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  1. TopTop #3151
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reasons To Survive November

    November like a train wreck -
    as if a locomotive made of cold
    had hurtled out of Canada
    and crashed into a million trees,
    flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

    The sky is a thick, cold gauze -
    but there's a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
    and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
    full of luminous red barns.

    - Or maybe I'll visit beautiful Donna,
    the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
    and roll around in her foldout bed.

    I know there are some people out there
    who think I am supposed to end up
    in a room by myself

    with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
    a locked door and my slack mouth open
    like a disconnected phone.

    But I hate those people back
    from the core of my donkey soul
    and the hatred makes me strong
    and my survival is their failure,

    and my happiness would kill them
    so I shove joy like a knife
    into my own heart over and over

    and I force myself toward pleasure,
    and I love this November life
    where I run like a train
    deeper and deeper
    into the land of my enemies.

    - Tony Hoagland
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  3. TopTop #3152
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Yes

    It could happen any time, tornado,
    earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
    Or sunshine, love, salvation.

    It could you know. That's why we wake
    and look out--no guarantees
    in this life.

    But some bonuses, like morning,
    like right now, like noon,
    like evening.


    - William Stafford
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  5. TopTop #3153
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Let's Remake The World


    Let's remake the world with words.
    Not frivolously, nor
    To hide from what we fear,
    But with a purpose.
    Let's,
    As Wordsworth said, remove
    "The dust of custom" so things
    Shine again, each object arrayed
    In its robe of original light.

    And then we'll see the world
    As if for the first time.
    As once we gazed at the beloved
    Who was gazing at us.

    - Gregory Orr
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  7. TopTop #3154
    Timothy Gega
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Let's Remake The World...
    And for those who don't know where to begin, define your Emotional Vocabulary using a College Dictionary.
    It all starts with you.
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  8. TopTop #3155
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Long, too long America

    Long, too long America,
    Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
    But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
    And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
    (For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

    - Walt Whitman
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  10. TopTop #3156
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mighty with Resolve

    It was a time when the word served insolent creed,
    spawned slaughter and hunger, served personal need,
    was a monogrammed forkful of glitz and cake

    It was a time when word's ancient force was a zinnia
    glowing for days after wind broke its stem and a lone
    silky newt spiraling slow in a far alpine lake

    Then the world exploded and the Living Word,
    bathed in blood and anguish, crept out of the rubble
    mighty with resolve
    Its time had come again

    - Cynthia Poten
    Last edited by Manna; 12-02-2016 at 06:28 AM.
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  12. TopTop #3157
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Revenge

    Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.

    I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending
    the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
    I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
    and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;

    I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies.
    With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars,
    my legion of hapa babies will be intersectional as fuck
    and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,

    because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
    You just delayed our coronation.
    We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
    we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
    because it’s still nobody’s business;
    there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
    for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing,
    and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:

    we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
    the buildings here are not on your side just because
    you make them spray-painted accomplices.
    These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
    Even the earth found common ground with us in the way
    you bootstrap across us both,

    oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
    and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
    but I won’t, because they’re my family,
    in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
    If you’ve never loved someone like that
    you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.

    I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
    I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
    I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
    and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
    But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
    We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
    the longer they spend burning us,
    we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
    by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
    We know everything we do is so the kids after us
    will be able to follow something towards safety;
    what can I call us but lighthouse,

    of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
    And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
    anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
    This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
    You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
    hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
    what makes America great.

    - e.c.c.
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  13. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  14. TopTop #3158
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    America

    Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
    Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

    Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
    Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

    And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
    He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

    Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
    Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

    Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
    Of the thick satin quilt of America

    And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
    or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

    And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
    It was not blood but money

    That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
    Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

    He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
    Clogging up my heart—

    And so I perish happily,
    Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

    Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
    Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

    And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
    And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

    And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
    And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

    “I was listening to the cries of the past,
    When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

    But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
    Or what kind of nightmare it might be

    When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
    And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

    Even while others are drowning underneath you
    And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

    And yet it seems to be your own hand
    Which turns the volume higher?

    - Tony Hoagland
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  15. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  16. TopTop #3159
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Elegy For A Friend

    The old dog looked out from behind
    the sudden blizzard that had become her world.

