Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

Are There Not Still Fireflies?

Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signaling to us
our manifest destiny?

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

wondering when L Ferlinghetti wrote this poem I found this:
https://www.nationalbook.org/lawrenc...erarian-award/

at end of his talk in accepting the Literarian Award in 2005, he says:

Quote:

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The dominant American mercantile culture may globalize the world but it is not the mainstream culture of our civilization. The true mainstream is made, not of oil but of literarians, publishers, bookstores, editors, libraries, writers and readers, universities and all the institutions that support them. That is the real mainstream of our civilization.

It will survive, if anything survives, after the electricity goes off and electronic civilization fades away, when Nature strikes back in retaliation for what the dominant culture is doing to it. Coming to your local theater soon, the day after tomorrow. See you at the show.

I’ll end with a poem I wrote just before 9/11:

Are there not still fireflies?

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(thank you to both Larry's :): )

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Are There Not Still Fireflies?

Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still four-leaf clovers
Is not our land still beautiful
our fields not full of armed enemies
our cities never bombed
by foreign invaders
never occupied
by iron armies
speaking iron tongues
Are not our warriors still valiant
ready to defend us
Are not our senators
still wearing fine togas
Are we not still a great people
in the greatest country in all the world
Is this not still a free country
Are not our fields still ours
our gardens still full of flowers
our ships with full cargoes
Why then do some still fear
the barbarians coming
coming coming
in their huddled masses
(What is that sound that fills the ear
drumming drumming?)
Is not Rome still Rome
Is not Los Angeles still Los Angeles
Are these not the last days of the Roman Empire
Is not beauty still beauty
And truth still truth
Are there not still poets
Are there not still lovers
Are there not still mothers
sisters and brothers
Is there not still a full moon
once a month
Are there not still fireflies
Are there not still stars at night
Can we not still see them
in bowl of night
signaling to us
our manifest destiny?

- Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Repeating History


In Krakow, on the hour
A trumpeter recalls
an interrupted call, warning invasion,
A warning arrested by an arrow
piercing the psyche
of a peoples. Repeat


Everywhere, injuries
enshrined, history felt
Repeatedly, wounds
remembered. The wounded, dead
forgotten by the bowman,
marksman, indifferent
bomber. Forgotten by the one
who ordered the arrow.


We repeat, but cannot
delete fear, erase blood.
We repeat slights and stabs,
rapes and rage of the ages.


We are all a history.
Redacted, invented
History of our innocence
And their guilt.


We carry culture, albeit
Ignorant of the original
Root, a curious explorer
Into darkness, into


Separation from a whole
Which held us, hewed a
Path toward empathy, a forked
Road now, moving


Away from each other,
Ourselves.


- Rebecca del Rio

The Farmer’s Wife
(In memory of Masako)


She sold tomatoes, corn and peppers
from the wooden stand
by their Fresno farm
surrounded by melon fields
and orange groves.
Apt at the calculator,
she figured out profits
no matter how meager.
In winter
she wore wool checkered shirts.
In summer
a light blouse sufficed
In the intense Central Valley heat.


By day
she hoisted crates of produce
and soothed customers.
In late evening
she walked with her husband
by the irrigation canals.
She could tie a kid’s shoes
tell a good story
or just listen.
She collected family photos
dolls
figurines
and laughed at the clutter.


She survived
sickness
the depression
the internment camp at Tule Lake
and raised four children
who became
doctors
teachers
entrepreneurs.


At eighty-three
she died well-loved
but not yet famous.


- Laura Blatt

To Earth the Mother of All


I will sing of the well-founded Earth,
mother of all, eldest of all beings.


She feeds all creatures that are in the world,
all that go upon the goodly land,
all that are in the paths of the seas, and all that fly;
all these are fed of her store.


Through you, O Queen, we are blessed
In our children, and in our harvest
and to you we owe our lives.


Happy are we who you delight to honor!


We have all things abundantly:
our houses are filled with good things,
our cities are orderly,
our sons exult with feverish delight.


(May they take no delight in war)


Our daughters with flower-laden hands
play and skip merrily over the soft flowers of the field.


(May they seek peace for all peoples)


Thus it is for those whom you honor,
O holy Goddess, Bountiful spirit!
Hail Earth, mother of the gods,
freely bestow upon us for this our song
that cheers and soothes the heart!


May we seek peace for all peoples of the well-founded earth


- Homeric Hymn XXX adapted by Elizabeth Roberts

Dance of the Macabre Mice

“In the land of turkeys in turkey weather” -W. Stevens


The president smiles to himself, he loves war
And another one is coming soon.
Each day we can feel the merriment mount
In government offices and TV studios
As our bombers fly off to distant countries.

