Poem for the day from Larry Robinson [Archive] - Page 37

Larry Robinson

12-23-2017, 07:05 AM

M/M

12-23-2017, 09:20 AM

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”
(https://thesciencewoman.com/2017/12/16/cdc-recieves-list-of-banned-words-including-evidence-based-and-science-based/)
War on language: Words like mankind, man-made, housewife banned at UK university
(https://www.sott.net/article/344431-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 (https://www.sott.net/article/243504-War-On-Words-New-York-City-Dept-Of-Education-Wants-50-Forbidden-Words-Banned-From-Standardized-Tests)

<style type="text/css">p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000}p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 18.0px Helvetica; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000; min-height: 22.0px}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}span.Apple-tab-span {white-space:pre}</style>Forbidden Words
...

Larry Robinson

12-24-2017, 06:41 AM

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;https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2017-12-24_13-51-16.png
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

12-25-2017, 06:07 AM

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

12-26-2017, 12:09 AM

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

12-26-2017, 04:58 AM

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2017-12-26_13-37-20.png
  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

12-27-2017, 05:48 AM

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

12-27-2017, 09:55 AM

Background photo taken from aircraft window somewhere above the Southwest.

42193

You Darkness...

Larry Robinson

12-28-2017, 08:00 AM

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

12-29-2017, 05:59 AM

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

12-30-2017, 07:14 AM

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

12-31-2017, 07:31 AM

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

01-01-2018, 06:59 AM

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

01-01-2018, 12:27 PM

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

01-02-2018, 05:44 AM

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

01-02-2018, 02:28 PM

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

01-03-2018, 07:48 AM

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

01-04-2018, 06:15 AM

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

01-05-2018, 08:05 AM

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

01-06-2018, 07:58 AM

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

01-07-2018, 07:00 AM

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

01-08-2018, 07:33 AM

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

01-09-2018, 07:48 AM

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

01-10-2018, 07:18 AM

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

01-11-2018, 07:10 AM

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

01-11-2018, 08:52 PM

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

January...

Larry Robinson

01-12-2018, 05:48 AM

Our Jeopardy

It is good to use best china https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-01-12_14-15-39.png
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

01-13-2018, 06:20 AM

Ladybugs

What guides the ladybugshttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-01-13_14-28-34.png
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

01-14-2018, 06:56 AM

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

01-15-2018, 07:38 AM

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

</pre>
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

Larry Robinson

01-16-2018, 06:50 AM

Larry Robinson

01-17-2018, 07:16 AM

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

- Dylan Thomas

Larry Robinson

01-18-2018, 06:38 AM

Waking

A massive blue stallion rears before me 42435
out of a midnight lake of dreams

Moonlight flows
like fire along his flanks, and

an inner blaze flares
from the dark mystery of his eyes

I turn and flee, afraid for the small life
clutched tight in my chest, knotted in my stomach

Branches tear at my coat
underbrush at my feet

Every step, the horse gains
his heavy breath close and closer, until

I stumble

He grabs my collar in his teeth
flings me over his shoulder, onto his back

and waits, trembling

for me to grab a handful of his wiry mane
press my knees together

urge him on

- Karl Frederick

Larry Robinson

01-19-2018, 08:00 AM

Perhaps we are all lost a little

I miss my mother; she listened to me

Sent me Pablo Neruda’s Fully Empowered,

Hoping that I would be.

She called Sunday evenings to

Listen to my News of the Day, the Week

Or month.

How would fully empowered feel?

Able to use my soul to enrich others?

Able to connect people who need each other

To complete themselves and their work?

Able to relax into life so it may be enjoyed

More than fought through.

How could we NOT be at least a bit lost?

Men we are asked to trust lead us

Ever closer to world war and possible

Annihilation;

Other men, mostly men, take away

The civil rights we worked for a lifetime

Or more to put in place.

If we are not required to love each other,

At least should we not be required to

Respect each other? To share.

How can our world be good

If we do not treat each other kindly?

How can our future be bright

If we are not quite sure love is real.

I want to curl up

And cry with you.

There is so much pain

In a life

And so very much joy

If you seek it but

You have to seek that and hold on.

Beauty, is all around

If you get off your iPhone.

Please come and find me;

I’ll be looking everywhere for you

Because it matters when you can touch

Another soul and

Once you have met on the astral plain

You shall remain there together forever.

Or not. Which?

- Connie Madden

Larry Robinson

01-20-2018, 06:24 AM

A Prayer

Refuse to fall down.
If you cannot refuse to fall down,
refuse to stay down.
If you cannot refuse to stay down,
lift your heart toward heaven,
and like a hungry beggar,
ask that it be filled,
and it will be filled.
You may be pushed down.
You may be kept from rising.
But no one can keep you
from lifting your heart
toward heaven -
only you.
It is in the middle of misery
that so much becomes clear.
The one who says nothing good
came of this,
is not yet listening.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Larry Robinson

01-21-2018, 06:47 AM

Three Gratitudes

Every night before I go to sleep
I say out loud
Three things that I’m grateful for,
All the significant, insignificant
Extraordinary, ordinary stuff of my life.

It’s a small practice and humble,
And yet, I find I sleep better
Holding what lightens and softens my life
Ever so briefly at the end of the day.

Sunlight, and blueberries,42473
Good dogs and wool socks,
A fine rain,
A good friend,
Fresh basil and wild phlox,
My father’s good health,
My daughter’s new job,
The song that always makes me cry,
Always at the same part,
No matter how many times I hear it.

Decent coffee at the airport,
And your quiet breathing,
The stories you told me,
The frost patterns on the windows,
English horns and banjos,
Wood Thrush and June bugs,
The smooth glassy calm of the morning pond,
An old coat,
A new poem,
My library card,
And that my car keeps running
Despite all the miles.

And after three things,
More often than not,
I get on a roll and I just keep on going,
I keep naming and listing,
Until I lie grinning,
Blankets pulled up to my chin,
Awash with wonder
At the sweetness of it all.

- Carrie Newcomer

Larry Robinson

01-22-2018, 06:57 AM

Do not be defeated by the rain

Unbeaten by the rain
Unbeaten by the wind
Bested by neither snow nor summer heat
Strong of body
Free of desire
Never angry
Always smiling quietly
Dining daily on four cups of brown rice
Some miso and a few vegetables
Observing all things
With dispassion
But remembering well
Living in a small, thatched-roof house
In the meadow beneath a canopy of pines
Going east to nurse the sick child
Going west to bear sheaves of rice for the weary mother
Going south to tell the dying man there is no cause for fear
Going north to tell those who fight to put aside their trifles
Shedding tears in time of drought
Wandering at a loss during the cold summer
Called useless by all
Neither praised
Nor a bother
Such is the person
I wish to be
Miyazawa.jpg

- Kenji Miyazawa
(27 August 1896 – 21 September 1933)

Larry Robinson

01-23-2018, 05:34 AM

I get up

(I don’t always want to)
I’m tired
I am run down
My thoughts run me down
The news runs me down
My country runs me down
Our history runs me down
But
Something pulls me from the safety of my sheets
Puts me in the shower
Dresses me and says
Show up
Sometimes I show up
Because Heather Heyer can’t
Sometimes I show up because
Anita Hill’s testimony still sends chills down my spine, because my friend who is a DREAMER is living in a constant state of fear, or because there are thousands of Puerto Rican Americans who have lost everything and are still living in darkness.

