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  1. TopTop #3451
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Deepening The Wonder

    Death is a favor to us,
    But our scales have lost their balance.

    The impermanence of the body
    Should give us great clarity,
    Deepening the wonder in our senses and eyes

    Of this mysterious existence we share
    And are surely just traveling through.

    If I were in the Tavern tonight,
    Hafiz would call for drinks

    And as the Master poured, I would be reminded
    That all I know of life and myself is that

    We are just a midair flight of golden wine
    Between His Pitcher and His Cup.

    If I were in the Tavern tonight,
    I would buy freely for everyone in this world

    Because our marriage with the Cruel Beauty
    Of time and space cannot endure very long.

    Death is a favor to us,
    But our minds have lost their balance.

    The miraculous existence and impermanence of
    Form
    Always makes the illumined ones
    Laugh and sing.

    - Hafiz
    (translation by Daniel Ladinsky)
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  3. TopTop #3452
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    THE COSMOLOGY OF FINDING YOUR SPOT

    The Resistantism of all other places
    On the floor among filters and the spillings
    The cosmology of the floor of the Nation
    The cosmology of finding your place
    The cosmology of smelling and feeling your Natural place
    inside the place, feeling the filters
    feeling the rock, feeling the roll
    feeling the social spray at that level
    low down, with the filters and the feet
    feeling the place you can fold all four legs
    and be man's best friend to the End, among the filters
    and the feet, in the rock, and in the roll
    in the clock and in the roll, in the hole
    of the social bilge The Great White Dog
    of the Rockchalk, seeks his place Seeks
    The place for Him there, tries every scrap of Space
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
    moves under the Social seeking his own Place
    in the constant present snap of eternity
    listening with the german dislocated castanet
    His Nose Is under the great pin ball rolling in heaven above
    thru the barren terrain of feet He moves
    from place to place seeking his place
    The resisters the dogs seek their place
    WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this
    WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths, WAYNE KIMBALL
    knows about the The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk doesn't
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk has been there
    Western Civilization is Beer
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk
    went thru the door of Western Civilization
    Which is north of the Barbershop
    and north of the sailor pants incense shop
    The Great White Dog went between all that
    and the Gaslight, The Great White Rockchalk Dog
    shakes hands with both paws indiscriminately
    For he Seeks his own true place on the floor
    He disregards the social He seeks the Place
    he seeks The Space his soul can occupy
    In His restless search he looks only for the Place
    Where he can come to rest in his own true Place
    and that might be on the floor of the rockchalk
    The great White Dog is not Interdicted by opinion
    He accepts the floor of the Rock Chalk as an Area,
    like any other, he will test that space
    He is preoccupied only with the Search
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk is not social
    WAYNE KIMBALL told me all this, WAYNE KIMBALL
    is social, he knows only persons, he doesn't
    give a shit for the floor of the Rockchalk
    WAYNE KIMBALL is neurotic like us, he wants
    to smoke Grass, WAYNE KIMBALL sits in the booths
    WAYNE KIMBALL drinks beer, has a part time job
    pretending to be literate, WAYNE KIMBALL uses
    the telephone and all other public Utilities
    including Cocaine, The Great White Dog
    of The Rockchalk is full of shit and can't shit
    until he finds his place, WAYNE KIMBALL has diarrhea
    WAYNE KIMBALL hasn't got a driver's license
    WAYNE KIMBALL is thin and knows everything that happens
    He has ears, He is a corrupt little mongrel like us
    turned on to everything hopeless and bullshit
    The Great White Dog of The Rockchalk is dumb
    and doesn't know anything but his instinct for the search
    for his place somewhere in the litter
    of the filters and the literally dropped dreams
    of the Great Rock Chalk, he smells the dreams
    on the floor dropped from between the legs
    of young English majors, ejected from between the
    Dual Spraycans of the fraternizers
    He seeks his place on top of this matter
    among the feet of the privileged nation on the floor
    of the Great shit, Rock Chalk Rock Chalk White Rock
    Calk Dog, And WAYNE KIMBALL Smokes cigarettes
    and Thoreaus them ontoOntoOntoOnto the floor
    already predicated by cancer, the slow movement of Cancer
    And I love these dogs because they are us and more us
    than we are and they seek their places as do the true
    whether they are Resisters or just scared or both
    They are the twin dogs of creation in our image
    and I give them both the floor as I give the Resisters
    This Poem from the throne of Belief as the Egyptians
    Gave and took from the Dogs Their access to Heaven
    That we may all be Gods and seek our Place.

