Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Move

Whether it’s a turtle who drags herself
Slowly to the sandlot, where she digs
The sandy nest she was born to dig

And lay leathery eggs in, or whether it’s salmon
Rocketing upstream
Toward pools that call, Bring your eggs here

And nowhere else in the world, whether it is turtle-green
Ugliness and awkwardness, or the seething
Grace and gild of silky salmon, we

Are envious, our wishes speak out right here,
Thirsty for a destiny like theirs,
An absolute right choice

To end all choices. Is it memory,
We ask, is it a smell
They remember,

Or just what is it—some kind of blueprint
That makes them move, hot grain by grain,
Cold cascade above icy cascade,

Slipping through
Water’s fingers
A hundred miles

Inland from the easy, shiny sea?
And we also—in the company
Of our tribe

Or perhaps alone, like the turtle
On her wrinkled feet with the tapping nails—
We also are going to travel, we say let’s be

Oblivious to all, save
That we travel, and we say
When we reach the place we’ll know

We are in the right spot, somehow, like a breath
Entering a singer’s chest, that shapes itself
For the song that is to follow.

- Alicia Ostriker

[Larry Robinson]

After the Wilderness


May 3, 1863


When Clifford wasn’t back to camp by nine,
I went to look among the fields of dead
before we lost him to a common grave.
But I kept tripping over living men
and had to stop and carry them to help
or carry them until they died,
which happened more than once upon my back.
And I got angry with those men because
they kept me from my search and I was out
still stumbling through the churned-up earth at dawn,
stopping to stare into each corpse’s face,
and all the while I was writing in my head
the letter I would have to send our father,
saying Clifford was lost and I had lost him.


I found him bent above a dying squirrel
while trying to revive the little thing.
A battlefield is full of trash like that —
dead birds and squirrels, bits of uniform.
Its belly racked for air. It couldn’t live.
Cliff knew it couldn’t live without a jaw.
When in relief I called his name, he stared,
jumped back, and hissed at me like a startled cat.
I edged up slowly, murmuring “Clifford, Cliff,”
as you might talk to calm a skittery mare,
and then I helped him kill and bury all
the wounded squirrels he’d gathered from the field.
It seemed a game we might have played as boys.
We didn’t bury them all at once, with lime,
the way they do on burial detail,
but scooped a dozen, tiny, separate graves.
When we were done he fell across the graves
and sobbed as though they’d been his unborn sons.
His chest was large — it covered most of them.
I wiped his tears and stroked his matted hair,
and as I hugged him to my chest I saw
he’d wet his pants. We called it Yankee tea.


- Andrew Hudgins

[Larry Robinson]

Laying the Fire


I am downstairs early
looking for something to do

when I find my father on his knees
at the fireplace in the sitting-room
sweeping ash
from around and beneath the grate
with the soft brown hand-brush
he keeps especially for this.

Has he been here all night
waiting to catch me out?
So far as I can tell
I have done nothing wrong.

I think so again
when he calls my name
without turning round;

he must have seen me
with the eyes in the back of his head.

‘What’s the matter old boy?
Couldn’t sleep?’

His voice is kinder than I expect,
as though he knows
we have in common a sadness
I do not feel yet.

I skate towards him in my grey socks
over the polished boards of the sitting-room,

negotiating the rugs
with their patterns of almost-dragons.

He still does not turn round.

He is concentrating now
on arranging a stack of kindling
on crumpled newspaper in the fire basket,

pressing small lumps of coal
carefully between the sticks
as though he is decorating a cake.

Then he spurts a match,
and chucks it on any old how,

before spreading a fresh sheet of newspaper
over the whole mouth of the fireplace
to make the flames take hold.

Why this fresh sheet
does not also catch alight
I cannot think.

The flames are very close.

I can see them
and hear them raging
through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy

and President Khrushchev
racing towards each other in their motorcars
both shouting
I’m sure he’s going to stop first!

But there’s no need to worry.
Everything
is just as my father wants it to be,
and in due time,
when the fire is burning nicely,
he whisks the newspaper clear,

folds it under his arm,

and picks up the dustpan
with the debris of the night before.

Has he just spoken to me again?
I do not think so. I
do not know.
I was thinking how neat he is.
I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?

