Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Forbidden Words


The Word Posse has rounded them up and lassoed them.
It has tied bandanas around their mouths; shut them up in word jails,
and in administrative lock-up. They will not see the light of day!
They have been barred them from the lexicon of our thought.


They are washing out our mouths with soap, yet
there is not a four-letter word among them!


They are tying our tongues in knots!
Can your hear the police speed those lawbreakers
Into dead letter files, or Black Sites?
Their terrible influence has to be stuffed down
our throats to strangle us, to wipe the silly grins off
our faces. The sound of them will never again
emerge from under our hats! They are to be
shot on sight. You better not, better not shout:
Vulnerable, or Transgender, or Fetus
Or Science–based, especially Evidenced-based.
No Diversity, no Entitlements., and what about
Global Climate Change? Is it next?


We hear you, but we will not keep silent. We will call in
armies of words in pussy hats, saying “Me Too.”
We will keep them all on the tips of our tongues;
giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitations. And Rosa Parks
and all the black women, and men, like William Barber
will lead white women and men, to join in and say them!
And Linda Sartor, Gloria Steinham and Jim Wallis
will keep them like scripture and memorized poems.
There is so much we know by heart. The whole
oral tradition, the sound of songs, nursery rhymes
echoing in the everyday streets of our lives.
Even Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and U2 will be playing
or rapping with the Millennials, and voting with them.
The answer my friends is blowing
with the wind of them, on the many roads


and marches, until every street resounds
with their un-rhymed offensive possibilities.


- Judith Stone

It is not just CDC, and it is not just USA.... AND what a clever way to stir up emotions and sides (aka the divide us/conquer us ruse)... See article by an oceanographer and two other lists of banned or forbidden words:

CDC Receives List of Banned Words Including “Evidence-Based” and “Science-Based”

War on language: Words like mankind, man-made, housewife banned at UK university

War On Words: New York City Dept. Of Education Wants 50 'Forbidden' Words Banned From Standardized Tests

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Forbidden Words
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Account Of A Visit From St. Nicholas

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all thro’ the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

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The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads,
And Mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap —

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:

“Now! Dasher, now! Dancer, now! Prancer, and Vixen,
“On! Comet, on! Cupid, on! Under and Blixem;
“To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
“Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys — and St. Nicholas too:

And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound:

He was dress’d all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnish’d with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys was flung on his back,
And he look’d like a peddler just opening his pack:

His eyes — how they twinkled! his dimples how merry,
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly:

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laugh’d when I saw him in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.

He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

- Henry Livingston, Jr.
_____________________

Amazing Peace


Thunder rumbles in the mountain passes
And lightning rattles the eaves of our houses.
Flood waters await us in our avenues.


Snow falls upon snow, falls upon snow to
avalanche
Over unprotected villages.
The sky slips low and grey and threatening.


We question ourselves.
What have we done
to so affront nature?
We worry God.
Are you there? Are you there really?
Does the covenant you made with us still hold?


Into this climate of fear and apprehension,
Christmas enters,
Streaming lights of joy, ringing bells of hope
And singing carols of forgiveness
high up in the bright air.
The world is encouraged to come away from rancor,
Come the way of friendship.


It is the Glad Season.
Thunder ebbs to silence
and lightning sleeps quietly in the corner.
Flood waters recede into memory.
Snow becomes a yielding cushion to aid us
As we make our way to higher ground.


Hope is born again in the faces of children
It rides on the shoulders of our aged
as they walk into their sunsets.
Hope spreads around the earth,
brightening all things,
Even hate which crouches,
breeding in dark corridors.


In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft.
Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now.
It is louder.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.


We tremble at the sound.
We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war.
But true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, a comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.


We clap hands and welcome the Peace of Christmas.
We beckon this good season to wait a while with us.
We, Baptist and Buddhist, Methodist and Muslim, say come.
Peace.
Come and fill us and our world with your majesty.
We, the Jew and the Jainist, the Catholic and the Confucian,
Implore you to stay a while with us.
So we may learn by your shimmering light
How to look beyond complexion and see community.


