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  1. TopTop #4441
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Now is the Time


    Now is the time to know
    That all that you do is sacred.


    Now, why not consider
    A lasting truce with yourself and God.


    Now is the time to understand
    That all your ideas of right and wrong
    Were just a child's training wheels
    To be laid aside
    When you finally live
    With veracity
    And love.


    Hafiz is a divine envoy
    Whom the Beloved
    Has written a holy message upon.


    My dear, please tell me,
    Why do you still
    Throw sticks at your heart
    And God?


    What is it in that sweet voice inside
    That incites you to fear?


    Now is the time for the world to know
    That every thought and action is sacred.


    This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
    That there is anything
    But Grace.


    Now is the season to know
    That everything you do
    Is sacred.


    -Hafiz
    (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
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  2. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  3. TopTop #4442
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Writing A Lesson

    I spend so much time
    Writing a lesson
    I'm a teacher you know
    A Licensed Teacher at that
    I try to impart wisdom
    Cloaked often in humor
    Wrap it all up in a twenty minute package
    Tie on a blow of blessing
    To hope that at least one person
    Is nudged toward personal healing.
    But Hafiz
    Oh Hafiz
    In less than thirty short lines
    Gives a more complete
    Lesson
    Than all the teachers
    Who have come before
    Yet I will continue to sing my song
    Bathed in the melody
    Of Hafiz


    - David McNair
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  5. TopTop #4443
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Plea in a Foreign Tongue

    The Spanish moss streaming off
    the branches of a hillside of black oaks
    like olive sheets of rain,
    a wailing of ancestral grief
    brings real tears to my eyes.
    They have seen and felt so much, these trees.
    Through their roots:
    They have felt how we have thinned
    and poisoned the soil;
    how our anger and greed for power
    has scorched the earth with the flame of drought.
    Through the tips of their branches:
    How we have sullied the air
    with the smoke of delusion.
    They grieve for the loss of the great trees,
    the grizzly, the herds of elk,
    the thick flocks of birds,
    who lived and worshipped in their branches,
    and for the people who knew their place,
    and did not set themselves
    apart from nature.
    Who loved the land
    as they loved themselves.

    There is not much time they seem to say.
    They are not afraid, but they mourn.
    Perhaps we only have weeks to learn
    their language, so ancient and
    undecipherable to us.
    We cannot go back you say.
    But we cannot go forward without
    reimagining who we are.


    - Barry Vesser
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  6. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  7. TopTop #4444
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  Among-the-Trees.jpg
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  8. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  9. TopTop #4445
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Immigrants in Our Own Land


    We are born with dreams in our hearts,

    looking for better days ahead.

    At the gates we are given new papers,

    our old clothes are taken

    and we are given overalls like mechanics wear.

    We are given shots and doctors ask questions.

    Then we gather in another room

    where counselors orient us to the new land

    we will now live in. We take tests.

    Some of us were craftsmen in the old world,

    good with our hands and proud of our work.

    Others were good with their heads.

    They used common sense like scholars

    use glasses and books to reach the world.

    But most of us didn’t finish high school.



    The old men who have lived here stare at us,

    from deep disturbed eyes, sulking, retreated.

    We pass them as they stand around idle,

    leaning on shovels and rakes or against walls.

    Our expectations are high: in the old world,

    they talked about rehabilitation,

    about being able to finish school,

    and learning an extra good trade.

    But right away we are sent to work as dishwashers,

    to work in fields for three cents an hour.

    The administration says this is temporary

    So we go about our business, blacks with blacks,

    poor whites with poor whites,

    chicanos and indians by themselves.

    The administration says this is right,

    no mixing of cultures, let them stay apart,

    like in the old neighborhoods we came from.



    We came here to get away from false promises,

    from dictators in our neighborhoods,

    who wore blue suits and broke our doors down

    when they wanted, arrested us when they felt like,

    swinging clubs and shooting guns as they pleased.

    But it’s no different here. It’s all concentrated.

    The doctors don’t care, our bodies decay,

    our minds deteriorate, we learn nothing of value.

    Our lives don’t get better, we go down quick.



    My cell is crisscrossed with laundry lines,

    my T-shirts, boxer shorts, socks and pants are drying.

    Just like it used to be in my neighborhood:

    from all the tenements laundry hung window to window.

    Across the way Joey is sticking his hands

    through the bars to hand Felipé a cigarette,

    men are hollering back and forth cell to cell,

    saying their sinks don’t work,

    or somebody downstairs hollers angrily

    about a toilet overflowing,

    or that the heaters don’t work.



    I ask Coyote next door to shoot me over

    a little more soap to finish my laundry.