After that he chooses a log
from the wicker wood-basket
to balance on the coals,
and admires his handiwork.

When the time comes to follow him,
glide, glide over the polished floor,
he leads the way to the dustbins.

A breath of ash
pours continuously over his shoulder
from the pan he carries before him
like a man bearing a gift
in a picture of a man bearing a gift.


- Andrew Motion

[Larry Robinson]

A Satirical Elegy on the Death of a Late Famous General


His Grace! impossible! what dead!
Of old age too, and in his bed!
And could that mighty warrior fall?
And so inglorious, after all!
Well, since he’s gone, no matter how,
The last loud trump must wake him now:
And, trust me, as the noise grows stronger,
He’d wish to sleep a little longer.
And could he be indeed so old
As by the newspapers we’re told?
Threescore, I think, is pretty high;
’Twas time in conscience he should die
This world he cumbered long enough;
He burnt his candle to the snuff;
And that’s the reason, some folks think,
He left behind so great a stink.
Behold his funeral appears,
Nor widow’s sighs, nor orphan’s tears,
Wont at such times each heart to pierce,
Attend the progress of his hearse.
But what of that, his friends may say,
He had those honours in his day.
True to his profit and his pride,
He made them weep before he died.


Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles raised by breath of kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turned to that dirt from whence he sprung.


- Jonathan Swift

[Larry Robinson]

rosetta

hair a bright orange
mouth painted red-red
gold teeth
fingers covered with rings
she wears many gold chains
and crosses
her car an old rusted out chevy
piled high with her belongings
she's laying against the fence
outside the opp center
wearing a long wine colored
rita hayworth number
with a slit up the side
and two black eyes

- Geri Digiorno

[Larry Robinson]

The Darkling Thrush


I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.


The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.


At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.


So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


- Thomas Hardy

[Larry Robinson]

The Dream

to Martin Luther King Jr.

"I have a dream," he said,
the dream, fitted to his times,
that his master the Nazarene
two-thousand years ago amplified
from the ancient scriptures of his cult,
the dream already pressed
into the clay tablets of Ur,
entered in the ledger of Toth,
the dream that when realized
will make us truly great.

- Rafael Jesús González

[Larry Robinson]

Floaters


"Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask ... have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m
not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS,
could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties
do some pretty sick things."
- Anonymous post, “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group


Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.


And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.


Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough
for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging
a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven,
sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.


Now their names rise off her tongue: Say Óscar y Valeria. He swam
from Matamoros across to Brownsville, the girl slung around his neck,
stood her in the weeds on the Texas side of the river, swore to return
with her mother in hand, turning his back as fathers do who later say:
I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop
from branch to branch, Valeria jumped in the river after her father.
Maybe he called out her name as he swept her up from the river;
maybe the river drowned out his voice as the water swept them away.
Tania called out the names of the saints, but the saints drowsed
in the stupor of birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets.
The men on patrol would never hear their pleas for asylum, watching
for floaters, hearts pumping coffee all night on the Texas side of the river.


No one, they say, had ever seen floaters so clean: Óscar’s black shirt
yanked up to the armpits, Valeria’s arm slung around her father’s
neck even after the light left her eyes, both face down in the weeds,
back on the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how
her head disappears in his shirt, the waterlogged diaper bunched
in her pants, the blue of the blue cans. The radio warned us about
the crisis actors we see at one school shooting after another; the man
called Óscar will breathe, sit up, speak, tug the black shirt over
his head, shower off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.


Yet, the floaters did not float down the Río Grande like Olympians
showing off the backstroke, nor did their souls float up to Dallas,
land of rumored jobs and a president shot in the head as he waved
from his motorcade. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud,
light as the iridescent circles of soap that would fascinate a two-year-old.


And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints,
names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed
all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery. Carve their names
in headlines and gravestones they would never know in the kitchens
of this cacophonous world. Enter their names in the book of names.
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the sainted archbishop
of the poor, shot in the heart saying mass, bullets bought by the taxes
I paid when I worked as a bouncer and fractured my hand forty years
ago, and bumper stickers read: El Salvador Is Spanish for Vietnam.