Sometimes I get up,
Because I’m tired of wondering why there are so many people who should not have a gun but
have a gun
Sometimes I get up
Because I know that equal pay for equal work does not exist.
And when I see that 1 in 4 black people in Florida cannot vote, it is clear to me that equal voting rights do not exist either.
Sometimes I get up
Because the land of the free is locking millions of human beings in cages, shackling women during childbirth, and putting our children in solitary confinement.

Sometimes I get up because
I know that Nazis are planning to march again, because Flint still has no clean drinking water.
Sometimes I get up
Because I know that 40 percent of our homeless population are LGBTQ youths and there is something wrong with that.
Sometimes I get up
Because I don’t want to have to teach my children how to do nuclear bomb drills, or what to wear to avoid sexual harassment or how to behave to avoid a “justifiable shooting” by the police.
Sometimes I get up
Because I hugged Trayvon Martin’s mother last year and told her I would keep going.
And sometimes I get up because I remember the time I read the Coretta Scott King line that said,
“Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.”

So I show up
Some days I am only able to show up for myself when I close my eyes and say,
“Breathe. You are are worthy. You can do this. And you will be okay.”
And on the days when I can do more …
I do more
I listen more
I learn more
I give more of my time.
I give more of my dollars.
I give more of my heart.
I give more spirit.
I give more of my …
Self
Because
To not show up
To stay silent
To do nothing
Is to tell the world that I think it is fine the way it is
And I do not think the world is fine the way it is

- Cleo Wade

Larry Robinson

01-24-2018, 07:39 AM

Anguish Longer Than Sorrow

If destroying all the maps known
would erase all the boundaries
from the face of this earth
I would say let us
make a bonfire
to reclaim and sing
the human person

Refugee is an ominous load
even for a child to carry
for some children
words like home
could not carry any possible meaning
but
displaced
border
refugee
must carry dimensions of brutality and terror
past the most hideous nightmare
anyone could experience or imagine

Empty their young eyes
deprived of a vision of any future
they should have been entitled to
since they did not choose to be born
where and when they were
Empty their young bellies
extended and rounded by malnutrition
and growling like the well-fed dogs of some
with pretensions to concerns about human rights
violations

Can you see them now
stumble from nowhere
to no
where
between
nothing
and
nothing

Consider
the premature daily death of their young dreams
what staggering memories frighten and abort
the hope that should have been
an indelible inscription in their young eyes

Perhaps
I should just borrow
the rememberer’s voice again
while I can and say:
to have a home is not a favour.

- Keorapetse Kgositsile
(Former Poet Laureate of South Africa:
September 19,1938 – January 3, 2018)

Larry Robinson

01-25-2018, 06:53 AM

Tension

"Never use the word suddenly just to
create tension." - Writing Fiction

Suddenly, you were planting some yellow petunias
outside in the garden,
and suddenly I was in the study
looking up the word oligarchy for the thirty-seventh time.

When suddenly, without warning,
you planted the last petunia in the flat,
and I suddenly closed the dictionary
now that I was reminded of that vile form of governance.

A moment later, we found ourselves
standing suddenly in the kitchen
where you suddenly opened a can of cat food
and I just as suddenly watched you doing that.

I observed a window of leafy activity
and, beyond that, a bird perched on the edge
of the stone birdbath
when suddenly you announced you were leaving

to pick up a few things at the market
and I stunned you by impulsively
pointing out that we were getting low on butter
and another case of wine would not be a bad idea.

Who could tell what the next moment would hold?
Another drip from the faucet?
Another little spasm of the second hand?
Would the painting of the bowl of pears continue

to hang on the wall from that nail?
Would the heavy anthologies remain on their shelves?
Would the stove hold its position?
Suddenly, it was anyone's guess.

The sun rose ever higher.
The state capitals remained motionless on the wall map
when suddenly I found myself lying on a couch
where I closed my eyes and without any warning

began to picture the Andes, of all places,
and a path that led over the mountain to another country
with strange customs and eye-catching hats
suddenly fringed with little colorful, dangling balls.

- Billy Collins

Larry Robinson

01-26-2018, 05:58 AM

At the Age of 18-Ode to Girls of Color

At the age of 5

I saw how we always pick the flower swelling with the most color.

The color distinguishes it from the rest, and tells us:

This flower should not be left behind.

But this does not happen in the case of colored girls.

Our color makes hands pull back, and we, left to grow alone,

stretching our petals to a dry sun.

At the age of 12

I blinked in the majesty of the color within myself,

blinded by the knowledge that a skinny black girl, a young brown teen,

has the power to light Los Angeles all night,

the radiance to heal all the scars left on this city's pavement.

Why had this realization taken so long,

When color pulses in all that is beauty and painting and human?

You see, long ago, they told me

that snakes and spiders have spots and vibrant bodies if they are poisonous.

In other words, being of color meant danger, warning, 'do not touch'.

At the age of 18

I know my color is not warning, but a welcome.

A girl of color is a lighthouse, an ultraviolet ray of power, potential, and promise

My color does not mean caution, it means courage

my dark does not mean danger, it means daring,

my brown does not mean broken, it means bold backbone from working

twice as hard to get half as far.

Being a girl of color means I am key, path, and wonder all in one body.

At the age of 18

I am experiencing how black and brown can glow.

And glow I will, glow we will, vibrantly, colorfully;

not as a warning, but as promise,

that we will set the sky alight with our magic.

- Amanda Gorman

(Amanda Gorman is America’s first national Youth Poet Laureate)

Larry Robinson

01-28-2018, 05:30 AM

A Quality of Face

Maybe it’s how kindness rests there

First on the forehead

Pausing not to land determinedly

Flowing out to the corners of your eyes

Creating small rivulets

Ebbing inward and onward

Drifting from the corners of your mouth

Floating down toward the bass violin

How kindness resonates, first

in your profile, then

in the curve of grained wood

Meeting and greeting the other, with

a small uplift of the mouth, and

a bowed note

- Rebecca Evert

Larry Robinson

01-29-2018, 08:45 AM

For C.

After the clash of elevator gates
And the long sinking, she emerges where,
A slight thing in the morning’s crosstown glare,
She looks up toward the window where he waits,
Then in a fleeting taxi joins the rest
Of the huge traffic bound forever west.

