Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Full Count

Very late watching recorded baseball
It’s still hot here but not as hot as in Phoenix
where this Giants and Diamondbacks game
was played earlier during triple digit weather

Don’t yet know who won and lost
Desert sun unfelt on the field
Roof was closed Something feels wrong
with this indoor artificially cooled baseball

Dictator plays something like airconditioned golf
While a child named Pablo cries Papa
Over and over and over again and
Again as I watch recorded baseball to forget

- Ed Coletti

A Man Talking To His House

I say that no one in this caravan is awake
and that while you sleep, a thief is stealing

the signs and symbols of what you thought
was your life. Now you're angry with me for

telling you this! Pay attention to those who
hurt your feelings telling you the truth.

Giving and absorbing compliments is like
trying to paint on water, that insubstantial.

Here is how a man once talked with his house,
“Please, if you're ever about to collapse,

let me know.” One night without a word the
house fell. “What happened to our agreement?”

The house answered, “Day and night I've been
telling you with cracks and broken boards and

holes appearing like mouths opening. But you
kept patching and filling those with mud, so

proud of your stopgap masonry. You didn't
listen.” This house is your body always

saying, I'm leaving; I'm going soon. Don't
hide from one who knows the secret. Drink

the wine of turning toward God. Don't examine
your urine. Examine instead how you praise,

what you wish for, this longing we've been
given. Fall turns pale yellow light wanting

spring and spring arrives! Trees blossom.
Come to the orchard and see what comes to

you, a silent conversation with your soul.

- Jelalludin Rumi

Mt Kailash, Nepal in the background.

Corfu: Olives Myths and Words

Barely shadowing my parcel of sunlight overlooking the Ionian Sea with
her placid azure waters are silvery green counterpoints, two
diminutive olive trees, bent like an aged couple facing off,
gnarled and twisted, roots exposed, pock marked and struggling.

Who plants trees knowing they will bear no fruit for a dozen years?

Eons pass and Menelaus’s kidnapped wife Helen launches a thousand
ships, kings and warriors battle for a decade, Paris, Achilles and thousands
more die. Another decade unfolds, this drama an underworld of sirens and
sea monsters as the Odyssey bears its narrative fruit for generations.

What Olympian storytelling gods orchestrate such a drama where myth
and history embrace as do the olive, and the tree that births it?

In our time the British authors Lawrence and Gerald Durrell descend into the
waters of Kalami bay for future readers and scholars hungry to partake of word
and verse. They had no titles, guarantees, or even prospects.

What beings plant such seedlings for fruits only to be gathered posthumously?

Knowing how fruitless would be the self-indulgent grasping.
Knowing that creating and even nurturing can reap no instant reward.
Knowing that with olives, myths and words, there is all the time in the world.

- Bruce Silverman

Age Sixty-nine

I keep waiting without knowing
what I'm waiting for.
I saw the setting moon at dawn
roll over the mountain
and perhaps into the dragon's mouth
until tomorrow evening.

There is this circle I walk
that I have learned to love.
I hope one day to be a spiral
but to the birds I'm a circle.

A thousand Spaniards died looking
for gold in a swamp when it was
in the mountains in clear sight beyond.

Here, though, on local earth my heart
is at rest as a groundling, letting
my mind take flight as it will,
no longer waiting for good or bad news.

Often, lately, the night is a cold maw
and stars the scattered white teeth of the gods,
which spare none of us. At dawn I have birds,
clearly divine messengers that I don't understand
yet day by day feel the grace of their intentions.

- Jim Harrison

Idée Fixe

No woman wants to be low-hanging fruit,
my glamorous girlfriend says, but I’m indiscriminate
and love all fruit, I’m tempted to list each kind
right here, in and out of season,
because even just saying the names gives me pleasure,
as does saying your name.
I’m not alone with my passion — my whole family,
we’re a little off in this regard,
we can spend hours talking about cantaloupe
or arguing over how many flats to buy
when it’s Peach-O-Rama at the Metropolitan.
Once I even drove half a day to get to Pence Orchards
where I met and took photos of Bert Pence,
who sold me three boxes of peaches at wholesale prices.
He was so good to me, as was the late-summer freestone
I picked as I walked back through the orchard
in the August heat to the entrance gates,
which were nothing like the Gates of Hell.
On the contrary, I was in heaven there in Yakima.
I can still smell that single peach, which was profusely
low-hanging, it was the definition of low-hanging,
it fell into my hands, as you did — 
or perhaps as I did into yours — 
but that was months ago.
When I walked past the stands yesterday,
on what should have been the first day of spring,
all produce had been covered with heavy blankets
to keep it warm, to mitigate harm.
Today the temperature dropped so low
someone thought to remove the fruit entirely and stash it away.
With this strange weather we’re having, will I see you again?
I can’t help myself.