When the last bubble of breath escapes the body, may the men
who speak of floaters, who have never seen floaters this clean,
float through the clouds to the heavens, where they paddle the air
as they wait for the saint who flips through the keys on his ring
like a drowsy janitor, till he fingers the key that turns the lock and shuts
the gate on their babble-tongued faces, and they plunge back to earth,
a shower of hailstones pelting the river, the Mexican side of the river.


- Martin Espada

[Roland Jacopetti]

I heard Martin read this poem on Democracy Now! a few days ago. Wonderful! Thanks, Larry.
Roland

Floaters
...

[Larry Robinson]

Not Unaware

The community’s time capsule resides beneath the parched and nearly
barren earth. A forlorn coffee can size relic coffin.

Above ground, a dusty bronze plaque specifies the far-off date when a
future citizenry should exhume and examine the artifacts.

The concerned civic leaders who buried the specially designed
canister have long since found their eternal resting places.

Should the premonitory marker yet be discovered, the container unearthed
and the contents retrieved; a trio of telltale objects would be recovered.

An empty plastic water bottle, a car key, a cell phone and nothing more.

At the time of the symbolic interment, some were opposed to such a
pointed and blatant characterization of their entire culture.
The realists however, prevailed.

The seasons such as they are, come and go. Dry incessant winds
howl across the scorched and inhospitable landscape.

A few small creatures scuttle about near the forsaken site, oblivious of
the three carefully chosen harbinger objects resting undisturbed
a few feet below.


- Mark Telles

[Larry Robinson]

What If


What if you were an angel,
called to earth to do your part?


What if your wings
were gently lifted from you,
and you were left to walk about on
the planet
just like everyone else,
though you could still feel
the places
where they had been?


What if you had come
with a gift
that was especially
your own,
though it was hidden inside?


Would you find it, use it,
help others on the way,
give love to all you met?


What if?


- Dorothy Walters

[Larry Robinson]

After the Lecture
for Martin Luther King Jr.


A woman said I was not polite
to the opposition,
that I was harsh
and did not encourage
discourse.


Perhaps if I were Christ,
I could say, "Forgive them
for they know not what they do."
Or the queen, and apologize
for stubbing my executioner's toes.


But only if I knew
the executioners
were mine only.


What courtesy have I the right to give
to them who break the bones,
the souls of my brothers,
my sisters;
deny bread, books
to the hungry,
the children;
medicine, healing
to the sick;
roofs to the homeless;


who spoil the oceans,
lay waste the forests
and the deserts,
violate the land?


Affability on the lips
of outrage
is a sin and blasphemy
I'll not be guilty of.

- Rafael Jesús González

---

Después del Discurso
a Martin Luther King Jr.


Una mujer me dijo que no fui cortés
con la oposición,
que fui duro
y que no animé
discusión.


Tal vez si fuera Cristo,
pudiera decir - Perdónalos
que no saben lo que hacen. -
O la reina, y disculparme
por haber pisarle el pie a mi verdugo.


Pero solamente si supiera
que los verdugos
fueran solamente míos.


¿Qué cortesía tengo el derecho a darles
a los que quiebran los huesos
y las almas de mis hermanos,
mis hermanas;
les niegan el pan, los libros
a los hambrientos,
a los niños;
la medicina, el sanar
a los enfermos;
techos a los desamparados;


que estropean los mares,
que destruyen los bosques
y los desiertos,
violan la tierra?


Afabilidad en los labios
de la furia justa
es pecado y blasfemia
de la cual no seré culpable.

- Rafael Jesús González

[Larry Robinson]

Once We Were Witches


Once we were witches
We drew all things
Within the circle
Because all things,
Including No things, are
Within the circle.
We drew all into
The magical corridor
Between the heart and the
Belly. We allowed all and
No things to whisper
Their true names
In their many languages.
All and no things told us
Stories in pictures,
That pierced
The veil of dreaming,
The dream of secrets,
Not secrets after all, but
Life hidden in plain and
Perfect sight.


Once we were witches
And told the stories
Given us in that magic
Corridor, between heart and belly,
To heal and soothe
All and no things which
Include beings, human and
Others. But our sight,
Made dim or blinded


By other stories,
Shouted by those who
Wanted the circle
Made smaller. Our sight
Went dark in their fires’
Dense, deadly smoke.
The voices choked, silenced,
and we, who once were


Witches came to believe the circle
Small, a place of precious few,
While outside, the many asked
For alms, believed the stories
Told between the eyes.


