lasts.
    There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,
    now.

    I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.


    4.
    Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings
    of the green moth
    against the lantern
    against its heat
    against the beak of the crow
    in the early morning.

    Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop
    of self-pity.

    Not in this world.


    5.
    My mother
    was the blue wisteria,
    my mother
    was the mossy stream out behind the house,
    my mother, alas, alas,
    did not always love her life,
    heavier than iron it was
    as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,
    oh, unforgettable!

    I bury her
    in a box
    in the earth
    and turn away.
    My father
    was a demon of frustrated dreams,
    was a breaker of trust,
    was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.
    He followed God, there being no one else
    he could talk to;
    he swaggered before God, there being no one else
    who would listen.
    Listen,
    this was his life.
    I bury it in the earth.
    I sweep the closets.
    I leave the house.


    6.
    I mention them now,
    I will not mention them again.

    It is not lack of love
    nor lack of sorrow.
    But the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

    I give them--one, two, three, four--the kiss of courtesy,
    of sweet thanks,
    of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.
    May they sleep well. May they soften.

    But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.
    I will not give them the responsibility for my life.


    7.
    Did you know that the ant has a tongue
    with which to gather in all that it can
    of sweetness?

    Did you know that?


    8.

    The poem is not the world.
    It isn't even the first page of the world.

    But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.
    It knows that much.

    It wants to open itself,
    like the door of a little temple,
    so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,
    and less yourself than part of everything.


    9.
    The voice of the child crying out of the mouth of the
    grown woman
    is a misery and a disappointment.
    The voice of the child howling out of the tall, bearded,
    muscular man
    is a misery, and a terror.


    10.
    Therefore, tell me:
    what will engage you?
    What will open the dark fields of your mind,
    like a lover
    at first touching?

    11.
    Anyway,
    there was no barn.
    No child in the barn.

    No uncle no table no kitchen.

    Only a long lovely field full of bobolinks.


    12.
    When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
    the orderliness of the world. Notice
    something you have never noticed before,

    like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
    whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

    Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
    shaking the water-sparks from its wings.

    Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
    Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
    like the diligent leaves.

    A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
    and the responsibilities of your life.

    Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
    Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.

    In the glare of your mind, be modest.
    And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

    Live with the beetle, and the wind.

    This is the dark bread of the poem.
    This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.


    - Mary Oliver
    Last edited by Barry; 08-02-2014 at 02:55 PM.
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  40. TopTop #2092
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Great Rose Tree


    This is the day and the year
    of the rose. The whole garden


    is opening with laughter. Iris
    whispering to cypress. The rose


    is the joy of meeting someone.
    The rose is a world imagination


    cannot imagine. A messenger from
    the orchard where the soul lives.


    A small seed that points to a great
    rose tree! Hold its hand and walk


    like a child. A rose is what grows
    from the work the prophets do.


    Full moon, new moon. Accept the
    invitation spring extends, four


    birds flying toward a master. A rose
    is all these, and the silence that


    closes and sits in the shade, a bud.


    - Jelalludin Rumi
    (Ghazal (Ode) 1348
    Version by Coleman Barks, with Nevit Ergin)
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  41. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  42. TopTop #2093
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Zimmer Imagines Heaven
    For Merrill Leffler

    I sit with Joseph Conrad in Monet’s garden.
    We are listening to Yeats chant his poems,
    A breeze stirs through Thomas Hardy’s moustache,
    John Skelton has gone to the house for beer,
    Wanda Landowska lightly fingers the clavichord,
    Along the spruce tree walk Roberto Clemente and
    Thurman Munson whistle a baseball back and forth.
    Mozart chants with Ellington in the roses.

    Monet smokes and dabs his canvas in the sun,
    Brueghel and Turner set easels behind the wisteria.
    The band is warming up in the Big Studio:
    Bean, Brute, Bird, and Serge on saxes,
    Kai, Bill Harris, Lawrence Brown, trombones,
    Little Jazz, Clifford, Fats on trumpets,
    Klook plays drums, Mingus bass, Bud the piano.
    Later Madam Schumann-Heink will sing Schubert,
    The monks of Benedictine Abbey will chant.
    There will be more poems from Emily Dickinson,
    James Wright, John Clare, Walt Whitman.
    Shakespeare rehearses players for King Lear.

    At dusk Alice Toklas brings out platters
    Of Sweetbreads a la Napolitaine, Salad Livoniere,
    And a tureen of Gaspacho of Malaga.
    After the meal Brahms passes fine cigars.
    God comes then radiant with a bottle of cognac,
    She pours generously into the snifters,
    I tell Her I have begun to learn what
    Heaven is about. She wants to hear.
    It is, I say, being thankful for eternity.
    Her smile is the best part of the day.