The mortuaries are being scrubbed clean.
Soon they’ll be full of grim young men laid out in rows.
Already the crowd gurgles with delight
At the bird-sweet deceits, the deep-throated lies
About our coming battles and victories.

Dark-clad sharpshooters on rooftops
Are scanning the mall for suspicious pigeons,
Blind men waving their canes in the air,
Girls with short skirts and ample bosoms
Reaching deep into their purses for a lighter.

- Charles Simic

Hadeel's Song


Some words are hard to pronounce—
He-li-cop-ter is most vexing
(A-pa-che or Co-bra is impossible)
But how it can stand still in the sky
I cannot understand—
What holds it up
What bears its weight
(Not clouds, I know)
It sends a flashing light—so smooth—
It makes a deafening sound
The house shakes
(There are holes in the wall by my bed)
Flash-boom-light-sound—
And I have a hard time sleeping
(I felt ashamed when I wet my bed, but no one scolded me).


Plane—a word much easier to say—
It flies, tayyara,
My mother told me
A word must have a meaning
A name must have a meaning
Like mine,
(Hadeel, the cooing of the dove)
Tanks, though, make a different sound
They shudder when they shoot
Dabbabeh is a heavy word
As heavy as its meaning.


Hadeel—the dove—she coos
Tayyara—she flies
Dabbabeh—she crawls
My Mother—she cries
And cries and cries
My Brother—Rami—he lies
DEAD
And lies and lies, his eyes
Closed.
Hit by a bullet in the head
(bullet is a female lead—rasasa—she kills,
my pencil is a male lead—rasas—he writes)
What’s the difference between a shell and a bullet?
(What’s five-hundred-milli-meter-
Or eight-hundred-milli-meter-shell?)
Numbers are more vexing than words—
I count to ten, then ten-and-one, ten-and-two
But what happens after ten-and-ten,
How should I know?
Rami, my brother, was one
Of hundreds killed—
They say thousands are hurt,
But which is more
A hundred or a thousand (miyyeh or alf)
I cannot tell—
So big—so large—so huge—
Too many, too much.


Palestine—Falasteen—I’m used to,
It’s not so hard to say,
It means we’re here—to stay—
Even though the place is hard
On kids and mothers too
For soldiers shoot
And airplanes shell
And tanks boom
And tear gas makes you cry
(Though I don’t think it’s tear gas that makes my mother cry)
I’d better go and hug her
Sit in her lap a while
Touch her face (my fingers wet)
Look in her eyes
Until I see myself again
A girl within her mother’s sight.


If words have meaning, Mama,
What is Is-ra-el?
What does a word mean
if it is mixed
with another—
If all soldiers, tanks, planes and guns are
Is-ra-el-i
What are they doing here
In a place I know
In a word I know—(Palestine)
In a life that I no longer know?




- Hanan Ashwari


Two days ago Dr. Hanan Ashwari’s application for a visa to visit the US was denied with no explanation. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-05-...denied-visa-us

Visiting San Francisco

I wanted to curl up
in the comfortable cosmic melancholy of my past,
in the sadness of my past being passed.
I wanted to tour the museum of my antiquities
and look at the sarcophagi there.
I wanted to wallow like a water buffalo in the cool,
sagacious mud of my past,
so I wrote you and said I’d be in town and could we meet.
But you think my past is your present.
You wouldn’t relent, you wouldn’t agree
to dinner or a cup of coffee or even a bag of peanuts
on a bench in North Beach.
You didn’t want to curl up or tour or wallow with me.
You’re still mad, long after the days
have turned into decades, about the ways I let you down.
The four hundred thousand ways.
Maybe I would be, too.
But people have done worse to me.
I don’t think I’m being grotesque when I tell you
I’ve been flayed and slayed and force-fed anguish.
I’ve been a human cataract
plunging through a noose and going to pieces on the rocks.
I’ve been a seagull tethered to Alcatraz.
What can I say, what more can I say, how much more
vulnerable can I be, to persuade you
now that I’ve persuaded myself?
Why can’t you just let it go?
Well, at least I’m in San Francisco.
San Francisco, where the homeless are most at home—
crouching over their tucker bags under your pollarded trees—
because your beauty is as free to them
as to the domiciled in their
dead-bolt domiciles, your beauty is as free to
the innocent as to the guilty.
The fog has burned off.
In a cheap and windy room on Russian Hill
a man on the run unwraps the bandages
swaddling his new face, his reconstructed face,
and looks in the mirror and sees
the face of Humphrey Bogart. Only here
could such a thing happen.
It was really always you, San Francisco,
time won’t ever darken my love for you,
San Francisco.


- Vijay Seshadri

My photos of the Bridge, old friend and and Native San Franciscan Tom Bissinger

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Visiting San Francisco
...

