Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Reasons To Survive November

November like a train wreck -
as if a locomotive made of cold
had hurtled out of Canada
and crashed into a million trees,
flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire.

The sky is a thick, cold gauze -
but there's a soup special at the Waffle House downtown,
and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum,
full of luminous red barns.

- Or maybe I'll visit beautiful Donna,
the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe,
and roll around in her foldout bed.

I know there are some people out there
who think I am supposed to end up
in a room by myself

with a gun and a bottle full of hate,
a locked door and my slack mouth open
like a disconnected phone.

But I hate those people back
from the core of my donkey soul
and the hatred makes me strong
and my survival is their failure,

and my happiness would kill them
so I shove joy like a knife
into my own heart over and over

and I force myself toward pleasure,
and I love this November life
where I run like a train
deeper and deeper
into the land of my enemies.

- Tony Hoagland

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That's why we wake
and look out--no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.


- William Stafford

Let's Remake The World


Let's remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.
Let's,
As Wordsworth said, remove
"The dust of custom" so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.

And then we'll see the world
As if for the first time.
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.

- Gregory Orr

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Let's Remake The World...

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And for those who don't know where to begin, define your Emotional Vocabulary using a College Dictionary.
It all starts with you.

Long, too long America

Long, too long America,
Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,
But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,
And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,
(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)

- Walt Whitman

Mighty with Resolve

It was a time when the word served insolent creed,
spawned slaughter and hunger, served personal need,
was a monogrammed forkful of glitz and cake

It was a time when word's ancient force was a zinnia
glowing for days after wind broke its stem and a lone
silky newt spiraling slow in a far alpine lake

Then the world exploded and the Living Word,
bathed in blood and anguish, crept out of the rubble
mighty with resolve
Its time had come again

- Cynthia Poten

Revenge

Since you mention it, I think I will start that race war.

I could’ve swung either way? But now I’m definitely spending
the next 4 years converting your daughters to lesbianism;
I’m gonna eat all your guns. Swallow them lock stock and barrel
and spit bullet casings onto the dinner table;

I’ll give birth to an army of mixed-race babies.
With fathers from every continent and genders to outnumber the stars,
my legion of hapa babies will be intersectional as fuck
and your swastikas will not be enough to save you,

because real talk, you didn’t stop the future from coming.
You just delayed our coronation.
We have the same deviant haircuts we had yesterday;
we are still getting gay-married like nobody’s business
because it’s still nobody’s business;
there’s a Muslim kid in Kansas who has already written the schematic
for the robot that will steal your job in manufacturing,
and that robot? Will also be gay, so get used to it:

we didn’t manifest the mountain by speaking its name,
the buildings here are not on your side just because
you make them spray-painted accomplices.
These walls do not have genders and they all think you suck.
Even the earth found common ground with us in the way
you bootstrap across us both,

oh yeah: there will be signs, and rainbow-colored drum circles,
and folks arguing ideology until even I want to punch them
but I won’t, because they’re my family,
in that blood-of-the-covenant sense.
If you’ve never loved someone like that
you cannot outwaltz us, we have all the good dancers anyway.

I’ll confess I don’t know if I’m alive right now;
I haven’t heard my heart beat in days,
I keep holding my breath for the moment the plane goes down
and I have to save enough oxygen to get my friends through.
But I finally found the argument against suicide and it’s us.
We’re the effigies that haunt America’s nights harder
the longer they spend burning us,
we are scaring the shit out of people by spreading,
by refusing to die: what are we but a fire?
We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,

of course I’m terrified. Of course I’m a shroud.
And of course it’s not fair but rest assured,
anxious America, you brought your fists to a glitter fight.
This is a taco truck rally and all you have is cole slaw.
You cannot deport our minds; we won’t
hold funerals for our potential. We have always been
what makes America great.

- e.c.c.

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
Says that America is for him a maximum-security prison

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Where you can’t tell the show from the commercials,

And as I consider how to express how full of shit I think he is,
He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu

Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
Of the thick satin quilt of America

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin doctoring a better grade,

And then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
It was not blood but money

That gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
Spilling from his wounds, and—this is the weird part—,

He gasped “Thank god—those Ben Franklins were
Clogging up my heart—

And so I perish happily,
Freed from that which kept me from my liberty”—

Which was when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
Would never speak in rhymed couplets,

And I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
And I think, “I am asleep in America too,

And I don’t know how to wake myself either,”
And I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

“I was listening to the cries of the past,
When I should have been listening to the cries of the future.”