It is Christmas time, a halting of hate time.


On this platform of peace, we can create a language
To translate ourselves to ourselves and to each other.


At this Holy Instant, we celebrate the Birth of Jesus Christ
Into the great religions of the world.
We jubilate the precious advent of trust.
We shout with glorious tongues at the coming of hope.
All the earth's tribes loosen their voices
To celebrate the promise of Peace.


We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and Non-Believers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at our world and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into ourselves
And we say without shyness or apology or hesitation.




Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.


- Maya Angelou

The Night Before Christmas redux

tis the day after christmas and all the thru the store
some folks will be shouting "we need to buy more"
most feared they'd missed out on the best deals of all
so early they got up and drove to the mall

I'm sorry to say it's the 'merican way ...
there's never enough in old Santy Claws sleigh
to fill up that void we buy things we don't need
it's really appalling to witness such greed

I remember when we would behave in this way
only that one late November Friday
we forget to be grateful for all that we've got
so here's an idea let's give it a shot

maybe next weekend to start the new year
we can relish our good health and those we hold dear
be grateful for everything good in our lives
our sisters our brothers our husbands and wives.

peace out, Ruth

Ring Out, Wild Bells

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

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  The flying cloud, the frosty light:
  The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
  The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
  For those that here we see no more;
  Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
  And ancient forms of party strife;
  Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
  The faithless coldness of the times;
  Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
  The civic slander and the spite;
  Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
  Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
  The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
  Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

You Darkness

You Darkness, from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires that fence out the world.

Because the fires make a circle of light
so that no one can see you any more.

But the Darkness holds it all.
The shapes, the animals,
The flames and myself.

How it holds them.
All power, All Strength

And it is possible, a great energy is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night

- Rainier Maria Rilke
(translation by Robert Bly)

Background photo taken from aircraft window somewhere above the Southwest.

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You Darkness...

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In My 74th Year


I’m leaving.
I come upon this unexpectedly,
like turning a corner and seeing the cat walking on out the open door.
I’ll be sitting quietly, like always,
and notice that something I used to think was very important
just doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
A surprise.
I always knew I would be leaving, the fact of it.
But now I know it differently, through awareness.
Not, as I once thought, through aches and pains,
or gradually diminishing capacity,
But, unexpectedly,
The cat, tail up, just walking away.

- Jean Norelli

Prayer


Tonight...instead of trying to talk to You in my bed,
I talk to You with my pen...a Psalm perhaps.
I ask for what I ask for every night:
Heal my heart and let me not be crazy,
and give me strength to live a good life.
This is a small man's simple wish.

Like on other nights, I do not know if You are there.
I do not know if You hear me.
It has been said by sages that You talk to men.
I have not heard Your voice, I do not think.
But yet....I know there is a You,
by what You have made:
by the stars and the grasses in the marshes.
How You grow flowers and trees
and by how they breathe.
By how Your perfumes fill the woods
and by the more than myriads of intricacies
Your hand has crafted.

Maybe then, for me in some small way
We have heard each other.
If this is so, I cannot say.

And now I end this with the end
of the Bedtime Shema:*
“Stand in awe and sin not.
Commune with your own heart
upon your bed and be still.
Selah” *

- Marvin Blaustein

*Shema is a Hebrew Prayer
*Selah; forever

Hieroglyphic Stairway


it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I’m awake
because my great great grandchildren
won’t let me sleep
my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the planet was plundered?
what did you do when the earth was unraveling?

surely you did something
when the seasons started failing?

as the mammals, reptiles, birds were all dying?

did you fill the streets with protest
when democracy was stolen?

what did you do
once
you
knew?