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Living Mandala
At a Tshechu, annual sacred festival in Domkhar. Bhutan


1.
Follow me to a small country
where trees in new yellow leaf
stand before black mountains,
where clouds curdle above,
with sun seeping through.
Where distant Himalayas look
like the exquisitely chipped rim
of the world’s sugar bowl.
Sit with me and the local populace
in a monastic courtyard
while temple bells gong
and drums beat out
da-da-DUM-dum-dum.


2.
Watch while a dozen monks
in masks of the zodiac,
in yellow skirts with rainbow
petticoats, emerge from
the temple, their feet bare,
chests, too, but for richly
embroidered bibs and straps.
And on the grass and flagstones,
they dance, whirl and
twirl, lift feet, toss ribboned
crests, ears, horns, gin up winds
with the sticks they carry.
Rooster, ox, rat and all spin like clocks
and counter-clocks, the mandala
of their ring wheeling in a circle game.
The winds blow hot and cold.
The temple horns blow cool.
At last spent, each takes a solo exit,
helped up steps by other monks –
ones not drunk on dance.


3.
After the barest of intervals, the monk dancers
will be back in different masks
to again leave all on the flagstones.
They will repeat all day. Meanwhile
divine jesters will orchestrate with smirk
masks and phallus prods. They grin,
teach steps, poke people, invite themselves
onto audience laps. It’s understood these
tricksters must stay inside the gates.


Cymbals are singing and the monks are
back in red brocade, whirling, holding
swords of purification, and spinning.
Have I ever witnessed someone
dancing themselves into a frenzy
for the enlightenment of my soul?
Yes


- Phyllis Meshulam

Theories of Time and Space



You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one—
by—one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion—dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp—buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry—tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph—who you were—
will be waiting when you return

- Natasha Trethewey

Politics


How can I, that girl standing there,
My attention fix
On Roman or on Russian
Or on Spanish politics,
Yet here's a travelled man that knows
What he talks about,
And there's a politician
That has both read and thought,
And maybe what they say is true
Of war and war's alarms,
But O that I were young again
And held her in my arms.


- William Butler Yeats

On Aging Fiercely


I am going to seed

Look around

All these blessings need scattering

Somewhere

There is an art to Elderhood
It is time to ask the
IMPORTANT question:
Where do I spread all of these seeds
I have collected?

I thought it disloyal at first
To the holy worship of youth
But hiding the baubles of delight
Has become impossible.

The splashy bangles
Around my bones keep jangling
sounding like hooray hooray!
Or I admit sometimes ouch ouch!
Which is simply
An invitation
To slow the hell down

Who knew walking
s-l-o-w-l-y
Could be considered graceful
Or even seductive?
I lean towards the latter.

And I will carry no ordinary cane
Already a hand carved
Walking-stick inlaid with
Chakra colored stones waits kindly
Against the far wall.

One day I may use it

As my planting stick
Or perhaps an encouragement
To stand taller
To better see where
I am to scatter
All of the seed-blessing
That are filling my pockets.

- Kristy Hellum

Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf
Pine in North America


Tell me what it’s like to live without
curiosity, without awe. To sail
on clear water, rolling your eyes
at the kelp reefs swaying
beneath you, ignoring the flicker
of mermaid scales in the mist,
looking at the world and feeling
only boredom. To stand
on the precipice of some wild valley,
the eagles circling, a herd of caribou
booming below, and to yawn
with indifference. To discover
something primordial and holy.
To have the smell of the earth
welcome you to everywhere.
To take it all in, and then,
to reach for your knife.


- Matthew Olzmann

In The Month of May


In the month of May when all leaves open,
I see when I walk how well things
Lean on each other, how the bees work,
The fish make their living the first day.
Monarchs fly high, then I understand
I love you with what in me is unfinished.


I love you with what in me is still
Changing, what has no head or arms
Or legs, what has not found its body.
And why shouldn't the miraculous,
Caught on this earth, visit
The old man alone in his hut?


And why shouldn't Gabriel, who loves honey,
Be fed with our own radishes and walnuts?
And lovers, tough ones, how many there are
Whose holy bodies are not yet born.
Along the roads, I see so many places
I would like us to spend the night.