But how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
Or what kind of nightmare it might be

When each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
And you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

Even while others are drowning underneath you
And you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

And yet it seems to be your own hand
Which turns the volume higher?

- Tony Hoagland

Elegy For A Friend

The old dog looked out from behind
the sudden blizzard that had become her world.

She had often approached me as if one of us
was a well and one of us was the bucket-
taking turns - Can I write that she filled me
with light? Now the storm raged around her
and soon she was lost beyond our sight
beyond our calling her back.
.
Her tail was a sail
Her nose pointed to a far shore.

I had taken for granted that
she would always be here when
nothing else ever is.

The rain is cold and gray
and the candle recognizes its
insignificance but bravely gives out
a little light, as I say my prayer
without words
in her language.

- Gail Onion

Barberism

It was light and lusterless and somehow luckless,
The hair I cut from the head of my father-in-law,
It was pepper-blanched and wind-scuffed, thin
As a blown bulb’s filament, it stuck to the teeth
Of my clippers like a dark language, the static
Covering his mind stuck to my fingers, it mingled
In halfhearted tufts with the dust. Because
Every barber’s got a gift for mind reading in his touch,
I could hear what he would not say. He’s sworn
To never let his hair be cut again after his daughter
Passed away. I told him how my own boy,
His grandchild, weeps when my clippers bite
Behind his ear, but I could not say how
The blood there tastes. I almost showed him
How I bow my own head to the razor in my hands,
How a mirror is used to taper the nape.
Science and religion come to the same conclusion:
Someday all the hair on the body will fall away.
I’m certain he will only call on me for a few more years,
The crown of his head is already smoother
Than any part of his face. It shines like the light
In tiny bulbs of sweat before the sweat evaporates.

- Terrance Hayes

Sharing The Grief

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

All who have more
Privileges and blessings
Take a piece
And in this holding
And sharing
Maybe, just maybe
We can provide some
Salve for those
In the trenches
Who taste the blood
In their mouths
Who see the
Limbs scattered in the dust
Who know the loss of their
Children and loved ones
It is not much to ask
One piece of it
In our hearts
To hold with love and words

- Corlene Van Sluizer

A Poem for Doug

First we heard the song
Then he sailed into the room
One foot on the stern, one foot on the bow
A mast of presence
Sails of billowing gray trailing behind
Lines of poems lapping at his feet
Von Koss he announced
But we had already sensed his imminent arrival
Such a captain he
Master of word and song

- Rebecca Evert

North of San Francisco

Here the soft hills touch the ocean
like one eternity touching another
and the cows grazing on them
ignore us, like angels.
Even the scent of ripe melon in the cellar
is a prophecy of peace.

The darkness doesn’t war against the light,
it carries us forward
to another light, and the only pain
is the pain of not staying here.

In my land, called holy,
they won’t let eternity be;
they’ve divided it into little religions,
zoned it for God-zones,
broken it into fragments of history,
sharp and wounding unto death.
And they’ve turned its tranquil distances
into a closeness convulsing with the pain of the present.

On the beach at Bolinas, at the foot of the wooden steps,
I saw some girls lying in the sand bare-bottomed.
their heads bowed, drunk
on the kingdom everlasting,
their souls like doors
closing and opening
closing and opening inside them
to the rhythm of the surf.

- Yehuda Amichai
(Translated by Chana Block)

For The Children


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

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

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

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

- Gary Snyder


Dear friends,
In the aftermath of the election and witnessing the alarming appointments to key positions in the next administration, I know that many of us are feeling disheartened and frightened about the future of our country and of our world. The determination of the President-elect and his appointed EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, to undo all our efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is particularly alarming.
But this is not the time to be discouraged. It is the time to stand up and take positive action. It is clear that, for the next four years at least, the federal government will not be leading the fight against climate change. This makes our local actions all the more important and necessary.
As some of you may know, I serve on the board of directors for the Center for Climate Protection, a northern California based organization which has been working to develop and promote local policies to address this critical issue. If you are looking for a way to help ensure a viable future for our children and for their children, I invite you to visit our website (https://climateprotection.org/) to learn more about our work and how you can get involved. I also hope that you will consider making a financial contribution to this important work.
May we all stay safe through these interesting times.