    - Ed Dorn
    (1969, Lawrence, Kansas)


    Ed Dorn (1929-1999)
    Poet and author of numerous works, Dorn is perhaps best known for his five part poem Gunslinger and as an alumni of the experimental, interdisciplinary Black Mountain College. His fictional character Wayne Kimball from the poem The Cosmology of Finding your Spot, which takes place in Lawrence, Kansas is the compilation of two Lawrence residents and fellow writers Wayne Propst and George Kimball.
    Last edited by Barry; 08-12-2017 at 02:10 PM.
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  5. TopTop #3453

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Thanks, Larry, for the paragraph about the author/poet Ed Dorn.

    This one begs to be read aloud!

    However I didn't wait for it to beg.

    I quickly recognized this and read it aloud as an offering, to Ed, Georg Propst, and myself! Powerful!

    Thanks again,
    dusty
    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    THE COSMOLOGY OF FINDING YOUR SPOT...
    Last edited by Barry; 08-13-2017 at 01:13 PM.
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  6. TopTop #3454
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What then Hafez?

    Hafez said:
    “THE GREAT RELIGIONS ARE THE SHIPS AND POETRY THE LIFE BOATS
    EVERY SANE MAN I’VE EVER KNOWN HAS JUMPED OVERBOARD.”

    But you may ask: what then Hafez?

    Then we’ll drift across uncharted seas in lifeboats without the antiquated provisions of clerics.

    We’ll survive by drinking holy rain-water, catching luminescent spirit fish, and making midnight prayers of the heart.

    Then after years or decades, we’ll return to a great ship that leads us onward, but not back to the familiar oceans of certainty.

    We’ll sit and humbly join hands with those huddled in the dark recesses of the ship’s steerage, who have left home forever in search of undiscovered lands.

    - Bruce Silverman
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  8. TopTop #3455
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    American Nightmare

    I'm in bed with America.
    America is writhing and moaning in her sleep,
    twisting the bed sheets around her
    as if coiled in the grip of a giant boa constrictor.
    America whimpers in her sleep
    and turns her head to the left and to the right.
    America is having a nightmare.

    America is dreaming that the Inquisition
    is back with its old, unimproved tortures.
    America is dreaming that the British won
    the Revolutionary War and that Franklin,
    Washington and Jefferson were hanged at Valley Forge.
    America is dreaming that she must increase
    her nuclear arsenal because being able
    to destroy the world 5,000 times over isn¹t enough
    if Russia can destroy the world 6,000 times over.
    America is dreaming that the southern plantations
    have risen from the dust, and the whips and manacles
    the torch and the hood and the noose.
    America is dreaming that water is rising
    around her house and she can¹t get out
    because the EPA has boarded up the doors and windows.
    America is dreaming that drinking melted polar ice
    has changed her children into Syrian refugees.
    America is dreaming that her babysitter
    is a registered sex offender.
    America is dreaming that her real parents
    are dead and impostor parents are forcing
    her into the family business of carnival geeking.
    America is dreaming that Lincoln has just
    shot everyone in Ford¹s Theater.
    America is dreaming that she¹s feeling faint
    after drinking the cup handed to her by Putin.
    America is dreaming that she has nothing left
    to eat but the money dragged from the vaults
    after the last billionaire committed suicide.
    America is dreaming that Whitman and Emerson
    have pulled up their grave plots and
    relocated them to Ontario.
    America is dreaming that all the blood shed by patriots
    in her wars has congealed into a malignant tumor
    kept in a secret room in the White House.
    America is dreaming that Henry Ford has
    returned from the dead to help the President
    rewrite the Constitution in 144 characters.
    America is dreaming that when the Pilgrims
    go out to the woods for the first Thanksgiving
    all they can find to shoot are skeletons.
    America is dreaming that the Italians and Irish
    and Poles have been sent back where they came from
    across the Atlantic in individual wooden washtubs.
    America is dreaming that beneath the site of the World Trade Center
    are anti-towers deep underground where
    the real masterminds of September 11th
    are plotting a new attack.
    America is dreaming that the President has hacked
    Jesus¹s twitter account
    and is repealing the Sermon on the Mount.
    America is dreaming that a tiny severed hand
    is creeping along the floor like a pale spider
    toward the Button.
    America is dreaming that a vast stone head
    from an exploded planet¹s Mount Rushmore
    is hurtling toward Indiana.
    America is dreaming ‹ STOP!

