Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Forbidden Words


The Word Posse has rounded them up and lassoed them.
It has tied bandanas around their mouths; shut them up in word jails,
and in administrative lock-up. They will not see the light of day!
They have been barred them from the lexicon of our thought.


They are washing out our mouths with soap, yet
there is not a four-letter word among them!


They are tying our tongues in knots!
Can your hear the police speed those lawbreakers
Into dead letter files, or Black Sites?
Their terrible influence has to be stuffed down
our throats to strangle us, to wipe the silly grins off
our faces. The sound of them will never again
emerge from under our hats! They are to be
shot on sight. You better not, better not shout:
Vulnerable, or Transgender, or Fetus
Or Science–based, especially Evidenced-based.
No Diversity, no Entitlements., and what about
Global Climate Change? Is it next?


We hear you, but we will not keep silent. We will call in
armies of words in pussy hats, saying “Me Too.”
We will keep them all on the tips of our tongues;
giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitations. And Rosa Parks
and all the black women, and men, like William Barber
will lead white women and men, to join in and say them!
And Linda Sartor, Gloria Steinham and Jim Wallis
will keep them like scripture and memorized poems.
There is so much we know by heart. The whole
oral tradition, the sound of songs, nursery rhymes
echoing in the everyday streets of our lives.
Even Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and U2 will be playing
or rapping with the Millennials, and voting with them.
The answer my friends is blowing
with the wind of them, on the many roads


and marches, until every street resounds
with their un-rhymed offensive possibilities.


- Judith Stone

[M/M]

It is not just CDC, and it is not just USA.... AND what a clever way to stir up emotions and sides (aka the divide us/conquer us ruse)... See article by an oceanographer and two other lists of banned or forbidden words:

CDC Receives List of Banned Words Including “Evidence-Based” and “Science-Based”

War on language: Words like mankind, man-made, housewife banned at UK university

War On Words: New York City Dept. Of Education Wants 50 'Forbidden' Words Banned From Standardized Tests

Forbidden Words
...

[Larry Robinson]

Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads,
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:

“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Under and Blixem;
“To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
“Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys — and St. Nicholas too:

And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:

He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:

His eyes — how they twinkled! his dimples how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

- Henry Livingston, Jr.
_____________________

[Larry Robinson]

Amazing Peace


Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.


Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to
avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.


We question ourselves.
What have we done
to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?


Into this climate of fear and apprehension,
Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness
high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.


It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence
and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.


Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged
as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth,
brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches,
breeding in dark corridors.


In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft.
Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now.
It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.


We tremble at the sound.
We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war.
But true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.


We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.


It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.


On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.


At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.


We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.




Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.


- Maya Angelou

[gardenmaniac]

The Night Before Christmas redux

tis the day after christmas and all the thru the store
some folks will be shouting "we need to buy more"
most feared they'd missed out on the best deals of all
so early they got up and drove to the mall

I'm sorry to say it's the 'merican way ...
there's never enough in old Santy Claws sleigh
to fill up that void we buy things we don't need
it's really appalling to witness such greed

I remember when we would behave in this way
only that one late November Friday
we forget to be grateful for all that we've got
so here's an idea let's give it a shot

maybe next weekend to start the new year
we can relish our good health and those we hold dear
be grateful for everything good in our lives
our sisters our brothers our husbands and wives.

peace out, Ruth

[Larry Robinson]

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

  The flying cloud, the frosty light:
  The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
  The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
  For those that here we see no more;
  Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
  And ancient forms of party strife;
  Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
  The faithless coldness of the times;
  Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
  The civic slander and the spite;
  Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
  Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
  The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
  Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

[Larry Robinson]

You Darkness

You Darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.

Because the fires make a circle of light
so that no one can see you any more.

But the Darkness holds it all.
The shapes, the animals,
The flames and myself.

How it holds them.
All power, All Strength

And it is possible, a great energy is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night

- Rainier Maria Rilke
(translation by Robert Bly)

[Ronaldo]

Background photo taken from aircraft window somewhere above the Southwest.

You Darkness...

[Larry Robinson]

In My 74th Year


I’m leaving.
I come upon this unexpectedly,
like turning a corner and seeing the cat walking on out the open door.
I’ll be sitting quietly, like always,
and notice that something I used to think was very important
just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
A surprise.
I always knew I would be leaving, the fact of it.
But now I know it differently, through awareness.
Not, as I once thought, through aches and pains,
or gradually diminishing capacity,
But, unexpectedly,
The cat, tail up, just walking away.

- Jean Norelli

[Larry Robinson]

Prayer


Tonight...instead of trying to talk to You in my bed,
I talk to You with my pen...a Psalm perhaps.
I ask for what I ask for every night:
Heal my heart and let me not be crazy,
and give me strength to live a good life.
This is a small man's simple wish.

Like on other nights, I do not know if You are there.
I do not know if You hear me.
It has been said by sages that You talk to men.
I have not heard Your voice, I do not think.
But yet....I know there is a You,
by what You have made:
by the stars and the grasses in the marshes.
How You grow flowers and trees
and by how they breathe.
By how Your perfumes fill the woods
and by the more than myriads of intricacies
Your hand has crafted.

Maybe then, for me in some small way
We have heard each other.
If this is so, I cannot say.

And now I end this with the end
of the Bedtime Shema:*
“Stand in awe and sin not.
Commune with your own heart
upon your bed and be still.
Selah” *

- Marvin Blaustein

*Shema is a Hebrew Prayer
*Selah; forever

[Larry Robinson]

Hieroglyphic Stairway


it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I’m riding home on the Colma train
I’ve got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I’m a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I’m riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I’m the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I can’t sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech


- Drew Dellinger

[Larry Robinson]

A Way Forward

There is that of Christ
in each of us
but none
has the whole.

Therefore, we must listen,
listen to discern
what part we speak
what part we hear
what part is left unspoken.

We must not think
our part is whole,
nor another’s part
nor the part left unspoken.

But searching our soul,
open to discovery
of something new
about ourselves,
hearing something new
from another,
being aware of something
yet to be spoken,
will lead us forward.

And what new thing
might we discover?
What fear uncover,
that leads to deafness
and to judgment—
of ourselves or of another?
And how might owning
that part of us
and sharing
in faith
that we will be heard
and held as human,
show us the Spirit
and the way forward?

- Bill Denham

[Larry Robinson]

A New Year’s Blessing

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

[Roland Jacopetti]

Thank you, Larry, for your year-long gift of poetry, and for your presence in our lives.
Roland

A New Year’s Blessing

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Year’s End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

- Richard Wilbur

[Roland Jacopetti]

One of my all-time favorites. Thanks again, Larry.
Roland

Year’s End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

- Richard Wilbur

[Larry Robinson]

It would be neat if with the New Year…


It would be neat if with the New Year
I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year.
My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots
my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws,
chews on for hours every day in my front yard—
rain, sun, snow, or wind
in bare feet, pondering my poem,
I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard.

But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots.

At the end of my day
while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido
I stare at my boots appreciating:
all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses
we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain,
I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice,
and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my
feet
keeping beat to the song, see how
my boots are scuffed, tooth-marked, worn-soled.

I keep wearing them because they fit so good
and I need them, especially when I love so hard,
where I go up those boulder strewn trails,
where flowers crack rocks in their defiant love for the light.

- Jimmy Santiago Baca

[Larry Robinson]

This Year

Assemble
resolve
good thoughts
merriment
humble pie
friends
unusual words
only good thots
goodness
lactobacillus bacteria
memories
some guts(iness)
gray clouds
nimbus

Dis-assemble
resentment
expectations
fancy restaurants–
Rebeccas
unilateral decisions
iron gloves
motherless days
ledgers
past ledgers
worries
knots in stomach
tangled sheets
the firearms


- Nancy Cavers Dougherty

[Larry Robinson]

A NEW YEAR’S REMINDER
TO TAPE TO MY CALENDAR

Burn the old calendar,
put up the new!
(We humans must always
have something to do.)

The date moves on
to the next little box.
Time inches forward
on all the world’s clocks—

all Impermanence,
as Buddha said.
No sooner welcomed,
each moment is shred.

Life is a shell game,
played on the street
by a trickster who yawns
at the Spirit’s defeat

while the Unchanging One,
behind time and space,
patiently waits
to gift us with Grace.

- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

Ashes Among the Remains

My father responded

Just throw them away

I did not nor did I cast them into
ocean or bay where we’d fished
flounder and fluke nor strew them
over the golf courses where he’d hit
multistage rockets rising from half an inch
then to a foot above fairways
to summarily explode
hundreds of yards into the future
other worldly fireworks released
by his elegantly compact fury.

Instead I left them in their box
a golden shiny tin ossuary
next to my mother’s on the top shelf
of my bedroom closet
where I did not have to make decisions
and I incidentally could visit them daily
until our house burned down
in the California wildfires
October Ninth 2017

I don’t intend here to dwell upon
the nightmare that fire is
I will not detail the feelings we had
as we evacuated in one of our cars
along with the family terrier and nothing else
though later we did contemplate
Dad’s and Mom’s remains further
consumed by 1500 degree flames
extending their years-earlier incineration
in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.

Were it not that my parents lived well into
their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74
might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim
to the bottomless jar of all that remains
to the what or the where or the not.

- Ed Coletti

[Larry Robinson]

Thoughts on a Journey


1

I knew I had to take gold.
When it was brought from my treasury,
even I marveled at it.
It had come from a royal suppliant,
a small coffer chased in lions & suns.
Even he did not fully know how costly it is:
the metal shines with the sweat of slaves,
its beauty weighed by blood.
(I had dreamt that in another world
it is called the excrement of gods.)
It had to be the incorruptible measure of cost.

2

Once I knew I was going,
I knew what I would bring;
the casket of olibanum stood on the table,
white male frankincense, breast-shaped drops,
brought by a traveler from Hadramaut.
As I gazed at the sky
the three tears I had placed in the brazier
gave up their scent.
It smelled bitterly sweet, this clotted blood of trees.
This smoke holy to the rites of Isis,
this costly gum precious to Horus.

3

For every coming there is a going,
even for stars.
One is no more astounding than the other,
one is to be celebrated even as the other,
& I sent for the myrrh,
brown & bitter & costly,
brought long distances by a friend.
(He said that somewhere it is fed cows
to make their milk flow rich.)
Incense for the gods,
unguent for the dead.


[From the records of a Galilean merchant late in the reign of Herod the Great: “The census has been good for trade, praise the Lord God. Prices are high and no one asks where the money comes from. Today a clownish craftsman bought one of my good mules: a gold box; two thick wool blankets: a pound of frankincense; and wheat-bread, dried figs, three goat-skins of wine (for a long trip, he said): one pound of myrrh.”]

- Rafael Jesus Gonzales


Pensamientos durante una Jornada


1

Supe que tendría que llevar oro.
Cuando lo trajeron de mi tesorería
aun yo me maravillé de él.
Me había llegado de un suplicante real,
un pequeño cofre engastado con soles y leones.
Ni él sabía del todo lo costoso que es:
el metal luce con el sudor de esclavos,
su belleza pesada con sangre.
(Había soñado yo que en algún otro mundo
se le llamaba el excremento de los dioses.)
Tenía que ser la medida incorruptible del precio.

2

Una vez que supe que iba,
supe lo que traería;
el cofrecito de olíbano estaba sobre la mesa,
blanco incienso macho, gotas en forma de pezones,
traído por un viajero de Hadramaut.
Al mirar al cielo
las tres lágrimas que había puesto en el brasero
despidieron su aroma.
Olía amargamente dulce,
esta coagulada sangre de árboles.
Este humo sacro a los ritos de Isis,
esta costosa resina preciosa a Hero.

3

Por cada venir hay un ir,
aun para las estrellas.
El uno no más asombrante que el otro,
el uno es para celebrarse tanto como el otro,
y mandé por la mirra,
morena y amarga y costosa,
traída a través largas distancias por un amigo.
(Dijo que en algún lugar se la alimentaban a las vacas
para que les fluyeran rica la leche.)
Incienso para los dioses,
ungüento para los muertos.


[De los apuntes de un mercader de Galilea tarde en el reino de Herodes el Grande: “El censo ha sido bueno para el negocio, alabado sea el Señor Dios. Los precios son altos y nadie pregunta de donde viene el dinero. Hoy un artesano villano compró una de mis mulas mejores: una cajita de oro; dos mantas gruesas de lana: una libra de incienso; y pan de trigo, higos desecados, tres botas de vino (para un viaje largo dijo): una libra de mirra.”]

- Rafael Jesus Gonzales

[Larry Robinson]

With Our Own Hands


After reading Kazim Ali’s poem “Drone”

Maybe we see everything from a distance now.
Like the drones we build,
We view life from twenty thousand feet,
Separate ourselves from the pain —
Autonomous capability.

Do we eventually become what we make?
If we make poems, do we become the words
Or the single letters from which they’re formed,
Or the thought just before our pencils land?
Be careful what you make.

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg

[Larry Robinson]

For the New Year, 1981

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

- Denise Levertov

[Larry Robinson]

What the Shuttle Driver Told Me

My spiritual education began when I was broke, dead broke.
I went to a park, sat down and cried.
A man in a black suit stopped in front of me.
He said, I’m a magician.
I have one trick no one else in the world can do.
Watch.
No, I won’t explain. It’s magic.
God sent me to give you a blessing, he said:
Don’t worry about money.
Oh, and feed the birds.

Three days in a row I sat on that bench.
Three days in a row, that magician found me.
Each time, he repeated his impossible trick.
He always had a big bag of bread
and fed the birds:
pigeons, crows, sparrows,
They waited for him.
Those birds knew him.

Growing up in El Salvador,
I used to catch little lizards and kill them.
I thought I was a hunter.
As an adult, I realize I’ve caused a lot of damage.
I have to pay it back.
That’s one thing the magician taught me.
You can feed a bunch of birds really fast, every day.
Those are little blessings.
You can give away blessings easily.
It’s not that hard.
Every day I look for a new way.

After the third blessing, I went back to the garage,
told the other drivers about my magician.
Oh I know who you mean! He wears a top hat, right?
Yes, I said, and a long black overcoat too.
Wait, when was this?
My friend was looking at me funny.
Today, just now, I said, and for two days before that.
Oh no, Eduardo, my friend laughed,
That can’t be right.
That’s old so-and-so (I can’t remember his name), he was famous.
He died ten years ago.

I’ve never seen that magician again.
Was he a ghost? a spirit? an angel?
I always remember what he said:
God sent me to give you a blessing.
There is a little bit of truth in all religions.

I’ve never worried about money since then.
I’ve never been that penniless again.
What he did was teach me how to give blessings.
I wish I had some rose quartz to give you.
Rose quartz is for healing.
The first time I touched it, I fainted.
It was like an electrical shock.
Now I still tingle all over,
but my body absorbs the energy.
I’m hungry for it, like a vitamin.

I’m giving you this story—
is this your destination?—
Sign here.
Take your receipt.
Remember me in your prayers, okay?
I will do the same.


- Deborah A. Miranda

[Larry Robinson]

January
Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness. If a star
shines now, that shine is
swallowed and given back
doubled, grounded bright.
The timid angels flailed
by passing children lift
in a whitening wind
toward night. What plays
beyond the window plays
as water might, all parts
making cold digress.
Beneath iced bush and eave,
the small banked fires of birds
at rest lend absences
to seeming absence. Truth
is, nothing at all is missing.
Wind hisses and one shadow
sways where a window’s lampglow
has added something. The rest
is dark and light together tolled
against the boundary-riven
houses. Against our lives,
the stunning wholeness of the world.
- Betty Adcock

[PElla]

What a poem... what a find! Thank you, Larry.

January...

[Larry Robinson]

Our Jeopardy


It is good to use best china

treasured dishes
the most gentle goblets
the oldest lace tablecloth
there is a risk of course
every time we use anything
or anyone shares an inmost
mood or comment
or a fragile cup of revelation
but not to touch
not to handle
not to employ the available
artifacts of being
a human being
that is a quiet crash
the deadly catastrophe

where nothing is enjoyed or broken
or spoken or spilled
or stained or mended
where nothing is ever
lived
loved
pored over
laughed over
wept over
lost
or found.

- Thomas John Carlisle

[Larry Robinson]

Ladybugs

What guides the ladybugs

to cluster every year
in the early winter months
alongside the Stream Trail?
How do they remember,
locate their way back,
find each other?
Clustering on dead logs
and in the sunny patches of
blackberry brambles, they rest,
lay their eggs, and
wait for Spring.

Why are ladybugs, like salmon
pitting their way back
to the places of their spawning,
smarter than we supposedly
superior humans?
They know to spend the bleak
winter months congregating with
their companions, while we so often think
we must overwinter alone, or only

with a few of our nearest and dearest.

Here is what ladybugs know:
Rest.
Find your way home.
Huddle up together.
Stay warm.

- Maya Spector

[Larry Robinson]

Nuyorico

Dedicated to Pedro Pietri “El Reverendo” R.I.P.


Nuyorico…
That place somewhere between The Empire State and El Morro
Down a dripping pipe that lands pitter pat on Mami’s broken back
For lifetimes attacked
Placed on frontlines to fight for what we will never get back
But the soil is still fertile unlike the colonized spirit of the
Mass graves of the enslaved that chanted but no one could hear it
‘Cause our heads are so far up our own asses
We can’t tell the unnatural from the natural gases
But best believe we still manage to breathe
And pull out in time so we won’t have to breed
Another generation of the ill conceived
Born in search of truth but perpetually deceived
Told that we are free but we cannot leave
Nuyorico…
That place that we live for
Papi said, “Americanos no tienen accentos”
Americans don’t have accents
Except the kind you sprinkle on your food and pretend
That compared to Abuelita’s cooking
Your cooking’s just as good
Yeah! Pour some more on for me
Call it Sazon, even though it’s made by Pillsbury
So obvious when the main ingredient is MSG
The message is to love all that isn’t we and
The doughboy in the White House just goes “hee hee hee”
World War I, World War II, World War Infinity
But resistance existed through Word War divinities
Coming in the form of “El Reverendo” Pedro Pietri
Who fought a war of no good and plenty
Still he speaks to our people
Forcing us out from behind tenement peepholes
To find a place where we can all feel equal
And realize all along your heart knew you were so Rico
When you realize that, that’s when you’re there
Welcome to Nuyorico…

- Caridad De La Luz

[Larry Robinson]

After the Lecture

for Martin Luther King Jr.

A woman said I was not polite
to the opposition,
that I was harsh
and did not encourage
discourse.

Perhaps if I were Christ,
I could say, "Forgive them
for they know not what they do."
Or the queen, and apologize
for stubbing my executioner's toes.

But only if I knew
the executioners
were mine only.

What courtesy have I the right to give
to them who break the bones,
the souls of my brothers,
my sisters;
deny bread, books
to the hungry,
the children;
medicine, healing
to the sick;
roofs to the homeless;

who spoil the oceans,
lay waste the forests
and the deserts,
violate the land?


Affability on the lips
of outrage
is a sin and blasphemy
I'll not be guilty of.

- Rafael Jesús González


Después del Discurso


a Martin Luther King Jr.


Una mujer me dijo que no fui cortés
con la oposición,
que fui duro
y que no animé
discusión.

Tal vez si fuera Cristo,
pudiera decir - Perdónalos
que no saben lo que hacen. -
O la reina, y disculparme
por haber pisarle el pie a mi verdugo.

Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.

¿Qué cortesía tengo el derecho a darles
a los que quiebran los huesos
y las almas de mis hermanos,
mis hermanas;
les niegan el pan, los libros
a los hambrientos,
a los niños;
la medicina, el sanar
a los enfermos;
techos a los desamparados;

que estropean los mares,
que destruyen los bosques
y los desiertos,
violan la tierra?

Afabilidad en los labios
de la furia justa
es pecado y blasfemia
de la cual no seré culpable.


- Rafael Jesús González