- Robert Bly

Waiting


The best way
to talk to God
is through those
sleeping
on the bus


Be they drunk
or derelict
or coming home
from work
or shopping


so dead tired
that their bones
open easily
to heaven


Those who
sleep on
the bus
are the
swiftest
couriers
of prayers


I find myself
on the same bus
with them
on many
nights


and
write a
note


on the
rhythm of
the bus
starting
and stopping


turning my breath
at each corner


It is always
the same
note to
God


I write


These days
bleed
through
my tongue
and pen


I want to
risk
my faith
with you


I want to ask
only one thing


for you to stop
carrying
the torn bodies
of children
past me


Please
let this end


I don't seek
your blessing
or tears


or any easy way
out of here


My hands
are empty
and barren
as I write


Just let this end



BeauWaiting


The best way
to talk to God
is through those
sleeping
on the bus


Be they drunk
or derelict
or coming home
from work
or shopping


so dead tired
that their bones
open easily
to heaven


Those who
sleep on
the bus
are the
swiftest
couriers
of prayers


I find myself
on the same bus
with them
on many
nights


and
write a
note


on the
rhythm of
the bus
starting
and stopping


turning my breath
at each corner


It is always
the same
note to
God


I write


These days
bleed
through
my tongue
and pen


I want to
risk
my faith
with you


I want to ask
only one thing


for you to stop
carrying
the torn bodies
of children
past me


Please
let this end


I don't seek
your blessing
or tears


or any easy way
out of here


My hands
are empty
and barren
as I write


Just let this end


- Beau Beausoleil

The Summer Noosphere


Wet nights, warm days are what we want in the summer noosphere.
Man's mind one with weather.
If this is true, life is good, or will be good.
Can I be encouraged that my sons will find mystery on the planet
as I did?

How sweet the slow spring! May already and the canopy not out yet.
Woods quiet all winter.
Now I can't distinguish the many bird songs from where I sit.
Red maple flowers and first sugar maple leaves are, to me, the Christ child
that's been coming.

The ancient poems and the new make the 1/10 inch of annual topsoil
from carbon dioxide loading.
As a humanist I want everyone pursuing happiness; as a naturalist
I sometimes pray for man's destruction. As a rationalist I admit
I lack data.

O to play slow and sure, even when the tune is fast. Inside an aquifer
of love for the audience.
Not to fear or even necessarily obey the changing wind's
direction. Being here I breathe and make the atmosphere as seen
from outer space.

The song of the world will often take you far from yourself. There
will be no self. How will you know yourself?
By knowing thyme and dandelion, the blue jay from the hawk,
the heron in its swamp, black cherries and the one pear at the junction of the trails.
They are yourself.

- Robert Ronnow

The Seven Streams

Come down drenched, at the end of May,
with the cold rain so far into your bones
that nothing will warm you
except your own walking
and let the sun come out at the day's end
by Slievenaglasha with the rainbows doubling
over Mulloch Mor and see your clothes
steaming in the bright air. Be a provenance
of something gathered, a summation of
previous intuitions, let your vulnerabilities
walking on the cracked sliding limestone
be this time, not a weakness, but a faculty
for understanding what's about
to happen. Stand above the Seven Streams
letting the deep down current surface
around you, then branch and branch
as they do, back into the mountain
and as if you were able for that flow,
say the few necessary words
and walk on, broader and cleansed
for having imagined.


- David Whyte

Family Syllabus

The butterfly is quickly seized and eaten just above their lifted heads
the children had trapped it in the house under glass and card
the father brought it to freedom in the center of the family garden
a Western scrub-jay straightway brought the lesson to a close

In the late afternoon the father glances over his shoulder
the jay and a waxing moon are sitting side by side on a phone wire
the jay says, I know everything that goes on in your garden
the moon says, I bring pale beauty to a darkened world.

- Lee Perron

Brothers in Arms


These mist covered mountains
Are a home now for me
But my home is the lowlands
And always will be
Someday you'll return to
Your valleys and your farms
And you'll no longer burn to be
Brothers in arms


Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've witnessed your suffering
As the battle raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms


There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones


Now the sun's gone to hell and
The moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line in your palm
We are fools to make war
On our brothers in arms


- Mark Knopfler




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs

Nothing Is Lost

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we love have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled.
Family jokes, outmoded anecdotes
each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears

Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar sent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night

- Noel Coward

Comment from SpokenVerse:

If one could go back in history and eliminate one particular villain who damaged the world forever, my candidate would be Sigmund Freud. There has proved to be not a word of truth in anything he said, yet his works changed the world profoundly, particularly the way that people think about simple emotions. This poem is an example of that pernicious influence. Even worse examples are the 'confessional poets', bamboozled and victimised by psychoanalysts, the head-in-the-gas-oven school of poetry.

—SpokenVerse

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resourc...eading-6269871

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

Nothing Is Lost

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we love have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled.
Family jokes, outmoded anecdotes
each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears

Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar sent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night

- Noel Coward

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I turn to Robert Bly, who comments ( American Poetry, pg. 34)

"Our poetry took a wrong turning years ago. Some centuries have a profound spiritual movement: poetry, when vigorous, always a part of it. We know ours is a century of technical obsession, of business mentality, of human effort dissipated among objects, of experience, of a destructive motion outward. Yet there is also a movement in the opposite direction that is even more powerful. THe best thought in this century moves inward. This movement has been sustained by Freud, by great poetry of Europe and South America, by painting, by the most intelligent men. This is the important movement. The weakness of our poetry is that ait does not share in this movement. "

So it seems to me that you cannot put blame for poor poetry on Freud, as well there are some ( Sylvia Plath) who wrote some great poetry, and by some is not considered a confessional poet.