On such grand scale do lovers say good-bye—
Even this other pair whose high romance
Had only the duration of a dance,
And who, now taking leave with stricken eye,
See each in each a whole new life forgone.
For them, above the darkling clubhouse lawn,

Bright Perseids flash and crumble; while for these
Who part now on the dock, weighed down by grief
And baggage, yet with something like relief,
It takes three thousand miles of knitting seas
To cancel out their crossing, and unmake
The amorous rough and tumble of their wake.

We are denied, my love, their fine tristesse
And bittersweet regrets, and cannot share
The frequent vistas of their large despair,
Where love and all are swept to nothingness;
Still, there’s a certain scope in that long love
Which constant spirits are the keepers of,

And which, though taken to be tame and staid,
Is a wild sostenuto of the heart,
A passion joined to courtesy and art
Which has the quality of something made,
Like a good fiddle, like the rose’s scent,
Like a rose window or the firmament.
- Richard Wilbur

Dorothy Friberg

01-29-2018, 10:32 AM

Nice visuals Larry, and once again I am sent to consult my dictionary.

For C.

After the clash of elevator gates ...

- Richard Wilbur

Larry Robinson

01-30-2018, 06:09 AM

Blessing

this is not the truth
about the end but a hint about
beginning When the Buddhahttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-01-30_09-32-25.png
had sat alone
for nearly forever
beneath the tree of many names
when he had taken into himself
all the suffering there is
and will always be then
he did not despair
he turned away
from the empty air
that starving saints exhale
he laughed at the idea
of nothing What he saw
clear and unmistakable
before him and really on all sides
was a lake and the lake shone
and there was Iight in it
and he knew that to hold
all that water in his gaze
would mislead him
about his own
size unless he entered the water
and bathed
for there is no enlightenment
without immersion

And so after so long the Buddhahttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-01-30_09-31-00.png
entered enlightenment
which is not the end
but the end of being alone

and the Buddha whom the world
had thought sufficient
unto himself was not
for that was what
enlightenment taught

And at the end of
so long alone
the Buddha slowly turned
toward all the others
who were also alone
and she opened her arms
and around them all the water
stretched and shone

- Eleanor Wilner

Larry Robinson

01-31-2018, 04:58 AM

Half Life

We walk through half our life
as if it were a fever dream
barely touching the ground
our eyes half open
our heart half closed.

Not half knowing who we are
we watch the ghost of us drift
from room to room
through friends and lovers
never quite as real as advertised.

Not saying half we mean
or meaning half we say
we dream ourselves
from birth to birth
seeking some true self.

Until the fever breaks
and the heart can not abide
a moment longer
as the rest of us awakens,
summoned from the dream,
not half caring for anything but love.

- Stephen Levine

Larry Robinson

02-01-2018, 05:12 AM

Love Hides

Love hides in crevices that go unnoticed. It dangles from
the worn threads of faith that drop from religion’s coattail.

It lies in splinters, beaten by the club of family strife and
the slow decay of relationships.

It stares wistfully from outside shattered windows of illness and mortality.

It sits amidst the debris left behind in silken cobwebs by
spirit’s door and in breath-less moments when the body can

do no more. It even lurks in moments of anger and hating.
Love hides in crevices: unperturbed and waiting.

- Bruce Silverman

Ronaldo

02-01-2018, 08:13 AM

Background photo: Margrethe Mather—1920

42568

Larry Robinson

02-02-2018, 06:57 AM

Where Papi’s Angel Speaks to Me About Love

mijo—i know you have seen the night
as an excuse to hold your body like a bottle

and drink yourself to sleep in the morning
the sun will rise bright as an infant fear

in your throat you will not die as much
as you wish for it you will get lucky

friends will envy you with their stomachs
whether or not you deserve it you will lose

women you loved wrong and i know what
that’s like—to love until you lose hope

in yourself no one wants to talk about it
how at the border they offered us clean

criminal records our first ride on an airplane
if we went back to motherland el salvador

it’s so hard to leave and of course your tio
he went back for a girl said he would try again

the right way but there is never a right way
to leave we would have never left if there

was a choice to make but men leave to survive
leaving is what makes us & you will become

a man all the wrong ways which is to say
there is no right way after your tio left

they let me go—into the blinding street
with nothing not even a bus route always

an orphan this time without a family
to call a motherland only an address

my eighth grade dropout’s command of
language & survival—mijo—i made it

there is no need for a map if fear is your
new face learn to kiss him with your eyes

open without a border between your lips

- Willie Palomo

Larry Robinson

02-03-2018, 07:20 AM

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

- e.e. cummings

Larry Robinson

02-04-2018, 05:04 AM

How Many Generations ‘Til Mary?

How many generations from
the wars of streets that
steal one’s children,
the daily violence of poverty,
the grinding stone of racism,
must one be before
she can follow Mary Oliver
down the green path
to the grasshopper’s house?

Between civilization and anarchy
only seven meals—
how many missing meals
must be replaced
before the chaos forced
upon the living earth
can be felt
by the hungry man?

How many generations of
enough bread, enough water,
enough freedom from
fear-blind soldiers—
especially when
they’re called police—
will carve a space of safety
in which to see and write
the fog-drunk woods, the hawk,
the running dear?

How can people burned as fuel
surely as a rainforest;
ghosted people trapped outside,
people in a gristmill turning
making plenty we enjoy—
even now as I am writing,
you are reading,
on this quiet page—
find a way to care
or even think
about the wild geese?

- Kalia Mussetter

REALnothings

02-04-2018, 05:32 AM

I'm listening on mp3 to Ann Patchett's novel, Run. Yesterday I heard a very moving passage in which an 11 year-old African-American girl named Kenya muses on the differences in opportunity between life in her and her mom's apartment in Roxbury and those of her half-brothers (it's complicated) in whose upscale, stately home she's just spent a night. Wish I could find the passage online to quote. Her half-brothers' place is light, her apartment is always dark. The new place is quiet, her apartment is always noisy with people going up and down the stairs, often cursing or muttering, with sirens waking her up all night...it's quiet a compelling description of the differences...the same sorts of things expressed and lamented in this poem. :heart:

Larry Robinson

02-05-2018, 06:55 AM

Dancing In Front Of The Guns

We’re facing the guns again, we have faced them before
Humanity’s longing after so many deaths
For something more human than war
But part of me whispers “Take your body and run away.
Leave the vision to somebody else,” then I hear myself say,

I’d rather be dancing at the edge of my grave.
I’d rather be holding you close as we march forward loving and brave.
I’d rather be singing in the face of my fear.
I’d rather be dancing in front of the guns as long as I’m here.
Life is so dangerous that there’s little to fear
Life is so possible, every breath a frontier
They’ve brought out the guns once again ‘cuz they haven’t a clue
That we could be dancing, the whole human race, each one must choose
And I’d rather be dancing at the edge of my grave…

To the drum of my heartbeat pounding up through my feet
With millions of lovers urging me on as we take to the streets
As we face the terror, if I leave here before my time
One thing’s for certain, I’ll go dancing and I’ll go alive!
And I’d rather be dancing at the edge of my grave…

- Libby Roderick

Larry Robinson

02-06-2018, 07:13 AM

On a Lamp Post Long Ago

I don’t know what to think of first
in the list

of all the things that are disappearing: Fishes, birds, trees, flowers, bees,

and languages too. They say that if historical rates are averaged, a language will die
every four months.

