Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

The Poets Are Dying


It seems impossible
they seemed immortal.

Where are they going
if not to their next poems?

Poems that, like lives, make do
and make that doing do more—

holding a jolt like a newborn,
a volta turning toward a god-load

of grief dumped from some heaven
where words rain down

and the poet is soaked. Cold
to the bone, we’ve become. Thick-

headed, death-bedded, heartsick.
Poets. Flowers picked, candles wicked,

forgiving everyone they tricked.

- Brenda Shaughnessy

Could this be the year?


Could this be the year the troops come home
from every battle every land everywhere -
home to love healing peace?

Could this be the year we build more homes than bombs
make more cookies than bullets
write more poems than balance sheets?

Could this be the year that no child goes hungry
no woman abused no man homeless
no body unloved?

Could this be the year that the salmon swim
the songbirds sing the coyotes dance
in greater numbers than we have ever known?

Could this be the year we stop serving the machine
the machine begins serving us
we begin serving life?

Could this be the year the ancient promise comes true
you know the one I mean of peace on earth
good will to all?

- Larry Robinson

The ABC of Security


Said Mr. A to Mr. B,
"I doubt the loyalty of C."


Said Mr. B to Mr. A,
"I'm shocked and stunned by what you say;
We'd better check on him today,
And since you've brought up Mr. C,
I feel that I must mention D.
I rather doubt his loyalty."


Said Mr. F to Mr. G,
"G, have you ever noticed B?
What do you make of his loyalty?"


Said Mr. G to Mr. F,
"Lower your voice - people aren't deaf!
I wouldn't want you quoting me,
But sure, I've always noticed B."


Said Mr. C to Mr. A,
"I saw a funny thing today;
At least, it seemed quite odd to me.
I saw F whispering with G
And I just caught the name of B."


"No, really?" answered A to C.
"Well, anyway - I don't know B.
I guess it's just as well for me."


And so the subtle poison spread
Until there rose a Mr. Zed.
The lightning played around his head.
"My fellow-countrymen," he said,
"The past, as you'll observe, is dead,
The alphabet's discredited;
You can't trust teachers now to teach,
You can't trust ministers to preach,
And it has been my special labor
To prove that none can trust his neighbor
In fact, it's amply clear to see
There's no one you can trust but me.
And by a happy turn of fate
I've come to purify the state.
My methods will be swift and strong
Against the crime of thinking wrong.
I know the cure for heresy
And you can leave it all to me.
Leave everything to me!" he said.


"Hurrah!" they cried. "Hurrah for Zed!”

E.B. White
(9 May, 1953)

Bless Their Hearts


At Steak ‘n Shake I learned that if you add
“Bless their hearts” after their names, you can say
whatever you want about them and it’s OK.
My son, bless his heart, is an idiot,
she said. He rents storage space for his kids’
toys—they’re only one and three years old!
I said, my father, bless his heart, has turned
into a sentimental old fool. He gets
weepy when he hears my daughter’s greeting
on our voice mail. Before our Steakburgers came
someone else blessed her office mate’s heart,
then, as an afterthought, the jealous hearts
of the entire anthropology department.
We bestowed blessings on many a heart
that day. I even blessed my ex-wife’s heart.
Our waiter, bless his heart, would not be getting
much tip, for which, no doubt, he’d bless our hearts.
In a week it would be Thanksgiving,
and we would each sit with our respective
families, counting our blessings and blessing
the hearts of family members as only family
does best. Oh, bless us all, yes, bless us, please
bless us and bless our crummy little hearts.


- Richard Newman

Spider Parable

Suspended from my ceiling on a single thread,
the spider became aware I planned to capture her.
Not knowing I would carefully carry her
to the garden, she scurried up her strand of silk,
winding it into a ball as she retreated, like the
Kogi of Columbia who pull in their rope bridge
when they return from journeys in our world.

O yes, the Kogi know they must keep their world
apart, safe from all who plunder Being, who divide
the very heart of Life into shacks and the gilded
habitations of the unaware, where slaver whip
echoes are silenced, where the fearful rumble of
collapsed mines, the din of mills, the cries of
the sick, the hungry, the wounded cannot intrude.

But the voices of Being are rising. In the wind and
the rain they rise, from the young and the old, in
classrooms, mobbed streets and meeting halls, in
chapels where candles glow in a Mother icon’s eyes,
where stained-glass light is Sun’s blessing. O yes,
voices are rising around the world -- from walls to
bridges, the Song of the One and the All resounds,
the ancient thread for binding us into Life’s circle.


- Cynthia Poten

For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet


Put down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop.

Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control.

Open the door, then close it behind you.

Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean.

Give it back with gratitude.

If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back.

Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire.

Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has been there without time.

Let the earth stabilize your postcolonial insecure jitters.

Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.

Don’t worry.
The heart knows the way though there may be high-rises, interstates, checkpoints, armed soldiers, massacres, wars, and those who will despise you because they despise themselves.

The journey might take you a few hours, a day, a year, a few years, a hundred, a thousand or even more.

Watch your mind. Without training it might run away and leave your heart for the immense human feast set by the thieves of time.

Do not hold regrets.

When you find your way to the circle, to the fire kept burning by the keepers of your soul, you will be welcomed.

You must clean yourself with cedar, sage, or other healing plant.

Cut the ties you have to failure and shame.

Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart, all the way to your feet. Let go the pain of your ancestors to make way for those who are heading in our direction.

Ask for forgiveness.

Call upon the help of those who love you. These helpers take many forms: animal, element, bird, angel, saint, stone, or ancestor.

Call your spirit back. It may be caught in corners and creases of shame, judgment, and human abuse.

You must call in a way that your spirit will want to return.

Speak to it as you would to a beloved child.

Welcome your spirit back from its wandering. It may return in pieces, in tatters. Gather them together. They will be happy to be found after being lost for so long.

Your spirit will need to sleep awhile after it is bathed and given clean clothes.

Now you can have a party. Invite everyone you know who loves and supports you. Keep room for those who have no place else to go.

Make a giveaway, and remember, keep the speeches short.

Then, you must do this: help the next person find their way through the dark.

- Joy Harjo

i am running into a new year


i am running into a new year
and the old years blow back
like a wind
that i catch in my hair
like strong fingers like
all my old promises and
it will be hard to let go
of what i said to myself
about myself
when i was sixteen and
twenty-six and thirty-six
even thirty-six but
i am running into a new year
and i beg what i love and
i leave to forgive me


- Lucille Clifton

A Poem I Wrote In A High Fever


You who are lengthening your lives
with the best doctors and the best medicines
remember those who are shortening their lives
with the wars
that you in your long lives are not
preventing

You who are again screwing
the younger generations
and winking at each other
the winking of your eyelids
is like the chill of the swinging shutters
in an empty house.


-Yehuda Amichai

(Translated, from the Hebrew, by Leon Wieseltier)

Another Happy New Year


The party's done, the plastic cups used up -
the ones we never know whether to wash or throw away -
thus
ambivalence follows us
into the new year
starting with the cups.


The food
my mother's crab mousse
so fifties in flavor
even the punch
a throwback to simpler days
when three kinds of sweet liquids
mixed together
did not make us quake
with fear of the consequences.


big resolutions
mostly the same
again and again


yet each year
I grow calmer
finding a still point
amidst the tumult
holding on
to the quicksilver
river of my dreams.
.
There is that cleansed feeling -
the counters bare of the detritus of the year
extraneous magazines never read now ready
to be trash
which we euphemistically call
recycle - as if we weren’t wasting
so much paper.


