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  1. TopTop #1201
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Grecian Temples


    Because I'm getting pretty gray at the temples,
    which negatively impacts my earning potential
    and does not necessarily attract vibrant young women
    with their perfumed bosoms to dally with me
    on the green hillside,
    I go out and buy some Grecian Hair Formula.


    And after the whole process, which involves
    rubber gloves, a tiny chemistry set,
    and perfect timing, I look great.
    I look very fresh and virile, full of earning potential.
    But when I take my fifteen-year-old beagle
    out for his evening walk, the contrast is unfortunate.
    Next to me he doesn't look all that great,
    with his graying snout, his sort of faded,
    worn-out-dog look. It makes me feel old,
    walking around with a dog like that.


    It's not something a potential employer,
    much less a vibrant young woman with a perfumed bosom
    would necessarily go for. So I go out
    and get some more Grecian Hair Formula-
    Light Brown, my beagle's original color.
    And after all the rigmarole he looks terrific.
    I mean, he's not going to win any friskiness contests,
    not at fifteen. But there's a definite visual improvement.
    The two of us walk virilely around the block.


    The next day a striking young woman at the bookstore
    happens to ask me about my parents,
    who are, in fact, long dead, due to the effects of age.
    They were very old, which causes death.
    But having dead old parents does not go
    with my virile, intensely fresh new look.


    So I say to the woman, my parents are fine.
    They love their active lifestyle in San Diego.
    You know, windsurfing, jai alai, a still-vibrant sex life.
    And while this does not necessarily cause her
    to come dally with me on the green hillside, I can tell
    it doesn't hurt my chances.


    I can see her imagining dinner
    with my sparkly, young-seeming mom and dad
    at some beachside restaurant
    where we would announce our engagement.


    Your son has great earning potential,
    she'd say to dad, who would take
    a gander at her perfumed bosom
    and give me a wink, like he used to do
    back when he was alive, and vibrant.


    - George Bilgere
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  3. TopTop #1202
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Basket

    You should go
    from place to place
    recovering the poems
    that have been written for you,
    to which you can affix your signature.
    Don't discuss these matters
    with anyone.
    Retrieve. Retrieve.

    When the basket is full
    someone will appear
    to whom you can present it.
    She will spread her wide skirt
    and sit down
    on a black stone
    and your basket will bounce
    like a speck in sunlight
    on the immense landscape
    of her lap.

    - Leonard Cohen
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  5. TopTop #1203
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Signs of Impermanence


    The fact that I'm getting old and not just older.
    That wine in a glass tastes better than wine
    in the stomach. That all matter is not only
    streaming toward the edge of the universe
    but that my tears are too, and not from the passing
    of next of kin, or even from sad visions, but from
    old movies seen too many times, and never more
    upsetting than the last time, when the ghost,
    for instance, had no face and only pointed.
    The fact that you can never find good bacon,
    you can never relax in the tub, you can never
    have a dream that doesn't have at least one
    ominous sign. That breath becomes heavier
    than gold, time lighter than air, and striving
    cumulonimbus. A house on a hill on a country
    road with pale sky shimmering? Try to find one.


    - Edward Nudelman
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  6. TopTop #1204
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    This Poem


    This poem is dangerous; it should not be left
    Within the reach of children, or even of adults
    Who might swallow it whole, with possibly
    Undesirable side effects. If you come across
    An unattended, unidentified poem
    In a public place, do not attempt to tackle it
    Yourself. Send it (preferably in a sealed container)
    To the nearest centre of learning, where it will be rendered
    Harmless, by experts. Even the simplest poem
    May destroy your immunity to human emotions.
    All poems must carry a Government warning. Words
    Can seriously affect your heart.


    - Elma Mitchell
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  7. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  8. TopTop #1205
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Blue Iris


    Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?
    Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.
    Well I think I can read books.


    What’s that you are doing?
    the green headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.
    I close the book.


    Well, I can write down words like these, softly.
    “What’s that your’re doing?” whispers the wind, pausing,
    in a heap just outside the window.


    Give me a little time I say back to its staring face.
    It doesn’t happen all of a sudden you know.


    ”Doesn’t it ?’ says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
    distillation of blue iris,


    And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
    the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.