In the time it takes to say I love you, or move in with someone, or admit to the child
you’re carrying, all the intricate words of a language become extinct.

There’s too many things to hold in the palm of the brain.

Your father uses the word thing to describe many different nouns and we guess
the word he means. When we get it right, he nods as if it’s obvious.

When we get it wrong, his face closes like a fist.

Out walking in the neighborhood, there’s a wide metal lamp post
that has scratched into it, Brandy Earlywine loves Jack Pickett and then there
come the hearts. The barrage of hearts scratched over and over as if,

just in case we have forgotten the word love, we will know its symbol. As if,
Miss Earlywine wanted us to know that, even after she and Mr. Pickett

have passed on, their real hearts stopped—the ones that don’t look anything
like those little symbols—they frantically, furiously, late one night under

the streetlight while their parents thought they were asleep, inscribed
onto the body of the something like a permanent tree, a heart—

so that even after their bodies ceased to be bodies,

their mouths no longer capable of words, that universal shape will tell you
how she felt, one blue evening, long ago, when there were still 7,000

languages that named and honored the plants and animals each in their
own way, when your father said thing and we knew what it meant,

and the bees were big and round and buzzing.

- Ada Límon

Larry Robinson

02-07-2018, 08:07 AM

What Do Women Want?

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.
- Kim Addonizio

Larry Robinson

02-08-2018, 07:26 AM

Reinventing America

The city was huge. A boy of twelve could walk
for hours while the closed houses stared down at him
from early morning to dusk, and he'd get nowhere.
Oh no, I was not that boy. Even at twelve I knew
enough to stay in my own neighborhood,
I knew anyone who left might not return.
Boys were animals with animal hungers
I learned early. Better to stay close to home.
I'd try to bum cigarettes from the night workers
as they left the bars in the heavy light of noon
or I'd hang around the grocery hoping
one of the beautiful young wives would ask me
to help her carry her shopping bags home.
You're wondering what I was up to. Not much.
The sun rose late in November and set early.
At times I thought life was rushing by too fast.
Before I knew it I'd be my half-blind uncle
married to a woman who cried all day long
while in the basement he passed his time working
on short-wave radio calls to anywhere.
I'd sneak down and talk to him, Uncle Nathan,
wiry in his boxer's shorts and high-topped boots,
chewing on a cigar, the one dead eye catching
the overhead light while he mused on his life
on the road or at sea. How he loved the whores
in the little Western towns and the Latin ports!
He'd hold his hands out to approximate
their perfect breasts. The months in jail had taught him
a man had only his honor and his ass
to protect. "You turn your fist this way," he said,
taking my small hand in both of his, "and fire
from the shoulder, so," and he'd extend it out
to the face of an imaginary foe.
Why he'd returned to this I never figured out,
though life was ample here, a grid of crowded blocks
of Germans, Wops, Polacks, Jews, wild Irish,
plus some square heads from the Upper Peninsula.
Six bakeries, four barber shops, a five and dime,
twenty beer gardens, a Catholic church with a shul
next door where we studied the Talmud-Torah.
Wonderful how all the old hatreds bubbled
So quietly on the back burner you could
forget until one day they tore through the pool halls,
the bowling alley, the high school athletic fields
leaving an eye gone, a long fresh, livid scar
running to touch a mouth, young hands raw or broken,
boys and girls ashamed of what they were, ashamed
of what they were not. It was merely village life,
exactly what our parents left in Europe
brought to America with pure fidelity.

- Philip Levine

Larry Robinson

02-09-2018, 08:12 AM

Larry Robinson

02-09-2018, 08:25 AM

Larry Robinson

02-10-2018, 07:26 AM

The Starlight Night

Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!
O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!
The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!
Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes!
The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!
Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare!
Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!
Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

Buy then! bid then! — What? — Prayer, patience, alms, vows.
Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs!
Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows!
These are indeed the barn; withindoors house
The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse
Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Larry Robinson

02-11-2018, 07:10 AM

Fire In The Earth

And we know, when Moses was told
in the way he was told,
“Take off your shoes”, he grew pale from that simple

reminder of fire in the dusty earth.
He never recovered
his complicated way of loving again

and was free to love in the same way
the fire licking at his heels loved him.
As if the lion earth could roar

and take him in one movement.
Every step he took
from there was carefully placed.

Everything he said mattered as if he knew
the constant witness of the ground
and remembered his own face in the dust

the moment before revelation.
Since then thousands have felt
the same immobile tongue with which he tried to speak.

Like the moment you too saw, for the first time,
your own house turned to ashes.
Everything consumed so the road could open again.

Your entire presence in your eyes
and the world turning slowly
into a single branch of flame.

- David Whyte

Larry Robinson

02-12-2018, 08:06 AM

Let History Be My Judge

We made all possible preparations,
Drew up a list of firms,
Constantly revised our calculations
And allotted the farms,

Issued all the orders expedient
In this kind of case:
Most, as was expected, were obedient,
Though there were murmurs, of course;

Chiefly against our exercising
Our old right to abuse:
Even some sort of attempt at rising,
But these were mere boys.

For never serious misgiving
Occurred to anyone,
Since there could be no question of living
If we did not win.

The generally accepted view teaches
That there was no excuse,
Though in the light of recent researches
Many would find the cause

In a not uncommon form of terror;
Others, still more astute,
Point to possibilities of error
At the very start.

As for ourselves there is left remaining
Our honour at least,
And a reasonable chance of retaining
Our faculties to the last.

- W. H. Auden

Larry Robinson

02-13-2018, 07:27 AM

Belief In Human Immortality

Belief, in a kind of certainty may be all that keeps us sane,
yet we know our houses are built on fragile cliffs,
erected on fragile yellowing limestone rock and scree,
bit by bit by bit, year by year by year,
winter storms and summer’s desiccating droughts
will undermine our man-made foundations,
our fragile existence to be taken in due course,
sometimes with ample warning,
sometimes on apparent whim just as a sudden gust
snaps a tree branch on the aged oak, or on the ancient maple;
or when a fire engulfs mountain and town
sparing little we thought of as permanent,
sparing little we were sure was there to stay,
sparing little of the world we knew.

In the fullness of time there is an inevitability to an ending,
even our minor solar system at the edge of the Milky Way
will devour itself and be engulfed by our minor star, as our sun
becomes a swollen white dwarf no longer able to sustain life,
even our one universe itself, all its barely countable planets,
all its hundreds of billions of stars
all its tens of billions of galaxies
and all the miscellaneous almost innumerable debris
all left over from what we have called our beginning, ‘the big bang’,
will in eons hence flee apart and become dark and inert.