- Catherine Barnett

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

- Wendell Berry

Holy As A Day Is Spent

Holy is the dish and drain
The soap and sink, the cup and plate
And the warm wool socks, and the cold white tile
Showerheads and good dry towels

And frying eggs sound like psalms
With a bit of salt measured in my palm
It’s all a part of a sacrament
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the busy street
And cars that boom with passion’s beat
And the check out girl, Counting change
And the hands that shook my hands today

Hymns of geese fly overhead
And stretch their wings like their parents did
Blessed be the dog
That runs in her sleep
To catch that wild and elusive thing

Holy is a familiar room and the quiet moments in the afternoon
And folding sheets like folding hands
To pray as only laundry can

I’m letting go of all I fear
Like autumn leaves of earth and air
For summer came and summer went
As holy as a day is spent

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
The empty page, the open book
Redemption everywhere I look

Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
With grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent

And morning light sings “providence”
As holy as a day is spent

- Carrie Newcomer

What is Lady Liberty Doing?


Guiding, guarding, illuminating, welcoming

She lifts her lamp beside the golden door

A beacon in the dark, a lighthouse for the world

But like any woman worth her salt, she is multi-tasking

We look up to Lady Liberty when we ought to look down

She has feet, you know,
Not legs, but feet.
She has neatly clipped toenails
And a sturdy pair of traveling sandals.

Why?

Because she is in motion, striding forward,
Her right foot flexed, pushing off,
Her left foot firmly planted ahead.

It cost Bartholdi precious time and expensive materials to carve those feet.
He could have hidden them under her robe.
He could have had her standing still, with just her toes peeping out,
But he made her a woman of action.

Because you cannot embody Liberty standing still.

Now, you cannot see her left foot unless you are airborne
Which is why so many people don’t know
That it is trampling, and breaking, a chain -
By the side, a broken shackle.
Lady Liberty has been a slave, her feet bound,
And now, liberated,
She is taking her first full step into a future of freedom.

Look down and see the story.
She holds the torch to light her own way
As well as ours.
She invites us not to end our journey but to begin it.

- Gail M. Burns

Messages From The Chair

What if the dental chair and reaming of roots were Buddhist trainers?
What if the scent of grinding bone spoke to you softly saying you are blessed beyond measure?
What if the Dylan songs sifting through layers of nitrous
sparked your truthful and rarely contacted conscious self
and allowed your total forgiveness of two ancient lovers?

What if a rarefied Wonder Woman
snatched away your self image of Doubts
and gifted you with deeper wisdom?

What if that wisdom set you in a new colorful chair
where acceptance and compassion replace
the older guides of struggle and striving?

What if Life after the dental chair brought us all to deep knowing
that no matter what is happening we are living our dreams
and those dreams wake us up feeling happy and blessed forever?

- Carole Watanabe

Ode to a Hat


It was down in the hold of the ship:
I crocheted in the half light
of crew arguments and the stomach-bending
pitch of the vessel,
While far away my mother wondered if I still loved her.

It was calico--and I realize now I must have borrowed the yarn
(after all, I didn't board with any--thank you, Angela!).
And its birth insulated me from where I was,
And from whom I had been.

Afterwards, I did mail it to her...my mother.
Then, much later, it appeared in photographs:
Scenes of her spending her mornings
studying Chinese or piano or some such--
those cold Northern California days, half-lit.
Always that special covering, though rarely mentioned...

Well...

then...

"The Fire":

The fire took the hat.
The fire
took most everything--even the piano I learned on.

Plus...

...that silly bit of spindly
cheap poly-thread covering
which Most likely had believed itself safe.
Yes, it did:
Safe in a box
where it had been deliberately placed so as not to be worn to death.
Safe where it might continue--as all love hopes to.
Safe, where, when the flames finally found it,
It told them it had already served a greater purpose.

Greater than all its adversaries possessed, even them.

Can you imagine how it spoke truth to flame?

Addressing the smoke and ash:

"I've mattered more in this world than you could ever ever possibly

Hope to.

I have done my work.