Still, all and no things,
Of which we are part,
Find their insistent way to
That place between heart
And belly. Whispering,
They remind us of what
We fear to see, lest the burning
Begin again.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Refugee

She comes inside, in her rain gear.
"I could use a hand," she says, "with the little deer."
"I’m already late for work," I say,
then, "O.K."

In the rain
I ease my shovel beneath its damp
grey-brown flanks, as hers
lifts the head of the fawn,

who had taken shelter beneath a
redwood tree, two days ago, near our home,
its legs curled beneath, its tall ears flickering,
as we had departed for the weekend, and yet

on our return, by the dimming flashlight, she found it
still there, nearly gone, in the dark and rain.
Thought she also saw something hovering, rippling
just above, and a shadow keeping vigil, in the trees behind..

We lay the small, now lifeless
form gently into the wheel barrow,
and, guided strangely
by uncertainty,

we head off into the forest,
know to find the place,
and cover it loosely with fallen boughs.
Vultures will complete the cycle.

In awed silence, we walk back together. Soon
I begin my daily drive, out the gravel road, and into the world.

All day long I stand in the woods,
the rain still is falling.

- Scott O'Brien

[Larry Robinson]

Listen


Words can only
Carry the perfume
Of the Mystery.


Will you listen anyway,
With your heart?


The way a mother
Listens for the cry
Of her child


A lover, for the voice
Of his beloved.


Let the perfume
Beckon you inward
To discover the sweetness of Being
To hear the language of the soul.


- Kathleen Rose McTeigue

[Larry Robinson]

Buna


Wasted feet, cursed earth,
the interminable gray morning
as Buna smokes corpses through industrious chimneys.


A day like every other day awaits us.
The terrible whistle shrilly announces dawn:
"You, O pale multitudes with your sad, lifeless faces,
welcome the monotonous horror of the mud ...
another day of suffering has begun."


Weary companion, I see you by heart.
I empathize with your dead eyes, my disconsolate friend.
In your breast you carry cold, hunger, nothingness.
Life has broken what's left of the courage within you.


Colorless one, you once were a strong man,
A courageous woman once walked at your side.
But now you, my empty companion, are bereft of a name,
my forsaken friend who can no longer weep,
so poor you can no longer grieve,
so tired you no longer can shiver with fear.


O, spent once-strong man,
if we were to meet again
in some other world, sweet beneath the sun,
with what kind faces would we recognize each other?

- Primo Levi
(translation by Michael R. Burch)


Note: Buna was the largest Auschwitz sub-camp.

[Larry Robinson]

Something


for the children of the Holocaust and the Nakba


Something inescapable is lost—
lost like a pale vapor curling up into shafts of moonlight,
vanishing in a gust of wind toward an expanse of stars
immeasurable and void.


Something uncapturable is gone—
gone with the spent leaves and illuminations of autumn,
scattered into a haze with the faint rustle of parched grass
and remembrance.


Something unforgettable is past—
blown from a glimmer into nothingness, or less,
and finality has swept into a corner where it lies
in dust and cobwebs and silence.


- Michael R. Burch

[Larry Robinson]

Letter to America


America I still love you
in spite of the hateful rhetoric
that spews from every street corner
in each forgotten city
while millions lose jobs
they once thought were theirs
and mothers work a multitude of jobs
well into the night just to feed their starving children


America I still love you
while fires burn uncontrollably
taking away homes
from those too poor to replace them
scattered homeless now displaced when once
they drove shiny cars and wore gold chains
factory workers strung out on opioids
tattered brains no longer care about
the America of long ago when our soldiers
came home from World War II and we
welcomed them with the GI bill, a new home
and jobs with pensions
what a comfortable life that used to be


America I still love you
while refugees grace our land who once
were welcomed with open arms
now they’re separated from their children
who then are locked in cages
and never seen again


America I’m getting frustrated
with promises of universal healthcare
while our environment rots at the core
and more of us are struck with cancer
each and every year


America I’m losing hope
in escaping gun violence
when so many are allowed to openly carry
their semi-automatics and shoot innocent
children or those practicing their religions
in church or synagogues
dying for what? to prove they’re some type of hero
on Social Media sites?
to give their families something to be proud of?