I’m riding home on the Colma train
I’ve got the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I have teams of scientists
feeding me data daily
and pleading I immediately
turn it into poetry

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech

I am the desirous earth
equidistant to the underworld
and the flesh of the stars

I am everything already lost

the moment the universe turns transparent
and all the light shoots through the cosmos

I use words to instigate silence

I’m a hieroglyphic stairway
in a buried Mayan city
suddenly exposed by a hurricane

a satellite circling earth
finding dinosaur bones
in the Gobi desert
I am telescopes that see back in time

I am the precession of the equinoxes,
the magnetism of the spiraling sea

I’m riding home on the Colma train
with the voice of the milky way in my dreams

I am myths where violets blossom from blood
like dying and rising gods

I’m the boundary of time
soul encountering soul
and tongues of fire

it’s 3:23 in the morning
and I can’t sleep
because my great great grandchildren
ask me in dreams
what did you do while the earth was unraveling?

I want just this consciousness reached
by people in range of secret frequencies
contained in my speech


- Drew Dellinger

A Way Forward

There is that of Christ
in each of us
but none
has the whole.

Therefore, we must listen,
listen to discern
what part we speak
what part we hear
what part is left unspoken.

We must not think
our part is whole,
nor another’s part
nor the part left unspoken.

But searching our soul,
open to discovery
of something new
about ourselves,
hearing something new
from another,
being aware of something
yet to be spoken,
will lead us forward.

And what new thing
might we discover?
What fear uncover,
that leads to deafness
and to judgment—
of ourselves or of another?
And how might owning
that part of us
and sharing
in faith
that we will be heard
and held as human,
show us the Spirit
and the way forward?

- Bill Denham

A New Year’s Blessing

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

Thank you, Larry, for your year-long gift of poetry, and for your presence in our lives.
Roland

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

A New Year’s Blessing

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

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Year’s End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

- Richard Wilbur

One of my all-time favorites. Thanks again, Larry.
Roland

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Year’s End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

- Richard Wilbur

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It would be neat if with the New Year…


It would be neat if with the New Year
I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year.
My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots
my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws,
chews on for hours every day in my front yard—
rain, sun, snow, or wind
in bare feet, pondering my poem,
I’d look out my window and see that dirty pair of boots in the yard.

But my happiness depends so much on wearing those boots.

At the end of my day
while I’m in a chair listening to a Mexican corrido
I stare at my boots appreciating:
all the wrong roads we’ve taken, all the drug and whiskey houses
we’ve visited, and as the Mexican singer wails his pain,
I smile at my boots, understanding every note in his voice,
and strangers, when they see my boots rocking back and forth on my
feet
keeping beat to the song, see how
my boots are scuffed, tooth-marked, worn-soled.

I keep wearing them because they fit so good
and I need them, especially when I love so hard,
where I go up those boulder strewn trails,
where flowers crack rocks in their defiant love for the light.

- Jimmy Santiago Baca

This Year

Assemble
resolve
good thoughts
merriment
humble pie
friends
unusual words
only good thots
goodness
lactobacillus bacteria
memories
some guts(iness)
gray clouds
nimbus

Dis-assemble
resentment
expectations
fancy restaurants–
Rebeccas
unilateral decisions
iron gloves
motherless days
ledgers
past ledgers
worries
knots in stomach
tangled sheets
the firearms


- Nancy Cavers Dougherty

A NEW YEAR’S REMINDER
TO TAPE TO MY CALENDAR

Burn the old calendar,
put up the new!
(We humans must always
have something to do.)

The date moves on
to the next little box.
Time inches forward
on all the world’s clocks—

all Impermanence,
as Buddha said.
No sooner welcomed,
each moment is shred.

Life is a shell game,
played on the street
by a trickster who yawns
at the Spirit’s defeat

while the Unchanging One,
behind time and space,
patiently waits
to gift us with Grace.

- Max Reif

Ashes Among the Remains

My father responded

Just throw them away

I did not nor did I cast them into
ocean or bay where we’d fished
flounder and fluke nor strew them
over the golf courses where he’d hit
multistage rockets rising from half an inch
then to a foot above fairways
to summarily explode
hundreds of yards into the future
other worldly fireworks released
by his elegantly compact fury.