Now take me home.”

- Ladd Holroyd

Made me cry...:tear:

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Ode to a Hat...

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My Proteins

They have discovered, they say,
the protein of itch—
natriuretic polypeptide b—
and that it travels its own distinct pathway
inside my spine.
As do pain, pleasure, and heat.

A body it seems is a highway,
a cloverleaf crossing
well built, well traversed.
Some of me going north, some going south.

Ninety percent of my cells, they have discovered,
are not my own person,
they are other beings inside me.

As ninety-six percent of my life is not my life.

Yet I, they say, am they—
my bacteria and yeasts,
my father and mother,
grandparents, lovers,
my drivers talking on cell phones,
my subways and bridges,
my thieves, my police
who chase my self night and day.

My proteins, apparently also me,
fold the shirts.

I find in this crowded metropolis
a quiet corner,
where I build of not-me Lego blocks
a bench,
pigeons, a sandwich
of rye bread, mustard, and cheese.

It is me and is not,
the hunger
that makes the sandwich good.

It is not me then is,
the sandwich—
a mystery neither of us
can fold, unfold, or consume.

- Jane Hirshfield

In Context: Mekong Delta


Somewhere, in a place entirely unlike
this one, the crown of the Mekong fissures
Earth’s tallest granite, thrust skyward

by the collision of continents that might
as well be gods in a myth we made,
so we could nod, say ah this is how

this came to be. The Mekong does not
know it is destined to lose itself
in the South China Sea, does not know

it is a river. For now it is only a melting
out of silence, a shifting from static
into motion. In the Himalayas

streams blossom with the trees,
glitter their own little Shangri-las
from every cliff and crag and crevice,

until the season avalanches into a tumult
of rapids, ripping new canyons through hills
that only look like they are standing still.

Land of a million elephants, land of smiles,
kingdoms, pagodas, wars working their way
through the salt mines of unwon minds.

When foothills spill into killing fields,
the Mekong yawns wide enough to live
on, to buy and sell on. To be sold on.

Whatever language it has gathered in its rushing
over stones, under bridges, in its lugging
of the dropped, the drowned, the used,

it will lose. Every second it is different
water whispering never again never
again. If we could ride it like a many-headed

serpent as it splays into the sea, for a while
it would remain its own current, but eventually
whatever body it’s become in its loose holding,

whatever sound it has become in its one yearning
toward exactly this disappearing, is replaced
by whatever the sea says when it forgets

the chant it repeats on every beach,
the one we mistranslate ash to ash,
dust to dust.


- Erin Rodoni

Petaluma Moment

Unhurried the heron walks, long skinny legs
across the Petaluma mud
Stands beside the slow-moving river
His long pointy beak preens long blue feathers
Then stares long long long at the rippling water

Long has the heron known
A fish will come
The water will flow
The moon will rise
And he will fly and die and fly again
Long has the heron known

- Doug von Koss

Everybody Loves Trader Joe's


Lost My Job
3 Children
Please Help

He saw the sign,
the woman's face blocked
by a scarf.
He parked, five dollars in hand,
locked the car, walked a few steps,
returned, looked in the glove compartment.
Maybe he had a ten—no, just a twenty...too much.
He shopped at Trader Joe's to save money.
Gave her the bill, said “good luck.”
“God Bless You,” she said.
She looked foreign...from India, Pakistan,
like a gypsy or something.
Actually he didn't want to get blessed.
He went through TJ's— rye bread, bananas, butter, milk, eggs, frozen peas, frozen chicken breast, cottage cheese, almonds.
That was it.
But if he wanted, he could get anything.
Heading back to his car, he passed her again.
He caught her eye.
She gave a slight nod, a certain elegance, a grace.

somehow
he felt diminished


- Jean Wong

Fire

Natural as a stream, a breeze
Hot and insistent in
Summer. Like puma, creosote
Or coyote, fire has its own life.

Our species invades homes
Of bobcat, deer and rabbit.
We invade the home of
Fire, who like us,
Takes all—our worthy adversary.