    - Mary Oliver
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  9. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  10. TopTop #1206
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Still Time


    I know there is still time—
    time for the hands
    to open,
    to be filled
    by those failed harvests,
    the imagined bread of the days of not having.
    I remember those summer nights
    when I was young and empty,
    when I lay through the darkness
    wanting, wanting,
    knowing
    I would have nothing of anything I wanted—
    that total craving
    that hollows the heart out irreversibly.
    So it surprises me now to hear
    the steps of my life following me—
    so much of it gone
    it returns, everything that drove me crazy
    comes back, as if blessing the misery
    of each step it took me into the world;
    as though a prayer had ended
    and the changed
    air between the palms goes free
    to become the glitter
    on common things that inexplicably shine.
    And the old voices,
    which once made broken-off, choked, parrot-incoherences,
    speak again,
    this time on the palatum cordis,
    saying there is still time
    for those who can groan
    to sing,
    for those who can sing to heal themselves.


    - Galway Kinnell
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  12. TopTop #1207
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Let someone Catch You


    It’s in the
    falling
    that we rise
    in that fall-on-your-face
    SPLAT
    that we forget
    who we think we should be
    and in that emptiness
    find our fullness

    Don’t get mad at yourself
    and leave
    for failing to find perfection
    as soon as possible
    millionaire by thirty
    PhD by thirty
    saint/martyr by thirty

    Let someone catch you
    so they can be the hero
    if that’s what they need
    let yourself fall
    if you really want
    to save the world


    - Lin Marie deVincent
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  14. TopTop #1208
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    O Captain! My Captain!






    O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
    The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
    The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
    While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
    But O heart! heart! heart!
    O the bleeding drops of red,
    Where on the deck my Captain lies,
    Fallen cold and dead.





    O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
    Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
    For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
    For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
    Here Captain! dear father!
    This arm beneath your head;
    It is some dream that on the deck,
    You’ve fallen cold and dead.



    My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
    My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
    The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
    From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
    Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
    But I, with mournful tread,
    Walk the deck my Captain lies,
    Fallen cold and dead.


    - Walt Whitman
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  15. TopTop #1209
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Round Woman

    My mom was a round woman
    About 5’ tall
    Maybe 180-200#

    My mom’s sisters, my aunties,
    Were mostly round women,
    Especially my aunt Margaret.

    I loved my Aunt Margaret best.
    Sometimes when my mom was at work
    Or traveling for politics
    My aunt Margaret would live with us
    And care for us.

    When I came home from school
    There she’d be – eyes blazing –
    Arms open – hugging me deeply & sweetly

    I would be folded back into her bosom
    And she would invite me to come to the table
    For a snack and a game of canasta.

    My aunt Margaret had her stomach stapled three times.

    I grieve for my aunt Margaret.

    I walk over to her grave and reach in and kiss those staples
    And unravel them and fold myself back into
    That round woman’s love.

    I am a round woman.
    Is there anyone in the house who would walk with me
    To put the staple gun down?


    - Patricia Flasch

    For all the round women in my family and
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  17. TopTop #1210
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    African Chuckle(for Duncan)
    That African chuckle
    wafting around
    smoky jazz joints,
    and weaving
    between ragtime tunes,
    around
    suburban kids
    break dancing
    in the high school quad;
    around
    pale men
    high-fivin’ and jivin’
    and huggin’ and bumpin’
    and practicing a myriad
    of soulful handshakes
    simply to touch
    each other—
    that
    sweet African laughter
    wafting
    in church choirs
    singing
    a balm in Gilead &
    low swinging sweet
    chariots
    is
    the laughter
    of the
    African ancestors
    who
    watched white men
    colonize
    their lives,
    their land,
    their people.
    But
    when they tried
    to colonize
    the African heart,
    they
    failed.
    Instead,
    the white
    heart
    was colonized
    by the African
    soul
    whose words
    & rhythms
    & songs
    & djembe dance to the gods
    now beat
    in the chest
    of white,
    black, brown and
    even yellow men.


    And now
    I know why
    the African gods laugh.


    - Greg Kimura
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  18. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  19. TopTop #1211
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    I'm Working On The World


    I'm working on the world,
    revised, improved edition,
    featuring fun for fools,
    blues for brooders,
    combs for bald pates,
    tricks for old dogs.


    Here's one chapter: The Speech
    of Animals and Plants.
    Each species comes, of course,
    with its own dictionary.
    Even a simple "Hi there,"
    when traded with a fish,
    make both the fish and you
    feel quite extraordinary.