Instead I left them in their box
a golden shiny tin ossuary
next to my mother’s on the top shelf
of my bedroom closet
where I did not have to make decisions
and I incidentally could visit them daily
until our house burned down
in the California wildfires
October Ninth 2017

I don’t intend here to dwell upon
the nightmare that fire is
I will not detail the feelings we had
as we evacuated in one of our cars
along with the family terrier and nothing else
though later we did contemplate
Dad’s and Mom’s remains further
consumed by 1500 degree flames
extending their years-earlier incineration
in an oven at the crematorium near Petaluma.

Were it not that my parents lived well into
their nineties I so sick depressed and barely 74
might feel prepared to let go of the tangible rim
to the bottomless jar of all that remains
to the what or the where or the not.

- Ed Coletti

Thoughts on a Journey


1

I knew I had to take gold.
When it was brought from my treasury,
even I marveled at it.
It had come from a royal suppliant,
a small coffer chased in lions & suns.
Even he did not fully know how costly it is:
the metal shines with the sweat of slaves,
its beauty weighed by blood.
(I had dreamt that in another world
it is called the excrement of gods.)
It had to be the incorruptible measure of cost.

2

Once I knew I was going,
I knew what I would bring;
the casket of olibanum stood on the table,
white male frankincense, breast-shaped drops,
brought by a traveler from Hadramaut.
As I gazed at the sky
the three tears I had placed in the brazier
gave up their scent.
It smelled bitterly sweet, this clotted blood of trees.
This smoke holy to the rites of Isis,
this costly gum precious to Horus.

3

For every coming there is a going,
even for stars.
One is no more astounding than the other,
one is to be celebrated even as the other,
& I sent for the myrrh,
brown & bitter & costly,
brought long distances by a friend.
(He said that somewhere it is fed cows
to make their milk flow rich.)
Incense for the gods,
unguent for the dead.


[From the records of a Galilean merchant late in the reign of Herod the Great: “The census has been good for trade, praise the Lord God. Prices are high and no one asks where the money comes from. Today a clownish craftsman bought one of my good mules: a gold box; two thick wool blankets: a pound of frankincense; and wheat-bread, dried figs, three goat-skins of wine (for a long trip, he said): one pound of myrrh.”]

- Rafael Jesus Gonzales


Pensamientos durante una Jornada


1

Supe que tendría que llevar oro.
Cuando lo trajeron de mi tesorería
aun yo me maravillé de él.
Me había llegado de un suplicante real,
un pequeño cofre engastado con soles y leones.
Ni él sabía del todo lo costoso que es:
el metal luce con el sudor de esclavos,
su belleza pesada con sangre.
(Había soñado yo que en algún otro mundo
se le llamaba el excremento de los dioses.)
Tenía que ser la medida incorruptible del precio.

2

Una vez que supe que iba,
supe lo que traería;
el cofrecito de olíbano estaba sobre la mesa,
blanco incienso macho, gotas en forma de pezones,
traído por un viajero de Hadramaut.
Al mirar al cielo
las tres lágrimas que había puesto en el brasero
despidieron su aroma.
Olía amargamente dulce,
esta coagulada sangre de árboles.
Este humo sacro a los ritos de Isis,
esta costosa resina preciosa a Hero.

3

Por cada venir hay un ir,
aun para las estrellas.
El uno no más asombrante que el otro,
el uno es para celebrarse tanto como el otro,
y mandé por la mirra,
morena y amarga y costosa,
traída a través largas distancias por un amigo.
(Dijo que en algún lugar se la alimentaban a las vacas
para que les fluyeran rica la leche.)
Incienso para los dioses,
ungüento para los muertos.


[De los apuntes de un mercader de Galilea tarde en el reino de Herodes el Grande: “El censo ha sido bueno para el negocio, alabado sea el Señor Dios. Los precios son altos y nadie pregunta de donde viene el dinero. Hoy un artesano villano compró una de mis mulas mejores: una cajita de oro; dos mantas gruesas de lana: una libra de incienso; y pan de trigo, higos desecados, tres botas de vino (para un viaje largo dijo): una libra de mirra.”]

- Rafael Jesus Gonzales

With Our Own Hands


After reading Kazim Ali’s poem “Drone”

Maybe we see everything from a distance now.
Like the drones we build,
We view life from twenty thousand feet,
Separate ourselves from the pain —
Autonomous capability.