- Rebecca del Rio

Rabbits and Fire

Everything’s been said
But one last thing about the desert,
And it’s awful: During brush fires in the Sonoran desert,
Brush fires that happen before the monsoon and in the great,
Deep, wide, and smothering heat of the hottest months,
The longest months,
The hypnotic, immeasurable lulls of August and July—
During these summer fires, jackrabbits—
Jackrabbits and everything else
That lives in the brush of the rolling hills,
But jackrabbits especially—
Jackrabbits can get caught in the flames,
No matter how fast and big and strong and sleek they are.
And when they’re caught,
Cornered in and against the thick
Trunks and thin spines of the cactus,
When they can’t back up any more,
When they can’t move, the flame—
It touches them,
And their fur catches fire.
Of course, they run away from the flame,
Finding movement even when there is none to be found,
Jumping big and high over the wave of fire, or backing
Even harder through the impenetrable
Tangle of hardened saguaro
And prickly pear and cholla and barrel,
But whichever way they find,
What happens is what happens: They catch fire
And then bring the fire with them when they run.
They don’t know they’re on fire at first,
Running so fast as to make the fire
Shoot like rocket engines and smoke behind them,
But then the rabbits tire
And the fire catches up,
Stuck onto them like the needles of the cactus,
Which at first must be what they think they feel on their skins.
They’ve felt this before, every rabbit.
But this time the feeling keeps on.
And of course, they ignite the brush and dried weeds
All over again, making more fire, all around them.
I’m sorry for the rabbits.
And I’m sorry for us
To know this.

- Alberto Ríos

Miracle Prayer

Mistress of Miracles, come to us now,
Out of the darkness, out of the earth.
Mistress of Miracles, we offer our vow,
To awaken the tides of our nation’s rebirth.

As the snow-topped peaks melt in rivers and streams,
As the grasses and flowers poke up from the land,
As the baby emerges from the womb’s land of dreams,
May the lies be revealed, may the truth take a stand.

As the rainbow emerges from storms in the sky,
As the eagle sees all with his wide roving eye,
As our deep wounds can heal, as the heart’s wings can fly,
May the old ways of power now wither and die.

May the ways of oppression now move to the past.
May all that is sacred be protected at last.
May wars wrought from killing for power and greed
Be replaced with compassion, that all may be freed.

May our leaders reflect the hopes that we share
For a world ruled in balance, by a people who care.
May the poor be rewarded, may the land be preserved,
May those who exploit get what they deserve.

Mistress of Magic, come out of your cave
Come aid in our efforts, there’s a world to be saved.
We need a miracle, of that we are sure
Save us from madness, bring us a cure.

- Anodea Judith

Another Poetic Argument For Grief

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Have you cried enough
in this lifetime?

Take your grief seriously

Become the ash urn
for the vanishing wilderness

Despair for the Dolphins

Make your own salt water
for the disappearing marshes

The silent Earth is listening

Be called to outrageous acts of despair

And then,

Every now and again

In the face of splendor

Turn toward it.

- Kristy Hellums

Two Arrows

The first arrow being some current ailment
The second arrow being directed at the unknown
cause and reason for the first and concern
for its future course Know that one arrow
alone is more than sufficient in that
it was fired by other than myself
The second would be launched by me
were I to choose to do so Don’t

- Ed Coletti

What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault?
What if they are whispering in our ears “You are brave”?
What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?
What does the midwife tell us to do?
BREATHE
And then?
PUSH!

- Valerie Kaur

Of course, on our duality plane much will depend on our interpretation of "PUSH"....
Hope for most it means letting in new Life that sparks our Vision and our Intention to bring more love, peace, joy to all... a reminder of our Truest Selves and our greatest potential....

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country that is waiting to be born?
What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all of our grandfathers and grandmothers are standing behind us now, those who survived occupation and genocide, slavery and Jim Crow, detentions and political assault?
What if they are whispering in our ears “You are brave”?
What if this is our nation’s greatest transition?
What does the midwife tell us to do?
BREATHE
And then?
PUSH!

- Valerie Kaur

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The summer fires of aught eighteen

How terrible the acrid air,
how terrible the summer fires
of aught eighteen—
yet, what incredible beauty is there
in the muted, late summer sun,
casting a magenta-tinted light
upon the structure I gaze at
each afternoon, sitting in my garden—
this giant white oak—
upon the column-like limbs,
stretching skyward,
whose light beige bark, now visible,
through openings among the leaves,
reflects an eerie, other worldly,
deep, pink patina—
as if the smoke-filled sky
were the rose window
of Chartres itself, at sunset—
and the fires then become
our own judgment day.