    She had often approached me as if one of us
    was a well and one of us was the bucket-
    taking turns - Can I write that she filled me
    with light? Now the storm raged around her
    and soon she was lost beyond our sight
    beyond our calling her back.
    .
    Her tail was a sail
    Her nose pointed to a far shore.

    I had taken for granted that
    she would always be here when
    nothing else ever is.

    The rain is cold and gray
    and the candle recognizes its
    insignificance but bravely gives out
    a little light, as I say my prayer
    without words
    in her language.

    - Gail Onion
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  18. TopTop #3160
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Barberism

    It was light and lusterless and somehow luckless,
    The hair I cut from the head of my father-in-law,
    It was pepper-blanched and wind-scuffed, thin
    As a blown bulb’s filament, it stuck to the teeth
    Of my clippers like a dark language, the static
    Covering his mind stuck to my fingers, it mingled
    In halfhearted tufts with the dust. Because
    Every barber’s got a gift for mind reading in his touch,
    I could hear what he would not say. He’s sworn
    To never let his hair be cut again after his daughter
    Passed away. I told him how my own boy,
    His grandchild, weeps when my clippers bite
    Behind his ear, but I could not say how
    The blood there tastes. I almost showed him
    How I bow my own head to the razor in my hands,
    How a mirror is used to taper the nape.
    Science and religion come to the same conclusion:
    Someday all the hair on the body will fall away.
    I’m certain he will only call on me for a few more years,
    The crown of his head is already smoother
    Than any part of his face. It shines like the light
    In tiny bulbs of sweat before the sweat evaporates.

    - Terrance Hayes
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  20. TopTop #3161
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sharing The Grief

    She held her heart
    She held all hearts
    In grief on the globe
    It is too much suffering
    For one heart
    So she takes a piece
    You take a piece
    I take a piece

    All who have more
    Privileges and blessings
    Take a piece
    And in this holding
    And sharing
    Maybe, just maybe
    We can provide some
    Salve for those
    In the trenches
    Who taste the blood
    In their mouths
    Who see the
    Limbs scattered in the dust
    Who know the loss of their
    Children and loved ones
    It is not much to ask
    One piece of it
    In our hearts
    To hold with love and words

    - Corlene Van Sluizer
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  22. TopTop #3162
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Poem for Doug

    First we heard the song
    Then he sailed into the room
    One foot on the stern, one foot on the bow
    A mast of presence
    Sails of billowing gray trailing behind
    Lines of poems lapping at his feet
    Von Koss he announced
    But we had already sensed his imminent arrival
    Such a captain he
    Master of word and song

    - Rebecca Evert
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  24. TopTop #3163
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    North of San Francisco

    Here the soft hills touch the ocean
    like one eternity touching another
    and the cows grazing on them
    ignore us, like angels.
    Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar
    is a prophecy of peace.

    The darkness doesn’t war against the light,
    it carries us forward
    to another light, and the only pain
    is the pain of not staying here.

    In my land, called holy,
    they won’t let eternity be;
    they’ve divided it into little religions,
    zoned it for God-zones,
    broken it into fragments of history,
    sharp and wounding unto death.
    And they’ve turned its tranquil distances
    into a closeness convulsing with the pain of the present.

    On the beach at Bolinas, at the foot of the wooden steps,
    I saw some girls lying in the sand bare-bottomed.
    their heads bowed, drunk
    on the kingdom everlasting,
    their souls like doors
    closing and opening
    closing and opening inside them
    to the rhythm of the surf.

    - Yehuda Amichai
    (Translated by Chana Block)
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  26. TopTop #3164
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For The Children


    The rising hills, the slopes
    of statistics
    lie before us.
    the steep climb
    of everything, going up
    up, as we all
    go down.

    In the next century
    or the one beyond that,
    they say,
    are valleys, pastures,
    we can meet there in peace
    if we make it.