Blanket statements about Freud will lead to a spirited debate? Blanket statements about poets and their poetry will lead to another type of debate. One is probably technical, the other is probably subjective, with a smattering of authoritative remarks which also can be disputed.

I view Robert Bly as one who is wise in matters of poetry, but not necessarily Freud. In matters of poetry i trust my instinct to lead me to entertain its source.

Quote:

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Posted in reply to the post by Ronaldo:

Comment from SpokenVerse:

If one could go back in history and eliminate one particular villain who damaged the world forever, my candidate would be Sigmund Freud. ...

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Song of the Open Road


9

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...1_12-15-12.png

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.

The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop’d,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.

Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter’d this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while.

- Walt Whitman
(today is Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday)

My dear friend Melvin Goldfield loved Walt Whitman and made numerous protraits of him.
Here are some accompanying a song



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

Deep Bows

I know that spring is here
When the fields are buttered
With flowers, and melting with water

When tall common egrets
stretch their necks out and
curve them into the curving hills.
Or let their white robed shoulders
Bow down to the cool wet grasses

The table of creation has been set again.
They dine in monastic silence
while the cows eat, too
While the kites fly,
while the hawks hunt
and Red-winged blackbirds
take a long deep breath of sky
and exhale above the marshes.
And punctuate them with song!

Perhaps they are calling us into their world
Saying listen to our languages,
Sing with us our sounds
And be wholly here with us
in the mystery,
And feel how rich it is this
springtime poem that is, for now
the recurrence of the world.

- Judith Stone

The Laughing Child


When she looked down from the kitchen window
into the back yard and the brown wicker
baby carriage in which she had tucked me
three months old to lie out in the fresh air
of my first January the carriage
was shaking she said and went on shaking
and she saw I was lying there laughing
she told me about it later it was
something that reassured her in a life
in which she had lost everyone she loved
before I was born and she had just begun
to believe that she might be able to
keep me as I lay there in the winter
laughing it was what she was thinking of
later when she told me that I had been
a happy child and she must have kept that
through the gray cloud of all her days and now
out of the horn of dreams of my own life
I wake again into the laughing child


- W. S. Merwin

Magpies Recognize Themselves in the Mirror


The night sounds like a murder
of magpies and we’re replacing our cabinet knobs
because we can’t change the world, but we can
change our hardware. America breaks my heart
some days, and some days it breaks itself in two.
I watched a woman have a breakdown in the mall
today and when the security guard tried to help her
what I could see was all of us
peeking from her purse as she threw it
across the floor into Forever 21. And yes,
the walls felt like another way to hold us in
and when she finally stopped crying,
I heard her say to the fluorescent lighting, Some days
the sky is too bright. And like that we were her
flock in our black coats and white sweaters,
some of us reaching our wings to her
and some of us flying away.


- Kelli Russell Agodon

Forever

Sweet summers we stayed outdoors
until we could no longer tell
the trees from the dark between them
and the brigade of fireflies failed
in its quest to prolong the day.
There was a name for what stepped in
when time stopped in daylight’s
slow embrace of farewell,
kind reprieve to our outdoor games
until the moment night’s blanket covered
the last corner of earth’s cradle
and the blanket itself came alive
with singing: that name was forever.
We did not speak the name, but
our minds were filled with forever.
My friend and I once tried
to say to how long it had been
since the day we’d first met.
We strained, but the effort flooded
the beds of our minds. Origins
lay too dim in memory’s forest.
“Two years ago,” we murmured—
another name for forever.

- Max Reif

The Booby Prize

My friend Jana tells me "knowing
Is the Booby Prize."
Once known the answer ossifies into Certainty.
Can we know Life
Without wanting
To trap it, cage it?
The heart’s rhythm arrives -
Constant waves carrying
The rich soup of the soul.
Each wave, each beat, its own universe
Each one its own gift, its necessary
Step in Creation’s dance.
We, who are frozen in ideas
And answers
Crave change, but belief
Blocks Life’s insistent responses.

Has our terrible
Demand for certainty caused
This chaos, this burning planet?
Is our home dying to free herself from
Our Absolute Knowing?
Every day our only habitat baptizes us
In Fire, winds and floods.
Every moment our planet pleads and punishes.
Her heart breaks, whispers, “Listen. If you must be sure:
Be certain of Change.
Cherish Wind, Water, Air, Love all your living Companions. Here are
The only gods, the one
Absolute you need.”

