Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

It's Never Too Late to Begin

Every human bond,
whether with a person of any species—
that is, an organic living being—
or with something whose life is mysterious and secretly self-defined
such as a mountain or star—

or an image or an idea
or a being outside of time,
a dweller in realms of mind
or an inhabitant of spirit—
a task or place or project,
or an object that occupies a space in time and heart or mind—

every bond has its own

landscape

mythscape

inscape/escape

soulscape

and is a place of possibility to infinity,
including the possibility of ending.

If endings come, retreat to some chosen, known haven,
a healing place where you are known
and never (or rarely and benevolently) judged—
a place where you are loved beyond your own powers to love yourself
or sometimes others—


And in that place of befriending,
whether friendship or flowerscape,
innerscape or dreamscape or meaningplace of work,
or in the floral-colored waves of ocean
or many-mountained forest light and darkness—
enter the beautiful rooms in the house of your soul.

Learn by being there
what peace can be,
what love can come to the quiet heart,
how well your soul can feel in unmolested circumstance and solitude,
and how deeply and fully and eventually, happily,
you can become yourself again,
or perhaps for the first time.

- Alla Renée Bozarth

[Larry Robinson]

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world..

- Lao Tzu, Tao te Ching
(Stephen Mitchell translation)

[Larry Robinson]

Statues
1989

In Prague, or perhaps Budapest,
the heroes have fallen off their horses.
Here lies a general's profile
and here a helmet, there
a ferrous glove still holding the reins.
The horses, so long inert
under the heavy bodies,
are not used to wind and sun,
nor to the tenderness of their flanks
now that the boots are gone,
and their eyes, so long overcast
by bronze or stone, are slow
to take in the gray city,
the heavyset houses. Gradually
they start to move, surprised
by their new lightness. There's a scent
of rain in the air, and something clicks
inside their heads; it has to do
with green, with pasture. They step down
from their pedestals, unsteady as foals
beginning to walk. No one pays attention
to riderless horses walking
through city streets; these are
supernatural times. Near the edge of town,
where the sky expands, they trust themselves
to break into a run
and then drop out of sight
behind a bank of willows
whose streamers promise water

- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

In the Deepest Deep


In the deepest deep and the darkest dark,
when the lightest light is the smallest spark,
when oppression reigns and repression leads,
when hate drives men in fanatic creeds…
When power is held like precious seeds
and the ground is barren and the waters freeze…

In these darkest times we must find our spark
where the flame burns bright inside our hearts.
In the deepest deep and the darkest dark,
we must light our light with our heart’s own spark.

There are times of day when the sun shines bright,
and there are times of dark in the deepest night
when the souls of men turn away from light
and nature suffers with disease and blight.

When dark forces rule with selfish greed
when MORE! and MORE! are the ego’s creed,
and accumulation is beyond all need
while children‘s cries are left unheeded.

These are times when each awake one must
with passion, heart, and guts and lust,
bring forth their light, bring forth their voice,
bring heart and truth and life and choice.

Let freedom ring from every place!
Let love flow forth – not just a taste,
but glorious in fullness pour –
let passions fly, let voices roar!

Now raise your voice, and raise your hand,
and take a vow, and take a stand
to glorify yourself and others
to love yourself, to love all others
to live awake, with joy and fun,
to use your best imagination --
creating life as you want it to be
to live your life forever free!

We shall not be suppressed again!
The fight for freedom shall not end!
Eternal vigilance shall see
us now, forever, living free!

- Lion Goodman

[Larry Robinson]

The Time Has Come


the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice

disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers' ties
with the sword of death

put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom

crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden

how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting

how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am

- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Nader Khalili)

Rumi's Caravan is delighted to announce the acclaimed musicians who will perform with
Rumi's Caravan on Saturday, Feb. 4 in Sebastopol.

MUSICIANS for the 2 pm MATINEE
Eliyahu Sills and Jason Ranjit Parmar will accompany the poets.