    To climb these coming crests
    one word to you, to
    you and your children:

    stay together
    learn the flowers
    go light

    - Gary Snyder


    Dear friends,
    In the aftermath of the election and witnessing the alarming appointments to key positions in the next administration, I know that many of us are feeling disheartened and frightened about the future of our country and of our world. The determination of the President-elect and his appointed EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to undo all our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is particularly alarming.
    But this is not the time to be discouraged. It is the time to stand up and take positive action. It is clear that, for the next four years at least, the federal government will not be leading the fight against climate change. This makes our local actions all the more important and necessary.
    As some of you may know, I serve on the board of directors for the Center for Climate Protection, a northern California based organization which has been working to develop and promote local policies to address this critical issue. If you are looking for a way to help ensure a viable future for our children and for their children, I invite you to visit our website (https://climateprotection.org/) to learn more about our work and how you can get involved. I also hope that you will consider making a financial contribution to this important work.
    May we all stay safe through these interesting times.

    Larry
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  27. TopTop #3165
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Narcissistic Personality Disorder

    This was sent by a friend and very timely, Trump in a nutshell. —Ron


    N Ziehl
    Nov 27
    Coping with Chaos in the White House

    A few days ago, I wrote a post for my Facebook friends about my personal experience with narcissistic personality disorder and how I view the president elect as a result. Unexpectedly, the post traveled widely, and it became clear that many people are struggling with how to understand and deal with this kind of behavior in a position of power. Although several writers, including a few professionals, have publicly offered their thoughts on a diagnosis, I am not a professional and this is not a diagnosis. My post is not intended to persuade anyone or provide a comprehensive description of NPD. I am speaking purely from decades of dealing with NPD and sharing strategies that were helpful for me in coping and predicting behavior. The text below is adapted from my original Facebook post.

    I want to talk a little about narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve unfortunately had a great deal of experience with it, and I’m feeling badly for those of you who are trying to grapple with it for the first time because of our president-elect, who almost certainly suffers from it or a similar disorder. If I am correct, it has some very particular implications for the office. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

    1) It’s not curable and it’s barely treatable. He is who he is. There is no getting better, or learning, or adapting. He’s not going to “rise to the occasion” for more than maybe a couple hours. So just put that out of your mind.

    2) He will say whatever feels most comfortable or good to him at any given time. He will lie a lot, and say totally different things to different people. Stop being surprised by this. While it’s important to pretend “good faith” and remind him of promises, as Bernie Sanders and others are doing, that’s for his supporters, so *they* can see the inconsistency as it comes. He won’t care. So if you’re trying to reconcile or analyze his words, don’t. It’s 100% not worth your time. Only pay attention to and address his actions.

    3) You can influence him by making him feel good. There are already people like Bannon who appear ready to use him for their own ends. The GOP is excited to try. Watch them, not him. President Obama, in his wisdom, may be treating him well in hopes of influencing him and averting the worst. If he gets enough accolades for better behavior, he might continue to try it. But don’t count on it.

    4) Entitlement is a key aspect of the disorder. As we are already seeing, he will likely not observe traditional boundaries of the office. He has already stated that rules don’t apply to him. This particular attribute has huge implications for the presidency and it will be important for everyone who can to hold him to the same standards as previous presidents.

    5) We should expect that he only cares about himself and those he views as extensions of himself, like his children. (People with NPD often can’t understand others as fully human or distinct.) He desires accumulation of wealth and power because it fills a hole. (Melania is probably an acquired item, not an extension.) He will have no qualms *at all* about stealing everything he can from the country, and he’ll be happy to help others do so, if they make him feel good. He won’t view it as stealing but rather as something he’s entitled to do. This is likely the only thing he will intentionally accomplish.

    6) It’s very, very confusing for non-disordered people to experience a disordered person with NPD. While often intelligent, charismatic and charming, they do not reliably observe social conventions or demonstrate basic human empathy. It’s very common for non-disordered people to lower their own expectations and try to normalize the behavior. DO NOT DO THIS AND DO NOT ALLOW OTHERS, ESPECIALLY THE MEDIA, TO DO THIS. If you start to feel foggy or unclear about this, step away until you recalibrate.

    7) People with NPD often recruit helpers, referred to in the literature as “enablers” when they allow or cover for bad behavior and “flying monkeys” when they perpetrate bad behavior on behalf of the narcissist. Although it’s easiest to prey on malicious people, good and vulnerable people can be unwittingly recruited. It will be important to support good people around him if and when they attempt to stay clear or break away.