Still we persevere in the firm belief
in our eternal being, our time without end,
yet as surely as our one universe expands exponentially
to end inert near absolute zero and in total darkness,
so too will we sapiens end in darkness
near absolute zero and become inert,
still we live on and on for a time still undefined,
for a time finite, for a time that must end,
immortality a human myth, a foible of our species,
maybe useful for its time, expedient for the moment,
serving a purpose for the day to day, to day,
sustaining us for a time uncertain,
sustaining us till no longer possible,
maybe our belief can help us through life’s difficulties,
maybe gratitude for all that has been given us nourishes us,
maybe our belief in truth and beauty can sustain us,
maybe belief in community is what there is.

- Sam Doctors

Larry Robinson

02-14-2018, 07:16 AM

The Song of Wandering Aengus

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;
And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire aflame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And someone called me by my name;
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old from wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

- William Butler Yeats

Larry Robinson

02-15-2018, 07:08 AM

Glove of War

His nightmares are
of war forty year ago.
Dreamt the asbestos glove
hanging at his left side,
gone, hands seared
on the red-hot fluted
gun barrel.
Changed out the M60 barrel
on a moving Huey
in thirteen seconds,
hail pouring down,
killing all that stood,
crawled before him.
“I killed every mother jumper I saw,
that’s what they told me to do.”
The asbestos glove let him kill
quicker.
Two tours Vietnam,
door gunner, nighttime strolls in the jungle,
LRRP sniper.
No sleep now,
this nightmare like the last:
angry,
blood red,
bodies,
dead young men,
smells,
sounds,
rapid streams of lead
splayed
into living forms.
Body whole,
countenance unshaken,
soul ripped asunder.
We forget what they gave,
what war serves back.
Why not our guilt,
not his or hers.
The glove of war envelopes
in its searing grasp.
Cannot
shake it free,
nor put it down
nor push it away.
Burnt by that hot
heat once again.

- Ernie Carpenter

Larry Robinson

02-16-2018, 07:11 AM

Zone

I spent the day
differentiating
and wound up
with nothing
whole to keep:

tree came apart from tree,
oak from maple, oak
from oak, leaf from leaf,
mesophyll cell
from cell
and toward dark
I got lost between
cytoplasm’s grains
and vacuoles:

the next day began
otherwise: tree
became plant, plant
and animal became
life: life & rock,
matter: that
took up most of
the morning: after
noon, matter began
to pulse, shoot, to
vanish in and out of
energy and

energy’s invisible
swirls confused, surpassed
me: from that edge
I turned back,
strict with limitation,
to my world’s
bitter acorns
and sweet branch water.

- A. R. Ammons

Larry Robinson

02-17-2018, 07:56 AM

REALnothings

02-17-2018, 08:21 AM

Lovely; and for me, timely.
Maybe a poem like this is always timely...

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Larry Robinson

02-18-2018, 06:24 AM

Sorrow and Joy

Sorrow and joy, alternating
like water and vapor and ice,
sorrow and joy in the same substance.
We knew.

Love and unlove, two colors
in a single rose, it’s wonderful,
an achievement of the rose’s cultivator
whose name stays with the rose.

Many years later we met again
without pain, each of us with our own tranquility.
That was the Garden of Eden
but it was also hell.

- Yehuda Amichai
(Translated by Robert Alter)

Larry Robinson

02-19-2018, 07:10 AM

Populist Manifesto #1

Poets, come out of your closets,
Open your windows, open your doors,
You have been holed-up too long
in your closed worlds.
Come down, come down
from your Russian Hills and Telegraph Hills,
your Beacon Hills and your Chapel Hills,
your Mount Analogues and Montparnasses,
down from your foothills and mountains,
out of your teepees and domes.
The trees are still falling
and we’ll to the woods no more.
No time now for sitting in them
As man burns down his own house
to roast his pig
No more chanting Hare Krishna
while Rome burns.
San Francisco’s burning,
Mayakovsky’s Moscow’s burning
the fossil-fuels of life.
Night & the Horse approaches
eating light, heat & power,
and the clouds have trousers.
No time now for the artist to hide
above, beyond, behind the scenes,
indifferent, paring his fingernails,
refining himself out of existence.
No time now for our little literary games,
no time now for our paranoias & hypochondrias,
no time now for fear & loathing,
time now only for light & love.
We have seen the best minds of our generation
destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Poetry isn’t a secret society,
It isn’t a temple either.
Secret words & chants won’t do any longer.
The hour of oming is over,
the time of keening come,
a time for keening & rejoicing
over the coming end
of industrial civilization
which is bad for earth & Man.
Time now to face outward
in the full lotus position
with eyes wide open,
Time now to open your mouths
with a new open speech,
time now to communicate with all sentient beings,
All you ‘Poets of the Cities’
hung in museums including myself,
All you poet’s poets writing poetry
about poetry,
All you poetry workshop poets
in the boondock heart of America,
All you housebroken Ezra Pounds,
All you far-out freaked-out cut-up poets,
All you pre-stressed Concrete poets,
All you cunnilingual poets,
All you pay-toilet poets groaning with graffiti,
All you A-train swingers who never swing on birches,
All you masters of the sawmill haiku in the Siberias of America,
All you eyeless unrealists,
All you self-occulting supersurrealists,
All you bedroom visionaries and closet agitpropagators,
All you Groucho Marxist poets
and leisure-class Comrades
who lie around all day and talk about the workingclass proletariat,
All you Catholic anarchists of poetry,
All you Black Mountaineers of poetry,
All you Boston Brahmins and Bolinas bucolics,
All you den mothers of poetry,
All you zen brothers of poetry,
All you suicide lovers of poetry,
All you hairy professors of poesie,
All you poetry reviewers
drinking the blood of the poet,
All you Poetry Police -
Where are Whitman’s wild children,
where the great voices speaking out
with a sense of sweetness and sublimity,
where the great new vision,
the great world-view,
the high prophetic song
of the immense earth
and all that sings in it
And our relations to it -
Poets, descend
to the street of the world once more
And open your minds & eyes
with the old visual delight,
Clear your throat and speak up,
Poetry is dead, long live poetry
with terrible eyes and buffalo strength.
Don’t wait for the Revolution
or it’ll happen without you,
Stop mumbling and speak out
with a new wide-open poetry
with a new commonsensual ‘public surface’
with other subjective levels
or other subversive levels,
a tuning fork in the inner ear
to strike below the surface.
Of your own sweet Self still sing
yet utter the word en-masse -
Poetry the common carrier
for the transportation of the public
to higher places
than other wheels can carry it.
Poetry still falls from the skies
into our streets still open.
They haven’t put up the barricades, yet,
the streets still alive with faces,
lovely men & women still walking there,
still lovely creatures everywhere,
in the eyes of all the secret of all
still buried there,
Whitman’s wild children still sleeping there,
Awake and walk in the open air.