As for resolutions - make ones that are doable.
The pen falls and the mind falters.
More than resolutions
how about reflecting –
have I become more me? that is all I ask.


And I respond to welcome the new year
with this poem.


- Basha/Barbara Hirschfeld

Anthropocene


Nesting, the turtle seems to be crying even though she is simply secreting
her salt. Her dozens bud limbs inside amniotic pillows

as she leaves every egg in a cup of sand the size of her body,
shaped like a tilting teardrop — and both cryings

are mentioned by scientists. My niece Eve is startle-eyed when you feed her
avocado and when you feed her sweet potato. She lives mouth first:

she would eat the sidewalk and piano, the symmetrical petals of the Bradford pear,
as if she could learn which parts of the world are made and how,

and yesterday she put her mouth on the image of her own face
in the mirror. Larkin says what will survive of us is love,

but the scientists say that the end of the decay-chain is lead and uranium and after that,
plastics. Just now the zooplankton are swallowing micro pearls of plastic

and the sea is aflame with waste caught in the moon’s light.
Here is the darkening hour and here, the shore, as she droplets her eggs,

bright as ping pong balls, into the sand. She can’t find the spot.
The beach is saltined with lights, neoned with spectacular

globes of light, a dozen moons instead of the one moon. Still, she lets them go
and one month later, tiny turtles hatch. They seem groggy,

carrying their houses of bone and cartilage to the ocean,
scrambling toward the horizon alongside the earth’s magnetic field.

Less than one percent of the hatchlings make it past
the seagulls and crabs, so Noah spent a summer dashing them to the water.

But my poem is not about the moment when a bird dove and bore
into the underflesh and into Noah’s memory.

My poem is about how we are gathered around Eve
in the kitchen as she eats a fruit she has never tried before

and each newness in the world
stops the world’s ending in its tracks.

- Nomi Stone

Move

Whether it’s a turtle who drags herself
Slowly to the sandlot, where she digs
The sandy nest she was born to dig

And lay leathery eggs in, or whether it’s salmon
Rocketing upstream
Toward pools that call, Bring your eggs here

And nowhere else in the world, whether it is turtle-green
Ugliness and awkwardness, or the seething
Grace and gild of silky salmon, we

Are envious, our wishes speak out right here,
Thirsty for a destiny like theirs,
An absolute right choice

To end all choices. Is it memory,
We ask, is it a smell
They remember,

Or just what is it—some kind of blueprint
That makes them move, hot grain by grain,
Cold cascade above icy cascade,

Slipping through
Water’s fingers
A hundred miles

Inland from the easy, shiny sea?
And we also—in the company
Of our tribe

Or perhaps alone, like the turtle
On her wrinkled feet with the tapping nails—
We also are going to travel, we say let’s be

Oblivious to all, save
That we travel, and we say
When we reach the place we’ll know

We are in the right spot, somehow, like a breath
Entering a singer’s chest, that shapes itself
For the song that is to follow.

- Alicia Ostriker

After the Wilderness


May 3, 1863


When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine,
I went to look among the fields of dead
before we lost him to a common grave.
But I kept tripping over living men
and had to stop and carry them to help
or carry them until they died,
which happened more than once upon my back.
And I got angry with those men because
they kept me from my search and I was out
still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn,
stopping to stare into each corpse’s face,
and all the while I was writing in my head
the letter I would have to send our father,
saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him.


I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that —
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live.
Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,”
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field.
It seemed a game we might have played as boys.
We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime,
the way they do on burial detail,
but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves.
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons.
His chest was large — it covered most of them.
I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair,
and as I hugged him to my chest I saw
he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.


- Andrew Hudgins

Laying the Fire


I am downstairs early
looking for something to do

when I find my father on his knees
at the fireplace in the sitting-room
sweeping ash
from around and beneath the grate
with the soft brown hand-brush
he keeps especially for this.

Has he been here all night
waiting to catch me out?
So far as I can tell
I have done nothing wrong.

I think so again
when he calls my name
without turning round;

he must have seen me
with the eyes in the back of his head.

‘What’s the matter old boy?
Couldn’t sleep?’

His voice is kinder than I expect,
as though he knows
we have in common a sadness
I do not feel yet.

I skate towards him in my grey socks
over the polished boards of the sitting-room,

negotiating the rugs
with their patterns of almost-dragons.

He still does not turn round.

He is concentrating now
on arranging a stack of kindling
on crumpled newspaper in the fire basket,

pressing small lumps of coal
carefully between the sticks
as though he is decorating a cake.

Then he spurts a match,
and chucks it on any old how,

before spreading a fresh sheet of newspaper
over the whole mouth of the fireplace
to make the flames take hold.

Why this fresh sheet
does not also catch alight
I cannot think.

The flames are very close.

I can see them
and hear them raging
through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy

and President Khrushchev
racing towards each other in their motorcars
both shouting
I’m sure he’s going to stop first!

But there’s no need to worry.
Everything
is just as my father wants it to be,
and in due time,
when the fire is burning nicely,
he whisks the newspaper clear,

folds it under his arm,

and picks up the dustpan
with the debris of the night before.

Has he just spoken to me again?
I do not think so. I
do not know.
I was thinking how neat he is.
I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?

After that he chooses a log
from the wicker wood-basket
to balance on the coals,
and admires his handiwork.

When the time comes to follow him,
glide, glide over the polished floor,
he leads the way to the dustbins.

A breath of ash
pours continuously over his shoulder
from the pan he carries before him
like a man bearing a gift
in a picture of a man bearing a gift.


- Andrew Motion

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General


His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now:
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He’d wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we’re told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
’Twas time in conscience he should die
This world he cumbered long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that’s the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that, his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.


Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung.


- Jonathan Swift

rosetta

hair a bright orange
mouth painted red-red
gold teeth
fingers covered with rings
she wears many gold chains
and crosses
her car an old rusted out chevy
piled high with her belongings
she's laying against the fence
outside the opp center
wearing a long wine colored
rita hayworth number
with a slit up the side
and two black eyes

- Geri Digiorno

The Darkling Thrush


I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.


The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.


At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.


So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


- Thomas Hardy

The Dream

to Martin Luther King Jr.

"I have a dream," he said,
the dream, fitted to his times,
that his master the Nazarene
two-thousand years ago amplified
from the ancient scriptures of his cult,
the dream already pressed
into the clay tablets of Ur,
entered in the ledger of Toth,
the dream that when realized
will make us truly great.

- Rafael Jesús González

Floaters


"Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask ... have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m
not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS,
could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties
do some pretty sick things."
- Anonymous post, “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group


Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.


And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.


Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough
for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging
a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven,
sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.


Now their names rise off her tongue: Say Óscar y Valeria. He swam
from Matamoros across to Brownsville, the girl slung around his neck,
stood her in the weeds on the Texas side of the river, swore to return
with her mother in hand, turning his back as fathers do who later say:
I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop
from branch to branch, Valeria jumped in the river after her father.
Maybe he called out her name as he swept her up from the river;
maybe the river drowned out his voice as the water swept them away.
Tania called out the names of the saints, but the saints drowsed
in the stupor of birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets.
The men on patrol would never hear their pleas for asylum, watching
for floaters, hearts pumping coffee all night on the Texas side of the river.


