Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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

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

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

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

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

The Layers


I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In the darkest night,
when the moon is covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.


- Stanley Kunitz

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Illustrated with original art.

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Just Because

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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

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

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

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

Love it! Great lines! :heart:

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

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

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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

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