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Larry Robinson

02-20-2018, 07:27 AM

My Grandmother’s Hair

I wash and comb her hair
Sweep up long gray strands,
an old world bun
reminiscent of a former life
She leaves her family,
her home
her country
her language
A wife, she births five children
A widow, she raises them through a depression and a war
She never returns
Never sees the family she left behind
She sits quietly on a kitchen stool
Head downcast, hands folded
I wash and comb her hair
Long gray strands
Fall silently at my feet
Like the sorrows of her life
A life of leaving and loss
A life of living and loving
Now I weave this legacy into my life
As long gray strands of hair
Fall silently at my feet

- Rebecca Evert

Larry Robinson

02-21-2018, 07:39 AM

What We Did While We Made More Guns

Prayed.
Dug mass graves.
Raped the daughters of the enemy, who,
in their terror,
turned back into swans.
Placed war orphans in loving homes.
Pinned honorifics
to field-dressed shadows,
recruited hommes noirs
to fill empty jail cells and swans
with their coruscating metallic cries
to lend comic grace
to memorial fountains.
The exchange of gifts, the games, the tilts, the jousts
the masques,
proceeded without irony.
The year’s cotillion was elegantly attended
by debutantes in a glowing
orange and red silk tent
before an amputated audience
of officers, some crying,
some propped on tiny
keepsake pillows.
We prayed.
Prayed for peace
through victory.
Sang the old hymns—
It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh Lord….
Planted winter wheat. Let it rot,
the alcohol smell sweet and scouring.
Planted corn.
Ate the mice that overran the field
instead, blood and small hides
in our cupped hands, and
purpose,

our hair
dripping as though we had just stepped
from a bath with our beloved.
The dead we have with us always.
Livestock were fed broken chocolate bars
to fatten provisions
quickly.
Guts ruined, they bellowed all night
but we were sleeping
only two or three hours now,
there was so much to do—
tunnels to torch,
missile silos to polish with our hair.
Cops and
students of political science
orated like gods in parking lots
decorated with thousands of yellow ribbons,
red searchlights
scalded the possible flight paths
of our urgency, everyone useful, finally, everyone
making corrections
to sacrifice,
beauty to conviction.
Paying prisoners of war
one bucket of water
for the truth.
Two if it wasn’t any good.

- Dorothy Barresi

Larry Robinson

02-22-2018, 06:39 AM

The Moment

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

- Margaret Atwood

Larry Robinson

02-23-2018, 07:28 AM

Tula [”Books are door-shaped”]

Books are door-shaped
portals
carrying me
across oceans
and centuries,
helping me feel
less alone.

But my mother believes
that girls who read too much
are unladylike
and ugly,
so my father's books are locked
in a clear glass cabinet. I gaze
at enticing covers
and mysterious titles,
but I am rarely permitted
to touch
the enchantment
of words.

Poems.
Stories.
Plays.
All are forbidden.
Girls are not supposed to think,
but as soon as my eager mind
begins to race, free thoughts
rush in
to replace
the trapped ones.

I imagine distant times
and faraway places.
Ghosts.
Vampires.
Ancient warriors.
Fantasy moves into
the tangled maze
of lonely confusion.

Secretly, I open
an invisible book in my mind,
and I step
through its magical door-shape
into a universe
of dangerous villains
and breathtaking heroes.

Many of the heroes are men
and boys, but some are girls
so tall
strong
and clever
that they rescue other children
from monsters.

- Margarita Engle

Larry Robinson

02-24-2018, 07:39 AM

Norwegian Grandfathers

My grandfather lived under the viaduct
Seattle’s postmodern Skid Row
Salt air softened his dark face;
Eyes like the Aleut
Cheekbones like the Chinook
He drank under the viaduct fast and furious
Like the trucks rumbling on concrete above his head

He was the Underground Seattle.
One of its dark knights
He ate smoked fish
That scented his jacket the day
we met;
Brown eyes like mine
Round face like mine
Missing teeth like mine

I was six when we found him
Our father driving four curious grandchildren
To meet a quiet man who out of respect
Wore a gray suit that hung
Limp on bent-over bones
Who couldn’t make his eyes meet mine
A weathered half smile was his hello

Descendants of the logging men
The failed gold miners
The daring men who once sailed from Oslo
Who knew the sea
Who knew the salmon
Who knew how to shape logs into homes
And children’s bed boards
Grandfathers, all of them
Who slept outside now
Smelling of salt brine aroma;
The Puget Sound

I met my grandfather living on skid row
Who still remembered when giant cedars
Came skidding down the mountain
Crashing overhead to the lumber ships below
Living under those trestles was desperate then,
Still is.
He lived near the sea
Drank near the sea
Died near the sea

Norwegian eyes like the Snohomish
Quinalt his forehead
The Athabaskan face
Of lost men.

- Kristy Hellum

Larry Robinson

02-25-2018, 06:48 AM

Just Because

Just because the Robins are trading places
on the telephone wire
Just because the sky now smiles blue
after a tussle with the morning fog
Just because the calla lilies are raising a toast
to their shy mustard seed neighbors
Just because the gnarled Pepper tree is sprinkling leaves
and seeds on my front steps
Just because it's peaceful and quiet
outside my front door
Just because I’m alive
to know one more spring
Just because I’ve made more room
for beauty to find a home
Just because I can
I’m opening my front door

- Doug von Koss

Ronaldo

02-25-2018, 09:26 AM

Illustrated with original art.

42811

Just Because

...

Larry Robinson

02-26-2018, 06:34 AM

Parable

First divesting ourselves of worldly goods, as St. Francis teaches,
in order that our souls not be distracted
by gain and loss, and in order also
that our bodies be free to move
easily at the mountain passes, we had then to discuss
whither or where we might travel, with the second question being
should we have a purpose, against which
many of us argued fiercely that such purpose
corresponded to worldly goods, meaning a limitation or constriction,
whereas others said it was by this word we were consecrated
pilgrims rather than wanderers: in our minds, the word translated as
a dream, a something-sought, so that by concentrating we might see it
glimmering among the stones, and not
pass blindly by; each
further issue we debated equally fully, the arguments going back and forth,
so that we grew, some said, less flexible and more resigned,
like soldiers in a useless war. And snow fell upon us, and wind blew,
which in time abated — where the snow had been, many flowers appeared,
and where the stars had shone, the sun rose over the tree line
so that we had shadows again; many times this happened.
Also rain, also flooding sometimes, also avalanches, in which
some of us were lost, and periodically we would seem
to have achieved an agreement; our canteens
hoisted upon our shoulders, but always that moment passed, so
(after many years) we were still at that first stage, still
preparing to begin a journey, but we were changed nevertheless;
we could see this in one another; we had changed although
we never moved, and one said, ah, behold how we have aged, traveling
from day to night only, neither forward nor sideward, and this seemed
in a strange way miraculous. And those who believed we should have a purpose
believed this was the purpose, and those who felt we must remain free
in order to encounter truth, felt it had been revealed.