MUSICIANS for the 7 pm SHOW
Bruce Hauschildt will provide his "wall of sound" -- gongs, bells, bowls -- to open the evening show and again after intermission.

Donald Ivan Fontowitz and Jason Ranjit Parmar will accompany the poets and Sufi dancer Chelsea Rose.
TICKETS are available and make great gifts. Get yours now ...

• Online: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2720565d
• In Person: at Many Rivers Books and Tea, 130 South Main Street, Sebastopol, (707) 829-8871
• Or call: Sebastopol Center for the Arts (707) 829-4797

Event proceeds benefit the Sebastopol Center for the Arts (www.sebarts.org)
and the Center for Climate Protection (www.climateprotection.org).

LEARN MORE about the Musicians:
www.facebook.com/Rumi.Caravan/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1056741807769911

LEARN MORE about the EVENT:
www.facebook.com/events/1200887923299084/

We look forward sharing light and love with you at the 17th Annual Celebration.

[Larry Robinson]

Once when young . . .

Once when young I lay and listened
To the rain falling on the roof
Of a brothel. The candle light
Gleamed on silk and silky flesh.
Then I heard it on the
Cabin roof of a small boat
On the Great River, under
Low clouds, where wild geese cried out
On the Autumn storm. Now I
Hear it again on the monastery
Roof. My hair has turned white.
Joy — sorrow — parting — meeting —
Are all as though they had
Never been. Only the rain
Is the same, falling in streams
On the tiles all through the night.


- Chiang Chieh, 1300 C. E.
(translated by Kenneth Rexroth)

[Larry Robinson]

A Lover’s Quarrel

There are some to whom a place means nothing,
for whom the lazy zeroes
a goshawk carves across the sky
are nothing,
for whom a home is something one can buy.
I have long wanted to say,
just once before I die,
I am home.
When I remember the sound of my true country,
I hear winds
high up in the evergreens, the soft snore
of surf, far off, on a wintry day,
the half-garbled song of finches
darting off through alder
on a summer day.
Lust does not
fatigue the soul, I say. This wind,
these ever- green trees, this little bird of the spirit—
this is the shape, the place of my desire. I’m free
as a fish or a stone.
—
Don’t tell me about the seasons in the East, don’t talk to me
about eternal California summer.
It’s enough to have
a few days naked
among three hundred kinds of rain.
In its little plastic pot on the high sill,
the African violet
grows away from the place
the sun last was, its fuzzy leaves
leaning out in little curtsies.
It, too, has had enough
of the sun. I love the sound of a storm
without thunder, the way winds
slow, trees darken, heavy clouds
rumbling so softly
you must close your eyes to listen:
then the blotch, blotch
of big drops plunketing through the leaves.
—
It is difficult,
this being a stranger on earth.
Why, I’ve seen pilgrims come
and tear away at blackberry vines
with everything that’s in them, I’ve seen them
heap their anger
up against a tree
and curse these swollen skies.
What’s this? —a mountain beaver
no bigger than a newborn mouse
curled in my palm,
an osprey curling over tide pools and lifting
toward the trees, a wind at dusk
hollow in the hollows of the eves,
a wind over waves
cooling sand crabs washed up along the beach.
Each thing, closely seen,
appears more strange
than before: the shape of my desire
is huge, vague,
full of many things
commingling—
dying bees among the dying flowers;
winter rain and the smoke it brings.
If it fills me with longing,
it is only because
we are like the rain, falling,
falling through our own most secret being,
through a world of not-knowing.
—
At the end of the day,
I come, finally,
to myself, I return to the strange sounds of a man
who wants to speak
with stones, with the hard crust of earth.
But nothing listens.
When the sea hammers the sea wall,
I’m dumb.
When the nighthawks bleat at dusk, I’m drunk
on the sadness of their songs.
When the moon is so close
you can almost reach it through the trees,
I’m frozen, I’m blind,
or I’m gone.
Fish, bird, stone, there’s something
I can’t know, but know the same:
I hear the rain inside me
only to look up
into a bitter sun.
What do we listen to, what do we think
we hear? The sound
of sea walls crumbling,
a little bird with hunger in its song:
You should have known! You should have known!
—
Like any Nootka rose,
I know there are some
for whom a place is nothing. Like the wild rose,
like the tide and the day,
we come, go, or stay
according to a whim.
It is enough, perhaps,
to say, We live here.
And let it go at that.
This wind lets go
of everything it touches.
I long to hold the wind.
I’d kiss a fish
and love a stone
and marry this winter rain
if I could persuade this battered earth
to let me make it home.

- Robert Greenway

[Larry Robinson]

The Vocation

Lit with strange carpentry magic — 
they build time-shares in her head. They carve
names deep in wood, erect beams of metal to hold up
the invincible defense of a bad history. They mourn
what’s subjective. They are shutters closed.
Sometimes I imagine such men in flip-flops
with fat towels draped over confident shoulders.
I imagine they all live in Texas, and find
South Padre too hot, and then I imagine them blaming
diversity for everything. Here, in the middle of grief,
we pout to the rhythm of their sentences.
Suns hiss in their dreams. Soon such critics will meet
daily for prayers. The Pharisees identify the guilty woman.
They are gathering sticks for a witch burning. Curandera
lit with the fire of sighs, casts spells, burns sage,
sweats in a lodge, her own prayers flaming.

- Sheryl Luna

[Larry Robinson]

A Lower Center of Gravity


And so
when something wanted is denied,
and life disappoints,
and we are determined
not to be overthrown
and yet again we are -
what do we do?


For myself,
I’m occupied
now
in finding
a lower center
of gravity.


- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame

Expand

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame,
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"


- Emma Lazarus
New York City, 1883
(Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty)

[Larry Robinson]

Learning

A piccolo played, then a drum.
Feet began to come - a part of the music. Here comes a horse,
clippety clop, away.

My mother said, "Don't run -
the army is after someone
other than us. If you stay
you'll learn our enemy."

Then he came, the speaker. He stood
in the square. He told us who
to hate. I watched my mother's face,
its quiet. "That's him," she said.

- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Alt Right News Feed


for months now
snuggled under warm covers
getting ready to start the day
I check newsfeeds
on the iPhone

and lately
I’ve discovered a new source
Alternative and Right

I turn off the iPhone
snuggle back in the covers
wait
listen
feel for a source
appearing from somewhere beyond
reassuring me
you are okay
reminding me
this too shall pass
encouraging me
it is okay to not know
let fear flow through you
imploring me
expand your tolerance
be open
grow your compassion
care for the plants
care for those you love
who are so distraught

I get out of bed
breath and belly calmer
less toxic almost grateful
a sense of resolve

this news has much to offer
it feeds me

- Sharon Bard

[Larry Robinson]

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay
no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.
you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
mean something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied
no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough
the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off
or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important
no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying
leave,
run away from me now
i don’t know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

- Warsan Shire

[Larry Robinson]

Another Long Walk


Given enough time,
there is always another long walk,
another proof of civilization's lie,
and all must prepare to run,
for no matter where you are born,
the sky can crack and drown you in fire.

The prophet said it would be fire
licking at our heels next time
and it is anyone’s bad luck to be born
where death comes cloaked as a walk
that goes on and on, until lives run
out of breath, stumble, and lie

in barren fields with nothing to lie
between them and scorching fire.
There is nothing to do, but to run
as fast as you can, to outdistance time
and this nightmare of a walk
where death is borne

on wings of silver and hope dies, unborn,
among hobbled prints that lie
in mute witness to another long walk
that crushes hearts into red grit of fire
and strangles cries of rage that time
after time, someone must pack up a life and run

to nowhere. This walk, too, shall run
its course, new stars will be born
to light up the heavens and, in time,
history will write, not quite truth, not quite lies,
of who and why and how all became fire.
Some will say there never was a walk

of death, that all people are free to walk
a thousand miles of blackened earth, to run
a marathon of fear, while fire
power presides as midwife to newborn
cries of war. Dark clouds gather and lie
low over fallow fields, where time

has run out. On distant horizon, fire is born,
from smoldering ash left to lie untended.
The time has come for another long walk.

- Patrice Warrender

[Larry Robinson]

Autopsy
Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
I dreamed that my passport was made of bone—
That it was a canoe carved out of stone.
“But I can’t swim,” I said. “I will drown
If I can’t make the shore. I’ll die alone
In the salt. No, my body will be found
With millions of bodies, all of them brown.”
I dreamed that my passport was a book of prayers,
Unanswered by the gods, but written down
By fact checkers in suits. “There are some errors
In your papers,” they said. Then took me downstairs
To a room with fingernails on the floor.
I dreamed that my passport was my keyware,
But soldiers had set fire to the doors,
To all doors—a conflagration of doors.
I dreamed that my passport was my priest:
“Sherman, will you battle the carnivores
Or will you turn and abandon the weak?
Will you be shelter? Or will you concede?”
Last night, I dreamed that my passport was alive
When it entered the ICU. It breathed, it breathed,
Then it sighed and closed its eyes. It did not survive.
- Sherman Alexie

[Dorothy Friberg]

Quit eating all that heavy food before bed.

Autopsy
Last night, I dreamed that my passport bled.
I dreamed that my passport was a tombstone
For our United States, recently dead.
...

[Larry Robinson]

We Are Alive. We Are for Everything
After Otto Piene

How does beginning go how does
remembering without forgetting go
in front of me in the snow a man
his back lonesome somber
how does beginning go not remembering
flashes of light that showed him images when he
was a boy quick and blinding see the shadows
in the light how does not-remembering go
listen to the hissing see the light
and Germany’s lightness
how bright Germany is like soot
like images quick and blinding how does
beginning go smell the snow
it’s new it fell in the night
in the dark gets forgotten
in images quick listen to the snow
it lies light like linen
something’s burning a hissing somber
like images at night on walls listen
to the hissing smell the smell of burning
look at the soot on a white background.

- Daniela Danz
(Translated from the German by Monica Cassel)

[Larry Robinson]

Protest

To sin by silence, when we should protest,

Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticize oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and childbearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man
Call this the land of freedom.


- Ella Wheeler Wilcox
(1850-1919)

[Larry Robinson]

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently


is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head; it is *spoken*,
a voice is *saying* it
as you read. It's the writer's words,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the sound
of that voice is the sound of *your* voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling,
having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word "barn"
that the writer wrote
but the "barn" you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation
is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled *chirr* of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows...
And "barn" is only a noun- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.


- Thomas Lux
(12/10/46 - 2/5/17)

[Larry Robinson]

How to Stop the Old Conversation

Go out on a winter’s day
and take the winding boardwalk that snugs up against
white sands and the slender grasses of Asilomar beach.

See the power of the Pacific surf, waves breaking,
then building, almost too close to shore today,
so even the wooden planks solidly placed seem to sway as you walk.

Smell your growing weariness —
a sudden rainfall and you’ve left the umbrella in the car,
a slight glance at the man and his dog passing and your toe catches a rock,
a request to snap a picture and your memory goes back fifteen years,
then twenty, then thirty, until you land on what seemed like solid ground,

only to find all the promises broken now.

Set the timer for thirty minutes to walk out, then return, in consideration
for the long drive home and the coming storm and your mind,
which sometimes forgets where the car is parked and where you started.

Return to the lodge, search for dry socks and the water bottle,
queue the book-on-tape, watch bridesmaids in orange hurry in from the rain,
then wonder why a young couple rushing past has missed the wedding.

Invite your own particular aloneness to sit in the seat beside you,
its breath alive with heartbreak and fury and sweet regret,
and as you drive away let the soft words of a new conversation
slide in through the open window —

just listen.

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg

[Larry Robinson]

On Immigration

After being humiliated one continues the manuscript of identity.
Activities, diseases, doldrums, the crony affair after the situation,
the one where one faces how one is the undertaste,
how one isn’t the neighbor, the piebaker, a white folk. How one isn't a gorgeous
dream wrapped up in tireless affection, primped for wider screens.
So there one grew, in the coffee sickness, the dictionary browsing
in a fury for the word entitlement to spill—

After convulsing with rage, one continues in the aftermath
of no friends on Tuesdays or shouting fiercely when nothing sobered
to the eleventh hour and the tide shrunk to its sense of privacy where it
had nothing to do with shores or moons, and humiliation sat on its lover's
knee, greeting the eccentric rich and the hourglass with such force
the rage enameled like fine paint to a sheen of deep blue.
Restless in the way that stirs the crowd to its feet to claim the encounter
for the intentions of personal gain without the empire, without the
embarrassment of shaking one’s head, of resting it underneath the ground,
to live sanctioned in the migrancy with an ugly plate for the economy but working ever
so hard. So unplanned, so beyond what one did before the lack of dignity sang an opera.
And organized all the ideas, before rage shot a bird that had once watched effortlessly all the comings and goings.

- Prageeta Sharma

[Larry Robinson]

Our Turn


Everything comes to me
Now in tatters, ripped
Un-wholly, and unholy.
When I reach for You
You are air, everywhere
And empty.

We are bleeding
Bleeding out terrors
Torn, drawn, quartered
Questioning why
Us, why now?


This fight—for
Freedom, Justice
Just now, like air
Everywhere,
Nothing new, an old,
An ancient fight.

An expression in Spanish:
"Nos toca a nosotros."
Taken literally,
It touches us,
Like a tap on the shoulder
Or a truncheon

It means "it's our turn,"
Our turn now.

- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

The Sacred Life

There comes a time
when you want to run.
Run as far away as you can.

Run from your life.
Run from the task
that is so large
it cannot be done.

But your feet don’t move.

And slowly
life opens up
and help appears.
Not in the form you expect
but in secrets
and winding roads
and gateways into
the world you long for
but don’t know how to reach.

And the task
doesn’t get easier
but life gets more beautiful
with a richness
you couldn’t imagine
and a warmth
you had never felt

As you directly face
the immensity
of what you are
called to do.

- Sherrie Lovler

[Larry Robinson]

Earth, You Have Returned to Me

Can you imagine waking up
every morning on a different planet,
each with its own gravity?

Slogging, wobbling,
wavering. Atilt
and out-of-sync
with all that moves
and doesn’t.

Through years of trial
and mostly error
did I study this unsteady way — 

changing pills, adjusting the dosage,
never settling.

A long time we were separate,
O Earth,
but now you have returned to me.

- Elaine Equi

[REALnothings]

At around age 50, I ended up "back" in my home town for a couple years. Recognizing I had to "take my life" in the positive way, ie claim it, I began taking small positive steps. Practically as long as I was there, though, the feeling continued that my feet were not touching the ground! I'm still not as grounded as I'd like, but at least I can feel myself walking on it, can now celebrate with the author:
A long time we were separate,
O Earth,
but now you have returned to me.

[Larry Robinson]

Dear lady at the Desk of Hotel Saint Antoine Rue de Faubourg, Paris France

You mistakenly assumed I was complaining when I arrived
too early to check into my room. “Monsieur,” you said, “I cannot
work miracles.”

How can I be so angry at such a small slight?

With hours to squander
before I take possession of my room,
I curse you under my breath and
board the train to Giverny
where Monet lived and painted water lilies.

Well, merci Madame, I’ve since returned
to New York, imagine me sitting on a bench
not far from where I live. Time shifts wreck havoc
with my equilibrium and I’m a bit down in the dumps.

In front of me I see five species of animal:
Dogs on leashes—which I’ll ignore since they lack free will to roam,
sparrows,
starlings,
squirrels and
pigeons.
A holy array of spritely hunter-gatherers nibbling
at food or else just messing
around in their own private space—separate
from one another.

I sigh, and suddenly these creatures assemble at my feet,
a mosaic of squirrel fur and bird feathers,
a harmonious tableau. Why are they here?
No peanuts, worms or breadcrumbs in my pockets, and for sure,
I am no Francis of Assisi.

Madame, let us explore the concept of miracles.
Is this congregation of small animals bonding
for my benefit alone? No, it’s merely my job to be astonished.

What?
I’ve failed to account for the universe human before me
Old people with walkers, death in their eyes,
nannies shoving strollers,
greenmarket shoppers schlepping canvas totes,
tattooed denizens in undershirts and straw bowlers,
workers carting trash.

I look, squint and gazes a second time,
we never see the same scene
or think the same thought twice.

What am I neglecting to notice as I think this thought?

Ah, Monet, poor man going blind at Giverny,
sky and pond a haze,
plants and water coalescing,
a palate of colors bleeding into a scene
without borders. Nothing permanent.
The ecology at Giverny is not the same
as the lawn near the bench where I sit in Manhattan.

Madame, thanks for booting me out of the hotel.

- Barry Denny

[Larry Robinson]

Listening to the Koln Concert


After we had loved each other intently,

we heard notes tumbling together,
in late winter, and we heard ice
falling from the ends of twigs.

The notes abandon so much as they move.
They are the food not eaten, the comfort
not taken, the lies not spoken.
The music is my attention to you.

And when the music came again,
later in the day, I saw tears in you r eyes.
I saw you turn your face away
so that the others would not see.

When men and women come together,
how much they have to abandon! Wrens
make their nests of fancy threads
and string ends, animals

abandon all their money each year.
What is that men and women leave?
Harder then wrens' doing, they have
to abandon their longing for the perfect.

The inner nest not made by instinct
will never be quite round,
and each has to enter the nest
made by the other imperfect bird.

- Robert Bly

[Larry Robinson]

Morning Report On My Immigrant Clothing

Awakened wearing old and faded
Calvin Klein sleepwear Made in Kenya
After the shower dried my made in the USA body
with a Martha Stewart towel Made in India, where else
Warmed by my East Coast L.L. Bean bathrobe from El Salvador
I made my coffee with beans gathered from God knows where

Pulling on clothes, still curious and not surprised, my
striped Perry Ellis boxers were Made in China and jeez
my iconic American Carhardt Jeans started in Nicaragua

And what’s more American than a T-shirt? Not my
Made in Peru pepper green “T” from Territory Ahead
And who knows where my socks started, maybe Bangalore
My shabby running shoes let into the country by Adidas,
probably began jogging in Northern India

So I’m almost ready and grab my hat. Now wait for it
My trouble making, eye catching, brilliant red,
Human Rights Campaign hat
emblazoned “Make America Gay Again”
was made in the USA

If they send my clothes back with the immigrants
at least I won’t be totally naked

- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

Whatever You Do

Whatever you do,
don’t waste your time
struggling with issues
about “faith” and
whether “the Other” is real
or not.

Do not worry about
your own existence -
whether you are palpable
or just a mirage
floating in a mirror.

When the worthies
begin debating such things inside
the temple,
do not bow and listen.
Run outside,
rattle the windows,
storm the doors,
let the music of light
come in.

Better still,
turn them out
into the sun,
point their solemn faces
toward the trees
blooming in fall’s
swelling luminosity,
let them see how
brilliant

a leaf
falling gracefully
into its new in carnation,
how majestic the limbs
in their bright emerging configurations.

- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

It Is I Who Must Begin

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try --
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-- to live in harmony
with the "voice of Being," as I
understand it within myself
-- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

- Vaclav Havel