Larry

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

This was sent by a friend and very timely, Trump in a nutshell. —Ron

N Ziehl
Nov 27
Coping with Chaos in the White House

A few days ago, I wrote a post for my Facebook friends about my personal experience with narcissistic personality disorder and how I view the president elect as a result. Unexpectedly, the post traveled widely, and it became clear that many people are struggling with how to understand and deal with this kind of behavior in a position of power. Although several writers, including a few professionals, have publicly offered their thoughts on a diagnosis, I am not a professional and this is not a diagnosis. My post is not intended to persuade anyone or provide a comprehensive description of NPD. I am speaking purely from decades of dealing with NPD and sharing strategies that were helpful for me in coping and predicting behavior. The text below is adapted from my original Facebook post.

I want to talk a little about narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve unfortunately had a great deal of experience with it, and I’m feeling badly for those of you who are trying to grapple with it for the first time because of our president-elect, who almost certainly suffers from it or a similar disorder. If I am correct, it has some very particular implications for the office. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

1) It’s not curable and it’s barely treatable. He is who he is. There is no getting better, or learning, or adapting. He’s not going to “rise to the occasion” for more than maybe a couple hours. So just put that out of your mind.

2) He will say whatever feels most comfortable or good to him at any given time. He will lie a lot, and say totally different things to different people. Stop being surprised by this. While it’s important to pretend “good faith” and remind him of promises, as Bernie Sanders and others are doing, that’s for his supporters, so *they* can see the inconsistency as it comes. He won’t care. So if you’re trying to reconcile or analyze his words, don’t. It’s 100% not worth your time. Only pay attention to and address his actions.

3) You can influence him by making him feel good. There are already people like Bannon who appear ready to use him for their own ends. The GOP is excited to try. Watch them, not him. President Obama, in his wisdom, may be treating him well in hopes of influencing him and averting the worst. If he gets enough accolades for better behavior, he might continue to try it. But don’t count on it.

4) Entitlement is a key aspect of the disorder. As we are already seeing, he will likely not observe traditional boundaries of the office. He has already stated that rules don’t apply to him. This particular attribute has huge implications for the presidency and it will be important for everyone who can to hold him to the same standards as previous presidents.

5) We should expect that he only cares about himself and those he views as extensions of himself, like his children. (People with NPD often can’t understand others as fully human or distinct.) He desires accumulation of wealth and power because it fills a hole. (Melania is probably an acquired item, not an extension.) He will have no qualms *at all* about stealing everything he can from the country, and he’ll be happy to help others do so, if they make him feel good. He won’t view it as stealing but rather as something he’s entitled to do. This is likely the only thing he will intentionally accomplish.

6) It’s very, very confusing for non-disordered people to experience a disordered person with NPD. While often intelligent, charismatic and charming, they do not reliably observe social conventions or demonstrate basic human empathy. It’s very common for non-disordered people to lower their own expectations and try to normalize the behavior. DO NOT DO THIS AND DO NOT ALLOW OTHERS, ESPECIALLY THE MEDIA, TO DO THIS. If you start to feel foggy or unclear about this, step away until you recalibrate.

7) People with NPD often recruit helpers, referred to in the literature as “enablers” when they allow or cover for bad behavior and “flying monkeys” when they perpetrate bad behavior on behalf of the narcissist. Although it’s easiest to prey on malicious people, good and vulnerable people can be unwittingly recruited. It will be important to support good people around him if and when they attempt to stay clear or break away.

8) People with NPD often foster competition for sport in people they control. Expect lots of chaos, firings and recriminations. He will probably behave worst toward those closest to him, but that doesn’t mean (obviously) that his actions won’t have consequences for the rest of us. He will punish enemies. He may start out, as he has with the NYT, with a confusing combination of punishing/rewarding, which is a classic abuse tactic for control. If you see your media cooperating or facilitating this behavior for rewards, call them on it.