- Louise Gluck

Larry Robinson

02-27-2018, 07:54 AM

Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild

A group of grandmothers is a tapestry, A group of toddlers, a jubilance (see also: a
bewailing). A group of librarians is an enlightenment. A group of artists is a
bioluminescence. A group of short story writers is a Flannery. A group of
musicians is - a band.

A resplendence of poets.
A beacon of scientists.
A raft of social workers,

A group of first responders is a valiance. A group of peaceful protesters is a dream.
A group of special education teachers is a transcendence. A group of neonatal ICU
nurses is a divinity. A group of hospice workers, a grace.

Humans is the wild, gathered and feeling good, previously an exhilaration, now: a
target.

A target of concert-goers.
A target of movie-goers.
A target of dancers.

A group of schoolchildren is a target.

- Kathy Fish

Larry Robinson

02-28-2018, 07:11 AM

Nero Tells All

I smelled the smoke first—
wood fire wafting on the wind

then the sky darkened
like the angry face of Jove

and bright spears of flame
shot to the heavens.

Why look to me?
It was not I
who sparked the blaze.

Blame those others
with their foreign ways,
and the fools who built
their hovels out of wood.

When the refugees
from the city drew near

with their shrieks and moans,
their stink of charred flesh

I barred the door
and taking the fiddle from the table

as was my habit
began to play.

- Lisa Shulman

Larry Robinson

03-01-2018, 07:15 AM

My Ancestry DNA results came in

Just as I suspected, my great great grandfather
was a monarch butterfly.
Much of who I am is still wriggling under a stone.
I am part larva, but part hummingbird too.
There is dinosaur tar in my bone marrow.
My golden hair sprang out of a meadow in Palestine.
Genghis Khan is my fourth cousin,
but I didn't get his dimples.
My loins are loaded with banyan seeds from Sri Lanka,
but I descended from Ravanna, not Ram.
My uncle is a mastodon.
There are traces of white people in my saliva.
3.7 billion years ago I swirled in the golden dust,
dreaming of a planet overgrown with lingams and yonis.
More recently, say 60,000 B.C.
I walked on hairy paws across a land bridge
joining Sweden to Botswana.
I am the bastard of the sun and moon.
I can no longer hide my heritage of raindrops and cougar scat.
I am made of your grandmother's tears.
You conquered rival tribesmen of your own color,
chained them together, marched them naked to the coast,
and sold them to colonials from Savannah.
I was that brother you sold, I was the slave trader,
I was the chain.
Admit it, you have wings, vast and golden,
like mine, like mine.
You have sweat, black and salty,
like mine, like mine.
You have secrets silently singing in your blood,
like mine, like mine.
Don't pretend that earth is not one family.
Don't pretend we never hung from the same branch.
Don't pretend we don't ripen on each other's breath.
Don’t pretend we didn't come here to forgive.

- Fred LaMotte

REALnothings

03-01-2018, 07:30 AM

Love it! Great lines! :heart:

Larry Robinson

03-02-2018, 07:36 AM

Glen and Paul
At Stewart Municipal Campground in British Columbia
bordering Alaska

Two happy middle aged men and
a white jeep station wagon

On top, a pop up tent for sleeping
a small ladder down the side of the car

One man went for a walk
while the other made dinner

A campsite picnic table
just a few steps from their car

A shake of a checkered table cloth
smoothed out by strong hands

A wine and beer glass, colorful plates
a small portable grill

The man returned from his walk
to a well thought out dinner

They ate together under the coniferous
trees in the warm glow of the evening light

When dinner was over they bundled it all up
put it carefully back into the jeep

They climbed up the ladder and went off to bed

The next morning fresh pressed coffee, orange juice
with scrambled eggs and toast

Two heads together studying a map
folding it back slowly, section by section

They pushed down the pop up tent
retrieved the ladder, and drove away

- Patricia LeBon Herb

Larry Robinson

03-03-2018, 06:36 AM

We are all Strangers

Crisps of sleet slash my face walking to yoga
in the morning of the bomb cyclone
of wind and snow.

A bomb cyclone conjures WW2 pilots
releasing carnage on cities, dropping explosives
on medieval churches--erasing history
for the sake of preserving civilization.

The yoga teacher never shows up,
leaving three students outside a bodega shivering
in the morning of the bomb cyclone, while a tattered lady,
face eclipsed by a woolen batman mask,
drags a suitcase through the storm.

We are all strangers in the snow-- herky-jerky
memento mori, dreaming transformation
and repose towards an opening,
neither weapon nor cyclone.

For me, coffee and croissant in a diner,
warmth and sustenance
filling in the dots.

- Barry Denny

** A bomb cyclone is basically a winter hurricane. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it "occurs when a midlatitude cyclone rapidly intensifies," or quickly drops in atmospheric pressure, marking the strengthening of the storm.

Larry Robinson

03-04-2018, 07:09 AM

Rebirth

Primordial, primal, intuitive
ancient knowing eyes — that are
looking out onto a vast sea
of pinkish lotus flowers
each year rising unrestrained
from their dense and murky muddy floor
patient — arriving into the sunlit air
leaves appear, then the flowers bloom
to view the dark green forest
ancient as the fossil flower
both here long before man

i have come to listen to this place
that i somehow seem to know
to put my cold feet into the water
that warms them like the sun
soul has told me
i have been here before
running naked through the woods
placing lotus seeds in wooden bowls
feeling the gentle rain at night
just being human — ancient and modern
in many different skins

- Karen Gunderson

Larry Robinson

03-05-2018, 07:19 AM

Rooms

1.

Some of us wake up
to rooms and brewed coffee

and the low clatter of spoons
filling up the kitchen

while the voice
of an elderly

pacing
the street below

our balcony
begs

allah
allah
allah

like a drifting tune
till we no longer hear him.

2.

Here comes the fruit cart
selling tangerines like tiny fists.

Here comes the man who measures
the weight

of chestnuts only to burn them
on a low fire.

Everywhere, children
are breastfeeding other children.

3.

War within
earshot
and the sea
the size of our lungs

we choke on the bones of those
who drowned and never arrived
or never left/

/this Mediterranean overpass to
nowhere.

Sabah el khair are two words
of a prayer.

We used to think that refugees
were of one kind

and we never knew
that we were too.

4.

My aunt says a woman
is like the soil, like the land,

el maraa mitil el ard

giving back despite
the pounding of army

boots and the blue fists
of men on our skin.

Giving back in orange
groves and children

even though her body
couldn’t
her land lost

eighteen and forced to walk
the length

of exile to get here.