    8) People with NPD often foster competition for sport in people they control. Expect lots of chaos, firings and recriminations. He will probably behave worst toward those closest to him, but that doesn’t mean (obviously) that his actions won’t have consequences for the rest of us. He will punish enemies. He may start out, as he has with the NYT, with a confusing combination of punishing/rewarding, which is a classic abuse tactic for control. If you see your media cooperating or facilitating this behavior for rewards, call them on it.

    9) Gaslighting — where someone tries to convince you that the reality you’ve experienced isn’t true — is real and torturous. He will gaslight, his followers will gaslight. Many of our politicians and media figures already gaslight, so it will be hard to distinguish his amplified version from what has already been normalized. Learn the signs and find ways to stay focused on what you know to be true. Note: it is typically not helpful to argue with people who are attempting to gaslight. You will only confuse yourself. Just walk away.

    10) Whenever possible, do not focus on the narcissist or give him attention. Unfortunately we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the president, but don’t circulate his tweets or laugh at him — you are enabling him and getting his word out. (I’ve done this, of course, we all have… just try to be aware.) Pay attention to your own emotions: do you sort of enjoy his clowning? do you enjoy the outrage? is this kind of fun and dramatic, in a sick way? You are adding to his energy. Focus on what you can change and how you can resist, where you are. We are all called to be leaders now, in the absence of leadership.

    Last edited by Barry; 12-11-2016 at 01:58 PM.
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #3166
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    my final lunch

    I spent noontime
    on the day of my death
    eating lunch
    at Jo Jo Sushi
    where I overheard
    a Mexican lady say
    anguila to her friend.

    I was pleased knowing
    anguila meant eel
    obviously here referring to
    unagi or cooked eel.

    Both proud and
    disappointed
    possessing this
    meaning
    and knowing I’d have
    no further use for it hence.

    - Ed Coletti
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  30. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  31. TopTop #3167
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Larry, thanks for the climate work you do, and for all the wonderful poems you post. You are a ray of sunshine in my day ... best, Ruth aka gardenmaniac
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  33. TopTop #3168
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Alive

    Dear Abby, said someone from Oregon,
    I am having trouble with my boyfriend’s attachment
    to an ancient gallon of milk still full
    in his refrigerator. I told him it’s me or the milk,
    is this unreasonable? Dear Carolyn,
    my brother won’t speak to me
    because fifty years ago I whispered
    a monkey would kidnap him in the night
    to take him back to his true family
    but he should have known it was a joke
    when it didn’t happen, don’t you think?
    Dear Board of Education, no one will ever
    remember a test. Repeat. Stories,
    poems, projects, experiments,
    mischief, yes, but never a test.
    Dear Dog Behind the Fence, you really need
    to calm down now. You have been barking every time
    I walk to the compost for two years
    and I have not robbed your house. Relax.
    When I asked the man on the other side
    if you bother him too, he smiled and said no,
    he makes me feel less alone. Should I be more
    worried about the dog or the man?

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  35. TopTop #3169
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Visitation


    It was still easy for her in the beginning,
    only when climbing she would
    be aware of her heavy womb, -
    and then she stood, breathing,

    on the Jewish mountains. But not the land
    spread about her, but her fullness; and
    while walking she knew: nowhere
    was there such fullness as hers.

    And she felt compelled to feel with her hand
    the womb of hers who was further along.
    Toward each other they swayingly stepped
    and caressed the dress and the hair.

    Each woman was filled with sacred life
    and safe and at ease with the relative.
    And though the savior was hardly in bloom,
    the Baptist in the cousin’s womb
    already jumped for joy.

    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  37. TopTop #3170
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    My Kumbaya Moment

    The sky one-dimensional, flat
    Shades on white and gray.
    The sun a blur, burning
    A hole in the smeared sky.

    I had coffee with God this morning.
    I know it's not fashionable
    To speak of God when so many
    Suffer, so many images crowd

    Our cluttered, small consciousness.
    But still, I need God, if only
    The idea of Something Greater
    Than Ourselves here. So I ask

    And here You are, disguised poorly,
    As a sun, a sky and the persistent
    Bird song in my limited Paradise.