- Rebecca del Rio

Rearmament

These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur
of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it
seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and
kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future ... I should do foolishly. The beauty
of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.


- Robinson Jeffers

The Answer


Then what is the answer? - Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know the great civilizations have broken down into violence, and their
tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose the least
ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted and not wish for
evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal peace or happiness. These dreams will not be
fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear the whole
remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing, and man dissevered from the earth and stars and his
history … for contemplation or in fact…
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness, the divine beauty of
the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions, or drown in
despair when his days darken.


- Robinson Jeffers

hmm... I have been told that understanding is the Booby Prize ... no matter, I do love this poem!

Quote:

---

Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson:

The Booby Prize

My friend Jana tells me "knowing
Is the Booby Prize."
Once known the answer ossifies into Certainty.
Can we know Life
Without wanting
To trap it, cage it?
The heart’s rhythm arrives -
Constant waves carrying
The rich soup of the soul.
Each wave, each beat, its own universe
Each one its own gift, its necessary
Step in Creation’s dance.
We, who are frozen in ideas
And answers
Crave change, but belief
Blocks Life’s insistent responses.

Has our terrible
Demand for certainty caused
This chaos, this burning planet?
Is our home dying to free herself from
Our Absolute Knowing?
Every day our only habitat baptizes us
In Fire, winds and floods.
Every moment our planet pleads and punishes.
Her heart breaks, whispers, “Listen. If you must be sure:
Be certain of Change.
Cherish Wind, Water, Air, Love all your living Companions. Here are
The only gods, the one
Absolute you need.”

- Rebecca del Rio

---

The Fifth Glass

This afternoon, my ex-wife came to visit,
With her new wife - and we all
Set up a table on the back porch.

We were having wine and cheese
Purchased on our long trip,
A big loop locally - and we all, somehow,
Thought we were one wine glass short.

When we talked about it later,
We all agreed…And, yes, they had told me
To bring the glass out, and, yes, I did.
Like we were one glass short.

And, yet, there were only four of us.
In attentive silence, we examined
That fifth glass, the one that all of us
Had said was missing…

Then, we clinked our glasses, and we
Shared that wine amongst ourselves,
A good one, from a Calistoga winery.
And we all said…

Well, she’s not here, anyway…


- Jon Jackson

Planet Sunburn


It becomes a joke before we even understand it, relegated to a kingdom of cliché:
the whole global warming thing—— it’’s that moment speeding
down a mountain road when you realize
the brakes are gone, when you swim over and past
the shark net barrier into darkening water——
the other morning in southern Australia koalas staggered onto public highways
in 120 degree heat,
begging passing humans for water——
the air crackled with heat
even after a flood of crows
rode the sun to the rim of distance——
as though nature was just joking around,
all those species about to go
extinct or insane only theoretical,
nothing to dry the moisture from your fields, drain the animals from forests
and fish from the sea——
and you, every once
in a while, could just
write a check
or watch a special on PBS, making everything all right.


- Michael Shorb

what to do with your goat in a drowning world


hear the helicopters come over the roof
water's up to my attic windows
and I'm stuck here with my goat
I can see my neighbor in the hole on his roof
he's got two dachsies and a tomcat
just across the rushing river is his sister
she's cradling her baby and a rooster
circling helicopters circling helicopters
will take me but not my goat
will lift me up from muck and flood
but they won't take my neighbor's dogs or cat
or his sister's baby's rooster
helicopters overhead nation to the rescue
take the people damn their friends
I'm not going without my goat
he's not going without his pets
baby won't leave without her rooster
lord oh lord why don't we have an ark
that's the helicopters leaving
that's the nation to the rescue
leaving us here in the dark


- Andrei Codrescu

For a Coming Extinction


Gray Whale
Now that we are sending you to The End
That great god
Tell him
That we who follow you invented forgiveness
And forgive nothing


I write as though you could understand
And I could say it
One must always pretend something
Among the dying
When you have left the seas nodding on their stalks
Empty of you
Tell him that we were made
On another day


The bewilderment will diminish like an echo
Winding along your inner mountains
Unheard by us
And find its way out
Leaving behind it the future
Dead
And ours


When you will not see again
The whale calves trying the light
Consider what you will find in the black garden
And its court
The sea cows the Great Auks the gorillas
The irreplaceable hosts ranged countless
And fore-ordaining as stars
Our sacrifices