5.

Here the streets are stray
cats. The streets are gossip

in the mouths of men.
/Minarets creaking like

old forgotten beds./

You say these men kill
with their hands, their teeth,

their swords, this is the way
they open countries.

You say you have no
idea who their god is

and why
but you know exactly

how only some of us
wake up to rooms

and brewed coffee
to the low clatter of spoons filling up

the kitchen
like a cruel laugh in our chest—

- Rewa Zeinati

Larry Robinson

03-06-2018, 06:44 AM

The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

- Mark Strand

Larry Robinson

03-07-2018, 07:47 AM

Timber

Fortunate is the hour
when you stumbled and fell down
into this.

Never stand again.
On your knees remain
where the earth is,

where the fire is ever-ready
and the air ever-clear,
water, and the stones of God.

For the Woods Of Error are
the wood of the real,
chosen for us as

the color of your soul.
Lie where forgiveness lies,
make love to that.

For there is nothing else
but gratitude, which is what
all your longing was for.

- Bruce Moody

Roland Jacopetti

03-07-2018, 11:04 AM

Thanks, Mark (and Larry). I think I'm ready.
rj

The End

Not every man knows what he shall sing at the end,
Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like
When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, there at the end,
Or what he shall hope for once it is clear that he’ll never go back.

When the time has passed to prune the rose or caress the cat,
When the sunset torching the lawn and the full moon icing it down
No longer appear, not every man knows what he’ll discover instead.
When the weight of the past leans against nothing, and the sky

Is no more than remembered light, and the stories of cirrus
And cumulus come to a close, and all the birds are suspended in flight,
Not every man knows what is waiting for him, or what he shall sing
When the ship he is on slips into darkness, there at the end.

- Mark Strand

Larry Robinson

03-08-2018, 07:02 AM

Phenomenal Woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD5Jhc0S320
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.
Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

- Maya Angelou

Larry Robinson

03-09-2018, 06:51 AM

My Mother as the Voice of Kahlo

I am fourteen & feeling ugly

looking at a unibrow
like the one I’d like to get rid of

when my mother says
Yes it’s supposed to be a bird
See she did it on purpose
See she didn’t care
what people thought of her
only what they were made of
which animals were inside & why
Here she’s a stag in mid-leap

with nine arrows in her body
alive bleeding

Her grief is constant & irreparable

like the crown of fresh flowers
she killed each day

See the instinct for painting is the instinct for power
Women don’t
choose work over love
but it’s not the same for men

See all men are in love with themselves

Like Diego & your father

& even an artist
will leave his wife behind

but he can’t if she runs harder
if she’s both hunter & sacrifice

- Analicia Sotelo

Larry Robinson

03-10-2018, 06:48 AM

Stars In A Wild Array

you're way closer to the end
than the beginning and now
free your mind of worries

since once we weren't even here
bright earth traveling in space yes
without us and soon

bright earth moving
round and round
the sun the moon

strong planets and
stars in a wild array
traveling without us

again unless we say
I am spirit always
I am awake in the west

I am spirit even
when I'm long gone
and real gone

gone for always
let's relax and say
you'll be spirit too

- Jack Crimmins

Larry Robinson

03-11-2018, 07:03 AM

Sadness Street

“Coffee in the Park”, “Larks in the Fields”
Or “A Grove of Fountains”
Would be nicer poem titles
Were it not for the
Silent and stunning starkness
Of leveled neighborhoods, grey and gayless.

Where did all the stuff go?
Some wafted west and south
In choking clouds
And found on far off lawns and streets
as feather weight horror shadows
Of Aunts and tax records
And love letters.

Where are the fortunate
But still trembling souls who
Escaped over embers aglow
In that predawn October night
From those streets of Santa Rosa,
All now renamed
Sadness Street?

- Jeff Boal

Larry Robinson

03-12-2018, 07:23 AM

Fire Empathy

The fires burn
And envelope
Houses erupt
And all is lost
History and its roots
In photos and memorabilia
The touch of spaces created
By love and children
Where I grew up
My friends in shelters
Perhaps moving on
In survival to other realms
Torn apart
Confused
Marked

The fires come and surround
In torrents of flame
Burst upon.
Those of us in forests
Feel the heat
As possible
Watch the winds
Pray for rain
Love those who fight the fires
Take in the refugees
Welcome!
You are us
We are you.

We change nature
Nature changes us
Irrevocably.
It is illusion
To feel we are safe from the natural--
That illusion will be broken.
Craft love of the natural
Know it
Live it
Live in it
Cultivate
Take nothing for granted.

- Phil Wolfson

Larry Robinson

03-13-2018, 07:31 AM

On Children

Your children are not your children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g0RZh0GlgQ
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran

Lilith Rogers

03-13-2018, 10:54 PM

Love this Larry. Have heard the first few verse as a song--did not realize it came from Kahlil Gibran. Thank you. Lilith

On Children

Your children are not your children.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g0RZh0GlgQ
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- Kahlil Gibran

Lilith Rogers

03-13-2018, 11:01 PM

Oh, my now I just watched the beautiful video and heard the song that you posted with it. Thank you!!!

Lilith

Love this Larry. Have heard the first few verse as a song--did not realize it came from Kahlil Gibran. Thank you. Lilith

Larry Robinson

03-14-2018, 06:58 AM

For The Children

The rising hills, the slopes
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

- Gary Snyder

Larry Robinson

03-15-2018, 07:38 AM

Nothing

Nothing sings in our bodies
like breath in a flute.
It dwells in the drum.
I hear it now
that slow beat
like when a voice said to the dark,
let there be light,
let there be ocean
and blue fish
born of nothing
and they were there.
I turn back to bed.
The man there is breathing.
I touch him
with hands already owned by another world.
Look, they are desert,
they are rust. They have washed the dead.
They have washed the just born.
They are open.
They offer nothing.
Take it.
Take nothing from me.
There is still a little life
left inside this body,
a little wildness here
and mercy
and it is the emptiness
we love, touch, enter in one another,
and try to fill.

- Linda Hogan

Larry Robinson

03-16-2018, 06:31 AM

Why Should Not Old Men Be Mad

Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly fisher's wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had
Know why an old man should be mad.

- William Butler Yeats

Larry Robinson

03-17-2018, 05:07 AM

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-03-17_10-40-00.png

The Wind That Shakes the Barley

There's music in my heart all day,
I hear it late and early,
It comes from fields are far away,
The wind that shakes the barley.

Above the uplands drenched with dew
The sky hangs soft and pearly,
An emerald world is listening to
The wind that shakes the barley.

Above the bluest mountain crest
The lark is singing rarely,
It rocks the singer into rest,
The wind that shakes the barley.

Oh, still through summers and through springs
It calls me late and early.
Come home, come home, come home, it sings,
The wind that shakes the barley.

- Katharine Tynan