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  1. TopTop #3181
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    little tree
    little tree
    little silent Christmas tree
    you are so little
    you are more like a flower

    who found you in the green forest
    and were you very sorry to come away?
    see i will comfort you
    because you smell so sweetly

    i will kiss your cool bark
    and hug you safe and tight
    just as your mother would,
    only don't be afraid

    look the spangles
    that sleep all the year in a dark box
    dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
    the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

    put up your little arms
    and i'll give them all to you to hold
    every finger shall have its ring
    and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

    then when you're quite dressed
    you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
    and how they'll stare!
    oh but you'll be very proud

    and my little sister and i will take hands
    and looking up at our beautiful tree
    we'll dance and sing
    "Noel Noel"

    - e.e.cummings
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  3. TopTop #3182
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Awaken


    we are in the wake
    of a great shifting

    awaken

    you better free your mind
    before they illegalize thought

    there’s a war going on

    the first casualty was truth
    and it’s inside you

    the universe is counting on our belief
    that faith is more powerful than fear
    and in that the shifting moment
    we’ll all remember why we’re here

    in a world where you’re assassinated for having a dream
    and the rich spend 9 billion a year to control our ideas
    and visions are televised so things aren’t what they seem

    we gotta believe
    in a world where
    there’s room enough for everyone
    to breathe

    cause reality is made up of
    7 billion thoughts
    who made up their minds
    of what’s real and what’s not

    so I stopped believing
    in false idols of war
    greed and hate
    is not worth my faith

    my mind’s dedicated
    to justice
    my soul is devoted
    to love

    and love is God
    and God is truth
    and truth is you
    and you are me
    and I am everything
    and everything is nothing
    and nothing is the birthplace of creation
    and transformation is possible
    and you are proof

    we were born right now
    for a reason
    we can be whatever
    we give ourselves the power to be

    and right now we need
    day dreamers
    gate keepers
    bridge builders
    soul speakers
    web weavers
    light bearers
    food growers
    wound healers
    trail blazers
    truth sayers
    life lovers
    peace makers

    give what you most deeply desire
    to give
    every moment you are choosing to live
    or you are waiting

    why would a flower hesitate to open?
    now is the only moment
    rain drop let go
    become the ocean

    possibility is as wide
    as the space
    we create
    to hold it

    - Naima Penniman
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  5. TopTop #3183

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    "Right now we need . . . truth sayers"!
    Thank you for introducing me to this performance poet new to me.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Awaken...
    - Naima Penniman
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  7. TopTop #3184
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Invocation For The Dark Times: Solstice 2002



    Stop what you are doing and listen.
    Listen to the darkness gathering around you

    Stop what you are doing and breathe.
    Breathe into the life that you are given.

    Stop what you are doing and breathe into this moment
    This moment of gathering darkness hovering at the edge
    Of colored lights and plastic trees and busy streets and unmet needs

    Breathe into the darkness
    Growling with the waxing web of war
    Wrapping the somnolent fear fed world
    in the power hungry vice grips of adolescent tyrants
    Formed from the dust of overextended empires
    Caught by the ruthless clutch of encroaching stupidity
    Escaping the boundaries of all reason at the cost of
    Everything You Hold Dear.

    Breathe into the wraithlike reporters of doom and gloom
    Breathe into the anguished futile cries
    Of unheard children wanting the world to last
    The trees to stand, the rivers to flow
    The sun to shine tomorrow and the next day and the next
    Without Nuclear Winter.

    Breathe through the putrid stench of all that is dying
    And Scream your Agonized Release.

    Scream and open to the darkness that is the Great Unmaking.
    Open to the darkness that is the letting go,
    The crashing down, the stricken stalk,
    The dwindling stream, the moonless night,
    The used up yesterdays
    Whose rightful place is
    Peacefully Pushed into the Past.

    Breathe and die to the ego-driven empires within you
    Spun from the longing of misled separation
    Breathe into the endless, endless nothing that is the
    blackest velvet source of all.
    Breathe into the quiet, the still, the empty and the full
    The cradling cloak of rest that
    Remembers and Renews.