Join your word to theirs
Tell him
That it is we who are important


- W. S. Merwin

Dear friends,
As you may know, over 70 gray whales have washed up dead on the Pacific shores this year, 13 of them in the San Francisco Bay Area. Most have died of starvation, some by collision with ships.
My heart is breaking as we witness what may be the beginning of the end of this magnificent species that has shared this planet with us for as long as we have been human. Our world will be a poorer place without them.
My friends Doug von Koss, Francis and Judith Weller, Elizabeth Herron and I are planning a memorial service and grief ritual for the whales July 20 at a beach in Sonoma County. We don’t know the time or specific location yet, but will let you know soon. If you are touched as we are by this tragedy we invite you to join us.
In solidarity with all beings,
Larry









Dying Thoughts Of A Beached Whale


I lie resting half into the sand
And she pulses against me
As softly as the edge of the sea
Envelopes the edge of the land;


She pushes but never overmounts
My naked flank like a rock
Or the sunken support of a dock
Stuck just where the tide runs out


And the blank dark ceiling above
Shows vision and memory
That astrology and astronomy
Reveal, but these are alive with love.


- Christopher Woodall

Dia de Amor: Magdalena Bay

Red streaked dawn across sun spattered waves
wind in our faces,
Panga boats bounce ahead toward deeper water.

They say the blow
of the gray whale
looks like a heart,
a spray of love so delicate
it bursts into flares of passion
nurturing
a steadily burning warmth.

We approach them slowly,
these gray whales,
engaging in the heaving dance
on the sea
of boat and beings.

Barnacled down their backs
rising hugely,
white filigree on shining thick black skin,
rolling in blue water,
grace in their mountainous girth.

Heads raising from the bay
glancing into our eyes,
penetrating to our very core.

Swimming beneath the boat,
nudging the keel playfully,
rising to blow with abandon.

Closing between us
they invite our hand to skin
for an eternal moment,
drowning in the swell of joined connection,
knowing our deeper selves
seen and blessed.

Two diverse beings
neither suffocating the other
into an indistinguishable confluent cocoon,
nor drawing separately far apart,
the gossamer line between
linking hearts
stretches and silently kisses.

Rumi says:
wash our eyes with awe.

Tears of thanks,
I am a native of this Earth's oceans
once again.

- Alan Cohen

Why Tara Turns Green

Some parts of your body are alive,

https://www.waccobb.net/forums/wacco...3_12-11-59.png

and some are numbed by shame.
The real purpose of meditation
is to wake up God
in your supernova toes,
arouse your bones’ erotic photons,
let each neutrino ring
like a mindfulness bell
in your rib cage,
make every proton rhythmic
with its star,
inspire a leukocyte to waltz
with a red dwarf.
This is how ancestors dance
with angels in your blood.
Have you received a morning glory’s
promiscuous smile,
a kiss from the dust on your sole?
O yogini, O devoted monk,
I know you’ve been trying to sing
without lips, “I am not this body!”
But Adam was a breath of mud.
His first wife, Lilith, liked to ride
on top, and Jesus died
on the Tree of Life shouting,
“I won’t leave anything behind!”
He claimed each sparkle
of your semen and each tear
you mingle with marrow and loam.
The half-chewed morsel
of bagel in your mouth
is the kingdom of his perfect joy.
Don’t you know he has a secret name
that means, “Miracle of Worms”?
The Bodhi Tree is the Body Tree.
That’s why Tara turns green
when her fingers stroke the ground.
It’s why we share food,
pray for sacred land and water,
laugh when we see babies,
whirl and spin like wizened leaves
at sunset when we die.



- Alfred K. LaMotte

Father

Father, there is a hole in my back
Where your hand did not rest,
Where the skin did not sense your presence
Where the bone did not grow
to meet your touch
Hence I stand,
shoulders slumped
protected heart
Unsure in the world



Father, our Father, now I see, there’s a hole in your back too.

- Rebecca Evert

Yesterday


My friend says I was not a good son
you understand
I say yes I understand

he says I did not go
to see my parents very often you know
and I say yes I know

even when I was living in the same city he says
maybe I would go there once
a month or maybe even less
I say oh yes

he says the last time I went to see my father
I say the last time I saw my father

he says the last time I saw my father
he was asking me about my life
how I was making out and he
went into the next room
to get something to give me

oh I say
feeling again the cold
of my father's hand the last time
he says and my father turned
in the doorway and saw me
look at my wristwatch and he
said you know I would like you to stay
and talk with me

oh yes I say

but if you are busy he said
I don't want you to feel that you
have to
just because I'm here

I say nothing

he says my father
said maybe
you have important work you are doing
or maybe you should be seeing
somebody I don't want to keep you

I look out the window
my friend is older than I am
he says and I told my father it was so
and I got up and left him then
you know

though there was nowhere I had to go
and nothing I had to do


- W. S. Merwin

Just Now I Heard My Father Singing

Just now I heard my father singing
an old, old song he used to sing
when his hands were busy
with something, as mine were until
I heart that voice: he has been dead
for eight years!

Just now I heard my father’s laughter.
That, too, came from my mouth.

- Alden Nowlan

the gift


you were sitting there
not rocking, in that chair
by the window
i wanted to say goodbye
it was time to go
my womanhood just
beginning to lift off
smoke curling from
the cigarette dangling
between your bent fingers
i wanted to say goodbye
to that heavy thing
you carried on your chest
the air stifled, close
it was time to go
i slowly found your side
leaning in to kiss
your cheek, leaning
into the barbed wire
and left the gift
of my lips between
your cheekbone
and your clenched jaw
“i will see you in a
few weeks” i said
and waited for you
to lift your face
your eyes met mine
and the words
“kiss of death”
fell from your mouth
they sounded soft
almost tender
we were frozen
in time, the light
slanting in long strips
thru venetian blinds
it was just the two of us
a strip of dark, a line
of light, a thin wire
between us
the tightrope on
which i walked
to the door
it was time to go


- Fran Carbonaro

The End of the Line

They never had much realitynor do I remember believing
in them. I assumed they were
meant for other people and I
liked the French twist that called
them cliches. This stock of ragged
sayings have often to do with ageing
and we rummage through them like
old clothes, assuming that whether large
or small they will eventually fit. Does a
creaky elevator take the old dog down to
the floor where he can't learn new tricks?
Is youth really wasted on the young or
does energy restlessly want to experience
a later stage? Who says that all things
come to an end? Anyone who's been on
a crowded train knows that the rails that
carry our bodies past nameless stations
go on and on forever. At life's end they say
there's a bucket to kick, a farm to buy and
a maker you must meet.
We listen all our lives to this babble that
doesn't care for ambiguity except for the one
where death waits until some obscure fat lady
sings. Idiotic idioms set up the language props
for unremarkable dramas with the same ending,
hammering the nails in, putting imagination on
hold. My ears tune into rhythm of the train riding
rails that speak of continuous journey. I believe
in an interminable soul but it makes no difference
to others. Mortality may eavesdrop on my sense
of time and sooner or later somebody will nudge
me insisting that the next stop is where I must get
off. Being foolish and accommodating, I will grab my
bags and step down on a vacant platform with no
village or hotel in sight.


- Rich Meyers

I dreamed that

A large whale, a leviathan, writhed in the ocean
close to the land where I stood, digging downward
Into the deep waters.

In darkness, I watched with trepidation, witnessing
The enormity of this extraordinary act unfolding
Before my eyes, the force so great, it created a hole

In the ocean that did not, and would not, fill. The
Empty space deepened, seemingly unending, such
That the earth upon which I stood might soon

Break off into the blackened deep from its force.
I sensed and still sense, feared and still fear that this
cosmic whale with the gaping mouth of a crocodile

was and is devouring the great sea itself, showing us
the hole In the reality we have wrought, where we
are headed, and where the very land upon which we

Stand will be shaken by a forbidding hand that will
thrust us into the perilous pit of our own foolhardy
undoing.

- Bruce Silverman

Perhaps The World Ends Here


The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat
to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it
has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at
the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to
be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around
our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down
selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the
table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in
the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents
for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering
and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying,
eating of the last sweet bite.


- Joy Harjo
(Joy Harjo is America’s new Poet Laureate)



See more about Joy here

Juneteenth


Know the enemy is in charge
and the exposer in chief is at large
and the presider of cruel justice
is orange haired Madame DJ DeFarge

So good to give up polarity
and see the victims of the systems
are you and me in history
wherever you happen to be

Celebrate the exposé
and make note of the failings
cast on both sides of the line
and know that party means faction
in this country of yours and mine

and counter to our law
we are making war by the score
on our children's credit card
creating victims in all directions
to which they shall pay evermore.

In sum
of parties, we need one
not of branding and division
scoring who lost, who won
but of e pluribus unum

- David Bean

Once the World Was Perfect Once the world was perfect, and we were happy in that world.Then we took it for granted.Discontent began a small rumble in the earthly mind.Then Doubt pushed through with its spiked head.And once Doubt ruptured the web,All manner of demon thoughtsJumped through—We destroyed the world we had been givenFor inspiration, for life—Each stone of jealousy, each stoneOf fear, greed, envy, and hatred, put out the light.No one was without a stone in his or her hand.There we were,Right back where we had started.We were bumping into each otherIn the dark.And now we had no place to live, since we didn’t knowHow to live with each other.Then one of the stumbling ones took pity on anotherAnd shared a blanket.A spark of kindness made a light.The light made an opening in the darkness.Everyone worked together to make a ladder.A Wind Clan person climbed out first into the next world,And then the other clans, the children of those clans, their children,And their children, all the way through time—To now, into this morning light to you. - Joy Harjo