9) Gaslighting — where someone tries to convince you that the reality you’ve experienced isn’t true — is real and torturous. He will gaslight, his followers will gaslight. Many of our politicians and media figures already gaslight, so it will be hard to distinguish his amplified version from what has already been normalized. Learn the signs and find ways to stay focused on what you know to be true. Note: it is typically not helpful to argue with people who are attempting to gaslight. You will only confuse yourself. Just walk away.

10) Whenever possible, do not focus on the narcissist or give him attention. Unfortunately we can’t and shouldn’t ignore the president, but don’t circulate his tweets or laugh at him — you are enabling him and getting his word out. (I’ve done this, of course, we all have… just try to be aware.) Pay attention to your own emotions: do you sort of enjoy his clowning? do you enjoy the outrage? is this kind of fun and dramatic, in a sick way? You are adding to his energy. Focus on what you can change and how you can resist, where you are. We are all called to be leaders now, in the absence of leadership.

my final lunch

I spent noontime
on the day of my death
eating lunch
at Jo Jo Sushi
where I overheard
a Mexican lady say
anguila to her friend.

I was pleased knowing
anguila meant eel
obviously here referring to
unagi or cooked eel.

Both proud and
disappointed
possessing this
meaning
and knowing I’d have
no further use for it hence.

- Ed Coletti

Larry, thanks for the climate work you do, and for all the wonderful poems you post. You are a ray of sunshine in my day ... best, Ruth aka gardenmaniac

Alive

Dear Abby, said someone from Oregon,
I am having trouble with my boyfriend’s attachment
to an ancient gallon of milk still full
in his refrigerator. I told him it’s me or the milk,
is this unreasonable? Dear Carolyn,
my brother won’t speak to me
because fifty years ago I whispered
a monkey would kidnap him in the night
to take him back to his true family
but he should have known it was a joke
when it didn’t happen, don’t you think?
Dear Board of Education, no one will ever
remember a test. Repeat. Stories,
poems, projects, experiments,
mischief, yes, but never a test.
Dear Dog Behind the Fence, you really need
to calm down now. You have been barking every time
I walk to the compost for two years
and I have not robbed your house. Relax.
When I asked the man on the other side
if you bother him too, he smiled and said no,
he makes me feel less alone. Should I be more
worried about the dog or the man?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Visitation


It was still easy for her in the beginning,
only when climbing she would
be aware of her heavy womb, -
and then she stood, breathing,

on the Jewish mountains. But not the land
spread about her, but her fullness; and
while walking she knew: nowhere
was there such fullness as hers.

And she felt compelled to feel with her hand
the womb of hers who was further along.
Toward each other they swayingly stepped
and caressed the dress and the hair.

Each woman was filled with sacred life
and safe and at ease with the relative.
And though the savior was hardly in bloom,
the Baptist in the cousin’s womb
already jumped for joy.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
(Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder)

My Kumbaya Moment

The sky one-dimensional, flat
Shades on white and gray.
The sun a blur, burning
A hole in the smeared sky.

I had coffee with God this morning.
I know it's not fashionable
To speak of God when so many
Suffer, so many images crowd

Our cluttered, small consciousness.
But still, I need God, if only
The idea of Something Greater
Than Ourselves here. So I ask

And here You are, disguised poorly,
As a sun, a sky and the persistent
Bird song in my limited Paradise.

- Rebecca del Rio

The Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul's history
Through corridors of light where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the spirit clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious is never to forget
The delight of the blood drawn from ancient springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth;
Never to deny its pleasure in the simple morning light,
Nor its grave evening demand for love;
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass,
And by the streamers of white cloud,
And whispers of wind in the listening sky;
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire's center.
Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.

- Stephen Spender

Shine, Perishing Republic


While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass
hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make
earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and
home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly
long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing
republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening
center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster’s feet there are left
the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant,
insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught—they say—God, when he
walked on earth.


- Robinson Jeffers

Cross That Line

Paul Robeson stood
on the northern border of the USA
and sang into Canada
where a vast audience
sat on folding chairs
waiting to hear him.

He sang into Canada.
His voice left the USA
when his body was not allowed
to cross that line.

Remind us again, brave friend!
What countries may we sing into?
What lines should we all be crossing?
What songs travel toward us
from far away
to deepen our days?

- Naomi Shihab Nye

For Strong Women

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do something others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

- Marge Piercy

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old,
For hope must not depend on feeling good
And there is the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight.
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality
Of the future, which surely will surprise us,
…And hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction
Any more than by wishing. But stop dithering.
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them?
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.