    America, can you hear me?
    (I¹m shaking you by the shoulders.)
    I wouldn¹t be in bed with you if I didn¹t love you.
    Spare yourself this nightmare.
    It doesn¹t have to be this way.
    There is still time.

    America, dear America, please wake up!

    - Thomas Smith
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  10. TopTop #3456
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Mark of Resistance


    Stone by stone I pile
    this cairn of my intention
    with the noon's weight on my back,
    exposed and vulnerable
    across the slanting fields
    which I love but cannot save
    from floods that are to come;

    can only fasten down
    with this work of my hands,
    these painfully assembled
    stones, in the shape of nothing
    that has ever existed before.

    A pile of stones: an assertion
    that this piece of country matters
    for large and simple reasons.

    A mark of resistance, a sign.

    - Adrienne Rich
    Last edited by Barry; 08-15-2017 at 01:12 PM.
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  12. TopTop #3457
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Anyone Who Is Still Trying

    Any person, any human, any someone who breaks
    up the fight, who spackles holes or FedExes
    ice shelves to the Arctic to keep the polar bears
    afloat, who talks the wind-rippled woman
    down from the bridge. Any individual, any citizen
    who skims muck from the coughing ocean,
    who pickets across the street from antigay picketers
    with a sign that reads, GOD HATES MAGGOTS,
    or, GOD HATES RESTAURANTS WITH ZAGAT RATINGS
    LESS THAN 27. Any civilian who kisses
    a forehead heated by fever or despair, who reads
    the X ray, pins the severed bone. Any biped
    who volunteers at soup kitchens, who chokes
    a Washington lobbyist with his own silk necktie—
    I take that back, who gives him mouth-to-mouth
    until his startled heart resumes its kabooms.
    Sorry, I get cynical sometimes, there is so much
    broken in the system, the districts, the crooked
    thinking, I’m working on whittling away at this
    pessimism, harvesting light where I can find it.
    Any countryman or countrywoman who is still
    trying, who still pushes against entropy,
    who stanches or donates blood, who douses fires
    real or metaphorical, who rakes the earth
    where tires once zeroed the ground, plants something
    green, say spinach or kale, say a modest forest
    for restless breezes to play with. Any anyone
    from anywhere who considers and repairs,
    who builds a prosthetic beak for an eagle—
    I saw the video, the majestic bird disfigured
    by a bullet, the visionary with a 3-D printer,
    with polymer and fidelity, with hours
    and hours and hours, I keep thinking about it,
    thinking we need more of that commitment,
    those thoughtful gestures, the flight afterward


    - David Hernandez
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  14. TopTop #3458
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Black Holes Exist

    The astrophysicists proclaim
    Black Holes Exist.
    I believe them.
    Yes, within my mind I see them
    Black against the Black of space.
    But now I ask
    What are they?
    Are they Everything that looks like
    Nothing?
    Are they Nothing that is also
    Everything?
    Are they the narcissistic ego
    of a cosmic body
    swallowing the praise of every star?
    I think I’ve seen them walking on Fifth Avenue
    and preening in their offices
    swallowing the little lights around them
    sucking in their hopes of everlasting fame
    leaving nothing in their wake
    readying their vacuumed contents for a vast explosion
    littering the universe with burning gas
    the trumpet of collapse.