    I look down and see new immigrants coming in,

    mattresses rolled up and on their shoulders,

    new haircuts and brogan boots,

    looking around, each with a dream in their heart,

    thinking they’ll get a chance to change their lives.



    But in the end, some will just sit around

    talking about how good the old world was.

    Some of the younger ones will become gangsters.

    Some will die and others will go on living

    without a soul, a future, or a reason to live.

    Some will make it out of here with hate in their eyes,

    but so very few make it out of here as human

    as they came in, they leave wondering what good they are now

    as they look at their hands so long away from their tools,

    as they look at themselves, so long gone from their families,

    so long gone from life itself, so many things have changed.


    - Jimmy Santiago Baca
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  10. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  11. TopTop #4446
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Nothing


    Now all the truth is out,
    Be secret and take defeat
    From any brazen throat,
    For how can you compete,
    Being honor bred, with one
    Who were it proved he lies
    Were neither shamed in his own
    Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
    Bred to a harder thing
    Than Triumph, turn away
    And like a laughing string
    Whereon mad fingers play
    Amid a place of stone,
    Be secret and exult,
    Because of all things known
    That is most difficult.


    - William Butler Yeats
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  12. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  13. TopTop #4447
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Triumph


    Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
    testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
    and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
    of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
    There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
    and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
    and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
    larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
    of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
    Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
    he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
    into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
    See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
    while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.

    - Anne Sexton

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  14. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  15. TopTop #4448
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Memory of W. B. Yeats



    I

    He disappeared in the dead of winter:
    The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
    And snow disfigured the public statues;
    The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
    What instruments we have agree
    The day of his death was a dark cold day.

    Far from his illness
    The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
    The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
    By mourning tongues
    The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

    But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
    An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
    The provinces of his body revolted,
    The squares of his mind were empty,
    Silence invaded the suburbs,
    The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

    Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
    And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
    To find his happiness in another kind of wood
    And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
    The words of a dead man
    Are modified in the guts of the living.

    But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
    When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the bourse,
    And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed
    And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom
    A few thousand will think of this day
    As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

    What instruments we have agree
    The day of his death was a dark cold day.


    II

    You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
    The parish of rich women, physical decay,
    Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
    Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
    For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
    In the valley of its making where executives
    Would never want to tamper, flows on south
    From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
    Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
    A way of happening, a mouth.


    III

    Earth, receive an honoured guest:
    William Yeats is laid to rest.
    Let the Irish vessel lie
    Emptied of its poetry.

    In the nightmare of the dark
    All the dogs of Europe bark,
    And the living nations wait,
    Each sequestered in its hate;

    Intellectual disgrace
    Stares from every human face,
    And the seas of pity lie
    Locked and frozen in each eye.

    Follow, poet, follow right
    To the bottom of the night,
    With your unconstraining voice
    Still persuade us to rejoice;

    With the farming of a verse
    Make a vineyard of the curse,
    Sing of human unsuccess
    In a rapture of distress;

    In the deserts of the heart
    Let the healing fountain start,
    In the prison of his days
    Teach the free man how to praise.

    - W. H. Auden

    Last edited by Barry; 02-12-2020 at 01:03 PM.
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  16. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  17. TopTop #4449
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Hi, Larry. One of the all-time greats. Thank you. Roland

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    In Memory of W. B. Yeats...
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  18. TopTop #4450
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stardust Lounge

    My mother came for a visit
    even though she died last spring.
    She was standing by the foot of my bed
    releasing vowels from the afterlife
    smelling of moss and spring rain
    on the tarmac.
    Here we go again, old recipes and lectures,
    I thought, stumbling out the door into the back yard
    while the history of all forgotten things
    was leaking out of her apron pockets
    like the Andromeda strain or the Milky
    Way filled with impossible features of dead stars.
    All she really wanted was for me to follow
    her lead in this shuffle-foot shim-sham, this
    millennial foxtrot of flesh turning into
    stardust, that long unwinding road
    pale as beer made from wheat where
    we all crowd into a room and wait for
    the unmarked bus to transport us into the highlands
    of the forever lands. This is the way it feels
    when she presses her hand against the small of my back.
    The valley gorge that rests between my hips and heart
    wakes up and smiles and even the smallest bones
    like the swing when she says anything is possible
    and I want to answer her but am lifted off my feet
    shucking the chrysalis of my life, resurrecting the
    boogie-woogie, dancing in the midnight arms
    of her Stardust Lounge.


    - Devreaux Baker

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  19. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  20. TopTop #4451
    Roland Jacopetti's Avatar
    Roland Jacopetti
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Larry - Another fabulous offering! Thanks so much. Roland

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by Larry Robinson: View Post
    Stardust Lounge...
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  21. TopTop #4452
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Whale’s Song



    I am the last gray—
    the last ocean bottom farmer
    beyond lonely,
    lost,
    terrified.