Because we have not made our lives to fit
Our places, the forests are ruined, the fields eroded,
The streams polluted, the mountains overturned. Hope
Then to belong to your place by your own knowledge
Of what it is that no other place is, and by
Your caring for it as you care for no other place, this
Place that you belong to though it is not yours,
For it was from the beginning and will be to the end


Belong to your place by knowledge of the others who are
Your neighbors in it: the old man, sick and poor,
Who comes like a heron to fish in the creek,
And the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike
Fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing
In the trees in the silence of the fisherman
And the heron, and the trees that keep the land
They stand upon as we too must keep it, or die.


This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power
Or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful
when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy
when they ask for your land and your work.
Answer with knowledge of the others who are here
And how to be here with them. By this knowledge
Make the sense you need to make. By it stand
In the dignity of good sense, whatever may follow.
Speak to your fellow humans as your place
Has taught you to speak, as it has spoken to you.
Speak its dialect as your old compatriots spoke it
Before they had heard a radio. Speak
Publicly what cannot be taught or learned in public.


Listen privately, silently to the voices that rise up
From the pages of books and from your own heart.
Be still and listen to the voices that belong
To the streambanks and the trees and the open fields.
There are songs and sayings that belong to this place,
By which it speaks for itself and no other.


Found your hope, then, on the ground under your feet.
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground
Underfoot. Be it lighted by the light that falls
Freely upon it after the darkness of the nights
And the darkness of our ignorance and madness.
Let it be lighted also by the light that is within you,
Which is the light of imagination. By it you see
The likeness of people in other places to yourself
In your place. It lights invariably the need for care
Toward other people, other creatures, in other places
As you would ask them for care toward your place and you.


No place at last is better than the world. The world
Is no better than its places. Its places at last
Are no better than their people while their people
Continue in them. When the people make
Dark the light within them, the world darkens.


- Wendell Berry

Solstice Song

On this midwinter night
let us summon what we’ve lost
with chant, prayer, song, fire,
faith that the nearly forgotten
will open and rise anew
and the world will turn
back toward the light.
Midwinter’s gift is memory
to hold a place for what was and will be again.
Leaves fallen off ancient vines
reveal gnarled fists of twisted branches
that even now push buds into the frosted night.
Low in the December sky
a tenebrous bulge of darkness
cradles the waxing crescent of a buttery moon.
And at the end of the western road
lies the black wet flatness of sand
where the tide ebbed and is now returning
in its endless whispering susurrus.
At this fulcrum of the season
we raise our arms and press fingertips
against the darkness to tip it back.
There are many winters in our pasts
and there is a time to allow our bodies to be tired and cold,
but beneath it all and slowly rising
like Lazarus to walk the warm earth again,
our blood is flowing, our muscles stretch and lengthen,
the pale green leaves encircling our hearts
await their unfolding.
We lean into the dawn,
eager to call the light home
and be young together
once more.

- Elaine Christo Watkins

Solstice Poem

The world will not end tonight,
though the wrinkled horsemen
slumped over their antediluvian mounts
are standing by waiting for the cue
and who knows where the trumpeter’s gone by now
itching to wet his whistle ...

though the placards and signs are lined up
against the crumbling walls proclaiming the end is nigh
and the ones on parchment vellum and papyrus
curl in their glass cases as generations
of school kids careen by, oblivious. ...

though the fountain of youth persists beneath
the track at Hialeah or maybe next door
under the ersatz jungle pool at the Four Winds Motel,
plastic pink flamingos fishing the crew cut lawn, ...

though the bomb shelters sink into themselves,
faded labels peeling from crushed and dented cans
whose combined shelf lives equal
a number we have not yet reckoned, ...

though the cryogenic warehouses await occupation
your choice of sheepskin or stainless steel lining
your pod stationed on site or shot into space, ...

though the falling dreams, the flying dreams
the nightly haunting journeys through
an unbound space time confluence...
(Did you ever ride an elevator to the moon? )

though the green leaves furl crimson and gold
and fall in the gusty autumn afternoon
and the sky stalls, a stark white glare
under the wraiths of cloud, the shroud of fog....
though the brewing rain a deluge in the drought, ...

though we are saturate of blood and oil,
the tape loops of disgruntlement,
the strung beads of grievance,
the squandered slain of battlefield and school

and though we grieve the sacrificial lambs,
petals strewn on blind archaic altars,
though we toll the bells and count our losses,
cast our nets, jump from cliffs,
or dive into the cold dark heart to find the molten light,
The world will not end tonight.