Do we eventually become what we make?
If we make poems, do we become the words
Or the single letters from which they’re formed,
Or the thought just before our pencils land?
Be careful what you make.

- Jackie Huss Hallerberg

For the New Year, 1981

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

- Denise Levertov

What the Shuttle Driver Told Me

My spiritual education began when I was broke, dead broke.
I went to a park, sat down and cried.
A man in a black suit stopped in front of me.
He said, I’m a magician.
I have one trick no one else in the world can do.
Watch.
No, I won’t explain. It’s magic.
God sent me to give you a blessing, he said:
Don’t worry about money.
Oh, and feed the birds.

Three days in a row I sat on that bench.
Three days in a row, that magician found me.
Each time, he repeated his impossible trick.
He always had a big bag of bread
and fed the birds:
pigeons, crows, sparrows,
They waited for him.
Those birds knew him.

Growing up in El Salvador,
I used to catch little lizards and kill them.
I thought I was a hunter.
As an adult, I realize I’ve caused a lot of damage.
I have to pay it back.
That’s one thing the magician taught me.
You can feed a bunch of birds really fast, every day.
Those are little blessings.
You can give away blessings easily.
It’s not that hard.
Every day I look for a new way.

After the third blessing, I went back to the garage,
told the other drivers about my magician.
Oh I know who you mean! He wears a top hat, right?
Yes, I said, and a long black overcoat too.
Wait, when was this?
My friend was looking at me funny.
Today, just now, I said, and for two days before that.
Oh no, Eduardo, my friend laughed,
That can’t be right.
That’s old so-and-so (I can’t remember his name), he was famous.
He died ten years ago.

I’ve never seen that magician again.
Was he a ghost? a spirit? an angel?
I always remember what he said:
God sent me to give you a blessing.
There is a little bit of truth in all religions.

I’ve never worried about money since then.
I’ve never been that penniless again.
What he did was teach me how to give blessings.
I wish I had some rose quartz to give you.
Rose quartz is for healing.
The first time I touched it, I fainted.
It was like an electrical shock.
Now I still tingle all over,
but my body absorbs the energy.
I’m hungry for it, like a vitamin.

I’m giving you this story—
is this your destination?—
Sign here.
Take your receipt.
Remember me in your prayers, okay?
I will do the same.


- Deborah A. Miranda

January
Dusk and snow this hour
in argument have settled
nothing. Light persists,
and darkness. If a star
shines now, that shine is
swallowed and given back
doubled, grounded bright.
The timid angels flailed
by passing children lift
in a whitening wind
toward night. What plays
beyond the window plays
as water might, all parts
making cold digress.
Beneath iced bush and eave,
the small banked fires of birds
at rest lend absences
to seeming absence. Truth
is, nothing at all is missing.
Wind hisses and one shadow
sways where a window’s lampglow
has added something. The rest
is dark and light together tolled
against the boundary-riven
houses. Against our lives,
the stunning wholeness of the world.
- Betty Adcock

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

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

January...

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Our Jeopardy


It is good to use best china

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...2_14-15-39.png

treasured dishes
the most gentle goblets
the oldest lace tablecloth
there is a risk of course
every time we use anything
or anyone shares an inmost
mood or comment
or a fragile cup of revelation
but not to touch
not to handle
not to employ the available
artifacts of being
a human being
that is a quiet crash
the deadly catastrophe

where nothing is enjoyed or broken
or spoken or spilled
or stained or mended
where nothing is ever
lived
loved
pored over
laughed over
wept over
lost
or found.

- Thomas John Carlisle

Ladybugs

What guides the ladybugs

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_14-28-34.png

to cluster every year
in the early winter months
alongside the Stream Trail?
How do they remember,
locate their way back,
find each other?
Clustering on dead logs
and in the sunny patches of
blackberry brambles, they rest,
lay their eggs, and
wait for Spring.