No one, they say, had ever seen floaters so clean: Óscar’s black shirt
yanked up to the armpits, Valeria’s arm slung around her father’s
neck even after the light left her eyes, both face down in the weeds,
back on the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how
her head disappears in his shirt, the waterlogged diaper bunched
in her pants, the blue of the blue cans. The radio warned us about
the crisis actors we see at one school shooting after another; the man
called Óscar will breathe, sit up, speak, tug the black shirt over
his head, shower off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.


Yet, the floaters did not float down the Río Grande like Olympians
showing off the backstroke, nor did their souls float up to Dallas,
land of rumored jobs and a president shot in the head as he waved
from his motorcade. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud,
light as the iridescent circles of soap that would fascinate a two-year-old.


And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints,
names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed
all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery. Carve their names
in headlines and gravestones they would never know in the kitchens
of this cacophonous world. Enter their names in the book of names.
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the sainted archbishop
of the poor, shot in the heart saying mass, bullets bought by the taxes
I paid when I worked as a bouncer and fractured my hand forty years
ago, and bumper stickers read: El Salvador Is Spanish for Vietnam.


When the last bubble of breath escapes the body, may the men
who speak of floaters, who have never seen floaters this clean,
float through the clouds to the heavens, where they paddle the air
as they wait for the saint who flips through the keys on his ring
like a drowsy janitor, till he fingers the key that turns the lock and shuts
the gate on their babble-tongued faces, and they plunge back to earth,
a shower of hailstones pelting the river, the Mexican side of the river.


- Martin Espada

I heard Martin read this poem on Democracy Now! a few days ago. Wonderful! Thanks, Larry.
Roland

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Floaters
...

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Not Unaware

The community’s time capsule resides beneath the parched and nearly
barren earth. A forlorn coffee can size relic coffin.

Above ground, a dusty bronze plaque specifies the far-off date when a
future citizenry should exhume and examine the artifacts.

The concerned civic leaders who buried the specially designed
canister have long since found their eternal resting places.

Should the premonitory marker yet be discovered, the container unearthed
and the contents retrieved; a trio of telltale objects would be recovered.

An empty plastic water bottle, a car key, a cell phone and nothing more.

At the time of the symbolic interment, some were opposed to such a
pointed and blatant characterization of their entire culture.
The realists however, prevailed.

The seasons such as they are, come and go. Dry incessant winds
howl across the scorched and inhospitable landscape.

A few small creatures scuttle about near the forsaken site, oblivious of
the three carefully chosen harbinger objects resting undisturbed
a few feet below.


- Mark Telles

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...9_14-38-44.png

What If


What if you were an angel,
called to earth to do your part?


What if your wings
were gently lifted from you,
and you were left to walk about on
the planet
just like everyone else,
though you could still feel
the places
where they had been?


What if you had come
with a gift
that was especially
your own,
though it was hidden inside?


Would you find it, use it,
help others on the way,
give love to all you met?


What if?


- Dorothy Walters

After the Lecture
for Martin Luther King Jr.


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


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


But only if I knew
the executioners
were mine only.


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


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


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

- Rafael Jesús González

---

Después del Discurso
a Martin Luther King Jr.


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


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


Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.


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


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


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

- Rafael Jesús González

Once We Were Witches


Once we were witches
We drew all things
Within the circle
Because all things,
Including No things, are
Within the circle.
We drew all into
The magical corridor
Between the heart and the
Belly. We allowed all and
No things to whisper
Their true names
In their many languages.
All and no things told us
Stories in pictures,
That pierced
The veil of dreaming,
The dream of secrets,
Not secrets after all, but
Life hidden in plain and
Perfect sight.


Once we were witches
And told the stories
Given us in that magic
Corridor, between heart and belly,
To heal and soothe
All and no things which
Include beings, human and
Others. But our sight,
Made dim or blinded


By other stories,
Shouted by those who
Wanted the circle
Made smaller. Our sight
Went dark in their fires’
Dense, deadly smoke.
The voices choked, silenced,
and we, who once were


Witches came to believe the circle
Small, a place of precious few,
While outside, the many asked
For alms, believed the stories
Told between the eyes.


Still, all and no things,
Of which we are part,
Find their insistent way to
That place between heart
And belly. Whispering,
They remind us of what
We fear to see, lest the burning
Begin again.


- Rebecca del Rio

Refugee

She comes inside, in her rain gear.
"I could use a hand," she says, "with the little deer."
"I’m already late for work," I say,
then, "O.K."

In the rain
I ease my shovel beneath its damp
grey-brown flanks, as hers
lifts the head of the fawn,

who had taken shelter beneath a
redwood tree, two days ago, near our home,
its legs curled beneath, its tall ears flickering,
as we had departed for the weekend, and yet

on our return, by the dimming flashlight, she found it
still there, nearly gone, in the dark and rain.
Thought she also saw something hovering, rippling
just above, and a shadow keeping vigil, in the trees behind..

We lay the small, now lifeless
form gently into the wheel barrow,
and, guided strangely
by uncertainty,

we head off into the forest,
know to find the place,
and cover it loosely with fallen boughs.
Vultures will complete the cycle.

In awed silence, we walk back together. Soon
I begin my daily drive, out the gravel road, and into the world.

All day long I stand in the woods,
the rain still is falling.

- Scott O'Brien

Listen


Words can only
Carry the perfume
Of the Mystery.


Will you listen anyway,
With your heart?


The way a mother
Listens for the cry
Of her child


A lover, for the voice
Of his beloved.


Let the perfume
Beckon you inward
To discover the sweetness of Being
To hear the language of the soul.


- Kathleen Rose McTeigue

Buna


Wasted feet, cursed earth,
the interminable gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys.


A day like every other day awaits us.
The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
"You, O pale multitudes with your sad, lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous horror of the mud ...
another day of suffering has begun."


Weary companion, I see you by heart.
I empathize with your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothingness.
Life has broken what's left of the courage within you.


Colorless one, you once were a strong man,
A courageous woman once walked at your side.
But now you, my empty companion, are bereft of a name,
my forsaken friend who can no longer weep,
so poor you can no longer grieve,
so tired you no longer can shiver with fear.


O, spent once-strong man,
if we were to meet again
in some other world, sweet beneath the sun,
with what kind faces would we recognize each other?

- Primo Levi
(translation by Michael R. Burch)


Note: Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp.

Something


for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba


Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.


Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.


Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.


- Michael R. Burch

Letter to America


America I still love you
in spite of the hateful rhetoric
that spews from every street corner
in each forgotten city
while millions lose jobs
they once thought were theirs
and mothers work a multitude of jobs
well into the night just to feed their starving children


America I still love you
while fires burn uncontrollably
taking away homes
from those too poor to replace them
scattered homeless now displaced when once
they drove shiny cars and wore gold chains
factory workers strung out on opioids
tattered brains no longer care about
the America of long ago when our soldiers
came home from World War II and we
welcomed them with the GI bill, a new home
and jobs with pensions
what a comfortable life that used to be


America I still love you
while refugees grace our land who once
were welcomed with open arms
now they’re separated from their children
who then are locked in cages
and never seen again


America I’m getting frustrated
with promises of universal healthcare
while our environment rots at the core
and more of us are struck with cancer
each and every year


America I’m losing hope
in escaping gun violence
when so many are allowed to openly carry
their semi-automatics and shoot innocent
children or those practicing their religions
in church or synagogues
dying for what? to prove they’re some type of hero
on Social Media sites?
to give their families something to be proud of?