    The long-suspected meanings
    of rustlings, chirps, and growls!
    Soliloquies of forests!
    The epic hoot of owls!
    Those crafty hedgehogs drafting
    aphorisms after dark,
    while we blindly believe
    they are sleeping in the park!


    Time (Chapter Two) retains
    its sacred right to meddle
    in each earthly affair.
    Still, time's unbounded power
    that makes a mountain crumble,
    moves seas, rotates a star,
    won't be enough to tear
    lovers apart: they are
    too naked, too embraced,
    too much like timid sparrows.


    Old age is, in my book,
    the price that felons pay,
    so don't whine that it's steep:
    you'll stay young if you're good.
    Suffering (Chapter Three)
    doesn't insult the body.
    Death? It comes in your sleep,
    exactly as it should.


    When it comes, you'll be dreaming
    that you don't need to breathe;
    that breathless silence is
    the music of the dark
    and it's part of the rhythm
    to vanish like a spark.
    Only a death like that. A rose
    could prick you harder, I suppose;
    you'd feel more terror at the sound
    of petals falling to the ground.


    Only a world like that. To die
    just that much. And to live just so.
    And all the rest is Bach's fugue, played
    for the time being
    on a saw.


    - Wislawa Szymborska
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  20. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  21. TopTop #1212
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Love Calls Us to the Things of This World




    The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
    And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
    Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
    As false dawn.
    Outside the open window
    The morning air is all awash with angels.


    Some are in bed-sheets, some are in blouses,
    Some are in smocks: but truly there they are.
    Now they are rising together in calm swells
    Of halcyon feeling, filling whatever they wear
    With the deep joy of their impersonal breathing;


    Now they are flying in place, conveying
    The terrible speed of their omnipresence, moving
    And staying like white water; and now of a sudden
    They swoon down into so rapt a quiet
    That nobody seems to be there.
    The soul shrinks


    From all that is about to remember,
    From the punctual rape of every blessed day,
    And cries,
    ``Oh, let there be nothing on earth but laundry,
    Nothing but rosy hands in the rising steam
    And clear dances done in the sight of heaven.''


    Yet, as the sun acknowledges
    With a warm look the world's hunks and colors,
    The soul descends once more in bitter love
    To accept the waking body, saying now
    In a changed voice as the man yawns and rises,


    ``Bring them down from their ruddy gallows;
    Let there be clean linen for the backs of thieves;
    Let lovers go fresh and sweet to be undone,
    And the heaviest nuns walk in a pure floating
    Of dark habits,
    keeping their difficult balance.''


    - Richard Wilbur
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  22. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  23. TopTop #1213
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    USA Politicians In Uniforms


    How gorgeous you all look
    In your new mandated outfits
    Reflecting your true colors
    Reflecting your true values
    Reflecting your true donors
    Reflecting who you owe favors


    I love the new transparency
    Full accountability is now your mantra
    Your anti-government messages loud
    Pro-corporate fondness now seen
    Just as the NASCAR driver jumpsuit and car
    Now patches, corporate logos


    No more hiding, secret lunches, junkets
    Are you liberated from your cage of choosing?
    Democracy went where or was it ever here?
    Legitimate plutocracy schoolchildren now learn
    Has been our way 236 years

    Will anything change now? Can we be saved?

    - Frank L. Kahl
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  24. TopTop #1214
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Samurai Song


    When I had no roof I made
    Audacity my roof. When I had
    No supper my eyes dined.


    When I had no eyes I listened.
    When I had no ears I thought.
    When I had no thought I waited.


    When I had no father I made
    Care my father. When I had
    No mother I embraced order.


    When I had no friend I made
    Quiet my friend. When I had no
    Enemy I opposed my body.


    When I had no temple I made
    My voice my temple. I have
    No priest, my tongue is my choir.


    When I have no means fortune
    Is my means. When I have
    Nothing, death will be my fortune.


    Need is my tactic, detachment
    Is my strategy. When I had
    No lover I courted my sleep.


    - Robert Pinsky
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  26. TopTop #1215
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Give Us Courage

    Give us courage, gaiety and the quiet mind.
    Spare us to our friends, soften to us our enemies.
    Bless us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavors.
    If it may not, give us the strength to encounter
    that which is to come, that we be brave in peril,
    constant in tribulation, temperate in wrath,
    and in all changes of fortune and down to the gates
    of death, loyal and loving to one another.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
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  27. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  28. TopTop #1216
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Meditation In Time Of War



    For one throb of the artery,
    While on that old grey stone I Sat
    Under the old wind-broken tree,
    I knew that One is animate,
    Mankind inanimate fantasy.