    - William Johnson Everett
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  16. TopTop #3459
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Below the City

    for the people of Barcelona


    In the city of Barcelona, a city
    Dripping with the honey of youth,
    Draped with history contained within
    Walls, witness to love and atrocities,
    We pass below the streets in currents
    Like schools of disparate fish. We pass
    Trying not to notice, not to see
    the other.
    Youth beautiful, luscious in
    Unearned pride, the elderly
    Phantoms of time. In between
    Swim children, ignorant of unspoken rules.
    Sometimes we're not a school, but
    A murmuration. We move as one, dancing
    And wheeling, a singular mind.
    It's then the massive love
    we are when we are one,
    pierces the pavement above and
    the pedestrians smile, not knowing
    Why.

    - Rebecca del Rio
    Last edited by Barry; 08-18-2017 at 01:44 PM.
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  18. TopTop #3460
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Young Maples

    I remember maples
    Smooth bark
    Like gray glass
    On a February pond
    Leafless supple switches
    Winter wands
    Buds furled with tight-fisted notions
    Brewing dreams of leaves and wind
    A contained explosiveness in
    Sleeping saplings
    Alarms and excites me, ready
    With the first hint of warmth
    To burgeon, to double their size
    Nearly splitting their skin with
    Calm, wild hurry

    I recall when I was eager
    To grow into the dream
    Of who I was sure I would be
    Maples have no hesitancy –
    How did mine overtake me? –
    Don’t second guess
    Or sink weary of being maples
    Nor begin to doubt their place
    In the woods. Do they?
    Perhaps too many snow storms
    Rock falls, lightening strikes
    Can slow them
    Even a tree is not so sure
    And of course there are the lumbermen
    Two by fours and cheap furniture
    In their eyes
    I shall return to the young maples
    Perhaps if I listen to their leaves
    In the April wind

    - Garth Gilchrist
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  19. TopTop #3461
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson


    The Moon

    Look out at the moon in the sky, as she is right at this moment.
    Does she have to be in an eclipse to be so honored and praised?

    What about seeing the Essence that is there right now?
    Not one drop more or less than when she goes between earth and sun some weeks later.

    Will we forget all about her after that news worthy event?
    Is there more to see than just the darkness that will appear on that particular date?

    What about the Light of Presence that never leaves?
    What is there now that is is asking to be seen always?

    That which could never be shown on the news.
    That which can never be taken away.

    But calls to be recognized and seen for what it truly is.
    Seen for the Silence that she holds and honors.

    For all her trips around the earth she has taken.
    For all the times she has shown up both night and day.

    There is the true seeing.
    Not just for one eclipse or for a one time viewing.

    But for each and every moment, a chance to be acknowledged.
    For being that Essence and beauty in our heavens, singing her Silence.

    - Mary Morgan
    Last edited by Barry; 08-20-2017 at 11:47 AM.
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  21. TopTop #3462
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poem

    I lived in the first century of world wars.
    Most mornings I would be more or less insane.
    The news would pour out of various devices
    The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
    Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
    I would call my friends on other devices;
    They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
    Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
    Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
    In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
    Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
    considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
    As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
    We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
    To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
    Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
    Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
    To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
    To let go the means, to wake.

    I lived in the first century of these wars.

    - Muriel Rukeyser
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  23. TopTop #3463
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Looking For A River

    We pass the long blue and white
    tent, chairs set in sedate rows,
    men and women silent shadows

    in the heat; preparing for a revival,
    they pay us no mind as our car
    tires whine past on soft asphalt.

    A bay horse grazes in a field; black
    Angus stand belly-deep in a farm pond,
    tails switching flies, heads down like

    somnolent statues cut out of starless
    skies. On and on we drive, a little lost,
    following the thread of a shaky map.