America I’m dying
because of poison air
filthy, lying politicians
not being able to leave my home
for fear of what’s around the corner
waiting to end my life
forever


- Marsha Johansen

[Larry Robinson]

Among The Ruins, The Wildflowers Grow


Arbeit Macht Frei,
“Work Makes Free”
inscribed on top of the gate
and Auschwitz opens its doors.


In a collective chill
to a rhythm of soft sobs,
we enter the gate of death
some of us holding hands
not daring to look at each other
we walk in
and hope to understand.


“If I must see, please God, hold my hand.”
Hand in hand
we march on the train tracks
the beat of my pace confused with
the roar of human cattle trains
packed with children’s terrorized hearts
we walk, God’s hand still in mine,
just as He walked with those terrorized hearts
when they bartered with death,
for God is everywhere, so they say…


Acres and acres and acres
of nazi commerce—the business of death.
They had blueprints,
Skilled electricians and engineers
who washed off the stench of burned flesh
and night after night sat for a warm meal
with their golden children of blue sight


Why? I ask
with my fist against the sky.
Why?
and the wind gently answers
with a faint smell of singed flesh.
The path changes color as we walk
from gray—
oh God, whose ashes are we walking on?—
to dark red…
Is the blood rising from the ground?
We are walking on earth that God forgot.
Faraway, a voice with no face,
A tour guide speaks German,
for a moment
a raging agony collapses time
now and then become one
rendering God ineffectual.


Suddenly a woman’s burning scream
rips the heat of the sun
and in that cry, we hear the six million.


Facing the ovens
Michael prays El Male Rachamim
the prayer “Oh God of mercy”—
and among the ruins
the landscape of corpses,
huddled together even in death,
reveals itself among the wild flowers
and golden grass.


Still wandering forlorn on earth that God forgot
we cross the gateway of help
into dark barracks filled with homeless prayers
where Jews lay famished
one on top of another, month after month.


A ray of light
filters through a crack
stealing a piece of sky.


Someone runs out of the barrack to throw up outside


Names on the bricks, scratched with fingernails
reveal themselves through the dark—
Sara, Esther, Golde…--
and inside my head I hear myself scream
Grandma, where is your name?!


Drowned in holocaust
we turn to return


Our safe bus is waiting for us…
Amiram picks up and clutches a stone
shedding tears through the sweat in his hand.
How can we leave?
Beloved ones, how can we leave you here?!
And the birds perched on the entrance door
Where Arbeit Macht Frei
continue singing


- Jana Liba Klenburg

[Larry Robinson]

Auschwitz-Birkenau


To awaken here
Is to hear silence
Shrieking in cold,
Empty corridors, to awaken


In a heart hewn
By fear, a darkness
Closed to compassion.
Any kindness


Is all kindness--a treachery
We must enter, allow to enter us--
Ask us, "who are you here
In this hallowed hell?"


No where to step
Where ash hasn't fallen,
Where cruelty hasn't walked,
Fed on our tender fear.


Who am I in this
Enormous evil?
A dog waiting at a platform?
Or the child terrified of dogs,


Clutching a brother's hand?
A boy alive forever,
Forever frightened so we
Will know what we can do.


I move through ghosts, numb.
Like others, I am dumb,
In respectful, awful silence,
Save for voices screaming,


Who I am? Am I
The selfless priest crammed
In a standing cell, dying
For a stranger who survived?


Who am I here in history's
Hall of horrors? Walls lined
With visages, victims
Who haven't yet imagined


What we can do--will do.


Not Nazis, not
Germans, but humans
Did this. We
Do this now.


To awaken here is
To see that casual blue
Chip in the sky's
Somber gray soul,


Innocent opening
letting light flow down,
Bless this damned,
Degraded place.