America I’m dying
because of poison air
filthy, lying politicians
not being able to leave my home
for fear of what’s around the corner
waiting to end my life
forever


- Marsha Johansen

Among The Ruins, The Wildflowers Grow


Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Work Makes Free”
inscribed on top of the gate
and Auschwitz opens its doors.


In a collective chill
to a rhythm of soft sobs,
we enter the gate of death
some of us holding hands
not daring to look at each other
we walk in
and hope to understand.


“If I must see, please God, hold my hand.”
Hand in hand
we march on the train tracks
the beat of my pace confused with
the roar of human cattle trains
packed with children’s terrorized hearts
we walk, God’s hand still in mine,
just as He walked with those terrorized hearts
when they bartered with death,
for God is everywhere, so they say…


Acres and acres and acres
of nazi commerce—the business of death.
They had blueprints,
Skilled electricians and engineers
who washed off the stench of burned flesh
and night after night sat for a warm meal
with their golden children of blue sight


Why? I ask
with my fist against the sky.
Why?
and the wind gently answers
with a faint smell of singed flesh.
The path changes color as we walk
from gray—
oh God, whose ashes are we walking on?—
to dark red…
Is the blood rising from the ground?
We are walking on earth that God forgot.
Faraway, a voice with no face,
A tour guide speaks German,
for a moment
a raging agony collapses time
now and then become one
rendering God ineffectual.


Suddenly a woman’s burning scream
rips the heat of the sun
and in that cry, we hear the six million.


Facing the ovens
Michael prays El Male Rachamim
the prayer “Oh God of mercy”—
and among the ruins
the landscape of corpses,
huddled together even in death,
reveals itself among the wild flowers
and golden grass.


Still wandering forlorn on earth that God forgot
we cross the gateway of help
into dark barracks filled with homeless prayers
where Jews lay famished
one on top of another, month after month.


A ray of light
filters through a crack
stealing a piece of sky.


Someone runs out of the barrack to throw up outside


Names on the bricks, scratched with fingernails
reveal themselves through the dark—
Sara, Esther, Golde…--
and inside my head I hear myself scream
Grandma, where is your name?!


Drowned in holocaust
we turn to return


Our safe bus is waiting for us…
Amiram picks up and clutches a stone
shedding tears through the sweat in his hand.
How can we leave?
Beloved ones, how can we leave you here?!
And the birds perched on the entrance door
Where Arbeit Macht Frei
continue singing


- Jana Liba Klenburg

Auschwitz-Birkenau


To awaken here
Is to hear silence
Shrieking in cold,
Empty corridors, to awaken


In a heart hewn
By fear, a darkness
Closed to compassion.
Any kindness


Is all kindness--a treachery
We must enter, allow to enter us--
Ask us, "who are you here
In this hallowed hell?"


No where to step
Where ash hasn't fallen,
Where cruelty hasn't walked,
Fed on our tender fear.


Who am I in this
Enormous evil?
A dog waiting at a platform?
Or the child terrified of dogs,


Clutching a brother's hand?
A boy alive forever,
Forever frightened so we
Will know what we can do.


I move through ghosts, numb.
Like others, I am dumb,
In respectful, awful silence,
Save for voices screaming,


Who I am? Am I
The selfless priest crammed
In a standing cell, dying
For a stranger who survived?


Who am I here in history's
Hall of horrors? Walls lined
With visages, victims
Who haven't yet imagined


What we can do--will do.


Not Nazis, not
Germans, but humans
Did this. We
Do this now.


To awaken here is
To see that casual blue
Chip in the sky's
Somber gray soul,


Innocent opening
letting light flow down,
Bless this damned,
Degraded place.


To awaken here,
Is to know one's
Darkness, and not
Turning from it, see that light.


- Rebecca del Rio

After


after you fell
to your death
I kept falling
and in that
there was a great hush
and concentric circles formed
of my thoughts
from the agonizing moment
we had to stop searching
the circular possibilities


I always knew you were free
that I could feel
and even celebrate


then three years


clean, broken skeleton
recovered
brought down the massive mountain
on the rhythmic back
of a black horse


For a little while
I lived to bring those bones home
to lay them down
one by one
I cradled
your crushed skull
in my hands
I held your hand in mine
and I gave you
a final goodbye
this time with my body
and yours
in attendance


The drenched dreams
of your future earthly life
wrung dry


- Erin RileyAfter

Not for Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet


"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."
-  Donald Trump, June 16, 2015


They woke him up by pissing in his face. He opened his mouth
to scream in Spanish, so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.


Scott and Steve: the Leader brothers, celebrating a night at Fenway,
where the Sox beat the Indians and a rookie named Rodríguez spun
the seams on his changeup to hypnotize the Tribe. Later that night,
Steve urinated on the door of his cell, and Scott told the cops why
they did it: Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported.


He was a Mexican in a sleeping bag outside JFK station on a night
in August, so they called him a wetback and emptied their bladders
in his hair. In court, the lawyers spoke his name: Guillermo Rodríguez,
immigrant with papers, crop-picker in the fields, trader of bottles
and cans collected in his cart. Two strangers squashed the cartilage
in his nose like a can drained of beer. In dreams, he would remember
the shoes digging into his ribcage, the pole raked repeatedly across
his cheekbones and upraised knuckles, the high-five over his body.


Donald Trump was right, said Scott. And Trump said: The people
that are following me are very passionate. His hands fluttered
as he spoke, a demagogue’s hands, no blood under the fingernails,
no whiff of urine to scrub away. He would orchestrate the chant
of Build That Wall at rally after rally, bellowing till the blood rushed
to his face, red as a demagogue in the grip of masturbatory dreams:
a tribute to the new conquistador, the Wall raised up by Mexican hands,
Mexican hair and fingernails bristling in the brick, Mexican blood
swirling in the cement like raspberry syrup on a vanilla sundae.
On the Cinco de Mayo, he leered over a taco bowl at Trump Tower.


Not for him the fiery lake of the false prophet, reddening
his ruddy face. Not for him the devils of Puritan imagination,
shrieking in a foreign tongue and climbing in the window
like the immigrant demons he conjures for the crowd.
Not even for him ten thousand years of the Leader brothers,
streaming a fountain of piss in his face as he sputters forever.


For him, Hell is a country where the man in a hard hat
paving the road to JFK station sees Guillermo and dials 911;
Hell is a country where EMTs kneel to wrap a blanket around
the shivering shoulders of Guillermo and wipe his face clean;
Hell is a country where the nurse at the emergency room
hangs a morphine drip for Guillermo, so he can go back to sleep.
Two thousand miles away, someone leaves a trail of water bottles
in the desert for the border crossing of the next Guillermo.


We smuggle ourselves across the border of a demagogue’s dreams:
Confederate generals on horseback tumble one by one into
the fiery lake of false prophets; into the fiery lake crumbles
the demolished Wall. Thousands stand, sledgehammers in hand,
to await the bullhorns and handcuffs, await the trembling revolvers.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face interrogates the interrogator.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face is the face of Guillermo.