    - William Butler Yeats
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  30. TopTop #1217
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Instructions for Living The Next 24 Hours


    Wake up. This is most important. Asleep,/
    It easy to fall into belief, opinion or, worse,/
    Certainty. Put one foot in front of the other,/
    Crawl, if you cannot walk. Inhabiting the body/
    Keeps you awake. Suit up./
    It's fine to be naked if that's what's called for,/
    But mostly, casual dress will suffice to clothe one/
    In life's necessary humility. Show up,/
    Living requires presence. More will be revealed/
    As needed, if needed./
    Tell the truth. With practice, this gets easier. /
    When tired, rest. When rested,/
    Wake up.


    - Rebecca del Rio
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  31. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  32. TopTop #1218
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Great Cathedrals


    Before a date, my college roommate
    Used to drive his candy-apple red Camaro
    Down to the car wash and spend the afternoon
    Washing, waxing, vacuuming it,
    Detailing the chrome strips, buffing the fenders,
    Spraying the big expensive tires
    With their raised white lettering


    That said something like Intruder
    Or Marauder, with a silicone spray
    Until they were slick and dark as sex.
    He polished that car as if each caress,
    Each pass of the chamois, each loving
    Stroke of the terry cloth would increase,


    By measurable degrees,
    The likelihood that in the immaculate
    Front seat, with its film of freshly applied
    Vinyl cleaner, at the end of a cul-de-sac
    Somewhere above the campus,
    She would consent to be rubbed
    And buffed just as lovingly.


    We do what we can,
    And if God is no more impressed
    By the cathedral at Chartres
    than by a righteously clean and cherry
    Camaro, at least He can't say
    We haven't tried


    With all our might to conceal our fear
    That we have little else to offer
    Than stained glass or polished chrome,
    The elbow grease of our good intentions.


    So I'm happy to see
    That in the Christmas card photo he sent
    Mark stands, balding now,
    With a dignified gut, a pretty wife,
    And a couple of nice-looking kids, in front
    Of the great cathedral
    Like the sweet vision of a future
    He'd been vouchsafed one day
    Long ago, through Turtle Wax
    On a gleaming hubcap.


    - George Bigere
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  33. TopTop #1219
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Bi-Focal

    Sometimes up out of this land
    a legend begins to move.
    Is it a coming near
    of something under love?




    Love is of the earth only,
    the surface, a map of roads
    leading wherever go miles
    or little bushes nod.




    Not so the legend under,
    fixed, inexorable,
    deep as the darkest mine
    the thick rocks won't tell.




    As fire burns the leaf
    and out of the green appears
    the vein in the center line
    and the legend veins under there,




    So, the world happens twice—
    once what we see it as;
    second it legends itself
    deep, the way it is.


    - William Stafford
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  34. TopTop #1220
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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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  35. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  36. TopTop #1221
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    There’s a Certain Slant of Light


    There’s a certain Slant of light,
    Winter Afternoons —
    That oppresses, like the Heft
    Of Cathedral Tunes —


    Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
    We can find no scar,
    But internal difference,
    Where the Meanings, are —


    None may teach it — Any —
    ’Tis the Seal Despair —
    An imperial affliction
    Sent us of the Air —


    When it comes, the Landscape listens —
    Shadows — hold their breath —
    When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
    On the look of Death —




    - Emily Dickinson
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  38. TopTop #1222
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Gaze

    "The reverence of gaze," I heard him say.

    The words caught me.
    Reverence?
    Gaze?
    Have I ever done that?
    Can I do that?

    Looking as if to see God,
    in the object,
    in the thing?

    In the yellow and green caterpillar now moving
    across the top of this page?

    Do we catch our gods in paintings and books
    or in mid-flight or bid-bloom
    or in sublime repose
    in a patch of sun?

    Can I gaze with enough reverence
    to see a God
    in the object,
    in the thing?

    In the slowly opening fingers of the homeless
    woman's dirty and twisted hand?

    Reverence of Gaze!?

    God help me!

    - Doug von Koss
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  39. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  40. TopTop #1223
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Oblong Root
    for Adelaide O’Connor Ehret

    Going deaf, neither she
    nor her hearing daughter
    recognize the assertive
    unconscious voice
    exchanging Pablo Neruda
    for oblong root or perhaps
    for the medulla oblongata
    center of so much involuntary
    assertiveness, her very breathing,
    the beating of her great heart,
    that fountain enabling her daughter,
    these words that must mean
    something greater than their sounds.