To awaken here,
Is to know one's
Darkness, and not
Turning from it, see that light.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

After


after you fell
to your death
I kept falling
and in that
there was a great hush
and concentric circles formed
of my thoughts
from the agonizing moment
we had to stop searching
the circular possibilities


I always knew you were free
that I could feel
and even celebrate


then three years


clean, broken skeleton
recovered
brought down the massive mountain
on the rhythmic back
of a black horse


For a little while
I lived to bring those bones home
to lay them down
one by one
I cradled
your crushed skull
in my hands
I held your hand in mine
and I gave you
a final goodbye
this time with my body
and yours
in attendance


The drenched dreams
of your future earthly life
wrung dry


- Erin RileyAfter

[Larry Robinson]

Not for Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet


"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."
-  Donald Trump, June 16, 2015


They woke him up by pissing in his face. He opened his mouth
to scream in Spanish, so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.


Scott and Steve: the Leader brothers, celebrating a night at Fenway,
where the Sox beat the Indians and a rookie named Rodríguez spun
the seams on his changeup to hypnotize the Tribe. Later that night,
Steve urinated on the door of his cell, and Scott told the cops why
they did it: Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported.


He was a Mexican in a sleeping bag outside JFK station on a night
in August, so they called him a wetback and emptied their bladders
in his hair. In court, the lawyers spoke his name: Guillermo Rodríguez,
immigrant with papers, crop-picker in the fields, trader of bottles
and cans collected in his cart. Two strangers squashed the cartilage
in his nose like a can drained of beer. In dreams, he would remember
the shoes digging into his ribcage, the pole raked repeatedly across
his cheekbones and upraised knuckles, the high-five over his body.


Donald Trump was right, said Scott. And Trump said: The people
that are following me are very passionate. His hands fluttered
as he spoke, a demagogue’s hands, no blood under the fingernails,
no whiff of urine to scrub away. He would orchestrate the chant
of Build That Wall at rally after rally, bellowing till the blood rushed
to his face, red as a demagogue in the grip of masturbatory dreams:
a tribute to the new conquistador, the Wall raised up by Mexican hands,
Mexican hair and fingernails bristling in the brick, Mexican blood
swirling in the cement like raspberry syrup on a vanilla sundae.
On the Cinco de Mayo, he leered over a taco bowl at Trump Tower.


Not for him the fiery lake of the false prophet, reddening
his ruddy face. Not for him the devils of Puritan imagination,
shrieking in a foreign tongue and climbing in the window
like the immigrant demons he conjures for the crowd.
Not even for him ten thousand years of the Leader brothers,
streaming a fountain of piss in his face as he sputters forever.


For him, Hell is a country where the man in a hard hat
paving the road to JFK station sees Guillermo and dials 911;
Hell is a country where EMTs kneel to wrap a blanket around
the shivering shoulders of Guillermo and wipe his face clean;
Hell is a country where the nurse at the emergency room
hangs a morphine drip for Guillermo, so he can go back to sleep.
Two thousand miles away, someone leaves a trail of water bottles
in the desert for the border crossing of the next Guillermo.


We smuggle ourselves across the border of a demagogue’s dreams:
Confederate generals on horseback tumble one by one into
the fiery lake of false prophets; into the fiery lake crumbles
the demolished Wall. Thousands stand, sledgehammers in hand,
to await the bullhorns and handcuffs, await the trembling revolvers.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face interrogates the interrogator.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face is the face of Guillermo.


- Martin Espada

[Larry Robinson]

Continuum


I was deeply comforted by Jung’s statement
that: “Everything is defined by its opposite.”

Thereafter I began to think
in terms of the continuum
that connects
opposing sides,
the soft grey running bears
between black/white battle lines.

They taught me that everything
is also contained within its opposite.

How could it be otherwise.

In old age the amygdalae shake hands
with the frontal lobes.
The oldest and youngest parts
of the human brain
finally realize
the true value of their relationship.

Together they blend
pattern recognition and raw emotion
into a savory complex
of fine spices
to enhance the grownup feast
of life and death
that awaits every old soul.

- Rabon Saip

[Larry Robinson]

The Unites States Welcomes You


Why and by whose power were you sent?

What do you see that you may wish to steal?

Why this dancing? Why do your dark bodies

Drink up all the light? What are you demanding

That we feel? Have you stolen something? Then

What is that leaping in your chest? What is

The nature of your mission? Do you seek

To offer a confession? Have you anything to do

With others brought by us to harm? Then

Why are you afraid? And why do you invade

Our night, hands raised, eyes wide, mute

As ghosts? Is there something you wish to confess?