    - Rebecca del Rio
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  39. TopTop #3171
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Truly Great

    I think continually of those who were truly great.
    Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
    Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
    Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
    Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
    Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
    And who hoarded from the spring branches
    The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

    What is precious is never to forget
    The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
    Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
    Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
    Nor its grave evening demand for love;
    Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
    With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

    Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
    See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
    And by the streamers of white cloud,
    And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
    The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
    Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
    Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
    And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

    - Stephen Spender
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  41. TopTop #3172
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shine, Perishing Republic


    While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
    And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass
    hardens,

    I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make
    earth.
    Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and
    home to the mother.

    You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
    long or suddenly
    A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing
    republic.

    But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
    center; corruption
    Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left
    the mountains.

    And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
    insufferable master.
    There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he
    walked on earth.


    - Robinson Jeffers
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #3173
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cross That Line

    Paul Robeson stood
    on the northern border of the USA
    and sang into Canada
    where a vast audience
    sat on folding chairs
    waiting to hear him.

    He sang into Canada.
    His voice left the USA
    when his body was not allowed
    to cross that line.

    Remind us again, brave friend!
    What countries may we sing into?
    What lines should we all be crossing?
    What songs travel toward us
    from far away
    to deepen our days?

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  45. TopTop #3174
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Strong Women

    A strong woman is a woman who is straining
    A strong woman is a woman standing
    on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
    while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
    A strong woman is a woman at work
    cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
    and while she shovels, she talks about
    how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
    the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
    develops the stomach muscles, and
    she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
    A strong woman is a woman in whose head
    a voice is repeating, I told you so,
    ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
    ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
    why aren't you feminine, why aren't
    you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
    A strong woman is a woman determined
    to do something others are determined
    not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
    of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
    a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
    to butt her way through a steel wall.
    Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
    to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
    A strong woman is a woman bleeding
    inside. A strong woman is a woman making
    herself strong every morning while her teeth
    loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
    a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
    every battle a scar. A strong woman
    is a mass of scar tissue that aches
    when it rains and wounds that bleed
    when you bump them and memories that get up
    in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
    A strong woman is a woman who craves love
    like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
    A strong woman is a woman who loves
    strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
    terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
    in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
    she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
    suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
    enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
    What comforts her is others loving
    her equally for the strength and for the weakness
    from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
    Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
    Only water of connection remains,
    flowing through us. Strong is what we make
    each other. Until we are all strong together,
    a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

    - Marge Piercy
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  47. TopTop #3175
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Poem on Hope

    It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
    For hope must not depend on feeling good
    And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
    You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
    Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
    …And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
    Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
    The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
    Tell them at least what you say to yourself.


    Because we have not made our lives to fit
    Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
    The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
    Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
    Of what it is that no other place is, and by
    Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
    Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
    For it was from the beginning and will be to the end


    Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
    Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
    Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
    And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
    Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
    In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
    And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
    They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.


    This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
    Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
    when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
    when they ask for your land and your work.
    Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
    And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
    Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
    In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
    Speak to your fellow humans as your place
    Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
    Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
    Before they had heard a radio. Speak
    Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.


    Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
    From the pages of books and from your own heart.
    Be still and listen to the voices that belong
    To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
    There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
    By which it speaks for itself and no other.


    Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
    Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
    Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
    Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
    And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
    Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
    Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
    The likeness of people in other places to yourself
    In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
    Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
    As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.


    No place at last is better than the world. The world
    Is no better than its places. Its places at last
    Are no better than their people while their people
    Continue in them. When the people make
    Dark the light within them, the world darkens.


    - Wendell Berry
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  49. TopTop #3176
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Solstice Song

    On this midwinter night
    let us summon what we’ve lost
    with chant, prayer, song, fire,
    faith that the nearly forgotten
    will open and rise anew
    and the world will turn
    back toward the light.
    Midwinter’s gift is memory
    to hold a place for what was and will be again.
    Leaves fallen off ancient vines
    reveal gnarled fists of twisted branches
    that even now push buds into the frosted night.
    Low in the December sky
    a tenebrous bulge of darkness
    cradles the waxing crescent of a buttery moon.
    And at the end of the western road
    lies the black wet flatness of sand
    where the tide ebbed and is now returning
    in its endless whispering susurrus.
    At this fulcrum of the season
    we raise our arms and press fingertips
    against the darkness to tip it back.
    There are many winters in our pasts
    and there is a time to allow our bodies to be tired and cold,
    but beneath it all and slowly rising
    like Lazarus to walk the warm earth again,
    our blood is flowing, our muscles stretch and lengthen,
    the pale green leaves encircling our hearts
    await their unfolding.
    We lean into the dawn,
    eager to call the light home
    and be young together
    once more.