- Carla Steinberg

In the Grip of the Solstice

Feels like a train roaring into night,
the journey into fierce cold just beginning.
The ground is newly frozen, the crust
brittle and fancy with striations,
steeples and nipples we break
under our feet.
Every day we are shortchanged a bit more,
night pressing down on the afternoon
throttling it. Wan sunrise later
and later, every day trimmed
like an old candle you beg to give
an hour’s more light.
Feels like hurtling into vast darkness,
the sky itself whistling of space
the black matter between stars
the red shift as the light dies,
warmth a temporary aberration,
entropy as a season.
Our ancestors understood the brute
fear that grips us as the cold
settles around us, closing in.
Light the logs in the fireplace tonight,
light the candles, first one, then two,
the full chanukiya.
Light the fire in the belly.
Eat hot soup, cabbage and beef
borscht, chicken soup, lamb
and barley, stoke the marrow.
Put down the white wine and pour
whiskey instead.
We reach for each other in our bed,
the night vaulted above us
like a cave. Night in the afternoon,
cold frosting the glass so it hurts
to touch it, only flesh still
welcoming to flesh.

- Marge Piercy

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

- Theodore Roethke

A Christmas Carol

Away in a manger
or a crack house
or under a bridge
or in a bombed-out village
or a refugee camp
or in the mesquite shade close to the border wall
some Mary is giving birth.

Even as you read this
a child is being born.

What if one of these were the promised one,
the beacon of hope,
the seed of a new light
in a dark time?

What if they all were?
What gifts would you bring
if you were wise?

- Larry Robinson

little tree
little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

- e.e.cummings

Awaken


we are in the wake
of a great shifting

awaken

you better free your mind
before they illegalize thought

there’s a war going on

the first casualty was truth
and it’s inside you

the universe is counting on our belief
that faith is more powerful than fear
and in that the shifting moment
we’ll all remember why we’re here

in a world where you’re assassinated for having a dream
and the rich spend 9 billion a year to control our ideas
and visions are televised so things aren’t what they seem

we gotta believe
in a world where
there’s room enough for everyone
to breathe

cause reality is made up of
7 billion thoughts
who made up their minds
of what’s real and what’s not

so I stopped believing
in false idols of war
greed and hate
is not worth my faith

my mind’s dedicated
to justice
my soul is devoted
to love

and love is God
and God is truth
and truth is you
and you are me
and I am everything
and everything is nothing
and nothing is the birthplace of creation
and transformation is possible
and you are proof

we were born right now
for a reason
we can be whatever
we give ourselves the power to be

and right now we need
day dreamers
gate keepers
bridge builders
soul speakers
web weavers
light bearers
food growers
wound healers
trail blazers
truth sayers
life lovers
peace makers

give what you most deeply desire
to give
every moment you are choosing to live
or you are waiting

why would a flower hesitate to open?
now is the only moment
rain drop let go
become the ocean

possibility is as wide
as the space
we create
to hold it

- Naima Penniman

"Right now we need . . . truth sayers"!
Thank you for introducing me to this performance poet new to me.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Awaken...
- Naima Penniman

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Invocation For The Dark Times: Solstice 2002



Stop what you are doing and listen.
Listen to the darkness gathering around you

Stop what you are doing and breathe.
Breathe into the life that you are given.

Stop what you are doing and breathe into this moment
This moment of gathering darkness hovering at the edge
Of colored lights and plastic trees and busy streets and unmet needs

Breathe into the darkness
Growling with the waxing web of war
Wrapping the somnolent fear fed world
in the power hungry vice grips of adolescent tyrants
Formed from the dust of overextended empires
Caught by the ruthless clutch of encroaching stupidity
Escaping the boundaries of all reason at the cost of
Everything You Hold Dear.

Breathe into the wraithlike reporters of doom and gloom
Breathe into the anguished futile cries
Of unheard children wanting the world to last
The trees to stand, the rivers to flow
The sun to shine tomorrow and the next day and the next
Without Nuclear Winter.