- Bill Denham

Smoldering

I’m on the street
where you took me
in a summer of wildfires
we’d dined on red meat and
a white sickle moon
cut into the dark
illuminating our innocence
it was simple at first
we found pleasure with
fingers searching for skin
beneath our clothes
you fragrant of dog
apricots and brine
our nails driving in and Hello
our mouths and tongues
tasting love
we mined each other tenderly
in the heat
our long limbs paused to stand
when we couldn’t
a handy chain link fence
helped us push closer
into a mystery
melting us
into something else
brightening our path
of embers
into gold.

- Danielle Bryant

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
standing by the windows looking out
in our directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks we are saying thank you
in the faces of the officials and the rich
and of all who will never change
we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
taking our feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
thank you we are saying and waving
dark though it is

- W.S. Merwin

Zen Lunatics (a term coined by Jack Kerouac)


Even in 1954 Kerouac Jack had the knack of knowing that a spirited Zen

pack would one day emerge and finally tear wide open the star-spangled

puritanical gunnysack that was strangling the American promise. It’s our

calling through outrageous tacks and random acts to bring down those

heat-seeking missile epistles that deny all who display any figment of dark

pigment, a face too tannish or an accent too Spanish.



Yes I’ve had the good fortune to hang with such a gang of jacks, of kings

with spades, and clubs that transform into talking sticks for Zen lunatics with

bright diamonds and open hearts, that make an end run around a ten-ton

anchor of the putrid civil rancor and then fly into an end zone far beyond

what’s known . . . or owned . . . or cloned . . . towards a different way, where

there exists a gateway of genius and justice, adorned by crimson roses, a wide

welcoming gateway, that never closes.

- Bruce Silverman

God In Drag

A star-studded night sky...
Mountains blanketed in fresh falling powder...
Meadows splash with brilliant wildflowers...
The mating call of a bugling elk...
The cacophony of song and sound of birds at dawn...
Baby elephants cavorting with delight...
The intoxicating fragrance of a stargazing Lily...
Peacocks with feathers and full fan...

God in drag, all.

- Kristal Parks

the yo-yo

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her mind rolls back to 1953
the year she wrote the poem
for the McKinley Magpie
she was learning tricks with
the Duncan yo-yo
its string looped loosely
around a thin wooden spindle
slip knot around her middle finger
just enough slack in the string
wooden dowel spinning

she learned to walk the dog
rolling the Duncan yo-yo
across the floor
an inch a foot
yanking it back up
up and down
rolling and yanking

she learned another trick that year
grabbing the string in two places
swinging the Duncan yo-yo between the cradle supports
rocking the baby to sleep
back and forth
wooden dowel spinning
yanking it back up again
up and down


though she tried to control it
the yo-yo had a mind of its own
defying gravity
defying order

she wrote about polarities that year
for her elementary school newsletter
the McKinley Magpie
her poem was about fire
how it was our friend and warmed us
how it was our enemy could kill us

at eight years old she liked extremes
she wrote about water
then about salt
but those poems
of too much and not enough
were mere copycats
the fire poem was selected for
the McKinley Magpie

could she have foreseen how
decades later
the yo-yo would become fire
up with its crimson flames licking the sky
down with blackening trees and chimneys
rolling and rocking
and crackling too
defying gravity
defying order
way too hot for the McKinley Magpie
way out of control

she searches for homes now
wandering up and down streets
after the firestorm
which did not kill her
it didn’t warm her either

maybe if the Magpie
had spread the word about
water and salt
the yo-yo would have become ocean

she rocks forward now
quenched and bobbing
rising and sinking
up and down
without a spindle
or a cradle or
a slipknot around an anchor

- sharon bard

another dark love


the climate is changing, seasons
rearranging, the specter of venus haunts
hydrocarbon dreams. no one believes
the disaster of 4-6 º centigrade, the apocalypse
of a few drowned cities.

we all know how much worse.
the savviest liberal is hardly more realistic
than the bible capitalist.
we scurry like denial ants, each with our
destined grain of sand.

& yet the breath of earth stirs us.
the winds of trees penetrate the gossamer
of unending connection. engineer to grub
to crab grass to mackerel to bread mold to
melting icicle to water rounded stone.

there is a voice singing inside every.
there is a hearing within the vast deafness.
aberrant cells in the sweet earth body,
we bend & shudder to some collective immune
response that calls us back, calls us.

greed is not the inner nature of any human being,
nor any kind of being. shark & wolverine
& kudzu vine are more complex, ambiguous.
even the corporate ceo fracking us to hell
is a patchwork story with unpredictable twists.

the sun doesn’t feel so warm now as threatening.
what happened to double hung windows & a thousand
clever passive devices lost to witness technology?
screw the supply side. whittle the demand to
so little even a caddis fly is cradled.

she is calling, she is calling. maple winds &
supersized hurricane waves become symphonic.
someday the dance teacher will no longer strike
the iridescent wings of a wandering fly. the oil magnate
will protect tar sands flora with his life.

all the things we have to have
become a joke, obscene but easily forgotten.
to touch lichen growing on bark brings us to our knees,
worshipping & awed. glaciers can grow again,
only one venus circling our sun.