- Martin Espada

Continuum


I was deeply comforted by Jung’s statement
that: “Everything is defined by its opposite.”

Thereafter I began to think
in terms of the continuum
that connects
opposing sides,
the soft grey running bears
between black/white battle lines.

They taught me that everything
is also contained within its opposite.

How could it be otherwise.

In old age the amygdalae shake hands
with the frontal lobes.
The oldest and youngest parts
of the human brain
finally realize
the true value of their relationship.

Together they blend
pattern recognition and raw emotion
into a savory complex
of fine spices
to enhance the grownup feast
of life and death
that awaits every old soul.

- Rabon Saip

The Unites States Welcomes You


Why and by whose power were you sent?

What do you see that you may wish to steal?

Why this dancing? Why do your dark bodies

Drink up all the light? What are you demanding

That we feel? Have you stolen something? Then

What is that leaping in your chest? What is

The nature of your mission? Do you seek

To offer a confession? Have you anything to do

With others brought by us to harm? Then

Why are you afraid? And why do you invade

Our night, hands raised, eyes wide, mute

As ghosts? Is there something you wish to confess?

Is this some enigmatic type of test? What if we

Fail? How and to whom do we address our appeal?

- Tracy K. Smith

Redwood Forest Yoga



Eighteen pairs of muddy boots
Kicked in a jumbled pile
Puddle by the door
Far from the fire


Eighteen well-worn jackets
Male odors mingling
Drip on the knotty pine floor
Out of the rain at last


Eighteen glowing bodies
Stretch their edges by the fire
Upward facing dogs
Under the sheltering roof


Eighteen visions of God
Held on an inward breath
Tear blind me
With their beauty

- Doug von Koss

A Brief For The Defense


Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.


- Jack Gilbert

If wheat grows from my soil


If wheat grows from my soil,
The bread you bake will make you drunk.

Both dough and baker are crazy.
The oven recites a drunken poem.

If you visit my grave,
My tomb will make you dance.

Be sure to bring a tambourine.
Don’t be sad at God’s festival.

My chin is shut, within the grave, asleep,
My mouth gnawing on bittersweet love.

If you rip apart my shroud,
A drunken man will unravel your soul.

From all sides, sounds of war and drunken harps,
Empty tasks become fruitful works.

God created me from love’s wine.
I’m still that love even as death wears me down.

I’m the drunken man. My essence is the wine of love.
What do you expect from wine but drunkenness?

I will never rest until my soul flies
To the towering soul of Shams of Tabriz.

- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz)

Kindergarten Justice

an anvil sits on the heart of America
her breath labored through a mouth wide open
in a frozen scream of boundless rage for justice


and we, blinded by tears, implore the goddess
to remove her blindfold before escape from this madness
is too late and sense by sense our country, coursing wildly
with no fulcrum to steady her compass, be sucked away


ruins of this metal wind, this breathless insanity
challenge our balance to stay upright
justice is abandoned, a rumble of unimaginable trouble
growls from behind doors we thought could never open


age has shortened our stride,
but how did our younger sense of fairness
get lost in our older hearts


before we began to make histories of our lives,
our polished cheeks brimming with innocence,
we knew when something wasn’t right,
we had the certainty of kindergarten justice,
the resolute declaration of “that’s not fair!”


stand up, act out, throw a tantrum,
join the voices of awareness reciting
the courage of our memory,
even if pitted against all odds
we can exhume the body of justice


once the battle is joined,
we will never have to
fumble in our pockets
for evidence of resistance


- Jo Ann Smith

EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT. NEWS THAT STAYS NEWS! Larry has his pulse on the Present Moment. This poetry, in the face of an absurd parody of "Justice" in the US, is HOT with vitality! As long as there are poems like this, attesting to the truth you can feel in your breath and blood, we can never get totally lost! :heart::waccosun:

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Kindergarten Justice

an anvil sits on the heart of America
her breath labored through a mouth wide open
in a frozen scream of boundless rage for justice...

---

It's been a week or two since you posted this poem, Larry, but I really want to share what happened.
I pasted the poem onto a certain spiritual poetry Facebook page, one devoted to a great and well-known modern Sage. One person vociferously objected that I would put such "gross language" on this sacred page. I replied, WHAT IS OBSCENE IS NOT THE DESCRIPTION! WHAT IS OBSCENE IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DID TO THIS MAN!
He didn't get it, at all...ended with a note "I'm saddened to see this here on this page..." to which I did not reply (having already shared what I capitalized above.) Keep 'em coming, Larry! :heart:

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Not for Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet


"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."
-  Donald Trump, June 16, 2015


They woke him up by pissing in his face. He opened his mouth
to scream in Spanish, so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.


Scott and Steve: the Leader brothers, celebrating a night at Fenway,
where the Sox beat the Indians and a rookie named Rodríguez spun
the seams on his changeup to hypnotize the Tribe. Later that night,
Steve urinated on the door of his cell, and Scott told the cops why
they did it: Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported...

---

Now is the Time


Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.


Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.


Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.


Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.


My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?


What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?


Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.


This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.


Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.


-Hafiz
(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Writing A Lesson

I spend so much time
Writing a lesson
I'm a teacher you know
A Licensed Teacher at that
I try to impart wisdom
Cloaked often in humor
Wrap it all up in a twenty minute package
Tie on a blow of blessing
To hope that at least one person
Is nudged toward personal healing.
But Hafiz
Oh Hafiz
In less than thirty short lines
Gives a more complete
Lesson
Than all the teachers
Who have come before
Yet I will continue to sing my song
Bathed in the melody
Of Hafiz


- David McNair

A Plea in a Foreign Tongue

The Spanish moss streaming off
the branches of a hillside of black oaks
like olive sheets of rain,
a wailing of ancestral grief
brings real tears to my eyes.
They have seen and felt so much, these trees.
Through their roots:
They have felt how we have thinned
and poisoned the soil;
how our anger and greed for power
has scorched the earth with the flame of drought.
Through the tips of their branches:
How we have sullied the air
with the smoke of delusion.
They grieve for the loss of the great trees,
the grizzly, the herds of elk,
the thick flocks of birds,
who lived and worshipped in their branches,
and for the people who knew their place,
and did not set themselves
apart from nature.
Who loved the land
as they loved themselves.

There is not much time they seem to say.
They are not afraid, but they mourn.
Perhaps we only have weeks to learn
their language, so ancient and
undecipherable to us.
We cannot go back you say.
But we cannot go forward without
reimagining who we are.


- Barry Vesser

Immigrants in Our Own Land


We are born with dreams in our hearts,

looking for better days ahead.

At the gates we are given new papers,

our old clothes are taken

and we are given overalls like mechanics wear.

We are given shots and doctors ask questions.

Then we gather in another room

where counselors orient us to the new land

we will now live in. We take tests.

Some of us were craftsmen in the old world,

good with our hands and proud of our work.

Others were good with their heads.

They used common sense like scholars

use glasses and books to reach the world.

But most of us didn’t finish high school.



The old men who have lived here stare at us,

from deep disturbed eyes, sulking, retreated.

We pass them as they stand around idle,

leaning on shovels and rakes or against walls.

Our expectations are high: in the old world,

they talked about rehabilitation,

about being able to finish school,

and learning an extra good trade.

But right away we are sent to work as dishwashers,

to work in fields for three cents an hour.