    Breathe into the darkness that is the moist wet womb
    Breathe into the slumbering seed,
    Cradled in the eternity of crumbled mountains.
    Breathe into the the gaping black lace of infinite galaxies,
    Birthed from the hiccups of sleeping Gods
    Just to tell us there's something
    More than Meets the Eye.

    Reach into the teeming void to a distant star
    And pull it down through endless steps and rainbow veils
    And yearning kisses and improbable wishes
    Breathe the dreams of dark night’s slumber
    onto the tongues of the inner flame,
    the luminous light,
    The awakening dance
    Breaking the trance
    Taking the chance on
    Changing the Stance.

    Breathe into your undulating visions
    Birthed from sorrow into hope
    Birthed from darkness into faith
    Birthed from nothing into something
    Something better, something new, something yet we do not know
    But only feel, deep within, deep and down,
    Where Darkness Reigns Forever
    like the
    Ancient Queen She Is.

    And then, and then, only then,
    The Light Will Come.


    - Anodea Judith
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  9. TopTop #3185
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    By The Way
    For Adrienne Rich

    I’ve given it time, as if time were mine to give.
    There was a dam, larger than Hoover or the President or the patent
    For the metal creature that sucks up all the dust.
    Words had to stop and ask permission before crossing over.
    Oh, sometimes they were wild with the urgency of sweet
    And leaped—
    Mostly the rest were kept in the net
    Of swallowed or forbidden language.

    I want to go back and rewrite all the letters.
    I lied frequently.
    No. I was not O.K.
    And neither was James Baldwin, though his essays
    Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight
    To assert humanness in a black-and-white world.

    That’s how blues emerged, by the way—
    Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess.
    The music, a sack that carries the bones of those left alongside
    The trail of tears when we were forced
    To leave everything we knew by the way—

    I constructed an individual life in the so-called civilized world.
    We all did—far from the trees and plants
    Who had born us and fed us.
    All I wanted was the music, I would tell you now—
    Within it, what we cannot carry.
    I talk about then from a hotel room just miles
    From your home in the East
    Before you fled on your personal path of tears
    To the West, that worn-out American Dream
    Dogging your steps.

    You lived on a pedestal for me then, the driven diver who climbed
    Back up from the abyss, Venus on a seashell with a dagger
    In her hands.
    I had to look, and followed your tracks in the poems
    Cut by suffering.
    Aren’t they all?
    We’re in the apocalyptic age of addiction and forgetting.
    It’s worse now.

    But that dam, I had to tell you. I broke it open stone by stone.
    It took a saxophone, flowers, and your words
    Had something to do with it
    I can’t say exactly how.
    The trajectory wasn’t clean, even though it was sure.
    Does that make sense?
    Maybe it does only in the precincts of dreams and poetry,
    Not in a country lit twenty-four hours a day to keep dreams stuck
    Turning in a wheel
    In the houses of money.

    I read about transcendence, how the light
    Came in through the window of a nearby traveller
    And every cell of creation opened its mouth
    To drink grace.

    That’s what I never told you.

    - Joy Harjo
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  11. TopTop #3186
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    Human movements,
    but for a few,
    are Westerly.
    Man follows the Sun.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    Or follows what he thinks to be the
    movement of the Sun.
    It is hard to feel it, as a rider,
    on a spinning ball.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    Centuries and hordes of us,
    from every quarter of the earth,
    now piling up,
    and each wave going back
    to get some more.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    My face is the map of the Steppes,"
    she said, on this mountain, looking West.

    My blood set singing by it,
    to the old tunes,
    Irish, still,
    among these Oaks.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    This is why
    once again we celebrate
    the great Spring Tides.

    Beaches are strewn again with Jasper,
    Agate, and Jade.
    The Mussel-rock stands clear.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    This is why
    once again we celebrate the
    Headland's huge, cairn-studded, fall
    into the Sea.

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    For we have walked the jeweled beaches
    at the feet of the final cliffs
    of all Man's wanderings.

    This is the last place.
    There is nowhere else we need to go.