Why are ladybugs, like salmon
pitting their way back
to the places of their spawning,
smarter than we supposedly
superior humans?
They know to spend the bleak
winter months congregating with
their companions, while we so often think
we must overwinter alone, or only

with a few of our nearest and dearest.

Here is what ladybugs know:
Rest.
Find your way home.
Huddle up together.
Stay warm.

- Maya Spector

Nuyorico

Dedicated to Pedro Pietri “El Reverendo” R.I.P.


Nuyorico…
That place somewhere between The Empire State and El Morro
Down a dripping pipe that lands pitter pat on Mami’s broken back
For lifetimes attacked
Placed on frontlines to fight for what we will never get back
But the soil is still fertile unlike the colonized spirit of the
Mass graves of the enslaved that chanted but no one could hear it
‘Cause our heads are so far up our own asses
We can’t tell the unnatural from the natural gases
But best believe we still manage to breathe
And pull out in time so we won’t have to breed
Another generation of the ill conceived
Born in search of truth but perpetually deceived
Told that we are free but we cannot leave
Nuyorico…
That place that we live for
Papi said, “Americanos no tienen accentos”
Americans don’t have accents
Except the kind you sprinkle on your food and pretend
That compared to Abuelita’s cooking
Your cooking’s just as good
Yeah! Pour some more on for me
Call it Sazon, even though it’s made by Pillsbury
So obvious when the main ingredient is MSG
The message is to love all that isn’t we and
The doughboy in the White House just goes “hee hee hee”
World War I, World War II, World War Infinity
But resistance existed through Word War divinities
Coming in the form of “El Reverendo” Pedro Pietri
Who fought a war of no good and plenty
Still he speaks to our people
Forcing us out from behind tenement peepholes
To find a place where we can all feel equal
And realize all along your heart knew you were so Rico
When you realize that, that’s when you’re there
Welcome to Nuyorico…

- Caridad De La Luz

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

Say Her Name


I am a woman carrying other women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL_y...ature=youtu.be

in my mouth
behold a sister
a daughter
a mother
dear friend
spirits demystify
on my tongue
they gather to breath
and exhale a dance with the death we know
is not the end all these nameless
bodies haunted by pellet wounds in their chests
listen for them and the saying of a name you cannot pronounce
black and woman is a sort of magic
you cannot hash tag
the mere weight
of it too vast to be held
we hold ourselves
an inheritance felt between the hips
womb of soft darkness portal of light
watch them envy the revolution of our movement
how we break open to give life flow
while the terror of our tears the torment of our taste
my rage
is righteous my love is righteous
my name
be righteous here what I am not here to say
we too have died we know we are dying too
I am not here to say look at me how I died
so brutal a death I deserve a name to fit all the horror in
I am here to tell you how if they mentioned me
in their protest and their rallies
they would have to face their role in it too
my beauty too
I have died many times before
the blow to the body
I have bled
many months before the bullet to the flesh we know
the body is not the end
call it what you will
but for all the handcuffed wrists of us the shackled
ankles of us
the bend over to make room for you
of us how dare we speak anything less
then I love you
we who love just as loudly in the thunderous
rain as when the Sun shines golden on our skin
and the world kisses us unapologetically we
be so beautiful when we be- how you gonna be free
without me
your freedom tied up
with mine at the nappy edge of my soul
singing for all my sisters watch them stretch their
arms and my voice how they fly open chested
toward your ear
listen for
Rekia Boyd, Tanisha Anderson Yvette Smith
Aiyana Jones
Caleb Moore Shelly Frey
Miriam Carey Kendra James
Alberto Spruill, Tarika Wilson,
Shereese Francis
Shantel Davis, Malissa Williams
Darnisha Harris Michelle Cassell
Pearlie Golden, Kathryn Johnston
Eleanor Bumpers, Natasha McKenna
Sheneque Proctor
We
we will not vanish
and the baited breath of our brothers
show me show me
a man willing to fight beside me
my hand in his the color of courage
there is no mountaintop worth
seeing without us
meet me
in the trenches where we lay our bodies down
in the valley of a voice
say her name
- Aja Monet


To hear Aja read her powerful poem: https://youtu.be/aL_yzeM7wY0

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

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

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

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

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

- Dylan Thomas

Waking

A massive blue stallion rears before me

out of a midnight lake of dreams

Moonlight flows
like fire along his flanks, and

an inner blaze flares
from the dark mystery of his eyes

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

Branches tear at my coat
underbrush at my feet

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

I stumble

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

and waits, trembling

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

urge him on


- Karl Frederick

Perhaps we are all lost a little

I miss my mother; she listened to me

Sent me Pablo Neruda’s Fully Empowered,

Hoping that I would be.