    We’re looking for a river. We’re looking
    for a fresh green current, swirls of mica,
    trout circling the kettle like holy ghosts.

    We’re looking for the long white banner
    of a waterfall, the hidden path behind
    a plume of mist and ragged lace.

    When we get there, we’ll slide across
    slick dark gray rocks, push aside moss
    cascading out of deep cracks like prophets.

    We’ll crawl into that cool dark space
    behind the veil, listen to the river preach:
    granite gospel from the mouth of a mountain.

    - Deborah A. Miranda
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  25. TopTop #3464
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Better Thank Expected

    Things were not as bad as I had thought.
    The scrape in the fender of the rented car
    could be hidden with a little white paint
    before I returned it to the agency.

    This CD of New Age music, which I disliked at first,
    with its synthetic wind of pulsing jellyfish,
    does a remarkable job of slowing down my heart.

    Merely to have survived to this point
    is already the most unlikely triumph;
    to still be breathing and trying to improve.

    Things are definitely better than expected.
    I'm not on trial for anything.
    I have given up on the idea of great sucess.
    The oncologist says the x-ray shows no " abnormalities."


    We are always trying to come to a decision,
    always in a place where we are making up our minds
    whether the soup is good, the flowers pretty,
    whether we are fortunate, or poor.

    All my life I have been
    loved by women,
    held up by water,
    ignored by war.
    I have outlasted the voluntary numbness
    I required to remain alive.

    Why shouldn't I be able,
    why shouldn't I be able now
    to walk down the street,

    under the overhanging trees,
    and raise my arms and say
    that the rain shaking down from the leaves

    is not an inconvenience but a joy?


    - Tony Hoagland
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  27. TopTop #3465
    Barry's Avatar
    Barry
    Founder & Moderator

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    ...
    Merely to have survived to this point
    is already the most unlikely triumph;
    to still be breathing and trying to improve....


    Happy Birthday, Larry!

    On behalf of all of Waccodom, thank you so much for sharing poetry with us!
    It brightens my day and many others!


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  28. TopTop #3466
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Of History and Hope

    We have memorized America,
    how it was born and who we have been and where.
    In ceremonies and silence we say the words,
    telling the stories, singing the old songs.
    We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.
    The great and all the anonymous dead are there.
    We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.
    The rich taste of it is on our tongues.
    But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
    The disenfranchised dead want to know.
    We mean to be the people we meant to be,
    to keep on going where we meant to go.

    But how do we fashion the future? Who can say how
    except in the minds of those who will call it Now?
    The children. The children. And how does our garden grow?
    With waving hands—oh, rarely in a row—
    and flowering faces. And brambles, that we can no longer allow.

    Who were many people coming together
    cannot become one people falling apart.
    Who dreamed for every child an even chance
    cannot let luck alone turn doorknobs or not.
    Whose law was never so much of the hand as the head
    cannot let chaos make its way to the heart.
    Who have seen learning struggle from teacher to child
    cannot let ignorance spread itself like rot.
    We know what we have done and what we have said,
    and how we have grown, degree by slow degree,
    believing ourselves toward all we have tried to become—
    just and compassionate, equal, able, and free.

    All this in the hands of children, eyes already set
    on a land we never can visit—it isn't there yet—
    but looking through their eyes, we can see
    what our long gift to them may come to be.
    If we can truly remember, they will not forget.

    - Miller Williams
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  30. TopTop #3467
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Cure At Troy

    Human beings suffer,
    They torture one another,
    They get hurt and get hard.
    No poem or play or song
    Can fully right a wrong
    Inflicted and endured.

    The innocent in gaols
    Beat on their bars together.
    A hunger-striker's father
    Stands in the graveyard dumb.
    The police widow in veils
    Faints at the funeral home.

    History says, don't hope
    On this side of the grave.
    But then, once in a lifetime
    The longed-for tidal wave
    Of justice can rise up,
    And hope and history rhyme.

    So hope for a great sea-change
    On the far side of revenge.
    Believe that further shore
    Is reachable from here.
    Believe in miracle
    And cures and healing wells.