    - Lew Welch
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  13. TopTop #3187
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I think I remember (that's the way the elderly talk) that Lew Welch told people that, when he died, he'd be buried in a place on Mt. Tamalpais that no one would ever be able to find. He left a suicide note at Gary Snyder's house and vanished. This was in 1971, and his body was never found. He was thought to be carrying a handgun at the time of his disappearance.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings

    This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

    ...

    - Lew Welch
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  15. TopTop #3188
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For/From Lew Welch

    Lew Welch just turned up one day,
    live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
    "you didn't shoot yourself after all."
    "Yes I did" he said,
    and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
    "Yes you did, too" I said—"I can feel it now."
    "Yeah" he said,
    "There's a basic fear between your world and
    mine. I don't know why.
    What I came to say was,
    teach the children about the cycles.
    The life cycles. All other cycles.
    That’s what it's all about, and it's all forgot."

    - Gary Snyder
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  17. TopTop #3189
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Burning the Old Year

    Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
    Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
    transparent scarlet paper,
    sizzle like moth wings,
    marry the air.

    So much of any year is flammable,
    lists of vegetables, partial poems.
    Orange swirling flame of days,
    so little is a stone.

    Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
    an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
    I begin again with the smallest numbers.

    Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
    only the things I didn’t do
    crackle after the blazing dies.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  19. TopTop #3190
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  BurningOldYear.jpg
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  21. TopTop #3191
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To the New Year

    With what stillness at last
    you appear in the valley
    your first sunlight reaching down
    to touch the tips of a few
    high leaves that do not stir
    as though they had not noticed
    and did not know you at all
    then the voice of a dove calls
    from far away in itself
    to the hush of the morning

    so this is the sound of you
    here and now whether or not
    anyone hears it this is
    where we have come with our age
    our knowledge such as it is
    and our hopes such as they are
    invisible before us
    untouched and still possible

    - W.S. Merwin
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  23. TopTop #3192
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    December 31st

    All my undone actions wander
    naked across the calendar,

    a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,
    blown snow scattered here and there,

    stumbling toward a future
    folded in the New Year I secure

    with a pushpin: January’s picture
    a painting from the 17th century,

    a still life: Skull and mirror,
    spilled coin purse and a flower.

    - Richard Hoffman
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  25. TopTop #3193
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Each year Sheila Murphy mails her friends a poem for the New Year. This years:Name:  Murphy2017.jpg
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  27. TopTop #3194
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Starting With Black

    In a dark place
    in a dark time

    start with black.
    Stop. Soak up its energy.

    Remember the circle
    however bent and broken.

    Prize balance. Seek Pleasure.
    Allow surprise. Let music

    guide your every impulse.
    Support those who falter.

    Steer by our fixed star:
    No Justice, No Peace.

    - Jim Haba
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  29. TopTop #3195
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Risk of Birth

    This is no time for a child to be born,
    With the earth betrayed by war & hate
    And a comet slashing the sky to warn
    That time runs out & the sun burns late.

    That was no time for a child to be born,
    In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
    Honour & truth were trampled by scorn-
    Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

    When is the time for love to be born?
    The inn is full on the planet earth,
    And by a comet the sky is torn-
    Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

    - Madeleine L’Engle
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  31. TopTop #3196
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Encounter

    We were riding through the frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
    A red wing rose in the darkness.

    And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
    One of us pointed to it with his hand.

    That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive.
    Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

    O my love, where are they, where are they going?
    The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
    I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

    - Czeslaw Milosz
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  33. TopTop #3197
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A New Land


    “What is to give light must endure burning.” Victor Frankl


    fires of grief
    burn thru every pore
    every crevice of self
    every belief held tightly
    even of inherent goodness

    beliefs fail us now
    watch as they dissolve
    fly away on the breeze
    ashes in free flight
    no time to bid farewell

    fully awake, eyes wide
    turning toward the east
    the return of light, a new day,
    surrender to who knows what
    gently hold the darkness

    as revealed in outer form
    step forward in terror
    and in trust, asking:
    how can i be of use
    this burning one?

    carry the torch
    of initiated innocence
    stumbling at times
    falling, yet knowing
    the fire will light a way

    beyond a shallow safety
    to a new land where
    the heart of the world
    pulses and sings
    in billions of ears

    somewhere between
    terror and trust runs
    the deeper river
    of resolve, and there
    we will reside, there

    the sun outshines
    the fires of grief
    a prayer rises up
    in a yet unspoken
    language of light

    - Fran Carbonaro
    Last edited by Barry; 01-06-2017 at 01:39 PM.
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  35. TopTop #3198
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ravens Hiding in a Shoe


    There is something men and women living in houses
    Don’t understand. The old alchemists standing
    Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times.