Breathe through the putrid stench of all that is dying
And Scream your Agonized Release.

Scream and open to the darkness that is the Great Unmaking.
Open to the darkness that is the letting go,
The crashing down, the stricken stalk,
The dwindling stream, the moonless night,
The used up yesterdays
Whose rightful place is
Peacefully Pushed into the Past.

Breathe and die to the ego-driven empires within you
Spun from the longing of misled separation
Breathe into the endless, endless nothing that is the
blackest velvet source of all.
Breathe into the quiet, the still, the empty and the full
The cradling cloak of rest that
Remembers and Renews.

Breathe into the darkness that is the moist wet womb
Breathe into the slumbering seed,
Cradled in the eternity of crumbled mountains.
Breathe into the the gaping black lace of infinite galaxies,
Birthed from the hiccups of sleeping Gods
Just to tell us there's something
More than Meets the Eye.

Reach into the teeming void to a distant star
And pull it down through endless steps and rainbow veils
And yearning kisses and improbable wishes
Breathe the dreams of dark night’s slumber
onto the tongues of the inner flame,
the luminous light,
The awakening dance
Breaking the trance
Taking the chance on
Changing the Stance.

Breathe into your undulating visions
Birthed from sorrow into hope
Birthed from darkness into faith
Birthed from nothing into something
Something better, something new, something yet we do not know
But only feel, deep within, deep and down,
Where Darkness Reigns Forever
like the
Ancient Queen She Is.

And then, and then, only then,
The Light Will Come.


- Anodea Judith

By The Way
For Adrienne Rich

I’ve given it time, as if time were mine to give.
There was a dam, larger than Hoover or the President or the patent
For the metal creature that sucks up all the dust.
Words had to stop and ask permission before crossing over.
Oh, sometimes they were wild with the urgency of sweet
And leaped—
Mostly the rest were kept in the net
Of swallowed or forbidden language.

I want to go back and rewrite all the letters.
I lied frequently.
No. I was not O.K.
And neither was James Baldwin, though his essays
Were perfect spinning platters of comprehension of the fight
To assert humanness in a black-and-white world.

That’s how blues emerged, by the way—
Our spirits needed a way to dance through the heavy mess.
The music, a sack that carries the bones of those left alongside
The trail of tears when we were forced
To leave everything we knew by the way—

I constructed an individual life in the so-called civilized world.
We all did—far from the trees and plants
Who had born us and fed us.
All I wanted was the music, I would tell you now—
Within it, what we cannot carry.
I talk about then from a hotel room just miles
From your home in the East
Before you fled on your personal path of tears
To the West, that worn-out American Dream
Dogging your steps.

You lived on a pedestal for me then, the driven diver who climbed
Back up from the abyss, Venus on a seashell with a dagger
In her hands.
I had to look, and followed your tracks in the poems
Cut by suffering.
Aren’t they all?
We’re in the apocalyptic age of addiction and forgetting.
It’s worse now.

But that dam, I had to tell you. I broke it open stone by stone.
It took a saxophone, flowers, and your words
Had something to do with it
I can’t say exactly how.
The trajectory wasn’t clean, even though it was sure.
Does that make sense?
Maybe it does only in the precincts of dreams and poetry,
Not in a country lit twenty-four hours a day to keep dreams stuck
Turning in a wheel
In the houses of money.

I read about transcendence, how the light
Came in through the window of a nearby traveller
And every cell of creation opened its mouth
To drink grace.

That’s what I never told you.

- Joy Harjo

The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

Human movements,
but for a few,
are Westerly.
Man follows the Sun.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

Or follows what he thinks to be the
movement of the Sun.
It is hard to feel it, as a rider,
on a spinning ball.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

Centuries and hordes of us,
from every quarter of the earth,
now piling up,
and each wave going back
to get some more.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

My face is the map of the Steppes,"
she said, on this mountain, looking West.

My blood set singing by it,
to the old tunes,
Irish, still,
among these Oaks.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

This is why
once again we celebrate
the great Spring Tides.

Beaches are strewn again with Jasper,
Agate, and Jade.
The Mussel-rock stands clear.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

This is why
once again we celebrate the
Headland's huge, cairn-studded, fall
into the Sea.