- Sandy Eastoak

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Barking

The moon comes up.
The moon goes down.
This is to inform you
that I didn't die young.
Age swept past me
but I caught up.
Spring has begun here and each day
brings new birds up from Mexico.
Yesterday I got a call from the outside
world but I said no in thunder.
I was a dog on a short chain
and now there’s no chain.

- Jim Harrison

True or False

Real emeralds are worth more than synthetics
but the only way to tell one from the other
is to heat them to a stated temperature,
then tap. When it’s done properly
the real one shatters.

I have no emeralds.
I was told this about them by a woman
who said someone had told her. True or false,
I have held my own palmful of bright breakage
from a truth too late. I know the principle.

- John Ciardi

Inversnaid

This dark handsome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fawn-froth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, fell-frowning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dew,
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O, let them be left, the wildness and wet.
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Imagining

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_12-10-22.png

What if God isnʼt a noun
to be empowered and worshiped
but a verb of creation
powered by love?

What if every single tree
drawn in primary school
is a sacred work of art
worthy of joyful notice?

What if our lives are built
on a web of kindness,
a net,
which holds everything living.

What if the rocks are alive
singing strength and courage;
vibrating
from our feet right up to our heart?

What if we loved ourselves
as deeply as the mountain
who,
caressed by water,
surrenders herself
into sand?

What if our most loved,
intra-national pastime
is a game of entertainment
where we all win?

What if no one aspired
to be a millionaire
and money no longer had power
but was simply a means of tender-ness.

What if transforming our world
by imagining it
can
actually make it happen?

- Deborah Rodney

Shirt

The back, the yoke, the yardage. Lapped seams,
The nearly invisible stitches along the collar
Turned in a sweatshop by Koreans or Malaysians

Gossiping over tea and noodles on their break
Or talking money or politics while one fitted
This armpiece with its overseam to the band

Of cuff I button at my wrist. The presser, the cutter,
The wringer, the mangle. The needle, the union,
The treadle, the bobbin. The code. The infamous blaze

At the Triangle Factory in nineteen-eleven.
One hundred and forty-six died in the flames
On the ninth floor, no hydrants, no fire escapes--

The witness in a building across the street
Who watched how a young man helped a girl to step
Up to the windowsill, then held her out

Away from the masonry wall and let her drop.
And then another. As if he were helping them up
To enter a streetcar, and not eternity.

A third before he dropped her put her arms
Around his neck and kissed him. Then he held
Her into space, and dropped her. Almost at once

He stepped up to the sill himself, his jacket flared
And fluttered up from his shirt as he came down,
Air filling up the legs of his gray trousers--

Like Hart Crane's Bedlamite, "shrill shirt
ballooning."
Wonderful how the patern matches perfectly
Across the placket and over the twin bar-tacked

Corners of both pockets, like a strict rhyme
Or a major chord. Prints, plaids, checks,
Houndstooth, Tattersall, Madras. The clan tartans

Invented by mill-owners inspired by the hoax of
Ossian,
To control their savage Scottish workers, tamed
By a fabricated heraldry: MacGregor,

Bailey, MacMartin. The kilt, devised for workers
to wear among the dusty clattering looms.
Weavers, carders, spinners. The loader,

The docker, the navvy. The planter, the picker, the
sorter
Sweating at her machine in a litter of cotton
As slaves in calico headrags sweated in fields:

George Herbert, your descendant is a Black
Lady in South Carolina, her name is Irma
And she inspected my shirt. Its color and fit

And feel and its clean smell have satisfied
both her and me. We have culled its cost and quality
Down to the buttons of simulated bone,

The buttonholes, the sizing, the facing, the
characters
Printed in black on neckband and tail. The shape,
The label, the labor, the color, the shade. The shirt.