    - Elaine Christo Watkins
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  51. TopTop #3177
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Solstice Poem

    The world will not end tonight,
    though the wrinkled horsemen
    slumped over their antediluvian mounts
    are standing by waiting for the cue
    and who knows where the trumpeter’s gone by now
    itching to wet his whistle ...

    though the placards and signs are lined up
    against the crumbling walls proclaiming the end is nigh
    and the ones on parchment vellum and papyrus
    curl in their glass cases as generations
    of school kids careen by, oblivious. ...

    though the fountain of youth persists beneath
    the track at Hialeah or maybe next door
    under the ersatz jungle pool at the Four Winds Motel,
    plastic pink flamingos fishing the crew cut lawn, ...

    though the bomb shelters sink into themselves,
    faded labels peeling from crushed and dented cans
    whose combined shelf lives equal
    a number we have not yet reckoned, ...

    though the cryogenic warehouses await occupation
    your choice of sheepskin or stainless steel lining
    your pod stationed on site or shot into space, ...

    though the falling dreams, the flying dreams
    the nightly haunting journeys through
    an unbound space time confluence...
    (Did you ever ride an elevator to the moon? )

    though the green leaves furl crimson and gold
    and fall in the gusty autumn afternoon
    and the sky stalls, a stark white glare
    under the wraiths of cloud, the shroud of fog....
    though the brewing rain a deluge in the drought, ...

    though we are saturate of blood and oil,
    the tape loops of disgruntlement,
    the strung beads of grievance,
    the squandered slain of battlefield and school

    and though we grieve the sacrificial lambs,
    petals strewn on blind archaic altars,
    though we toll the bells and count our losses,
    cast our nets, jump from cliffs,
    or dive into the cold dark heart to find the molten light,
    The world will not end tonight.

    - Carla Steinberg
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  52. Gratitude expressed by:

  53. TopTop #3178
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In the Grip of the Solstice

    Feels like a train roaring into night,
    the journey into fierce cold just beginning.
    The ground is newly frozen, the crust
    brittle and fancy with striations,
    steeples and nipples we break
    under our feet.
    Every day we are shortchanged a bit more,
    night pressing down on the afternoon
    throttling it. Wan sunrise later
    and later, every day trimmed
    like an old candle you beg to give
    an hour’s more light.
    Feels like hurtling into vast darkness,
    the sky itself whistling of space
    the black matter between stars
    the red shift as the light dies,
    warmth a temporary aberration,
    entropy as a season.
    Our ancestors understood the brute
    fear that grips us as the cold
    settles around us, closing in.
    Light the logs in the fireplace tonight,
    light the candles, first one, then two,
    the full chanukiya.
    Light the fire in the belly.
    Eat hot soup, cabbage and beef
    borscht, chicken soup, lamb
    and barley, stoke the marrow.
    Put down the white wine and pour
    whiskey instead.
    We reach for each other in our bed,
    the night vaulted above us
    like a cave. Night in the afternoon,
    cold frosting the glass so it hurts
    to touch it, only flesh still
    welcoming to flesh.

    - Marge Piercy
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  55. TopTop #3179
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In a Dark Time

    In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
    I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
    I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
    A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
    I live between the heron and the wren,
    Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

    What’s madness but nobility of soul
    At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
    I know the purity of pure despair,
    My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
    That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
    Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

    A steady storm of correspondences!
    A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
    And in broad day the midnight come again!
    A man goes far to find out what he is—
    Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
    All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

    Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
    My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
    Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
    A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
    The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
    And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

    - Theodore Roethke
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  57. TopTop #3180
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Christmas Carol

    Away in a manger
    or a crack house
    or under a bridge
    or in a bombed-out village
    or a refugee camp
    or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
    some Mary is giving birth.

    Even as you read this
    a child is being born.

    What if one of these were the promised one,
    the beacon of hope,
    the seed of a new light
    in a dark time?

    What if they all were?
    What gifts would you bring
    if you were wise?

    - Larry Robinson
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

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