The administration says this is temporary

So we go about our business, blacks with blacks,

poor whites with poor whites,

chicanos and indians by themselves.

The administration says this is right,

no mixing of cultures, let them stay apart,

like in the old neighborhoods we came from.



We came here to get away from false promises,

from dictators in our neighborhoods,

who wore blue suits and broke our doors down

when they wanted, arrested us when they felt like,

swinging clubs and shooting guns as they pleased.

But it’s no different here. It’s all concentrated.

The doctors don’t care, our bodies decay,

our minds deteriorate, we learn nothing of value.

Our lives don’t get better, we go down quick.



My cell is crisscrossed with laundry lines,

my T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks and pants are drying.

Just like it used to be in my neighborhood:

from all the tenements laundry hung window to window.

Across the way Joey is sticking his hands

through the bars to hand Felipé a cigarette,

men are hollering back and forth cell to cell,

saying their sinks don’t work,

or somebody downstairs hollers angrily

about a toilet overflowing,

or that the heaters don’t work.



I ask Coyote next door to shoot me over

a little more soap to finish my laundry.

I look down and see new immigrants coming in,

mattresses rolled up and on their shoulders,

new haircuts and brogan boots,

looking around, each with a dream in their heart,

thinking they’ll get a chance to change their lives.



But in the end, some will just sit around

talking about how good the old world was.

Some of the younger ones will become gangsters.

Some will die and others will go on living

without a soul, a future, or a reason to live.

Some will make it out of here with hate in their eyes,

but so very few make it out of here as human

as they came in, they leave wondering what good they are now

as they look at their hands so long away from their tools,

as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families,

so long gone from life itself, so many things have changed.


- Jimmy Santiago Baca

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing


Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.


- William Butler Yeats

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph


Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

- Anne Sexton

In Memory of W. B. Yeats

https://api.poets.org/sites/default/...?itok=NALd64_C

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.


II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.


III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

- W. H. Auden

Hi, Larry. One of the all-time greats. Thank you. Roland

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

In Memory of W. B. Yeats...

---

Stardust Lounge

My mother came for a visit
even though she died last spring.
She was standing by the foot of my bed
releasing vowels from the afterlife
smelling of moss and spring rain
on the tarmac.
Here we go again, old recipes and lectures,
I thought, stumbling out the door into the back yard
while the history of all forgotten things
was leaking out of her apron pockets
like the Andromeda strain or the Milky
Way filled with impossible features of dead stars.
All she really wanted was for me to follow
her lead in this shuffle-foot shim-sham, this
millennial foxtrot of flesh turning into
stardust, that long unwinding road
pale as beer made from wheat where
we all crowd into a room and wait for
the unmarked bus to transport us into the highlands
of the forever lands. This is the way it feels
when she presses her hand against the small of my back.
The valley gorge that rests between my hips and heart
wakes up and smiles and even the smallest bones
like the swing when she says anything is possible
and I want to answer her but am lifted off my feet
shucking the chrysalis of my life, resurrecting the
boogie-woogie, dancing in the midnight arms
of her Stardust Lounge.


- Devreaux Baker

Larry - Another fabulous offering! Thanks so much. Roland

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Stardust Lounge...

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The Whale’s Song

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I am the last gray—
the last ocean bottom farmer
beyond lonely,
lost,
terrified.

I swim in waters too warm
for my ancestors and kin,
pickings so slim
we starve.

We have danced
in the depths for eons,
the ocean’s moods and moons
embedded in our bones
and mottled skin.

I bear her barnacles
and
grief.

Our surging into the deep—
that constant churning
kept the planet’s plankton
balance.

How will you live now
young, foolish species?

I am the last gray—
wailing.

- Raphael Block

For Love


for Bobbie


Yesterday I wanted to
speak of it, that sense above
the others to me
important because all


that I know derives
from what it teaches me.
Today, what is it that
is finally so helpless,


different, despairs of its own
statement, wants to
turn away, endlessly
to turn away.


If the moon did not ...
no, if you did not
I wouldn’t either, but
what would I not


do, what prevention, what
thing so quickly stopped.
That is love yesterday
or tomorrow, not


now. Can I eat
what you give me. I
have not earned it. Must
I think of everything


as earned. Now love also
becomes a reward so
remote from me I have
only made it with my mind.


Here is tedium,
despair, a painful
sense of isolation and
whimsical if pompous


self-regard. But that image
is only of the mind’s
vague structure, vague to me
because it is my own.


Love, what do I think
to say. I cannot say it.
What have you become to ask,
what have I made you into,


companion, good company,
crossed legs with skirt, or
soft body under
the bones of the bed.


Nothing says anything
but that which it wishes
would come true, fears
what else might happen in


some other place, some
other time not this one.
A voice in my place, an
echo of that only in yours.


Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you


also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to


say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.


- Robert Creely

The Dakini Speaks


My friends, let's grow up.
Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
Let's grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
But please, let's not be so shocked by them.
Let's not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.


Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.


To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise.
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -
There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.


The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.


- Jennifer Wellwood

Visiting an Old Teacher
For Dr. Robert Hall


The light I used to see in your eyes
Has gone somewhere else.
It's odd, isn't it?
What goes and what stays.


When you spoke at the meditation center,
I felt your kindness.
You talked about resting, just resting.
A door opened in my heart then.
I did rest. I breathed easily.


I thought of all the love
I had received in my life, including from you.
I felt a wave of gratitude break in my body.
It almost reached my eyes.
I asked myself,
"Would I cry, in Mexico?"
For you, or for myself?


Afterwards, you sat in the bright sun on the patio.
I asked you if you wanted to go out for coffee or a walk,
You smiled and said, "Oh, I don't do that, anymore."
Okay.


Your partner helped you down the stone steps
to your car.
It's odd, isn't it? What goes and what stays.


You've been with me, this long.
- Geo Taylor

Dear Teacher


I see you now, deep diver, spear
Gun hidden close to your body,
Hunter, you plant hooks, piercing
Fragile flesh of the female psyche


Save other tools for men,
Your troop of sleeping eunuchs,
Lulled by stories of awakening.
They drift on your charm, the charisma of one
Who feigns wisdom so well.


You feign humility well too,
Perhaps you fool even yourself.


The first time I saw
Your shadow throw its
Cold arms around an elderly woman
I excused you, my sight
Wanting what you claimed,
You feigned to offer.


The first, for me, but not
The first, exodus, you casually
Betrayed yourself, waving goodbye
To those you wounded,
Behind a watery apology,
Weakened by charming excuses
Of over-enthusiasm. Clever.


Ignoring the apparent,
Indulging in your attention
We allowed you to penetrate
Our minds, plant poisonous
Images along with nourishment.


Your spear spiked hearts,
Opening all to love
You. You, who may know
An idea of larger love,
But are incapable
Of individual love, specific Empathy.
Speaking of compassion, you are immune
To compassion for the bleeding
In your home.


Always aiming for the sex
Watching for the awakening
Of desire. You hunt with
Bait: flattery, focus and soft,
Cunningly placed kindnesses.
A net cast wide, your wandering
Eye. You capture whatever
Heart and body opens first.


Moving like the sleeping shark,
Never fully awake
Nor asleep in peace,
You hunger,
A hungry ghost, you
Feed on fear, growing fat on
Our attention. Growing thin and
Never sated.