- Robert Pinsky

Late Ripeness

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget - I kept saying - that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef - they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

- Czeslaw Milosz

(Translated by Robert Hass)

Giving Myself Up

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the constant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.

- Mark Strand

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Giving Myself Up...

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Democracy

It's coming through a hole in the air,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHI9BTpGkp8

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that it ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow on the street
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of G-d in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
that the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming to the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
o mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
past the Reefs of Greed
through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on
I'm sentimental if you know what I mean:
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

- Leonard Cohen

Imagining

What if God isnʼt a noun
to be empowered and worshiped
but a verb of creation
powered by love?

What if every single tree
drawn in primary school
is a sacred work of art
worthy of joyful notice?

What if our lives are built
on a web of kindness,
a net,
which holds everything living.

What if the rocks are alive
singing strength and courage;
vibrating
from our feet right up to our heart?

What if we loved ourselves
as deeply as the mountain
who,
caressed by water,
surrenders herself
into sand?

What if our most loved,
intra-national pastime
is a game of entertainment
where we all win?

What if no one aspired
to be a millionaire
and money no longer had power
but was simply a means of tender-ness.

What if transforming our world
by imagining it
can
actually make it happen?

- Deborah Rodney

Prisoners Cinema with Saints Catherine and Lucy

“Prisoner’s cinema” is the term given to visual hallucinations reported by prisoners confined to dark cells and by others kept in darkness for long periods of time.

Lit by a million specks of light,
all your dust turns holy.
What’s rotten in you burns

and burns. You, a shadow-
you, gone glowing
Catherine wheel, a spoked

gloaming. You know lead can lodge
into an animal’s skull, turn
the skull into a lit temple

of its wanderings, and this is how
you understand the fabled bowl
a saint carries, its hollow lit

by the eyes it cradles and the saint
eyeless and God-filled. You are not
eyeless and God is nowhere

to witness how you become
the wheel and the body it breaks,
a spectacle of light you cannot fathom

until you fathom it—flooded
as you are with shadow, darkness
taut as an animal’s shank

until it ripples at your touch. Pools
in the bowl your hands make.
Then breaks.

- Susannah Nevison

The Signings

Lies can be charismatic, the truth is cloudy,

With its traditional testing place a body.

I cross my heart and hope to die. The breath,

One hand on the book, one raised, exhales the oath.

The bully making a club of the victim’s hand,

“You hit yourself”: Falsehood asserts Command.

Mortgage papers declare and hereby pledge

That money is money. Sign here, page after page.

The President holds up for the camera’s eye

A paper with his signature, two inches high.

Times when he lied or cheated, the Director

Made longhand notes. Now the Director’s an author

On a bookstore tour. He produced his clunky book

Himself. No ghost. In a defensive joke

At signings a writer I know likes to set up

A jar he labels “For Tips”: wry overlap

Of Truth, Marketing and Art. Any collector

Knows to pay less for copies with a signed sticker

Than one with its title page directly signed:

Authentic, true. But on the other hand,

Inscribed to someone’s name is somehow worth less

Than simply Signed, out here in the marketplace —

But why? The blemish of the particular?

Or truth too a commodity? Flailing for air.

- Robert Pinsky
(Listen to Pinsky read it himself: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...d1#pg-benfolds)

Attack


My wife is 25 years younger than I.

Whenever a man grins at me
and says "Way to go,"
I want to smash my fist into his face.

Yesterday our much-loved dog died.

My wife took our shovel
and dug a 4-foot wide
2 1/2-foot deep
grave in our garden.

After my father died
I kept feeling a gun
tucked under my belt
at the back of my pants.
I hoped I would find someone
who would make me say
"Go ahead
and make my day."

Dulcy said that death
can sometimes feel
like an attack.

If someone looked at my wife
in our dog's grave,
and winked at me,
I would want to take her shovel
and crush his head.

- Trout Black

True Colors

“Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.”
~ Robert Frost

As trees prepare for winter
fall colors pour
into my eyes

Lush true colors
long hidden under green
call to my soul

Soft voices of colors
blown on the wind say
“Remember me, I’ll soon be gone.”

As I approach my own certain winter
what colors long hidden
will I reveal

Can I be like the leaves
radiantly shine for a time
then quietly fall away

Why not

- Doug von Koss

September


September first comes round in my cold knees.
In voices from the next room, and the body
radiant from a shower.

September comes with the tinnitus of country silence,
the blue bay that keeps things still.

The uselessness of success in spiritual practice
seems lasting. But that’s such a weak account
of the even weaker failure of weakness.