    When it comes to shapes oblong,
    poets prefer oval over rhomboid.
    Because both lampreys and hagfish
    possess a fully developed medulla
    oblongata, half a billion years of
    evolution formed this mother-wisdom
    this connection between a great poet
    and that most essential ancient
    ancestor of her own brain
    eventually bestowing the gift
    of words on her daughter
    who told mother that she’d won
    a prize now confused with an oblong root.

    This sound the mother hazily heard
    might have been the swishing of
    a weed growing in dry rocky
    pasture land outside Stoneham
    near the marble quarry
    or vibration off a German yellow sugar beet.
    The very pith of plants also referred to
    as their “medulla” Yet mathematicians
    know the oblong root as an algebraic square.

    All such fugues episodically
    musically create all richness
    all story all myth all family.
    Even entire geographies as they exist
    for midwestern endodontists who
    in 2012 AD estimated
    the typical cost of a root canal
    in Oblong, Illinois to be
    nineteen hundred-thirty-four dollars.

    But, in terms of preference,
    when it comes to oblong contours
    almost all poets and loving mothers
    choosing the egg-shape over rhombus,
    realize how one thing always leads to another,
    even and perhaps especially, this.


    - Ed Coletti
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  41. TopTop #1224
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dedicated To Birte and Inger
    on their day of U.S. citizenship


    To be an American
    is to be English, Irish,
    Spanish, Swedish, Finnish,
    Danish, Ukrainian, Russian,
    Asian, German, Frenchman,
    Indian, East Indian, African,
    Belgium, Arab, Jew.

    To be an American
    is to have as much faith
    in a mantra as in a rosary;
    in the Book as in the Bible;
    in the Koran as in the Talmud;
    in a Crystal as in a Medal;

    To be an American
    is to have as much faith
    in caps as in high cornered hats,
    in black robes as in white robes
    or no robes at all;
    in a woman as in a man;
    in a maybe-God, a real-God or no-God at all.

    To be an American
    is to have faith
    that every man, woman and child
    is called to a sacred destiny
    that no one should ever take away
    or abuse their humanity
    but to encourage
    their search for themselves in others
    who are of their image.

    To be an American
    is above race, color, creed
    even when fork-tongues spill spoons of love,
    even when the glitter of gold darkens a rainbow,
    even when a country under God acts above God
    because somewhere in the American vistage
    there is the foundation and the gift
    that all men and women are created equal.
    To be an American
    is a place beyond boundaries
    beyond vision, but a dream
    a possible dream:
    when boundaries are dissolved
    where perfect is growth
    where imperfection is ours
    sometimes in a most perfect way.

    To be an American
    is a place where everything and everyone
    is not yet, yet
    even though our brightest victories
    applaud sciences of war and peace
    in the echoes of machinery still making bombs and guns.
    We are peoples mixed, melted and split
    with differences that make pork in government,
    doves and hawks outside of it,
    and truth come late.

    To be an American
    is to grow in confusion of a world
    inside part of a world called these United States
    ...in a milieu of men, women and children.
    Where differences are different and similarities are
    never different; that each and everyone needs
    very little in life; a place to eat,
    a place to sleep,
    a place to die,
    and a lot of loving in between.

    To be an American
    is to be you in another place,
    next door to a million, million neighbors
    who live in the confusion of a World
    inside part of the world
    whose country makes them not
    but wherein they make the country.
    Now you are a part of that people,
    you are "WE THE PEOPLE.'


    - Bill McGee
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  43. TopTop #1225
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poem for Change


    Go into the next room and look
    into the mirror hanging there.
    What do you see? Snow
    on the passes, a serene
    and empty sky. . .
    Your own face, reflecting
    the ways of Time, or perhaps
    the face of another, forgotten
    or long familiar, beyond
    knowing. Light
    the candles, watch the flames
    rise up and dance,
    and when they die, see
    the shapes the wax takes
    as it cools.


