Click Banner For More Info See All Sponsors

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!

This site is now closed permanently to new posts.
We recommend you use the new Townsy Cafe!

Click anywhere but the link to dismiss overlay!

Page 140 of 162 FirstFirst ... 40 90 130 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 150 ... LastLast
Results 4,171 to 4,200 of 4857

  • Share this thread on:
  • Follow: No Email   
  • Thread Tools
  1. TopTop #4171
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  2. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  3. TopTop #4172
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from 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
    Last edited by Barry; 05-30-2019 at 01:53 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  4. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  5. TopTop #4173
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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 Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    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
    Last edited by Barry; 05-31-2019 at 12:10 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  6. Gratitude expressed by:

  7. TopTop #4174
    eddierosenthal's Avatar
    eddierosenthal
    Supporting Member

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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 Posted in reply to the post by Ronaldo: View Post
    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. ...
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  8. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  9. TopTop #4175
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Song of the Open Road


    9
    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)
    Last edited by Barry; 05-31-2019 at 12:16 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  10. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  11. TopTop #4176
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

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

    Name:  Goldfields-Whitman.png
Views: 907
Size:  151.2 KB

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDUbyVShBTA
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  12. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  13. TopTop #4177
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  14. TopTop #4178
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  15. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  16. TopTop #4179
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  17. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  18. TopTop #4180
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  19. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  20. TopTop #4181
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from 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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  21. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  22. TopTop #4182
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  23. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  24. TopTop #4183
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  25. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  26. TopTop #4184
    gardenmaniac's Avatar
    gardenmaniac
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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: View Post
    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  27. TopTop #4185
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  28. TopTop #4186
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  29. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  30. TopTop #4187
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  31. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  32. TopTop #4188
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  33. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  34. TopTop #4189
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  35. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  36. TopTop #4190
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    Last edited by Barry; 06-12-2019 at 02:43 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  37. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  38. TopTop #4191
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Why Tara Turns Green

    Some parts of your body are alive,

    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

    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  39. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  40. TopTop #4192
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  41. TopTop #4193
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    Last edited by Barry; 06-15-2019 at 12:22 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  42. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  43. TopTop #4194
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  44. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  45. TopTop #4195
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  46. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  47. TopTop #4196
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  48. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  49. TopTop #4197
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  50. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  51. TopTop #4198
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    Last edited by Barry; 06-20-2019 at 03:20 PM.
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  52. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  53. TopTop #4199
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  54. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  55. TopTop #4200
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    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
    | Login or Register (free) to reply publicly or privately   Email

  56. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

Similar Threads

  1. Thank you Larry Robinson
    By JandA in forum WaccoReader
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 12-11-2009, 02:36 PM
  2. Poem of the day from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 13
    Last Post: 05-20-2008, 09:33 AM
  3. Poems from Larry Robinson
    By Larry Robinson in forum Poetry and Prose
    Replies: 34
    Last Post: 01-07-2007, 08:45 AM
  4. Measure F Precinct Walk with Larry Robinson
    By Portia in forum General Community
    Replies: 0
    Last Post: 10-06-2006, 02:46 PM

Bookmarks