For the fact is if I can’t offer half an hour
to the One who gave me life…
if I can’t listen for even half an hour for Him…
if I can’t offer the One a half hour of gratitude for that…
then immodesty has no limit.

You hear what I am saying, I know.
I am not someone who so treasures his every mood
that he must thrust each precious slice into you,
and I don’t feel bad at all here. I feel good.
Because I know you’re listening.
Maybe.

May Be. The mediation, the message, is:
the embryo of glee.

In September it starts to stir.
Before the end – just watch it –
it wants to be born,
once more.


- Bruce Moody

Mr. Peepers

They’re public punching bags

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...5_09-19-22.png

But someone’s gotta do it
It’s not so sexy, the procedure or the truth
I say God bless the bureaucrat and the lawyer, too.

The House Intelligence Committee piles on
They’d love to know what Rosenstein has on the boss
But it’s just for cameras, yeah, it’s just a show of force
Y’all know he can’t comply
But that’s the point, of course

So they call him Mister Peepers
As the thugs all smash his glasses
Going full Lord of the Flies
Burning this island down to ashes.
What’s the rule of law if we can’t agree on what a fact is?
There ain’t nothing here to see, folks, move along, move along

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdycPewO0T0

Thank God for facts.
They’re stubborn things indeed
But little cowboys will try cases on TV
It doesn’t make it so
Because you make believe.
You can’t lose in court and appeal on Hannity

The distinguished wrestler from Ohio
He’s free to lie, he’s not the one who’s under oath
The law don’t suit the boss
This Deputy must go
We got him in the locker room, boys
Start the show.

So they call him Mister Peepers

Send some thugs to smash his glasses.
If he’s gone and peeped the wrong thing
Then they’ll burn his name to ashes.
What’s the rule of law
If we can’t establish what a fact is?

There ain’t nothing here to see, folks, move along, ah move along

They say it dies in the dark
Right now, they’re trying to kill it in broad daylight
Can flashlights really fight bombs?
We’ll see.
Right now

You boys are Christians, right?
What would Jesus do?
Would he bury crimes and carry water like a stooge?
Or smear a family man in case he tells the truth
About the boss?
Yeah, what would Jesus do?

Would he call him Mister Peepers?
Send some thugs to smash his glasses?
The institution’s standing tall
Though we tried our best to trash it
Aren’t we all the keepers
Of this fragile young Republic?
And when all those Mister Peepers people fall…

Lord help us all.

- Ben Folds

The Man Born To Farming

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,
whose hands reach into the ground and sprout
to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death
yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down
in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.
His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.
What miraculous seed has he swallowed
That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth
Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water
Descending in the dark?

- Wendell Berry

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside —
The diaries of grief, the tongue tied aches
Of unacknowledged love are no less real
For having passed unsaid. What we conceal
Is always more than what we dare confide.
Think of the letters that we write our dead.

- Dana Gioia

Wild Heart

We say to our dog sit and she sits
We say good girl and she wags her tail
We tame our horses by breaking them
In the same way we tame our hearts
Behave we say, good boy
You shouldn’t say that, good girl
We say over and over, I am good
When a part of us believes I’ve been bad
Each belief is a whip to our flanks
Breaking our spirit
Cracking our hearts over and over

You ask forgiveness to others for the gossip,
Indifference and harm you caused them
You forget to ask forgiveness
For your critical self-slander,
The indifference and harm you cause yourself
By not listening to the still small voice within

Stop breaking your wild pony of a heart
Instead say to your good girl and good boy
I’m sorry

This year turn towards that brokenness
See it anew
Look beyond the broken latches and shards of glass
Created by your own sorrow
See openness

Climb through into the heart of your heart
To your untamed and uncivilized heart
Where the thrum of excitement and anticipation is loud
Enter your wild heart where thrives a teaming jungle of life
Monkeys howling with joy, swinging carefree above the
Grinning hyenas of shame, the ripping teeth of self-doubt
Here there are no civilized red lights
Here beyond brokenness only one light shines
The green light of love

Enter fully into the broken heart and you will find
Your whole, wild, untamed, uncivilized heart
Here there is only yes
Yes to love
Yes to life

Go deeply enough and you will remember
Your heart is the heart of the world
The world is the heart of God

- Sally Churgel

The Ode

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
World losers and world forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire’s glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.


- Arthur O’Shaughnessy
(1873)