    Call miracle self-healing:
    The utter, self-revealing
    Double-take of feeling.
    If there's fire on the mountain
    Or lightning and storm
    And a god speaks from the sky

    That means someone is hearing
    The outcry and the birth-cry
    Of new life at its term.

    - Seamus Heaney’s translation of
    "The Philoctetes," by Sophocles
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  32. TopTop #3468
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Chambermaids in the Marriott in Midmorning

    are having a sort of coffee klatch as they clean
    calling across the corridors in their rich contraltos
    while luffing fresh sheets in the flickering gloom
    of the turgid passionate soaps they follow from room to room.
    In Atlanta they are black, young, with eloquent eyes.
    In Toledo white, middle-aged, wearing nurses’ shoes.
    In El Paso always in motion diminutive Chicanas
    gesture and lift and trill in liquid Spanish.
    Behind my “Do Not Disturb” sign I go wherever they go
    sorely tried by their menfolk, their husbands, lovers or sons
    who have jobs or have lost them, who drink and run around,
    who total their cars and are maimed, or lie idle in traction.
    The funerals, weddings and births, the quarrels, the fatal gunshots
    happen again and again, inventively reenacted
    except that the story is framed by ads and coming attractions,
    except that what takes a week in real life took only minutes.
    I think how static my life is with its careful speeches and classes
    and how I admire the women who daily clean up my messes,
    who are never done scrubbing with Rabelaisian vigor
    through the Marriott’s morning soaps up and down every corridor.

    - Maxine Kumin
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  34. TopTop #3469
    american dream's Avatar
    american dream
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A wonderful testimonial to these hard-working women - Thank you!!

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    The Chambermaids in the Marriott in Midmorning

    ...
    Last edited by Barry; 08-27-2017 at 12:11 PM.
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  35. TopTop #3470
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    PLEASE DISTURB

    I hung out my “please disturb sign”
    but nobody did

    It would have been fine with me

    Nobody reads anymore
    it’s all this television

    So I stayed on my side of the door
    nobody even knocked

    It was a nice looking door

    Then one morning the maid knocked
    She didn’t bother to read my special sign

    I yelled, “Come in, oh God, please come in!”
    She said, “I’ll come back.”

    Nobody reads anymore

    - Doug von Koss
    After five days at the Royal York Hotel
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada. May 25, 1994
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  37. TopTop #3471
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At The Flea Market


    Last week at the flea market I spied Mahatma Ghandi, Rabbi Abraham Heschel and the Reverend Martin Luther King perusing a small two-pan balancing scale.

    One pan was marked good, the other evil.

    A discussion then ensued. Said Heschel: this scale is flawed: “the opposite of good is not evil, it’s indifference.”

    Ghandi replied: yes, I agree, for “good and evil often are found together.” Then Dr. King spoke and said:

    I find this scale to be befuddling because “there’s some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.”

    With that they simply walked off.

    I timidly stepped forward and bought the scale.

    I took it home and measured the weights sitting in the two pans marked good and evil. And here is what I found:

    When compared, good and evil seem to be about equal in

    measure, but clearly, at times like this,

    it’s necessary to put a finger on the scale.


    - Bruce Silverman
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  39. TopTop #3472
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    If You Want To Pray For Houston


    if you want
    to pray for Houston
    you have to pray
    in her way
    pray like Beyoncé
    when she was
    at HSPVA
    or Billy and Dusty
    shooting pool
    at Rudyard's
    pray like you're
    sitting over soup
    at Spanish Flowers
    or pho at Mai's
    steaming your glasses
    pray like the kids
    playing soccer
    on the east side
    or mutton busting
    at the livestock show
    pray like the runners
    in Memorial Park
    lacing them up
    or the researchers
    in the medical center
    looking into microscopes
    if you want
    to pray for Houston
    you have to pray
    as quietly as
    the Rothko Chapel
    or Houston Zen Center
    and you have to pray
    as loudly as
    the old scoreboard
    at the Astrodome
    after a José Cruz
    home run
    you have to pray
    sitting under
    a live oak tree
    or standing next to
    an azalea bloom
    while your skin
    clams in the heat
    if you want to pray
    for Houston
    you have to pray
    without pretense
    this ain't Dallas
    and in a neighborly way
    as friends come out
    to check on each other
    in the rain
    and those
    who are far away
    watch screens
    and wipe our eyes
    if you want to pray
    for Houston
    raise a bottle of Shiner
    to the gray sky
    and say that 130 mile an hour winds
    and 9 trillion gallons of rain
    are no match
    for a city of such life
    and diversity
    you can fill up our bayou
    but you will never rain
    on our parade