    - Paul Zimmer
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  43. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  44. TopTop #2094
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Flying over clearcut hills


    brown wounds scraped raw
    don’t require bandaids, antibiotics
    Mama Earth heals herself
    slowly, by the measure of human time
    confident in her immune system
    inviting exposure to nutrient sun, water,
    coyote scat
    Tiny trees and grass stubble earth skin
    She always wins in the end
    not by force or violence
    tho she can thunder and quake
    but more by
    simply and patiently growing life
    over and over again


    just because she can


    - Monnie Reba Efross
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  45. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  46. TopTop #2095
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Come to Hiroshima


    to those who with no shame condone
    annihilation of whole cities or nations
    please come to Hiroshima
    come in early August when the heat is worst
    make sure you're there on the sixth
    when the sweat running down your back
    somehow feels appropriate
    see the museum - learn what you can
    imagine as deeply as possible what happened
    and try to understand - why


    to those who think we need atomic bombs
    newer better more useable ones
    as certain leaders now claim
    please come to Hiroshima
    walk through Peace Park
    this epicenter - cemetery of ironic serenity
    contemplate - meditate - try to understand
    would we have done this to whites - dear Christians
    here by the riverside thousands staggered to water
    "mizu! mizu!" some couldn't even ask
    for what could possibly relieve the burning


    to those who think that war is still okay
    sleepy as people used to be about slavery
    come see the shattered wrecked dome
    left in jagged shambles to remind us
    see at sunset the paper lanterns
    red blue and gold - inscribed with dreams
    people lovingly made in the park all day
    watch them float downstream candles aglow
    like thousands of vanished souls
    or beautiful hopes - for what might be possible
    please come to Hiroshima
    and bring pictures of your loved ones


    - Ron Hertz
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  47. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  48. TopTop #2096
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Second Coming


    Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.


    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
    A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again, but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?


    - William Butler Yeats
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  49. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  50. TopTop #2097
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This incredible poem, after so many years, still manages to stab me in the heart when I read it. One of the best.
    I am at once the falcon and the falconer, trying to hear myself.
    Thank you, Larry, once again, for your dedication to doing this every day.

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

    The Second Coming

    Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
    A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again, but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    - William Butler Yeats
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  51. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  52. TopTop #2098
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wildpeace

    Not the peace of a cease-fire
    not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
    but rather
    as in the heart when the excitement is over
    and you can talk only about a great weariness.
    I know that I know how to kill, that makes me an adult.
    And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
    how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
    A peace
    without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
    without words, without
    the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
    light, floating, like lazy white foam.
    A little rest for the wounds - who speaks of healing?
    (And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
    to the next, as in a relay race:
    the baton never falls.)

    Let it come
    like wildflowers,
    suddenly, because the field
    must have it: wildpeace.

    - Yehuda Amichai


    (Translation by Chana Bloch, in This Same Sky, ed. by Naomi Shihab Nye)
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  53. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  54. TopTop #2099
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Weeping




    I have shut my windows.
    I do not want to hear the weeping,
    but from behind the gray walls,
    nothing is heard but the weeping.

    There are few angels that sing,
    there are few dogs that bark,
    a thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand.

    But the weeping is an immense dog,
    the weeping is an immense angel,
    the weeping is an immense violin,
    tears strangle the wind,
    nothing is heard but the weeping.

    - Frederico Garcia Lorca
    translation by Kenneth Rexroth
    from “Casida del Llanto”
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  55. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  56. TopTop #2100
    Chris Dec's Avatar
    Chris Dec
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Typing in the Dark

    For W.B. Yeats

    Don't feel sorry for me
    I have only 24 hours to live every day.

    I'm looking for letters that glow in the dark,
    hidden among the dead letters...
    THEY will spell out the real poem I need to write.
    for my other mind is being held ransom by the very light of day.

    No time to eat
    I am commanded by voices in my gurgling digestive acids
    Ancient and crying, they bubble into hallucinations:
    I heard my crazy mother call my name...
    I heard my cat child crying... dying last week
    how could he have made his way
    back to my belly so soon?

    Can my words rescue them
    Can my words do any good at all.

    No pen is mightier than any sword
    There's no contest in dim alleys
    Ask someone who works the night shift
    of any of the public services that handle the dying.
    Some swords squeak clean, some words leak blood
    My pen is too sane to hear.

    I tune in to the cosmic noise
    I turn down the volume of their cries to a low low lull
    and cover my ears to dull the lull

    Oh, mother, brother, tried to drown the voices in their heads...
    They could do no good at all.

    Ah to save the world is a crazy notion
    But I am still typing on my last night before morning
    hoping to write the poem that will save the world from darkness.


    Chris Dec © 1989


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

    Turning and turning on the widening gyre,
    The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
    Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

    Surely some revelation is at hand;
    Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
    The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
    When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
    Troubles my sight: Somewhere in the sands of the desert
    A shape with a lion body and the head of a man,
    A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
    Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
    Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
    The darkness drops again, but now I know
    That twenty centuries of stony sleep
    Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
    And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
    Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

    - William Butler Yeats
    Last edited by Barry; 08-10-2014 at 12:45 PM.
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  57. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

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