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

For we have walked the jeweled beaches
at the feet of the final cliffs
of all Man's wanderings.

This is the last place.
There is nowhere else we need to go.

- Lew Welch

I think I remember (that's the way the elderly talk) that Lew Welch told people that, when he died, he'd be buried in a place on Mt. Tamalpais that no one would ever be able to find. He left a suicide note at Gary Snyder's house and vanished. This was in 1971, and his body was never found. He was thought to be carrying a handgun at the time of his disappearance.

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings

This is the last place. There is nowhere else to go.

...

- Lew Welch

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For/From Lew Welch

Lew Welch just turned up one day,
live as you and me. "Damn, Lew" I said,
"you didn't shoot yourself after all."
"Yes I did" he said,
and even then I felt the tingling down my back.
"Yes you did, too" I said—"I can feel it now."
"Yeah" he said,
"There's a basic fear between your world and
mine. I don't know why.
What I came to say was,
teach the children about the cycles.
The life cycles. All other cycles.
That’s what it's all about, and it's all forgot."

- Gary Snyder

Burning the Old Year

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

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.

Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.

Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.

- Naomi Shihab Nye

To the New Year

With what stillness at last
you appear in the valley
your first sunlight reaching down
to touch the tips of a few
high leaves that do not stir
as though they had not noticed
and did not know you at all
then the voice of a dove calls
from far away in itself
to the hush of the morning

so this is the sound of you
here and now whether or not
anyone hears it this is
where we have come with our age
our knowledge such as it is
and our hopes such as they are
invisible before us
untouched and still possible

- W.S. Merwin

December 31st

All my undone actions wander
naked across the calendar,

a band of skinny hunter-gatherers,
blown snow scattered here and there,

stumbling toward a future
folded in the New Year I secure

with a pushpin: January’s picture
a painting from the 17th century,

a still life: Skull and mirror,
spilled coin purse and a flower.

- Richard Hoffman

Each year Sheila Murphy mails her friends a poem for the New Year. This years:

Starting With Black

In a dark place
in a dark time

start with black.
Stop. Soak up its energy.

Remember the circle
however bent and broken.

Prize balance. Seek Pleasure.
Allow surprise. Let music

guide your every impulse.
Support those who falter.

Steer by our fixed star:
No Justice, No Peace.

- Jim Haba

The Risk of Birth

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn-
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn-
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

- Madeleine L’Engle

Encounter

We were riding through the frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive.
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going?
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

- Czeslaw Milosz

A New Land


“What is to give light must endure burning.” Victor Frankl


fires of grief
burn thru every pore
every crevice of self
every belief held tightly
even of inherent goodness

beliefs fail us now
watch as they dissolve
fly away on the breeze
ashes in free flight
no time to bid farewell

fully awake, eyes wide
turning toward the east
the return of light, a new day,
surrender to who knows what
gently hold the darkness

as revealed in outer form
step forward in terror
and in trust, asking:
how can i be of use
this burning one?

carry the torch
of initiated innocence
stumbling at times
falling, yet knowing
the fire will light a way

beyond a shallow safety
to a new land where
the heart of the world
pulses and sings
in billions of ears

somewhere between
terror and trust runs
the deeper river
of resolve, and there
we will reside, there

the sun outshines
the fires of grief
a prayer rises up
in a yet unspoken
language of light

- Fran Carbonaro

Ravens Hiding in a Shoe


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

Ravens at night hide in an old woman’s shoe.
A four-year-old speaks some ancient language.
We have lived our own death a thousand times.

Each sentence we speak to friends means the opposite
As well. Each time we say, “I trust in God,” it means
God has already abandoned us a thousand times.

Mothers again and again have knelt in church
In wartime asking God to protect their sons,
And their prayers were refused a thousand times.

The baby loon follows the mother’s sleek
Body for months. By the end of summer, she
Has dipped her head into Rainy Lake a thousand times.

Robert, you’ve wasted so much of your life
Sitting indoors to write poems. Would you
Do that again? I would, a thousand times.

- Robert Bly

Hooray for Robert Bly!

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Ravens Hiding in a Shoe...

- Robert Bly

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Shoe drawn by Sherry Yuki, ravens from Oana Enache's pinterest page.