My heart would break
For the unloveliness of
You, who won’t be seen,
But there’s precious few
Places left, most taken
By your broken and
Healing sisters.


- Rebecca del Rio

The Burning of the Books

When the Regime

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commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.


Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he’d been excluded!


He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fiery letters to the morons in power—
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen—
Haven’t I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!


- Bertolt Brecht


(translation by Michael R. Burch)

In Muir Woods


Last night, a giant redwood fell

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either from old age, disease, or
"sometimes they just give up," the ranger said.
Listen, I was in the woods, I
heard it too, like my own death
falling inside me.
Here in the last of the old growth forests
where some trees are still virginal,
some older than Moses,
I thought, then, of you. You are not the one
dying, you said to me,
and I quoted to you from Montaigne
that death was not a proper object of fear
but only the end of life.
What is a proper object of fear, you asked,
and I said death of the heart.
But life, you said, was
everything. And you were in love
with that beautiful lie.
Sometimes these trees send out
all their sap at once
making them vulnerable, sometimes,
they grow burls of anxiety
Look, the ranger said to us,
the bark is so wet because the tree
drinks hundreds of gallons of water a day
from the fog that rolls in
over the Golden Gate Bridge.
That bridge which is so beautiful and which
holds such promise for tomorrow
with its blue shimmering bay.
Every day when I see the fog now,
I think of you and then I can almost
feel the fog cover me with
that enveloping mist, can almost feel
the branches of the redwood
being kissed by its cold
ministrations. I would, if I could,
stand here all day like these trees, but my
heart is so sore, it is almost ready to burst,
and I am filled, suddenly,
with a wild and insatiable thirst.

- June Besich

Dot Over The I

What's in the glint of a hummingbird?
In the shorthand of the sweetheart rose?
A meager now.
A precious here.
The dot God put in the i

But I am in the wind;
always somewhere else,
scattering God.
Not now.
Not here.

Punta Sobre La I

Que resume el colibri?
Que abrevia la rosa de pitimini?
Un escaso ahora.
Un precioso aqui.
Dios hecho punto
sobre la i.

Pero estoy de viento
siempre en otra parte
a Dios diluyendo.
Ni ahora.
Ni aqui.

- Ulalume Gonzales de Leon
(translation by Terry Ehret, John Johnson and Nancy Morales)

A Riddle in Troubled Times


A grain of It is next to naught
a half is half corrupted,
the whole…?
if even a single
link is compromised,
the chain cannot
secure its anchor


If Its provenance is
God Almighty
as theologians claim,
pray which deity
do they mean,
and for the love of God
what is a Holy War?


If It is just
a matter of consensus,
can fast-talking-double-dealing
politicians wear their slogans gauzy;
then can a multitude of ranting-chanting,
banner-toting, blindly-voting citizens
be dead wrong


Scientists insist Its place is in their forge
to assay and refine for all mankind,


but might It be the poets’ rightful realm,
I mean the ones who understand the currency
and can navigate in unpredictable terrain.
Undeterred by what may be revealed,
they spelunk ice caves at the poles
to test their tolerance for stinging cold


In search of It,
they’ll sift through bones
of buried civilizations
unearthing at last
none other than
their own familiar skulls

- b. armstrong

The Weighing


The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.


- Jane Hirshfield

The World Ended Today


“We cannot live alone in a world of wounds.” A. Leopold


The world ended today
But no one noticed
Just another day
Business as usual.
No one noticed
The holocaust of animal genocide
The ghost oceans, the withered soil
Judas in the White House
America hanging on the Cross.
Trophies handed out for the best lies.
Trophies for the head of a lion
Tail of an elephant, feathers of a turtle dove
Wings of a monarch butterfly.
Children marinate in cages at the borders of greed and hate.
The world ended again today.
Floods and fires, air gasping for breath
Wisdom shipwrecked on dead languages
Rewritten history, swindled education
Surrendered truth. Words disappearing
As we speak in grunts and groans
Whimpers and shrieks
Or stunned silences
Where are you lovers of liberty?
“When in the course of human events”
Again and again the world ends.
The moon looks on pityingly
As humanity shrinks away from the sight of
Hell on earth.
Paradise bleeds out from the rotting corpses
Of love.
“We hold these truths to be self evident”
The world ends again beneath the avalanche
Concussion after concussion of hope.
But it is just another day
Business as usual
Crack open another beer or bottle of wine
Eat up and shut up.
Guns locked and loaded.
Television casual distraction from the massacre
Of justice. We are mesmerized like a school of fish
Swept up in the sly antics of the internet.
Who wins or who loses is so important that
We cannot hear above the applause cheers furtive
Buying and selling marching troops threats scandal
The nuclear subs circling like sharks the climate ticking away
Media frenzy, our own ravaged lives,some homeless and others
Losing the home of self respect replaced by shame and terror.
But it is just another day
The world has ended again
And no one noticed.


- Gail Onion

Medea
For T. E.


I had always been Rhea in Colchis
but, at 14, I first spoke my own name
in Circe’s shadow. A sunlit breeze
lifted the red curtains in our candled rooms
where the loom ran, healer and deceiver.
Later, ambling along the barren coast
I was a weave of sun and blackness.
Far in the west, the gold flash of a prow.


And when the oarsmen first saw the far shore
they rose and cheered. A new fury seized them
with courage and the ship of heroes leaped
swiftly through the waves to a drum’s blows.
In the first glow of the goddess’ fires
my eyes were lost in sullen wonder,
my breath came shallow as a grave in sand
and the great vessel entered our small port.


In worlds destroyed
what still shines?
Under shattered patterns
run ancient lines.


- Kevin Pryne

Reuniting With Beauty


It stops there!
All the greed, blindness, hate, lies.
Out there!


I have been letting you in
too much,
too deep,
for too long.
I don't even know
my own soul anymore,
my own peace.
My head is filled
with your ill-will.
No — Out There,
it stops Out There.


Morning is here.
I awake to the newness
of the day.
I awake to the adventure
it holds.


Today, like every day,
I have a chance to start over,
to greet the sun,
to smell the flowers,
to bathe in nature
and breathe her in.


Today I smile
with the universe.


Today I accept
the invitation
that beauty brings.


- Sherrie Lovler

In Passing

How swiftly the strained honey
of afternoon light
flows into darkness

and the closed bud shrugs off
its special mystery
in order to break into blossom:

as if what exists, exists
so that it can be lost
and become precious

- Lisel Mueller
(February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020)

Auction

I am old and do not want
to be bothered about it.
So I rejoice at bearing witness
to these interesting times.

I see
that the deep recognition
of a righteous guide
is not happening
because the model
in the rear view mirror
cannot come up front
far enough to help us.

She knows
that the backbone
of humankind
has never cracked
like this
before.

Now
the truth comes
in many artificial flavors
and core baby sweet Jesus
is no longer up for adoption.

- Rabon Saip

Sincerely

Dear Whole Planet Boy from another world
it is I, Excalibur Orchid Door, coming in
from the page to greet your full eyes
which are looking by way of sky into
every house of trees.
These trees, always whispering to me of
the half-sung wing, are the place I rest.
We are calling out from the handmade
word, white stones laid down soft from
our mouths like bad puppets.
Still, we fly together at the end of a long
crying string, and each fresh day earned alive
is a new kind of moon,
soft with its light dust, thick with floating.
In the sky my eyes are wild too,
sorting the bones,
sorting the caches, sorting the petals.
I am wearing my heartbeat like your small coat;
time my favorite jumping rope is helping me
Hello

- Kalia Mussetter

The Fawn




Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal
The church bells rang, but I went
To the woods instead.