    - Jeremy Rutledge
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  41. TopTop #3473
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Before The Flood


    Why did he promise me
    that we would build ourselves
    an ark all by ourselves
    out in back of the house
    on New York Avenue
    in Union City New Jersey
    to the singing of the streetcars
    after the story
    of Noah whom nobody
    believed about the waters
    that would rise over everything
    when I told my father
    I wanted us to build
    an ark of our own there
    in the back yard under
    the kitchen could we do that
    he told me that we could
    I want to I said and will we
    he promised me that we would
    why did he promise that
    I wanted us to start then
    nobody will believe us
    I said that we are building
    an ark because the rains
    are coming and that was true
    nobody ever believed
    we would build an ark there
    nobody would believe
    that the waters were coming

    - W.S. Merwin
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  43. TopTop #3474
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Slipping Away


    Nim the tide. Thole time.
    Strangers knock on my door.
    They say the ice-caps are melting.

    Winter frozen waxen, white foam on high.
    Crazed ice opens to dust-stone and mud.
    Great halls splinter and fall into the sea,
    dark sea rising.

    All are slipping away.

    Where goes the ice-walker white bear?
    Where seal pups that blossom in spring?
    Where are whales and the songs they sing?

    They are slipping away.

    Where feathered fliers that once filled the sky
    the sky with sound of many wings thrumming?
    Where is silver wolf’s night howl hunting?

    Slipping away.

    Alas for great halls toppled and gone.
    Alas the tall, empty sky.
    Nim the tide. Thole time.
    Fold up the Earth.
    Fugitive earth-stepper is slipping away.


    - Patrice Warrender
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  45. TopTop #3475
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Why Then Do We Not Despair?

    Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
    Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
    Misery gnaws to the bone.
    Why then do we not despair?

    By day, from the surrounding woods,
    cherries blow summer into town;
    at night the deep transparent skies
    glitter with new galaxies.

    And the miraculous comes so close
    to the ruined, dirty houses --
    something not known to anyone at all,
    but wild in our breast for centuries.


    - Anna Akhmatova
    (translated by Stanley Kunitz)
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  47. TopTop #3476
    joybird's Avatar
    joybird
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sometimes I really wonder when these poems were written. Many seem to come from today's headlines and yet I know they might be much older. would you consider adding the date ?

    thanks
    Joy aka Joybird

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Why Then Do We Not Despair?

    Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,
    Death's great black wing scrapes the air,
    Misery gnaws to the bone.
    Why then do we not despair?

    By day, from the surrounding woods,
    cherries blow summer into town;
    at night the deep transparent skies
    glitter with new galaxies.

    And the miraculous comes so close
    to the ruined, dirty houses --
    something not known to anyone at all,
    but wild in our breast for centuries.


    - Anna Akhmatova
    (translated by Stanley Kunitz)
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  49. TopTop #3477
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cupped Hands

    Find a teacher. Preferably one that lives close by. Very close. Like inside. Build a container. You don't have to cut down a tree and then let the wood season nor purchase a lathe and then sign up for a wood turning class at the local community center. All you have to do is cup your hands. They become their own container.
    Now whisper
    a prayer.
    Those cupped hands hold all the prayers you have yet to pray. If you do not know how to pray
    Simply say to yourself:
    thank you
    A thousand or eight thousand times. If you wonder who you're praying to,
    don't worry

    everyone wonders this most of the time,
    the rabbis,
    the monks in the caves,
    the devout catholic.
    Please please please
    Thank you thank you thank you
    Or the other way around it doesn't matter which comes first.
    Teacher
    Container
    Prayer or
    Gratitude.

