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  1. TopTop #3931
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Flammable


    Like roadside weeds, dried
    leeched of color
    bleached pale,


    foxtail, wild oat, rattlesnake grass
    their thin throated rasp
    and rustle lost in the breeze.

    Unheard, unseen,
    men and women mass
    waiting, fuel for the match—

    the spark of anger
    flicked into the crowd
    leaps to life, becomes

    a rolling wave of flame
    roaring across the shocked land

    thick air, clogged with smoke
    the vengeful bones of those who burn.

    When they are but ashes
    smothering the land
    winter skies will weep

    and in the spring
    roadside flowers will blaze
    bright with color.

    - Lisa Shulman
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #3932
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn Passage

    On suffering, which is real.
    On the mouth that never closes,
    the air that dries the mouth.

    On the miraculous dying body,
    its greens and purples.
    On the beauty of hair itself.

    On the dazzling toddler:
    “Like eggplant,” he says,
    when you say “Vegetable,”

    “Chrysanthemum” to “Flower.”
    On his grandmother’s suffering, larger
    than vanished skyscrapers,

    September zucchini,
    other things too big. For her glory
    that goes along with it,

    glory of grown children’s vigil,
    communal fealty, glory
    of the body that operates

    even as it falls apart, the body
    that can no longer even make fever
    but nonetheless burns

    florid and bright and magnificent
    as it dims, as it shrinks,
    as it turns to something else.

    - Elizabeth Alexander
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  4. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  5. TopTop #3933
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Better Than Expected

    Things were not as bad as I had thought.
    The scrape in the fender of the rented car
    could be hidden with a little white paint
    before I returned it to the agency.

    This CD of new age music, which I just liked it first,
    with its that synthetic wind of pulsing jellyfish,
    does a remarkable job of slowing down my heart.

    Merely to have survived to this point
    is already the most unlikely triumph;
    to still be breathing and trying to improve.

    Things are definitely better than expected.
    I'm not on trial for anything.
    I have given up on the idea of great success.
    The oncologist says the X Ray shows no “abnormalities.”

    We are always trying to come to a decision,
    always in a place where we are making up our minds
    whether this soup is good, the flowers pretty,
    whether we are fortunate, or poor.

    All my life I have been
    loved by women,
    held up by water,
    ignored by war.
    I have outlasted the voluntary numbness
    I required to remain alive.

    Why shouldn't I be able,
    why shouldn't I be able now
    to walk down the street,

    under the overhanging trees,
    and raise my arms and say
    that the ring shaking down from the leaves
    is not an inconvenience but it's joy?

    - Tony Hoagland
    (November 19, 1953 - October 23, 2018)
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  7. TopTop #3934
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The New Dark Ages

    Thunderstorms stir me up—
    the stillness right before
    the first close tremor,
    the pond shivering
    at the height of summer,
    the field full-blown, going to seed.
    But this storm scares me.
    A foreign climate occupies the land.
    When nature was God, in my childhood,
    I wasn't afraid. Snow buried the town,
    the river flooded it,
    lightning set the woods on fire.
    In months the damage bandaged itself
    with mosses and ferns.
    This storm comes from another
    world, here by mistake,
    its rain blistering the birch leaves.
    Has it been weaponized?
    No one knows what to expect
    of a storm with human parents.

    - Chase Twichell
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  9. TopTop #3935
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sometimes


    Sometimes
    if you move carefully
    through the forest

    breathing
    like the ones
    in the old stories

    who could cross
    a shimmering bed of dry leaves
    without a sound,

    you come
    to a place
    whose only task

    is to trouble you
    with tiny
    but frightening requests

    conceived out of nowhere
    but in this place
    beginning to lead everywhere.

    Requests to stop what
    you are doing right now,
    and

    to stop what you
    are becoming
    while you do it,

    questions
    that can make
    or unmake
    a life,

    questions
    that have patiently
    waited for you,

    questions
    that have no right
    to go away.

    - David Whyte
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 8 members:

  11. TopTop #3936
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Ground of Truth


    Does greed win?
    Can it outrun justice?
    Does it subsume truth?
    I think it eats itself like a hungry boar
    Gobbling away at itself until
    It destroys every vestige, every morsel, every crumb.
    Left are the teeth of truth
    Telling the stories that lies cannot obliterate.
    The tongue may deceive but the eyes cannot
    Disguise a malicious intent just as
    The rose cannot perfume away the rot of evil.
    Ah, but the lilies of the field in all their glory
    Stand tall as sentinels of truth and goodness.
    Their beauty covers greed’s detritus
    As it becomes the scented soil of tomorrow’s dreams
    And Truth sprouts anew to show us in rainbow hues
    The arc of justice and honesty.


    - Pat Morgan
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  13. TopTop #3937
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Diameter Of The Bomb

    The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
    and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
    with four dead and eleven wounded.
    And around these, in a larger circle
    of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
    and one graveyard. But the young woman
    who was buried in the city she came from,
    at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
    enlarges the circle considerably,
    and the solitary man mourning her death
    at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
    includes the entire world in the circle.
    And I won't even mention the howl of orphans
    that reaches up to the throne of God and
    beyond, making
    a circle with no end and no God.

    - Yehuda Amichai

    (translated by Chana Bloch & Stephen Mitchell)
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  14. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  15. TopTop #3938
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    On a Day Like Today


    We are feeling the first
    glint of shock that our
    ancestors felt the day they
    were expelled from Spain.

    Now our restive hands
    are sensing the first drops
    of pelting rain that fell on
    loved ones who boarded an
    unspeakable train.

    We remember those who wore
    yellow stars and perhaps those
    times are not so far away.

    Maybe soon on a day like today
    we will see crescent moons on
    the sleeves of those who have
    no place to pray.

    Glance upwards at the angry
    sky casting an ominous pall
    over the frightened heads of
    brown-skinned children who
    are pleading: why?

    The latest version of “it can’t
    happen here” is no longer
    news from a distant
    shore; it’s here at our door.

    My hope is that you and I will
    awaken and be vigilant on
    behalf of all that we hold to
    be dear,

    And my prayer is that our tired
    eyes can see and our broken
    hearts can hear.

    - Bruce Silverman
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  17. TopTop #3939
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    were they singing

    were they
    singing, praying, daydreaming
    was the Rabbi droning on
    maybe they were sleeping
    I used to fall asleep in church

    the embrace of shabes peace
    brought them to the shul that day
    where unsuspected terror struck

    senseless serial assaults
    spike my blood pressure
    even evoke a momentary outrage
    then fade
    often before the next news cycle begins

    this one
    threatens my balance
    spinning dizzy falling
    on my knees immobile
    stuck in centuries old tear soaked mud
    not ready to resurrect

    what is this sorrow
    I am not a Jew
    what is this compulsion to
    tightly hold this pain
    as if letting go would shatter a trust
    but with whom

    tomorrow
    time
    the grand arbiter
    may work its magic
    begin to crowd out
    yesterday’s biddings

    but today
    aware the sound of breaking glass
    has never cost me more than
    just an inconvenience
    today
    eighty years since Kristallnacht
    today I am a Jew

    - JoAnn Smith
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  19. TopTop #3940
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    At a Country Funeral


    Now the old ways that have brought us
    farther than we remember sink out of sight
    as under the treading of many strangers
    ignorant of landmarks. Only once in a while
    they are cast clear again upon the mind
    as at a country funeral where, amid the soft
    lights and hothouse flowers, the expensive
    solemnity of experts, notes of a polite musician,
    persist the usages of old neighborhood.
    Friends and kinsmen come and stand and speak,
    knowing the extremity they have come to,
    one of their own bearing to the earth the last
    of his light, his darkness the sun’s definitive mark.
    They stand and think as they stood and thought
    when even the gods were different.
    And the organ music, though decorous
    as for somebody else’s grief, has its source
    in the outcry of pain and hope in log churches,
    and on naked hillsides by the open grave,
    eastward in mountain passes, in tidelands,
    and across the sea. How long a time?
    Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide my
    self in Thee. They came, once in time,
    in simple loyalty to their dead, and returned
    to the world. The fields and the work
    remained to be returned to. Now the entrance
    of one of the old ones into the Rock
    too often means a lifework perished from the land
    without inheritor, and the field goes wild
    and the house sits and stares. Or it passes
    at cash value into the hands of strangers.
    Now the old dead wait in the open coffin
    for the blood kin to gather, come home
    for one last time, to hear old men
    whose tongues bear an essential topography
    speak memories doomed to die.
    But our memory of ourselves, hard earned,
    is one of the land’s seeds, as a seed
    is the memory of the life of its kind in its place,
    to pass on into life the knowledge
    of what has died. What we owe the future
    is not a new start, for we can only begin
    with what has happened. We owe the future
    the past, the long knowledge
    that is the potency of time to come.
    That makes of a man’s grave a rich furrow.
    The community of knowing in common is the seed
    of our life in this place. There is not only
    no better possibility, there is no
    other, except for chaos and darkness,
    the terrible ground of the only possible
    new start. And so as the old die and the young
    depart, where shall a man go who keeps
    the memories of the dead, except home
    again, as one would go back after a burial,
    faithful to the fields, lest the dead die
    a second and more final death.

    - Wendell Berry
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  21. TopTop #3941
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught

    You've got to be taught to hate and fear
    You've got to be taught from year to year
    It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
    You've got to be carefully taught

    You've got to be taught to be afraid
    Of people whose eyes are oddly made
    And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade
    You've got to be carefully taught

    You've got to be taught before it's too late
    Before you are six or seven or eight
    To hate all the people your relatives hate
    You’ve got to be carefully taught

    - Richard Rogers
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  22. TopTop #3942

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught...

    WONDERFUL choice!

    Here is the song on YouTube One of the most memorable from childhood! I can tell because of the indelible memory of it, and the tears that well up, still.
    Last edited by Barry; 11-02-2018 at 07:14 PM.
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  23. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  24. TopTop #3943
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Autumn

    The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
    as if orchards were dying high in space.
    Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."

    And tonight the heavy earth is falling
    away from all the other stars in the loneliness.

    We're all falling. This hand here is falling.
    And look at the other one….it's in them all.

    And yet there is Someone, whose hands
    Infinitely calm, hold up all this falling.


    - Rainer Maria Rilke
    (Translated from the German by Robert Bly)
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  25. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  26. TopTop #3944
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In the Event of Another Morning

    In the event of another morning,
    I ask all those inclined to a violent act,
    of whatever sort, physical, psychological, economic,
    to remember your mother’s breast and
    the soft sound of her breath in your ear.
    If you lost your mother, remember your longing and your pain.
    Remember your beating heart and your dying day.

    In the event of another morning,
    I ask all those inclined to a violent act
    to remember the pinprick of recognition
    in the perception of their hallowed face.
    Remember that time dismisses all beings equally
    and honor is the coin of the realm.

    In the event of another morning,
    consider allowing yourself to be held
    by those whom you would harm, feeling
    the gentle warmth of their arms, and
    the yearning of your heart.

    In the event of another morning,
    let not the hardship of the sowing
    rob you of the richness of the harvest
    that will come with your patience.

    In the event of another morning,
    might we know together the fresco of our passions
    and study the patterns of our birthright.

    In the event of another morning,
    there will be lessons and we would be wise to listen.

    In the event of another morning, may the sun rise on your forgiving face.

    - Tim Hicks
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  28. TopTop #3945
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Earth Is Dying

    The earth is dying.
    We sit in hospice, we few
    who are willing
    to bear witness.
    People say –
    My life is fine,
    difficult at times,
    but fine.
    The rent gets paid.
    There is food in the refrigerator.
    The sun rose this morning.

    But in my lifetime
    half the creatures of the sea
    have died.
    The plankton is full of plastic.
    Turtles eat it and are full
    of plastic as well, and sometimes
    they are trapped in the plastic islands
    filling our heating oceans.
    The glaciers are disappearing,
    almost before our eyes.

    You don’t want to hear this.
    I don’t want to hear this.
    But how will the children breathe
    when the oxygen producers are gone?
    How will they live
    when there is no clean water to drink?

    Oh, I will be gone by then,
    dead and beyond caring.
    But I have children,
    and my children have children,
    still wide-eyed and excited
    by life and possibility.

    We are called
    to bear the unbearable.
    She is dying, and so
    we are dying.
    Will you be with Her?
    Will you give Her
    your tears?

    - Maya Spector
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  29. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  30. TopTop #3946
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This Is How I Voted Today


    This is how I voted today.
    I went to the woods and dug a hole
    under fern in leaf rot and luminous fungi

    into which I pressed my mouth and screamed
    a long hot uncreated vowel containing
    the first and last letters of every alphabet.
    I signed my vote with my tears,
    it was ratified by planetary silence
    groans of Adam's first wife from far below
    heaved out of the groundlessness
    where she is gowned in seamless glistening mycellia.

    Only then did I realize what I'd voted for
    the abolition of Republicans and Democrats,
    the downfall of spires and hierarchies,
    the dissolution of superpacs and
    $50,000 a plate dinner parties
    in Hollywood and the Hamptons,
    the deconstruction of the Constitution into a single
    proto-Hebraic rune,
    inscribed on a cavern wall somewhere under
    the vast and indecipherable border
    between Mexico and Arizona.

    The overthrow of male and female hegemony,
    the annihilation of both capitalism and socialism,
    the eradication of black and white by a rainbow of tears,
    the renaissance of family farms and local small-business collectives
    spawning an exquisite tapestry of bio-regional economies where
    no mention is ever made of "government."

    Where politics evaporates into folk music story-telling
    fermented cabbage useful tools
    and the gentle heroics of mere listening.

    I voted for the mule that Jesus rode into the city
    proclaiming forgiveness of all debts
    which is the same mule Laotzu rode out
    beyond the wall of China.

    Which is also the mule that Rumi sat backwards on
    stumbling Westward into exile
    gazing Eastward toward eternal loss--
    that mule I tell you will be president!

    I voted to compost and manure the floor of the Senate
    entangling every politician in a web of hemp moss
    mushrooms and deer pellets.
    I voted to turn the dome of Congress all abuzz
    into a giant hummingbird feeder.

    I voted for the reclamation of all human skin
    with musky forests of golden fur.

    My vote was the sound of Yes in every tongue
    the co-whispering of all leaves
    the council of trees
    the un-clink of gold and emeralds returning to
    veins in stone the echo of a primal Sigh
    that meant to sing the color green
    but accidentally created the stars.

    - Fred LaMotte
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 10 members:

  32. TopTop #3947

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    AMEN!

    And add this one to it, as well!



    I know the voice of depression
    Still calls to you.

    I know those habits that can ruin your life
    Still send their invitations.

    But you are with the Friend now
    And look so much stronger.

    You can stay that way
    And even bloom!

    Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From your prayers and work and music
    And from your companions' beautiful laughter.

    Keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From the sacred hands and glance of your Beloved
    And, my dear,
    From the most insignificant movements
    Of your own holy body.

    Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
    That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
    But then drag you for days
    Like a broken man
    Behind a farting camel.

    You are with the Friend now.
    Learn what actions of yours delight Him,
    What actions of yours bring freedom
    And Love.

    Whenever you say God's name, dear pilgrim,
    My ears wish my head was missing
    So they could finally kiss each other
    And applaud all your nourishing wisdom!

    O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
    From your prayers and work and music
    And from your companions' beautiful laughter

    And from the most insignificant movements
    Of your own holy body.

    Now, sweet one,
    Be wise.
    Cast all your votes for Dancing!

    ~ Hafiz

    From:
    https://www.thebarefootjourney.com/single-post/2015/12/22/Cast-All-Your-Votes-for-Dancing


    Last edited by Barry; 11-07-2018 at 08:46 AM.
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  33. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  34. TopTop #3948
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Ancient Ones


    From the beginning
    We have been with you.
    We are the Ancient Ones
    And we remember.

    We remember the time when there was only love,
    The time when all breathing was one. 

    We remember the seed of your being 

    Planted in the belly of the vast black night. 


    We remember the red cave of deep slumber, 

    The time of forgetting, 

    The sound of your breath, 

    The pulse of your heart. 


    We remember the force of your longing for life,
    
The cries of your birth 

    Bringing you forth.

    We are the Ancient Ones 

    And we have waited 
and watched.
    You say that you cannot remember that time

    
That you have no memory of us. 

    You say that you cannot hear our voices 

    That our touch no longer moves you. 

    You say there can be no return 


    That something has been lost, 

    That there is only 
silence.
    We say the time of waiting is over. 

    We say the silence has been broken. 


    We say there can be no forgetting now. 

    We say, 
Listen.
    We are the bones of your grandmother's grandmothers. 

    We have returned now, 

    We say you cannot forget us now, 


    We say we are with you
    And you are us. 


    Remember,
    Remember.

    - Patricia Reis
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  35. TopTop #3949
    Dorothy Friberg's Avatar
    Dorothy Friberg
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Tell that to Trump!
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  36. Gratitude expressed by:

  37. TopTop #3950
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Adrift

    Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
    This is how the heart makes a duet of
    wonder and grief. The light spraying
    through the lace of the fern is as delicate
    as the fibers of memory forming their web
    around the knot in my throat. The breeze
    makes the birds move from branch to branch
    as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
    in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
    of the next stranger. In the very center, under
    it all, what we have that no one can take
    away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
    It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
    by a holiness that exists inside everything.
    I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

    - Mark Nepo
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  39. TopTop #3951
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    They


    The Bishop tells us: 'When the boys come back
    They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
    In a just cause: they lead the last attack
    On Anti-Christ; their comrades' blood has bought
    New right to breed an honourable race,
    They have challenged Death and dared him face to face.'



    'We're none of us the same!' the boys reply.
    'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
    Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
    And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
    A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.'
    And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange.'

    - Siegfried Sassoon
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  41. TopTop #3952
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Paradox


    I am the mother of sorrows,
    I am the ender of grief;
    I am the bud and the blossom,
    I am the late-falling leaf.


    I am thy priest and thy poet,
    I am thy serf and thy king;
    I cure the tears of the heartsick,
    When I come near they shall sing.


    White are my hands as the snowdrop;
    Swart are my fingers as clay;
    Dark is my frown as the midnight,
    Fair is my brow as the day.


    Battle and war are my minions,
    Doing my will as divine;
    I am the calmer of passions,
    Peace is a nursling of mine.


    Speak to me gently or curse me,
    Seek me or fly from my sight;
    I am thy fool in the morning,
    Thou art my slave in the night.


    Down to the grave will I take thee,
    Out from the noise of the strife;
    Then shalt thou see me and know me—
    Death, then, no longer, but life.


    Then shalt thou sing at my coming,
    Kiss me with passionate breath,
    Clasp me and smile to have thought me
    Aught save the foeman of Death.


    Come to me, brother, when weary,
    Come when thy lonely heart swells;
    I’ll guide thy footsteps and lead thee
    Down where the Dream Woman dwells.


    - Paul Laurence Dunbar
    (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was an African-American poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His parents were slaves. He died at 33 from tuberculosis.
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  42. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  43. TopTop #3953
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

    So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
    And took the fire with him, and a knife.
    And as they sojourned both of them together,
    Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
    Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
    But where the lamb, for this burnt-offering?
    Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
    And builded parapets and trenches there,
    And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
    When lo! an Angel called him out of heaven,
    Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
    Neither do anything to him, thy son.
    Behold! Caught in a thicket by its horns,
    A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

    But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
    And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

    - Wilfred Owen

    Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) spent much of his short, adult life as a volunteer soldier for the British military during World War I.
    He wrote vivid and terrifying poems about modern warfare. Owen was killed by machinegun fire just days before the end of the war.
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  45. TopTop #3954

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    What a powerful poem!

    Leonard Cohen used the same images to decry the slaughter of part of a generation in the Vietnam era, in his song "Story of Isaac." Here are the lyrics of the first 3 verses (masterful, imo! There's a 4th verse I don't really care for.), and below, a link to a YouTube video of Cohen singing the song:

    The door it opened slowly,
    My father he came in,
    I was nine years old.
    And he stood so tall above me,
    His blue eyes they were shining
    And his voice was very cold.
    He said, "I've had a vision
    And you know I'm strong and holy,
    I must do what I've been told."
    So he started up the mountain,
    I was running, he was walking,
    And his axe was made of gold.

    Well, the trees they got much smaller,
    The lake a lady's mirror,
    We stopped to drink some wine.
    Then he threw the bottle over.
    Broke a minute later
    And he put his hand on mine.
    Thought I saw an eagle
    But it might have been a vulture,
    I never could decide.
    Then my father built an altar,
    He looked once behind his shoulder,
    He knew I would not hide.

    You who build these altars now
    To sacrifice these children,
    You must not do it anymore.
    A scheme is not a vision
    And you never have been tempted
    By the Devil or the Lord.
    You who stand above them now,
    Your hatchets blunt and bloody,
    You were not there before,
    When I lay upon a mountain
    And my father's hand was trembling
    With the beauty of the word.
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  47. TopTop #3955
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Cinders

    With every breath I take
    I inhale the ash of homes
    where families convened,
    the trees that exhaled oxygen
    and gave birds a place to rest
    I breathe in the Safeway, the Taco Bell
    that exploded in the dead of night
    and the remains of squirrels and spiders
    and grasshoppers, who had nowhere to run
    as flames surrounded them


    A hundred miles from the fire
    There’s not a cloud in the sky
    Yet it’s still gray. And cold.
    Two small birds chatter outside my office
    They can’t stay inside today,
    or wear masks to filter the air


    A year ago the smoke came from our county
    The pall it created spread thick and wide
    Today we inhale misery from far away
    The singed dreams of our neighbors
    Knowing that nothing will ever be as it was
    But that from the ashes springs renewal

    - Michael Shapiro
    Last edited by Barry; 11-12-2018 at 12:32 PM.
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  49. TopTop #3956
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Laughter of Women

    The laughter of women sets fire
    to the Halls of Injustice
    and the false evidence burns
    to a beautiful white lightness