She called Sunday evenings to

Listen to my News of the Day, the Week

Or month.

How would fully empowered feel?

Able to use my soul to enrich others?

Able to connect people who need each other

To complete themselves and their work?

Able to relax into life so it may be enjoyed

More than fought through.

How could we NOT be at least a bit lost?

Men we are asked to trust lead us

Ever closer to world war and possible

Annihilation;

Other men, mostly men, take away

The civil rights we worked for a lifetime

Or more to put in place.

If we are not required to love each other,

At least should we not be required to

Respect each other? To share.

How can our world be good

If we do not treat each other kindly?

How can our future be bright

If we are not quite sure love is real.

I want to curl up

And cry with you.

There is so much pain

In a life

And so very much joy

If you seek it but

You have to seek that and hold on.

Beauty, is all around

If you get off your iPhone.

Please come and find me;

I’ll be looking everywhere for you

Because it matters when you can touch

Another soul and

Once you have met on the astral plain

You shall remain there together forever.

Or not. Which?

- Connie Madden

A Prayer

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

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Three Gratitudes

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

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

Sunlight, and blueberries,

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

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

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


- Carrie Newcomer

Do not be defeated by the rain

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

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

I get up

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

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

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

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

- Cleo Wade

Anguish Longer Than Sorrow

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tension

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Billy Collins

At the Age of 18-Ode to Girls of Color


At the age of 5

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

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

This flower should not be left behind.

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

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

stretching our petals to a dry sun.


At the age of 12

I blinked in the majesty of the color within myself,

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

has the power to light Los Angeles all night,

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

Why had this realization taken so long,

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

You see, long ago, they told me

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

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

At the age of 18

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

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

My color does not mean caution, it means courage

my dark does not mean danger, it means daring,

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

twice as hard to get half as far.

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

At the age of 18

I am experiencing how black and brown can glow.

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

not as a warning, but as promise,

that we will set the sky alight with our magic.

- Amanda Gorman

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

A Quality of Face


Maybe it’s how kindness rests there

First on the forehead

Pausing not to land determinedly

Flowing out to the corners of your eyes

Creating small rivulets

Ebbing inward and onward

Drifting from the corners of your mouth

Floating down toward the bass violin

How kindness resonates, first

in your profile, then

in the curve of grained wood

Meeting and greeting the other, with

a small uplift of the mouth, and

a bowed note


- Rebecca Evert

For C.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

For C.

After the clash of elevator gates ...

- Richard Wilbur

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Blessing

this is not the truth
about the end but a hint about
beginning When the Buddha

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...0_09-32-25.png

had sat alone
for nearly forever
beneath the tree of many names
when he had taken into himself
all the suffering there is
and will always be then
he did not despair
he turned away
from the empty air
that starving saints exhale
he laughed at the idea
of nothing What he saw
clear and unmistakable
before him and really on all sides
was a lake and the lake shone
and there was Iight in it
and he knew that to hold
all that water in his gaze
would mislead him
about his own
size unless he entered the water
and bathed
for there is no enlightenment
without immersion


And so after so long the Buddha

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...0_09-31-00.png

entered enlightenment
which is not the end
but the end of being alone


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

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

- Eleanor Wilner

Half Life


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


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


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


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


- Stephen Levine

Love Hides


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

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

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

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

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

- Bruce Silverman

Background photo: Margrethe Mather—1920

Where Papi’s Angel Speaks to Me About Love


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

open without a border between your lips

- Willie Palomo

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

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

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

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

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

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

i hate you


- e.e. cummings