    - Kristy Hellum
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  51. TopTop #3478
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    As Houston Drowns


    As Houston drowns
    in storm of such force
    as never before recorded
    there is thunderous silence
    in the press as to its cause
    & silence, too, about
    the same happening
    in Bangladesh, India, Nepal,
    Pakistan, Kashmir
    due to the same cause.
    Science is not silent though;
    calling bread bread & wine wine,
    it names the cause of climate change:
    the economics of empire
    with its scorn for the Earth,
    with its technology for profit
    fueled by the remains
    of ancient forests & the life they bore
    distilled in the dark entrails
    of the Great Mother that birthed us
    & now punishes our arrogance
    to possibly heal herself
    with our demise.
    & the scoundrel fools that govern us
    tweet on.

    - Rafael Jesús González 2017


    A la vez que se ahoga Houston


    A la vez que se ahoga Houston
    en tormenta de tal fuerza
    que nunca antes se registra
    hay silencio aturdidor
    en la prensa hacia su causa
    y silencio también acerca de
    lo mismo que pasa
    en Bangladés, India, Nepal,
    Pakistán, Cachemira
    debido a la misma causa.
    Pero la ciencia no se calla;
    llamándole pan al pan y vino al vino
    nombra la causa por el cambio climático:
    La economía de imperio
    con su desdén por la Tierra,
    con su tecnología por lucro
    alimentada por los restos
    de bosques ancianos y la vida que daban
    destilados en las entrañas oscuras
    de la Gran Madre que nos dio nacer
    y ahora castiga nuestra arrogancia
    para posiblemente sanarse
    con nuestra extinción.
    Y los canallas imbéciles que nos gobiernan
    siguen tuiteando.


    © Rafael Jesús González 2017
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  53. TopTop #3479
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina

    A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy
    receives my admission and points the way.
    Here are gray jackets with holes in them,
    red sashes with individual flourishes,
    things soft as flesh. Someone sewed
    the gold silk cord onto that gray sleeve
    as if embellishments
    could keep a man alive.

    I have been reading War and Peace,
    and so the particulars of combat
    are on my mind--the shouts and groans
    of men and boys, and the horses' cries
    as they fall, astonished at what
    has happened to them.
    Blood on leaves,
    blood on grass, on snow; extravagant
    beauty of red. Smoke, dust of disturbed
    earth; parch and burn.

    Who would choose this for himself?
    And yet the terrible machinery
    waited in place. With psalters
    in their breast pockets, and gloves
    knitted by their sisters and sweethearts,
    the men in gray hurled themselves
    out of the trenches, and rushed against
    blue. It was what both sides
    agreed to do.

    - Jane Kenyon
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  55. TopTop #3480
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Street Musicians


    One died, and the soul was wrenched out
    Of the other in life, who, walking the streets
    Wrapped in an identity like a coat, sees on and on
    The same corners, volumetrics, shadows
    Under trees. Farther than anyone was ever
    Called, through increasingly suburban airs
    And ways, with autumn falling over everything:
    The plush leaves the chattels in barrels
    Of an obscure family being evicted
    Into the way it was, and is. The other beached
    Glimpses of what the other was up to:
    Revelations at last. So they grew to hate and forget each other.

    So I cradle this average violin that knows
    Only forgotten showtunes, but argues
    The possibility of free declamation anchored
    To a dull refrain, the year turning over on itself
    In November, with the spaces among the days
    More literal, the meat more visible on the bone.
    Our question of a place of origin hangs
    Like smoke: how we picnicked in pine forests,
    In coves with the water always seeping up, and left
    Our trash, sperm and excrement everywhere, smeared
    On the landscape, to make of us what we could.

    - John Ashbury
    (July 28, 1927 - September 3, 2017)
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

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