Is this some enigmatic type of test? What if we

Fail? How and to whom do we address our appeal?

- Tracy K. Smith

[Larry Robinson]

Redwood Forest Yoga



Eighteen pairs of muddy boots
Kicked in a jumbled pile
Puddle by the door
Far from the fire


Eighteen well-worn jackets
Male odors mingling
Drip on the knotty pine floor
Out of the rain at last


Eighteen glowing bodies
Stretch their edges by the fire
Upward facing dogs
Under the sheltering roof


Eighteen visions of God
Held on an inward breath
Tear blind me
With their beauty

- Doug von Koss

[Larry Robinson]

A Brief For The Defense


Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.


- Jack Gilbert

[Larry Robinson]

If wheat grows from my soil


If wheat grows from my soil,
The bread you bake will make you drunk.

Both dough and baker are crazy.
The oven recites a drunken poem.

If you visit my grave,
My tomb will make you dance.

Be sure to bring a tambourine.
Don’t be sad at God’s festival.

My chin is shut, within the grave, asleep,
My mouth gnawing on bittersweet love.

If you rip apart my shroud,
A drunken man will unravel your soul.

From all sides, sounds of war and drunken harps,
Empty tasks become fruitful works.

God created me from love’s wine.
I’m still that love even as death wears me down.

I’m the drunken man. My essence is the wine of love.
What do you expect from wine but drunkenness?

I will never rest until my soul flies
To the towering soul of Shams of Tabriz.

- Jellaludin Rumi
(Translated by Brad Gooch and Maryam Mortaz)

[Larry Robinson]

Kindergarten Justice

an anvil sits on the heart of America
her breath labored through a mouth wide open
in a frozen scream of boundless rage for justice


and we, blinded by tears, implore the goddess
to remove her blindfold before escape from this madness
is too late and sense by sense our country, coursing wildly
with no fulcrum to steady her compass, be sucked away


ruins of this metal wind, this breathless insanity
challenge our balance to stay upright
justice is abandoned, a rumble of unimaginable trouble
growls from behind doors we thought could never open


age has shortened our stride,
but how did our younger sense of fairness
get lost in our older hearts


before we began to make histories of our lives,
our polished cheeks brimming with innocence,
we knew when something wasn’t right,
we had the certainty of kindergarten justice,
the resolute declaration of “that’s not fair!”


stand up, act out, throw a tantrum,
join the voices of awareness reciting
the courage of our memory,
even if pitted against all odds
we can exhume the body of justice


once the battle is joined,
we will never have to
fumble in our pockets
for evidence of resistance


- Jo Ann Smith

[REALnothings]

EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT. NEWS THAT STAYS NEWS! Larry has his pulse on the Present Moment. This poetry, in the face of an absurd parody of "Justice" in the US, is HOT with vitality! As long as there are poems like this, attesting to the truth you can feel in your breath and blood, we can never get totally lost!

Kindergarten Justice

an anvil sits on the heart of America
her breath labored through a mouth wide open
in a frozen scream of boundless rage for justice...

[REALnothings]

It's been a week or two since you posted this poem, Larry, but I really want to share what happened.
I pasted the poem onto a certain spiritual poetry Facebook page, one devoted to a great and well-known modern Sage. One person vociferously objected that I would put such "gross language" on this sacred page. I replied, WHAT IS OBSCENE IS NOT THE DESCRIPTION! WHAT IS OBSCENE IS WHAT THESE PEOPLE DID TO THIS MAN!
He didn't get it, at all...ended with a note "I'm saddened to see this here on this page..." to which I did not reply (having already shared what I capitalized above.) Keep 'em coming, Larry!

Not for Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet


"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best.... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists."
-  Donald Trump, June 16, 2015


They woke him up by pissing in his face. He opened his mouth
to scream in Spanish, so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.


Scott and Steve: the Leader brothers, celebrating a night at Fenway,
where the Sox beat the Indians and a rookie named Rodríguez spun
the seams on his changeup to hypnotize the Tribe. Later that night,
Steve urinated on the door of his cell, and Scott told the cops why
they did it: Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported...