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  1. TopTop #3871
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Two Arrows

    The first arrow being some current ailment
    The second arrow being directed at the unknown
    cause and reason for the first and concern
    for its future course Know that one arrow
    alone is more than sufficient in that
    it was fired by other than myself
    The second would be launched by me
    were I to choose to do so Don’t

    - Ed Coletti
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  2. TopTop #3872
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
    What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
    What if the story of America is one long labor?
    What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault?
    What if they are whispering in our ears “You are brave”?
    What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?
    What does the midwife tell us to do?
    BREATHE
    And then?
    PUSH!

    - Valerie Kaur
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  3. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  4. TopTop #3873
    M/M's Avatar
    M/M
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Of course, on our duality plane much will depend on our interpretation of "PUSH"....
    Hope for most it means letting in new Life that sparks our Vision and our Intention to bring more love, peace, joy to all... a reminder of our Truest Selves and our greatest potential....


    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
    What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
    What if the story of America is one long labor?
    What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault?
    What if they are whispering in our ears “You are brave”?
    What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?
    What does the midwife tell us to do?
    BREATHE
    And then?
    PUSH!

    - Valerie Kaur
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  5. Gratitude expressed by:

  6. TopTop #3874
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The summer fires of aught eighteen

    How terrible the acrid air,
    how terrible the summer fires
    of aught eighteen—
    yet, what incredible beauty is there
    in the muted, late summer sun,
    casting a magenta-tinted light
    upon the structure I gaze at
    each afternoon, sitting in my garden—
    this giant white oak—
    upon the column-like limbs,
    stretching skyward,
    whose light beige bark, now visible,
    through openings among the leaves,
    reflects an eerie, other worldly,
    deep, pink patina—
    as if the smoke-filled sky
    were the rose window
    of Chartres itself, at sunset—
    and the fires then become
    our own judgment day.

    - Bill Denham
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  7. Gratitude expressed by:

  8. TopTop #3875
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Smoldering

    I’m on the street
    where you took me
    in a summer of wildfires
    we’d dined on red meat and
    a white sickle moon
    cut into the dark
    illuminating our innocence
    it was simple at first
    we found pleasure with
    fingers searching for skin
    beneath our clothes
    you fragrant of dog
    apricots and brine
    our nails driving in and Hello
    our mouths and tongues
    tasting love
    we mined each other tenderly
    in the heat
    our long limbs paused to stand
    when we couldn’t
    a handy chain link fence
    helped us push closer
    into a mystery
    melting us
    into something else
    brightening our path
    of embers
    into gold.

    - Danielle Bryant
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  9. Gratitude expressed by:

    M/M
  10. TopTop #3876
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Listen

    with the night falling we are saying thank you
    we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
    we are running out of the glass rooms
    with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
    and say thank you
    we are standing by the water thanking it
    standing by the windows looking out
    in our directions

    back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
    after funerals we are saying thank you
    after the news of the dead
    whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

    over telephones we are saying thank you
    in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
    remembering wars and the police at the door
    and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
    in the banks we are saying thank you
    in the faces of the officials and the rich
    and of all who will never change
    we go on saying thank you thank you

    with the animals dying around us
    taking our feelings we are saying thank you
    with the forests falling faster than the minutes
    of our lives we are saying thank you
    with the words going out like cells of a brain
    with the cities growing over us
    we are saying thank you faster and faster
    with nobody listening we are saying thank you
    thank you we are saying and waving
    dark though it is

    - W.S. Merwin
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  11. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  12. TopTop #3877
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Zen Lunatics (a term coined by Jack Kerouac)


    Even in 1954 Kerouac Jack had the knack of knowing that a spirited Zen

    pack would one day emerge and finally tear wide open the star-spangled

    puritanical gunnysack that was strangling the American promise. It’s our

    calling through outrageous tacks and random acts to bring down those

    heat-seeking missile epistles that deny all who display any figment of dark

    pigment, a face too tannish or an accent too Spanish.



    Yes I’ve had the good fortune to hang with such a gang of jacks, of kings

    with spades, and clubs that transform into talking sticks for Zen lunatics with

    bright diamonds and open hearts, that make an end run around a ten-ton

    anchor of the putrid civil rancor and then fly into an end zone far beyond

    what’s known . . . or owned . . . or cloned . . . towards a different way, where

    there exists a gateway of genius and justice, adorned by crimson roses, a wide

    welcoming gateway, that never closes.

    - Bruce Silverman
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  13. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  14. TopTop #3878
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    God In Drag

    A star-studded night sky...
    Mountains blanketed in fresh falling powder...
    Meadows splash with brilliant wildflowers...
    The mating call of a bugling elk...
    The cacophony of song and sound of birds at dawn...
    Baby elephants cavorting with delight...
    The intoxicating fragrance of a stargazing Lily...
    Peacocks with feathers and full fan...

    God in drag, all.

    - Kristal Parks
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  15. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  16. TopTop #3879
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    the yo-yo

    her mind rolls back to 1953
    the year she wrote the poem
    for the McKinley Magpie
    she was learning tricks with
    the Duncan yo-yo
    its string looped loosely
    around a thin wooden spindle
    slip knot around her middle finger
    just enough slack in the string
    wooden dowel spinning

    she learned to walk the dog
    rolling the Duncan yo-yo
    across the floor
    an inch a foot
    yanking it back up
    up and down
    rolling and yanking

    she learned another trick that year
    grabbing the string in two places
    swinging the Duncan yo-yo between the cradle supports
    rocking the baby to sleep
    back and forth
    wooden dowel spinning
    yanking it back up again
    up and down


    though she tried to control it
    the yo-yo had a mind of its own
    defying gravity
    defying order

    she wrote about polarities that year
    for her elementary school newsletter
    the McKinley Magpie
    her poem was about fire
    how it was our friend and warmed us
    how it was our enemy could kill us

    at eight years old she liked extremes
    she wrote about water
    then about salt
    but those poems
    of too much and not enough
    were mere copycats
    the fire poem was selected for
    the McKinley Magpie

    could she have foreseen how
    decades later
    the yo-yo would become fire
    up with its crimson flames licking the sky
    down with blackening trees and chimneys
    rolling and rocking
    and crackling too
    defying gravity
    defying order
    way too hot for the McKinley Magpie
    way out of control

    she searches for homes now
    wandering up and down streets
    after the firestorm
    which did not kill her
    it didn’t warm her either

    maybe if the Magpie
    had spread the word about
    water and salt
    the yo-yo would have become ocean

    she rocks forward now
    quenched and bobbing
    rising and sinking
    up and down
    without a spindle
    or a cradle or
    a slipknot around an anchor

    - sharon bard
    Last edited by Barry; 08-29-2018 at 01:04 PM.
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  17. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  18. TopTop #3880
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    another dark love


    the climate is changing, seasons
    rearranging, the specter of venus haunts
    hydrocarbon dreams. no one believes
    the disaster of 4-6 º centigrade, the apocalypse
    of a few drowned cities.

    we all know how much worse.
    the savviest liberal is hardly more realistic
    than the bible capitalist.
    we scurry like denial ants, each with our
    destined grain of sand.

    & yet the breath of earth stirs us.
    the winds of trees penetrate the gossamer
    of unending connection. engineer to grub
    to crab grass to mackerel to bread mold to
    melting icicle to water rounded stone.

    there is a voice singing inside every.
    there is a hearing within the vast deafness.
    aberrant cells in the sweet earth body,
    we bend & shudder to some collective immune
    response that calls us back, calls us.

    greed is not the inner nature of any human being,
    nor any kind of being. shark & wolverine
    & kudzu vine are more complex, ambiguous.
    even the corporate ceo fracking us to hell
    is a patchwork story with unpredictable twists.

    the sun doesn’t feel so warm now as threatening.
    what happened to double hung windows & a thousand
    clever passive devices lost to witness technology?
    screw the supply side. whittle the demand to
    so little even a caddis fly is cradled.

    she is calling, she is calling. maple winds &
    supersized hurricane waves become symphonic.
    someday the dance teacher will no longer strike
    the iridescent wings of a wandering fly. the oil magnate
    will protect tar sands flora with his life.

    all the things we have to have
    become a joke, obscene but easily forgotten.
    to touch lichen growing on bark brings us to our knees,
    worshipping & awed. glaciers can grow again,
    only one venus circling our sun.

    - Sandy Eastoak
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  19. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  20. TopTop #3881
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson





    Barking

    The moon comes up.
    The moon goes down.
    This is to inform you
    that I didn't die young.
    Age swept past me
    but I caught up.
    Spring has begun here and each day
    brings new birds up from Mexico.
    Yesterday I got a call from the outside
    world but I said no in thunder.
    I was a dog on a short chain
    and now there’s no chain.

    - Jim Harrison
    Last edited by Barry; 08-31-2018 at 02:16 PM.
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  21. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  22. TopTop #3882
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    True or False

    Real emeralds are worth more than synthetics
    but the only way to tell one from the other
    is to heat them to a stated temperature,
    then tap. When it’s done properly
    the real one shatters.

    I have no emeralds.
    I was told this about them by a woman
    who said someone had told her. True or false,
    I have held my own palmful of bright breakage
    from a truth too late. I know the principle.

    - John Ciardi
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  24. TopTop #3883
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Inversnaid

    This dark handsome burn, horseback brown,
    His rollrock highroad roaring down,
    In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
    Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

    A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
    Turns and twindles over the broth
    Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
    It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

    Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
    Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
    Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
    And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

    What would the world be, once bereft
    Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
    O, let them be left, the wildness and wet.
    Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

    - Gerard Manley Hopkins
    Last edited by Barry; 09-02-2018 at 01:05 PM.
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  26. TopTop #3884
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Imagining

    What if God isnʼt a noun
    to be empowered and worshiped
    but a verb of creation
    powered by love?

    What if every single tree
    drawn in primary school
    is a sacred work of art
    worthy of joyful notice?

    What if our lives are built
    on a web of kindness,
    a net,
    which holds everything living.

    What if the rocks are alive
    singing strength and courage;
    vibrating
    from our feet right up to our heart?

    What if we loved ourselves
    as deeply as the mountain
    who,
    caressed by water,
    surrenders herself
    into sand?

    What if our most loved,
    intra-national pastime
    is a game of entertainment
    where we all win?

    What if no one aspired
    to be a millionaire
    and money no longer had power
    but was simply a means of tender-ness.

    What if transforming our world
    by imagining it
    can
    actually make it happen?

    - Deborah Rodney
    Last edited by Barry; 09-03-2018 at 12:10 PM.
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  28. TopTop #3885
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Shirt

    The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
    The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
    Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

    Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
    Or talking money or politics while one fitted
    This armpiece with its overseam to the band

    Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
    The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
    The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

    At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
    One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
    On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

    The witness in a building across the street
    Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
    Up to the windowsill, then held her out

    Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
    And then another. As if he were helping them up
    To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

    A third before he dropped her put her arms
    Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
    Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

    He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
    And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
    Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

    Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt
    ballooning."
    Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
    Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

    Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
    Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
    Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

    Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of
    Ossian,
    To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
    By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

    Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
    to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
    Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

    The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the
    sorter
    Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
    As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

    George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
    Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
    And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

    And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
    both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
    Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

    The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the
    characters
    Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
    The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

    - Robert Pinsky
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  29. Gratitude expressed by:

  30. TopTop #3886
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Late Ripeness

    Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
    I felt a door opening in me and I entered
    the clarity of early morning.

    One after another my former lives were departing,
    like ships, together with their sorrow.

    And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
    assigned to my brush came closer,
    ready now to be described better than they were before.

    I was not separated from people,
    grief and pity joined us.
    We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

    For where we come from there is no division
    into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

    We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
    of the gift we received for our long journey.

    Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
    a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
    of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
    staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
    waiting for a fulfillment.

    I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
    as are all men and women living at the same time,
    whether they are aware of it or not.

    - Czeslaw Milosz

    (Translated by Robert Hass)
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  32. TopTop #3887
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Giving Myself Up

    I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
    I give up my tongue.
    I give up my mouth which is the constant dream of my tongue.
    I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
    I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
    I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
    I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
    I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
    I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
    I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
    I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
    I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
    I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
    and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
    I give up. I give up.
    And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
    again without anything.

    - Mark Strand
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  34. TopTop #3888
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Giving-Myself-Up.jpg
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    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Giving Myself Up...
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  35. TopTop #3889
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Democracy

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

    - Leonard Cohen
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  37. TopTop #3890
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Imagining

    What if God isnʼt a noun
    to be empowered and worshiped
    but a verb of creation
    powered by love?

    What if every single tree
    drawn in primary school
    is a sacred work of art
    worthy of joyful notice?

    What if our lives are built
    on a web of kindness,
    a net,
    which holds everything living.

    What if the rocks are alive
    singing strength and courage;
    vibrating
    from our feet right up to our heart?

    What if we loved ourselves
    as deeply as the mountain
    who,
    caressed by water,
    surrenders herself
    into sand?

    What if our most loved,
    intra-national pastime
    is a game of entertainment
    where we all win?

    What if no one aspired
    to be a millionaire
    and money no longer had power
    but was simply a means of tender-ness.

    What if transforming our world
    by imagining it
    can
    actually make it happen?

    - Deborah Rodney
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  39. TopTop #3891
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Prisoners Cinema with Saints Catherine and Lucy

    “Prisoner’s cinema” is the term given to visual hallucinations reported by prisoners confined to dark cells and by others kept in darkness for long periods of time.

    Lit by a million specks of light,
    all your dust turns holy.
    What’s rotten in you burns

    and burns. You, a shadow-
    you, gone glowing
    Catherine wheel, a spoked

    gloaming. You know lead can lodge
    into an animal’s skull, turn
    the skull into a lit temple

    of its wanderings, and this is how
    you understand the fabled bowl
    a saint carries, its hollow lit

    by the eyes it cradles and the saint
    eyeless and God-filled. You are not
    eyeless and God is nowhere

    to witness how you become
    the wheel and the body it breaks,
    a spectacle of light you cannot fathom

    until you fathom it—flooded
    as you are with shadow, darkness
    taut as an animal’s shank

    until it ripples at your touch. Pools
    in the bowl your hands make.
    Then breaks.

    - Susannah Nevison
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  40. Gratitude expressed by:

    Dre
  41. TopTop #3892
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Signings

    Lies can be charismatic, the truth is cloudy,

    With its traditional testing place a body.

    I cross my heart and hope to die. The breath,

    One hand on the book, one raised, exhales the oath.

    The bully making a club of the victim’s hand,

    “You hit yourself”: Falsehood asserts Command.

    Mortgage papers declare and hereby pledge

    That money is money. Sign here, page after page.

    The President holds up for the camera’s eye

    A paper with his signature, two inches high.

    Times when he lied or cheated, the Director

    Made longhand notes. Now the Director’s an author

    On a bookstore tour. He produced his clunky book

    Himself. No ghost. In a defensive joke

    At signings a writer I know likes to set up

    A jar he labels “For Tips”: wry overlap

    Of Truth, Marketing and Art. Any collector

    Knows to pay less for copies with a signed sticker

    Than one with its title page directly signed:

    Authentic, true. But on the other hand,

    Inscribed to someone’s name is somehow worth less

    Than simply Signed, out here in the marketplace —

    But why? The blemish of the particular?

    Or truth too a commodity? Flailing for air.

    - Robert Pinsky
    (Listen to Pinsky read it himself: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...d1#pg-benfolds)
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #3893
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Attack


    My wife is 25 years younger than I.

    Whenever a man grins at me
    and says "Way to go,"
    I want to smash my fist into his face.

    Yesterday our much-loved dog died.

    My wife took our shovel
    and dug a 4-foot wide
    2 1/2-foot deep
    grave in our garden.

    After my father died
    I kept feeling a gun
    tucked under my belt
    at the back of my pants.
    I hoped I would find someone
    who would make me say
    "Go ahead
    and make my day."

    Dulcy said that death
    can sometimes feel
    like an attack.

    If someone looked at my wife
    in our dog's grave,
    and winked at me,
    I would want to take her shovel
    and crush his head.

    - Trout Black
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  44. Gratitude expressed by:

  45. TopTop #3894
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    True Colors

    “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.”
    ~ Robert Frost


    As trees prepare for winter
    fall colors pour
    into my eyes

    Lush true colors
    long hidden under green
    call to my soul

    Soft voices of colors
    blown on the wind say
    “Remember me, I’ll soon be gone.”

    As I approach my own certain winter
    what colors long hidden
    will I reveal

    Can I be like the leaves
    radiantly shine for a time
    then quietly fall away

    Why not

    - Doug von Koss
    Last edited by Barry; 09-13-2018 at 03:25 PM.
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  47. TopTop #3895
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    September


    September first comes round in my cold knees.
    In voices from the next room, and the body
    radiant from a shower.

    September comes with the tinnitus of country silence,
    the blue bay that keeps things still.

    The uselessness of success in spiritual practice
    seems lasting. But that’s such a weak account
    of the even weaker failure of weakness.

    For the fact is if I can’t offer half an hour
    to the One who gave me life…
    if I can’t listen for even half an hour for Him…
    if I can’t offer the One a half hour of gratitude for that…
    then immodesty has no limit.

    You hear what I am saying, I know.
    I am not someone who so treasures his every mood
    that he must thrust each precious slice into you,
    and I don’t feel bad at all here. I feel good.
    Because I know you’re listening.
    Maybe.

    May Be. The mediation, the message, is:
    the embryo of glee.

    In September it starts to stir.
    Before the end – just watch it –
    it wants to be born,
    once more.


    - Bruce Moody
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  49. TopTop #3896
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Mr. Peepers

    They’re public punching bags

    But someone’s gotta do it
    It’s not so sexy, the procedure or the truth
    I say God bless the bureaucrat and the lawyer, too.