    Ravens at night hide in an old woman’s shoe.
    A four-year-old speaks some ancient language.
    We have lived our own death a thousand times.

    Each sentence we speak to friends means the opposite
    As well. Each time we say, “I trust in God,” it means
    God has already abandoned us a thousand times.

    Mothers again and again have knelt in church
    In wartime asking God to protect their sons,
    And their prayers were refused a thousand times.

    The baby loon follows the mother’s sleek
    Body for months. By the end of summer, she
    Has dipped her head into Rainy Lake a thousand times.

    Robert, you’ve wasted so much of your life
    Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you
    Do that again? I would, a thousand times.

    - Robert Bly
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  37. TopTop #3199
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hooray for Robert Bly!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Ravens Hiding in a Shoe...

    - Robert Bly
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  39. TopTop #3200
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shoe drawn by Sherry Yuki, ravens from Oana Enache's pinterest page.Name:  RavensHiding-Bly.jpg
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  41. TopTop #3201
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Invisible Work

    Because no one could ever praise me enough,
    because I don't mean these poems only
    but the unseen
    unbelievable effort it takes to live
    the life that goes on between them,
    I think all the time about invisible work.
    About the young mother on Welfare
    I interviewed years ago,
    who said, "It's hard.
    You bring him to the park,
    run rings around yourself keeping him safe,
    cut hot dogs into bite-sized pieces for dinner,
    and there's no one
    to say what a good job you're doing,
    how you were patient and loving
    for the thousandth time even though you had a headache."
    And I, who am used to feeling sorry for myself
    because I am lonely,
    when all the while,
    as the Chippewa poem says, I am being carried
    by great winds across the sky,
    thought of the invisible work that stitches up the world day and night,
    the slow, unglamorous work of healing,
    the way worms in the garden
    tunnel ceaselessly so the earth can breathe
    and bees ransack this world into being,
    while owls and poets stalk shadows,
    our loneliest labors under the moon.

    There are mothers
    for everything, and the sea
    is a mother too,
    whispering and whispering to us
    long after we have stopped listening.
    I stopped and let myself lean
    a moment, against the blue
    shoulder of the air. The work
    of my heart
    is the work of the world's heart.
    There is no other art.

    - Alison Luterman
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  43. TopTop #3202
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Song on the End of the World


    On the day the world ends
    A bee circles a clover,
    A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
    Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
    By the rainspout young sparrows are playing
    And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be.


    On the day the world ends
    Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas,
    A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn,
    Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
    And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island,
    The voice of a violin lasts in the air
    And leads into a starry night.


    And those who expected lightning and thunder
    Are disappointed.
    And those who expected signs and archangels’ trumps
    Do not believe it is happening now.
    As long as the sun and the moon are above,
    As long as the bumblebee visits a rose,
    As long as rosy infants are born
    No one believes it is happening now.

    Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
    Yet is not a prophet, for he’s much too busy,
    Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:
    There will be no other end of the world,
    There will be no other end of the world.

    Warsaw, 1944

    - Czeslaw Milosz
    (translated by Anthony Milosz)
    Last edited by Barry; 01-10-2017 at 10:55 AM.
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  45. TopTop #3203
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shoulders

    A man crosses the street in rain,
    stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
    because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

    No car must splash him.
    No car drive too near to his shadow.

    This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
    but he's not marked.
    Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
    HANDLE WITH CARE.

    His ear fills up with breathing.
    He hears the hum of a boy's dream
    deep inside him.

    We're not going to be able
    to live in this world
    if we're not willing to do what he's doing
    with one another.

