Thank You for Waiting

At this moment in time we'd like to invite
First Class passengers only to board the aircraft.

Thank you for waiting. We now extend our invitation
to Exclusive,...

What I Teach 3rd Graders

I teach how to shake hands
and raise hands
and clap hands
to appreciate.
How to listen
how to wait
how to hold a pencil
(not a gun).

The Formula

I'm going to let you in
On a secret: You’re not alone
Looking for the one, right way
The way where no mistake
Is possible, the place
Of no loss, no deluge
On the wedding day, no...

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Mehttps://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2018-03-21_10-28-32.png

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the...

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...

Tula [”Books are door-shaped”]

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

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...

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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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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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...

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...

Prayer


Tonight...instead of trying to talk to You in my bed,
I talk to You with my pen...a Psalm...

Winter Solstice: Persephone's Return

I stand at my kitchen window
in the silence of the still sleeping
house and watch the sun
scatter eucalyptus light into leaves,
peel red strips of sky from...

If, On Account Of The Political Situation


If, on account of the political situation,
there are quite a number of homes without roofs, and men
Lying about in the countryside neither drunk or...

The Beautiful Changes

One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides
The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies
On water; it glides
So from the walker, it turns
Dry grass to a lake, as the...

Song: The Kiss

We were walking through
A department store in Paris,
Escaping the rain,
The sort of French rain
That changes in intensity
If you look at it,...

You Learn

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul,

And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security.

And you...

Advice from a Five Year Old

Audra asks my dog’s middle name.
I say it’s Super Star. She says,

“What’s her last name?”
I say it’s Wing, like me.

She spins twice on one sneakered toe,...

The Forgotten Dialect Of The Heart


How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the...

In a Neighborhood in Los Angeles

I learned
Spanish
from my grandma

mijito
don’t cry
she’d tell me

Earth Prayer

O Endless Creator, Force of Life, Seat of the Unconscious, Dharma,
Atman, Ra, Qalb, Dear Center of our Love, Christlight, Yahweh, Allah,
Mawu, Mother of the Universe…

Let us,...

Cupped Hands

Find a teacher. Preferably one that lives close by. Very close. Like inside. Build a container. You don't have to cut down a tree and then let the wood season nor purchase a lathe and...

The Chambermaids in the Marriott in Midmorning

are having a sort of coffee klatch as they clean
calling across the corridors in their rich contraltos
while luffing fresh sheets in the flickering...

The Good Life

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on...

Love Comes Quietly

Love comes quietly,
Finally drops around me,
On me, in the old way.

What did I know,
Thinking myself able to go alone
All the way?

Animal Rescue

To say nothing of all the moths and wasps
I’ve been opening windows for;

the sheep headlocked in the wire
of a fence,

the newt in the slippery inch
of a dog-bowl of rain,

Senior Discount

I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.

So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.

I’ll wait at register two in my green...

A Daily Joy to be Alive

No matter how serene things
may be in my life,
how well things are going,
my body and soul
are two cliff peaks
from which a dream of who I can be
falls, and I must...

Her Roots


A strong wind
wrenched the great Madrone
from her hold in the hillside,
and when she fell
her roots,
hanging in mid-air,
gave us handholds

Little Boy

for Donald Trump

When you speak, I hear
the child in you demand:

Make me a golden crown
Bring me a spotless mirror
Tell me I an the smartest

The Sacred Life

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

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

How to Stop the Old Conversation

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

See the power of the...

Home

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well
your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in...

Alt Right News Feed


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

and lately

The New Colossushttps://www.WaccoBB.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2017-01-30_10-07-04.png

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame
39004With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at...

In the Deepest Deep


In the deepest deep and the darkest dark,
when the lightest light is the smallest spark,
when oppression reigns and repression leads,
when hate drives men in fanatic...

Statues
1989

In Prague, or perhaps Budapest,
the heroes have fallen off their horses.
Here lies a general's profile
and here a helmet, there
a ferrous glove still holding the...

Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHI9BTpGkp8
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feels
that it ain't exactly real,
or...

Shoulders

A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to...

A Song on the End of the World


On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover,
A fisherman mends a glimmering net.
Happy porpoises jump in the sea,
By the rainspout young sparrows are...

Invisible Work

Because no one could ever praise me enough,
because I don't mean these poems only
but the unseen
unbelievable effort it takes to live
the life that goes on between them,
I...

Ravens Hiding in a Shoe


There is something men and women living in houses
Don’t understand. The old alchemists standing
Near their stoves hinted at it a thousand times.

Ravens at night hide...

Burning the Old Year

Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.

So much of any...

For/From Lew Welch

Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't shoot yourself after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down...

Sharing The Grief

She held her heart
She held all hearts
In grief on the globe
It is too much suffering
For one heart
So she takes a piece
You take a piece
I take a piece