    It rattles the Chambers of Congress
    and forces the windows wide open
    so the fatuous speeches can fly out

    The laughter of women wipes the mist
    from the spectacles of the old;
    it infects them with a happy flu
    and they laugh as if they were young again

    Prisoners held in underground cells
    imagine that they see daylight
    when they remember the laughter of women

    It runs across water that divides,
    and reconciles two unfriendly shores
    like flares that signal the news to each other

    What a language it is, the laughter of women,
    high-flying and subversive.
    Long before law and scripture
    we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

    - Lisel Mueller
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  51. TopTop #3957
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    velociraptor


    she puts her clawed finger to her
    terrifying lips & whispers

    tell them
    tell them predators
    only hunt when hungry

    of course she means wild predators
    not the domesticated cat
    contaminated by human whim

    when we’re hungry we hunt
    when we’re successful we kill
    when we kill we eat
    then we’re not hungry
    all our neighbors relax
    we enjoy each other’s beauty

    she is light on her feet
    the plodding protoceratops lifts his heart
    seeing the speed of her dance
    across the plain

    scents of grasses mingle
    with the soft grinding of cretaceous teeth
    the rumbling of digestion
    heavy legs impressing the soil
    bending the blades

    the sun falls abundantly & warm
    soft colors of skin undulating over muscles
    scaled, feathered & fragrant
    everyone’s motions fascinate everyone’s eyes
    a symphony of effort & repose

    velociraptor rejoices
    it’s a good day & all around are big & small bodies
    breathing, singing praises of abundance & suspense
    light on her feet she dances
    light on her feet she entertains
    she is entertained
    not hunting

    - Sandy Eastoak
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  53. TopTop #3958
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Compassion

    Have compassion for everyone you meet,
    even if they don't want it. What seems conceit,
    bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
    of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
    You do not know what wars are going on
    down there where the spirit meets the bone.

    - Miller Williams
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 7 members:

  55. TopTop #3959
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Tubbs Fire from Freestone

    It was midnight and I could not sleep.
    My window open and barely a hint of smoke,
    a gas grill, I thought, or the first fire
    this season in a neighbor’s wood stove.
    Terrible winds were in the trees
    a death rattle shaking of
    the pull-down shades
    in an open window.
    I still did not know why
    I could not, could not sleep
    in the yet ocean-moist autumn air.

    The next morning I woke to a world
    now bone dry and strange, oddly metallic,
    a coppery sky and its dull shining.
    I took a photo of that eerie color
    escaping the clouds and burning
    into my consciousness.
    I drove inland as I always do for coffee
    to spark-plug the day. And I saw it,
    and pulled over. Blood orange
    the sun as I had never seen before.
    It scared me the way heat-
    lightning did that first time,
    of no warning and not knowing
    what it was.

    I took another picture of that
    sun, red siren of warning,
    signaling an already charred
    County and its remains,
    its kiln dried bone fragments,
    skeletons of an old world.
    A choking smoke
    beginning of this other!

    It will take years and lifetimes
    to sift through the black presence:

    the raku-glazed shards,
    the inky charcoal earth, now toxic,
    the fire bombing of treasures,
    landmarks exploded, and everywhere
    cars are deader than doornails.

    We are all breathing-in melted electronics.
    whole stoves, refrigerators, computers,
    plus bibles, trees, dead birds. Whole libraries
    vanish into our lungs along with the deer.
    Black clouds of ash descend
    as entire neighborhoods
    become unfamiliar, are bequeathed
    to the bravery of first responders
    still evacuating residents, and
    their animals, and fighting fire.
    Ambulances scream: a horrible
    midnight parade that went on until morning.
    Freeways packed, all the way to San Francisco!
    A trauma stained beginning of that day
    begins a collective story of dying and rising
    together for years, companions of that ash.

    - Judith Stone
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  57. TopTop #3960
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    It’s Always Been About Wind


    It’s early and the top of the oak
    wet with dew is swaying, calling me
    as it did when I was a boy, and
    the birds, singing before we wake,
    are the hearts of those who’ve
    suffered, reborn as soft things
    that sit in trees.

    As for me, I’ve become
    a hollow bone through which
    things long needing to be said
    are sung, though I often don’t
    know what they mean.

    I have been carved out, one
    heartache at a time, to make
    a clear sound. I don’t cite this
    as a principle, just what
    happened to me.

    I lean my head to the wind
    and my heart sings. Then
    I eat the song.

    - Mark Nepo
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