    We all want signs.
    We read our dreams, look
    for the meaning of leaves
    falling, birds calling, shadows
    turning in the light.
    But you must sleep without questions.
    In the morning you will set off,
    letting the journey take you,
    trusting the hand that guides you.
    Your way is one among many,
    you must follow its thread.
    You will not become tangled or lost.
    At the end you will find
    what you came for - you will know
    as soon as you see it: the face


    looking out of your mirror,
    calling you on


    - Wendy McVicker
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  44. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  45. TopTop #1226
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Art of Disappearing




    The moon that broke on the fencepost will not hold.


    Desire will not hold. Memory will not hold.


    The house you grew up in; its eaves; its attic will not hold.


    The still lives and the Botticellis will not hold.


    The white peaches in the bowl will not hold.


    Something is always about to happen.


    You get married, you change your name,


    and the sun you wore like a scarf on your wrist has vanished.


    It is an art, this ever more escaping grasp of things;


    imperatives will not still it – no stay or wait or keep


    to seize the disappeared and hold it clear, like pain.


    So tell the car idling in the street to go on;


    tell the skirmish of chesspieces to go on;


    tell the scraps of paper, the lines to go on.


    It is winter: that means the blossoms are gone,


    that means the days are getting shorter.


    And the dark water flows endlessly on.


    - Sarah Holland-Batt
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  47. TopTop #1227
    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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  49. TopTop #1228
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Poem for South African Women


    Commemoration of the 40,000 women and children who,
    August 9, 1956, presented themselves in bodily protest against
    the “dompass” in the capital of apartheid. Presented at The
    United Nations, August 9, 1978.


    Our own shadows disappear as the feet of thousands
    by the tens of thousands pound the fallow land
    into new dust that
    rising like a marvelous pollen will be
    fertile
    even as the first woman whispering
    imagination to the trees around her made
    for righteous fruit
    from such deliberate defense of life
    as no other still
    will claim inferior to any other safety
    in the world


    The whispers too they
    intimate to the inmost ear of every spirit
    now aroused they
    carousing in ferocious affirmation
    of all peaceable and loving amplitude
    sound a certainly unbounded heat
    from a baptismal smoke where yes
    there will be fire


    And the babies cease alarm as mothers
    raising arms
    and heart high as the stars so far unseen
    nevertheless hurl into the universe
    a moving force
    irreversible as light years
    traveling to the open
    eye


    And who will join this standing up
    and the ones who stood without sweet company
    will sing and sing
    back into the mountains and
    if necessary
    even under the sea


    we are the ones we have been waiting for


    - June Jordan


    from Passion (1980)
    and from Directed by Desire. The Collected Poems of June Jordan.
    Copyright 2005 by the June M. Jordan Literary Estate Trust
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  51. TopTop #1229
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Finding The Way


    At the edge of the road
    walking in the tracks of deer
    on Bolinas Mesa,
    above foliage so dense
    everything becomes
    one thing

    slowing
    to the slowness of the snake
    crossing the path. When
    heaven breathes it knows,
    its whole body waving with wind.
    It is good to be that sensitive.


    now, stop with the trees, and see

    morning glories rising like butterflies
    from the bushes
    on cloud white wings,

    Miwoks
    still
    here,

    arising from places that cannot hold,
    like the moon.


    - Judith Stone
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  53. TopTop #1230
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reading Plato


    I think about the mornings it saved me
    to look at the hearts penknifed on the windows
    of the bus, or at the initials scratched


    into the plastic partition, in front of which
    a cabbie went on about bread his father
    would make, so hard you broke teeth on it,


    or told one more story about the plumbing
    in New Delhi buildings, villages to each floor,
    his whole childhood in a building, nothing to


    love but how much now he missed it, even
    the noises and stinks he missed, the avenue
    suddenly clear in front of us, the sky ahead


    opaquely clean as a bottle's bottom, each heart
    and name a kind of ditty of hopefulness
    because there was one you or another I was


    leaving or going to, so many stalls of flowers
    and fruit going past, figures earnest with
    destination, even the city itself a heart,


    so that when sidewalks quaked from trains
    underneath, it seemed something to love,
    like a harbor boat's call at dawn or the face


    reflected on a coffee machine's chrome side,
    the pencil's curled shavings a litter
    of questions on the floor, the floor's square


    of afternoon light another page I couldn't know
    myself by, as now, when Socrates describes
    the lover's wings spreading through the soul


    like flames on a horizon, it isn't so much light
    I think about, but the back's skin cracking
    to let each wing's nub break through,


    the surprise of the first pain and the eventual
    lightening, the blood on the feathers drying
    as you begin to sense the use for them.


    - Rick Barot
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