    The road will only be wide.
    The rain will never stop falling.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye
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  47. TopTop #3204
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Democracy

    It's coming through a hole in the air,
    from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
    It's coming from the feels
    that it ain't exactly real,
    or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
    From the wars against disorder,
    from the sirens night and day,
    from the fires of the homeless,
    from the ashes of the gay:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
    It's coming through a crack in the wall,
    on a visionary flood of alcohol;
    from the staggering account
    of the Sermon on the Mount
    which I don't pretend to understand at all.
    It's coming from the silence
    on the dock of the bay,
    from the brave, the bold, the battered
    heart of Chevrolet:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
    It's coming from the sorrow on the street
    the holy places where the races meet;
    from the homicidal bitchin'
    that goes down in every kitchen
    to determine who will serve and who will eat.
    From the wells of disappointment
    where the women kneel to pray
    for the grace of G-d in the desert here
    and the desert far away:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
    Sail on, sail on
    o mighty Ship of State!
    To the Shores of Need
    past the Reefs of Greed
    through the Squalls of Hate
    Sail on, sail on
    It's coming to America first,
    the cradle of the best and the worst.
    It's here they got the range
    and the machinery for change
    and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
    It's here the family's broken
    and it's here the lonely say
    that the heart has got to open
    in a fundamental way:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
    It's coming from the women and the men.
    O baby, we'll be making love again.
    We'll be going down so deep
    that the river's going to weep,
    and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
    It's coming to the tidal flood
    beneath the lunar sway,
    imperial, mysterious
    in amorous array:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
    Sail on, sail on
    o mighty Ship of State!
    To the Shores of Need
    past the Reefs of Greed
    through the Squalls of Hate
    Sail on, sail on
    I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
    I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
    And I'm neither left or right
    I'm just staying home tonight,
    getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
    But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
    that Time cannot decay,
    I'm junk but I'm still holding up
    this little wild bouquet:
    Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

    - Leonard Cohen
    Last edited by Barry; 01-12-2017 at 02:57 PM.
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  49. TopTop #3205
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For My Young Friends Who Are Afraid

    There is a country to cross you will
    find in the corner of your eye, in
    the quick slip of your foot—air far
    down, a snap that might have caught.
    And maybe for you, for me, a high, passing
    voice that finds its way by being
    afraid. That country is there, for us,
    carried as it is crossed. What you fear
    will not go away: it will take you into
    yourself and bless you and keep you.
    That's the world, and we all live there.

    - William Stafford
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  51. TopTop #3206
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Drought Break -1979


    Ducks skid on October flat water
    Small buck, leaps up the blond grass
    Never enough water here.
    The land splits open like two chapped lips.


    Your grandpa died.
    He gave you fly fishing
    and arrogance
    his gin, straight
    in the bottom of the jelly jar,
    my throat closing around it
    for lack of water

    Your grandmother’s gone dotty.
    She was halfway there,
    made for easy conversation
    her rapture complete repeating
    Enchilada recipes

    Forgotten in minutes.
    Bake at three fifty.
    Now damns burst
    Reservoirs spillover
    The contents of houses sweep out
    to the sea.

    Your grandmother’s synapses flood.
    The river crests at high tide.

    - Zeena Janowsky
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  52. Gratitude expressed by:

  53. TopTop #3207
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Spirit Work


    Let us ourselves be still
    While the maelstrom builds

    Be

    At the center of
    The powerful storm
    A neutral place

    Touch Earth and Sky
    These are all of you
    You are part of them

    When the funnel cloud builds
    You may look away
    Soothe yourself
    Fine enough

    When the Sudden comes

    If you are lifted away
    Look down and smile
    Imagine each second separately
    Each second a life in itself
    Full of wonder
    Sparkling and clear

    Let go

    Control

    Is Illusion
    You have the gift of senses
    Celebrate all that you see and hear and taste

    In Jubilee
    You give up all
    To allow life to coalesce
    In a new way

    Fly away

    And wherever the grains and seconds
    Reassemble

    That is as it will be

    Let each particle carry the memory of love

    - Anonymous
    Last edited by Barry; 01-15-2017 at 11:33 AM.
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  54. Gratitude expressed by:

  55. TopTop #3208
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    America: A Prophecy (excerpt)

    The morning comes, the night decays, the watchmen leave their stations;
    The grave is burst, the spices shed, the linen wrapped up;
    The bones of death, the cov'ring clay, the sinews shrunk & dry'd.
    Reviving shake, inspiring move, breathing! awakening!
    Spring like redeemed captives when their bonds & bars are burst;

    Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the field:
    Let him look up into the heavens & laugh in the bright air;
    Let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing,
    Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years;
    Rise and look out, his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open.
    And let his wife and children return from the opressors scourge;
    They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream.
    Singing. The Sun has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning
    And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;
    For Empire is no more, and now the Lion & Wolf shall cease.

    For Everything that lives is holy. For Everything that lives is holy.

    - William Blake
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  57. TopTop #3209
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Remember

    Remember the sky that you were born under,
    know each of the star's stories.
    Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
    in a bar once in Iowa City.
    Remember the sun's birth at dawn, that is the
    strongest point of time. Remember sundown
    and the giving away to night.
    Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
    to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
    her life, and her mother's, and hers.
    Remember your father. He is your life also.
    Remember the earth whose skin you are:
    red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
    brown earth, we are earth.
    Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
    tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
    listen to them. They are alive poems.
    Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
    origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
    dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
    Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
    Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
    Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
    Remember that language comes from this.
    Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
    Remember.

    - Joy Harjo
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  59. TopTop #3210
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    September 1, 1939

    I sit in one of the dives
    On Fifty-second Street
    Uncertain and afraid
    As the clever hopes expire
    Of a low dishonest decade:
    Waves of anger and fear
    Circulate over the bright
    And darkened lands of the earth,
    Obsessing our private lives;
    The unmentionable odour of death
    Offends the September night.

    Accurate scholarship can
    Unearth the whole offence
    From Luther until now
    That has driven a culture mad,
    Find what occurred at Linz,
    What huge imago made
    A psychopathic god:
    I and the public know
    What all schoolchildren learn,
    Those to whom evil is done
    Do evil in return.

    Exiled Thucydides knew
    All that a speech can say
    About Democracy,
    And what dictators do,
    The elderly rubbish they talk
    To an apathetic grave;
    Analysed all in his book,
    The enlightenment driven away,
    The habit-forming pain,
    Mismanagement and grief:
    We must suffer them all again.

    Into this neutral air
    Where blind skyscrapers use
    Their full height to proclaim
    The strength of Collective Man,
    Each language pours its vain
    Competitive excuse:
    But who can live for long
    In an euphoric dream;
    Out of the mirror they stare,
    Imperialism's face
    And the international wrong.

    Faces along the bar
    Cling to their average day:
    The lights must never go out,
    The music must always play,
    All the conventions conspire
    To make this fort assume
    The furniture of home;
    Lest we should see where we are,
    Lost in a haunted wood,
    Children afraid of the night
    Who have never been happy or good.

    The windiest militant trash
    Important Persons shout
    Is not so crude as our wish:
    What mad Nijinsky wrote
    About Diaghilev
    Is true of the normal heart;
    For the error bred in the bone
    Of each woman and each man
    Craves what it cannot have,
    Not universal love
    But to be loved alone.

    From the conservative dark
    Into the ethical life
    The dense commuters come,
    Repeating their morning vow;
    "I will be true to the wife,
    I'll concentrate more on my work,"
    And helpless governors wake
    To resume their compulsory game:
    Who can release them now,
    Who can reach the deaf,
    Who can speak for the dumb?

    All I have is a voice
    To undo the folded lie,
    The romantic lie in the brain
    Of the sensual man-in-the-street
    And the lie of Authority
    Whose buildings grope the sky:
    There is no such thing as the State
    And no one exists alone;
    Hunger allows no choice
    To the citizen or the police;
    We must love one another or die.

    Defenceless under the night
    Our world in stupor lies;
    Yet, dotted everywhere,
    Ironic points of light
    Flash out wherever the Just
    Exchange their messages:
    May I, composed like them
    Of Eros and of dust,
    Beleaguered by the same
    Negation and despair,
    Show an affirming flame.

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

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