A fawn, too new
For fear, rose from the grass
And stood with its spots blazing,
And knowing no way but words,
No trick but music,
I sang to him.

He listened.
His small hooves struck the grass.
Oh what is holiness?

The fawn came closer,
Walked to my hands, to my knees.

I did not touch him.
I only sang, and when the doe came back
Calling out to him dolefully
And he turned and followed her into the trees,
Still I sang,
Not knowing how to end such a joyful text,

Until far off the bells once more tipped and tumbled
And rang through the morning, announcing
The going forth of the blessed.

- Mary Oliver

Stardust




What’s in a star? We are.
All the elements of our body and of the planet
were once in the belly of a star.
We are stardust.
15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass
of hydrogen floating in space, turning slowly, dancing.
And the gas condensed more and more
gaining increasingly more mass
and mass became star and began to shine.
As they condensed they grew hot and bright.
Gravitation produced thermal energy: light and heat.
That is to say love.
Stars were born, grew, and died.
And the galaxy was taking the shape of a flower
the way it looks now on a starry night.
Our flesh and our bones come from other stars
and perhaps even from other galaxies,
we are universal,
and after death we will help to form other stars
and other galaxies.
We come from the stars, and to them we shall return.


- Ernesto Cardenal
January 20, 1925 - March 1, 2020)
( Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen)

Civic Duty


Not long ago a man mailed 100 letters.
A message to each United States senator.
It cost him sixty-eight dollars and change.
But, with the fate of the nation at stake,
He considered it a patriotic investment.


Each letter was personalized and signed.
Every enveloped addressed by hand.
A gesture of respect for that august body.
Certainly not a special-interest robo-mailing.


He quoted some great Americans and noted that
Managing a representative republic is messy.
He said his civic duty required him to remind them
That an impeachment trial should be a real trial.


He politely and respectfully implored them
Both left and right, to do what they knew history
Would judge as being wise and true.
He felt that given the gravity of the circumstances,
They might appreciate his earnest petition.


Every one of the 100 letters went unanswered.
No senator could be bothered to acknowledge
The concerns of an active and engaged citizen.
The sound of those letters landing in wastebaskets,
Soft thuds of portent.


- Mark Telles

Day Dream

One day people will touch and talk perhaps easily,
And loving be natural as breathing and warm as sunlight,
And people will untie themselves, as string is unknotted,
Unfold and yawn and stretch and spread their fingers,
Unfurl, uncurl like seaweed returned to the sea,
And work will be simple and swift as a seagull flying,
And play will be casual and quiet as a seagull settling,
And the clocks will stop, and no one will wonder or care or notice,
And people will smile without reason, even in winter, even in the rain.

- A. S. J. Tessimond

Small Kindnesses


I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead—you first,” “I like your hat.”


- Danusha Lameris

Nicely done! I wrote something with a similar sentiment, a couple years ago:
DRIVERS' SACRAMENT

The ancient Romans built shrines at crossroads, and then the life and death of Jesus further layered the archetype of the cross.

We continue to approach Intersections in a special way as we drive, observing a moment of awareness, acknowledging a common Center,
coming to a stop and quietly determining as one mind the order of going forth.

Once in awhile, a driver refuses this ritual, but mostly we join brothers and sisters at the wheel,
and there’s an authority to the way everyone knows how we should move on.

This is the way we need to live.
******
c 2018 from The Well At World's End by Max Reif, New Humanity Publications

Cataclysm


It begins subtly:
the maple
withdraws an inch from the birch tree.

.

The porcupine
wants nothing to do with the skink.

.

Fish unschool,
sheep unflock to separately graze.

.

Clouds meanwhile
declare to the sky
they have nothing to do with the sky,
which is not visible as they are,

.

nor knows the trick of turning
into infant, tumbling pterodactyls.

.

The turtles and moonlight?
Their long arrangement is over.

.

As for the humans.
Let us not speak of the humans.
Let us speak of their language.

.

The first person singular
condemns the second person plural
for betrayals neither has words left to name.

.

The fed consider the hungry
and stay silent.


- Jane Hirshfield

Passing Through
- on my seventy-ninth birthday


Nobody in the widow’s household
ever celebrated anniversaries.
In the secrecy of my room
I would not admit I cared
that my friends were given parties.
Before I left town for school
my birthday went up in smoke
in a fire at City Hall that gutted
the Department of Vital Statistics.
If it weren’t for a census report
of a five-year-old White Male
sharing my mother’s address
at the Green Street tenement in Worcester
I’d have no documentary proof
that I exist. You are the first,
my dear, to bully me
into these festive occasions.


Sometimes, you say, I wear
an abstracted look that drives you
up the wall, as though it signified
distress or disaffection.
Don’t take it so to heart.
Maybe I enjoy not-being as much
as being who I am. Maybe
it’s time for me to practice
growing old. The way I look
at it, I’m passing through a phase:
gradually I’m changing to a word.
Whatever you choose to claim
of me is always yours;
nothing is truly mine
except my name. I only
borrowed this dust.


- Stanley Kunitz

Daffodils



Each spring daffodils like a secret happiness
Are everywhere again as if they did not care
That the world is so messed up
Or are depressed by the tragedies of last year
We admonish the bright inquisitive faces.
Don’t you realize you are arriving in a drought
Global warming, even extinctions.
The next day even more daffodils crowd
The edges of fences, careen across a field.
They seem to lack a sense of trepidation
Or have self-esteem issues or are intimidated
By changes in weather or a hostile environment.
They are the loyal canines of the plant world
Assured that everyone is glad to see them,
Like your dog in whose eyes you know
You are loved more than you believe
Anyone could. We have to admit we have longed
To look into the eyes of flowers
To ask how they do it
So free to share with equanimity
Their finite beauty
Without hesitation
No questions asked, no disturbing borders.
I am your flower they say
You are my flower they say
We are here for you.
Springtime may just be
Humanity’s other
Best friend.


- Gail Onion

Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)




I was born in the congo
I walked to the fertile crescent and built
the sphinx
I designed a pyramid so tough that a star
that only glows every one hundred years falls
into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad


I sat on the throne
drinking nectar with allah
I got hot and sent an ice age to europe
to cool my thirst
My oldest daughter is nefertiti
the tears from my birth pains
created the nile
I am a beautiful woman


I gazed on the forest and burned
out the sahara desert
with a packet of goat's meat
and a change of clothes
I crossed it in two hours
I am a gazelle so swift
so swift you can't catch me


For a birthday present when he was three
I gave my son hannibal an elephant
He gave me rome for mother's day
My strength flows ever on


My son noah built new/ark and
I stood proudly at the helm
as we sailed on a soft summer day
I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save


I sowed diamonds in my back yard
My bowels deliver uranium
the filings from my fingernails are
semi-precious jewels
On a trip north
I caught a cold and blew
My nose giving oil to the arab world
I am so hip even my errors are correct
I sailed west to reach east and had to round off
the earth as I went
The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid
across three continents


I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal
I cannot be comprehended
except by my permission


I mean . . . I . . . can fly
like a bird in the sky . . .


- Nikki Giovanni