    The House Intelligence Committee piles on
    They’d love to know what Rosenstein has on the boss
    But it’s just for cameras, yeah, it’s just a show of force
    Y’all know he can’t comply

    But that’s the point, of course

    So they call him Mister Peepers
    As the thugs all smash his glasses
    Going full Lord of the Flies
    Burning this island down to ashes.
    What’s the rule of law if we can’t agree on what a fact is?
    There ain’t nothing here to see, folks, move along, move along

    Thank God for facts.
    They’re stubborn things indeed
    But little cowboys will try cases on TV
    It doesn’t make it so
    Because you make believe.
    You can’t lose in court and appeal on Hannity

    The distinguished wrestler from Ohio
    He’s free to lie, he’s not the one who’s under oath
    The law don’t suit the boss
    This Deputy must go
    We got him in the locker room, boys
    Start the show.

    So they call him Mister Peepers

    Send some thugs to smash his glasses.
    If he’s gone and peeped the wrong thing
    Then they’ll burn his name to ashes.
    What’s the rule of law
    If we can’t establish what a fact is?

    There ain’t nothing here to see, folks, move along, ah move along

    They say it dies in the dark
    Right now, they’re trying to kill it in broad daylight
    Can flashlights really fight bombs?
    We’ll see.
    Right now

    You boys are Christians, right?
    What would Jesus do?
    Would he bury crimes and carry water like a stooge?
    Or smear a family man in case he tells the truth
    About the boss?
    Yeah, what would Jesus do?

    Would he call him Mister Peepers?
    Send some thugs to smash his glasses?
    The institution’s standing tall
    Though we tried our best to trash it
    Aren’t we all the keepers
    Of this fragile young Republic?
    And when all those Mister Peepers people fall…

    Lord help us all.

    - Ben Folds

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  50. Gratitude expressed by:

  51. TopTop #3897
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Man Born To Farming

    The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
    whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
    to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
    yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
    in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
    His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
    What miraculous seed has he swallowed
    That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
    Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
    Descending in the dark?

    - Wendell Berry
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  52. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  53. TopTop #3898
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Unsaid

    So much of what we live goes on inside —
    The diaries of grief, the tongue tied aches
    Of unacknowledged love are no less real
    For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
    Is always more than what we dare confide.
    Think of the letters that we write our dead.

    - Dana Gioia
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  55. TopTop #3899
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Wild Heart

    We say to our dog sit and she sits
    We say good girl and she wags her tail
    We tame our horses by breaking them
    In the same way we tame our hearts
    Behave we say, good boy
    You shouldn’t say that, good girl
    We say over and over, I am good
    When a part of us believes I’ve been bad
    Each belief is a whip to our flanks
    Breaking our spirit
    Cracking our hearts over and over

    You ask forgiveness to others for the gossip,
    Indifference and harm you caused them
    You forget to ask forgiveness
    For your critical self-slander,
    The indifference and harm you cause yourself
    By not listening to the still small voice within

    Stop breaking your wild pony of a heart
    Instead say to your good girl and good boy
    I’m sorry

    This year turn towards that brokenness
    See it anew
    Look beyond the broken latches and shards of glass
    Created by your own sorrow
    See openness

    Climb through into the heart of your heart
    To your untamed and uncivilized heart
    Where the thrum of excitement and anticipation is loud
    Enter your wild heart where thrives a teaming jungle of life
    Monkeys howling with joy, swinging carefree above the
    Grinning hyenas of shame, the ripping teeth of self-doubt
    Here there are no civilized red lights
    Here beyond brokenness only one light shines
    The green light of love

    Enter fully into the broken heart and you will find
    Your whole, wild, untamed, uncivilized heart
    Here there is only yes
    Yes to love
    Yes to life

    Go deeply enough and you will remember
    Your heart is the heart of the world
    The world is the heart of God

    - Sally Churgel
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  57. TopTop #3900
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Ode

    We are the music-makers,
    And we are the dreamers of dreams,
    Wandering by lone sea-breakers
    And sitting by desolate streams;
    World losers and world forsakers,
    On whom the pale moon gleams:
    Yet we are the movers and shakers
    Of the world for ever, it seems.

    With wonderful deathless ditties
    We build up the world’s great cities.
    And out of a fabulous story
    We fashion an empire’s glory:
    One man with a dream, at pleasure,
    Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
    And three with a new song’s measure
    Can trample an empire down.

    We, in the ages lying
    In the buried past of the earth,
    Built Nineveh with our sighing,
    And Babel itself with our mirth;
    And o’erthrew them with prophesying
    To the old of the new world’s worth;
    For each age is a dream that is dying,
    Or one that is coming to birth.
    

    - Arthur O’Shaughnessy
    (1873)
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  58. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

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