    I swim in waters too warm
    for my ancestors and kin,
    pickings so slim
    we starve.

    We have danced
    in the depths for eons,
    the ocean’s moods and moons
    embedded in our bones
    and mottled skin.

    I bear her barnacles
    and
    grief.

    Our surging into the deep—
    that constant churning
    kept the planet’s plankton
    balance.

    How will you live now
    young, foolish species?

    I am the last gray—
    wailing.

    - Raphael Block
    Last edited by Barry; 02-14-2020 at 01:43 PM.
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  23. TopTop #4453
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    For Love


    for Bobbie


    Yesterday I wanted to
    speak of it, that sense above
    the others to me
    important because all


    that I know derives
    from what it teaches me.
    Today, what is it that
    is finally so helpless,


    different, despairs of its own
    statement, wants to
    turn away, endlessly
    to turn away.


    If the moon did not ...
    no, if you did not
    I wouldn’t either, but
    what would I not


    do, what prevention, what
    thing so quickly stopped.
    That is love yesterday
    or tomorrow, not


    now. Can I eat
    what you give me. I
    have not earned it. Must
    I think of everything


    as earned. Now love also
    becomes a reward so
    remote from me I have
    only made it with my mind.


    Here is tedium,
    despair, a painful
    sense of isolation and
    whimsical if pompous


    self-regard. But that image
    is only of the mind’s
    vague structure, vague to me
    because it is my own.


    Love, what do I think
    to say. I cannot say it.
    What have you become to ask,
    what have I made you into,


    companion, good company,
    crossed legs with skirt, or
    soft body under
    the bones of the bed.


    Nothing says anything
    but that which it wishes
    would come true, fears
    what else might happen in


    some other place, some
    other time not this one.
    A voice in my place, an
    echo of that only in yours.


    Let me stumble into
    not the confession but
    the obsession I begin with
    now. For you


    also (also)
    some time beyond place, or
    place beyond time, no
    mind left to


    say anything at all,
    that face gone, now.
    Into the company of love
    it all returns.


    - Robert Creely
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  25. TopTop #4454
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Dakini Speaks


    My friends, let's grow up.
    Let's stop pretending we don't know the deal here.
    Or if we truly haven't noticed, let's wake up and notice.
    Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
    It's simple - how could we have missed it for so long?
    Let's grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
    But please, let's not be so shocked by them.
    Let's not act so betrayed,
    As though life had broken her secret promise to us.


    Impermanence is life's only promise to us,
    And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.


    To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
    And her compassion exquisitely precise.
    Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
    She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
    This is the true ride - let's give ourselves to it!
    Let's stop making deals for a safe passage -
    There isn't one anyway, and the cost is too high.
    We are not children anymore.


    The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
    Let's dance the wild dance of no hope.


    - Jennifer Wellwood
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  26. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  27. TopTop #4455
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Visiting an Old Teacher
    For Dr. Robert Hall


    The light I used to see in your eyes
    Has gone somewhere else.
    It's odd, isn't it?
    What goes and what stays.


    When you spoke at the meditation center,
    I felt your kindness.
    You talked about resting, just resting.
    A door opened in my heart then.
    I did rest. I breathed easily.


    I thought of all the love
    I had received in my life, including from you.
    I felt a wave of gratitude break in my body.
    It almost reached my eyes.
    I asked myself,
    "Would I cry, in Mexico?"
    For you, or for myself?


    Afterwards, you sat in the bright sun on the patio.
    I asked you if you wanted to go out for coffee or a walk,
    You smiled and said, "Oh, I don't do that, anymore."
    Okay.


    Your partner helped you down the stone steps
    to your car.
    It's odd, isn't it? What goes and what stays.


    You've been with me, this long.
    - Geo Taylor
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  28. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  29. TopTop #4456
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dear Teacher


    I see you now, deep diver, spear
    Gun hidden close to your body,
    Hunter, you plant hooks, piercing
    Fragile flesh of the female psyche


    Save other tools for men,
    Your troop of sleeping eunuchs,
    Lulled by stories of awakening.
    They drift on your charm, the charisma of one
    Who feigns wisdom so well.


    You feign humility well too,
    Perhaps you fool even yourself.


    The first time I saw
    Your shadow throw its
    Cold arms around an elderly woman
    I excused you, my sight
    Wanting what you claimed,
    You feigned to offer.


    The first, for me, but not
    The first, exodus, you casually
    Betrayed yourself, waving goodbye
    To those you wounded,
    Behind a watery apology,
    Weakened by charming excuses
    Of over-enthusiasm. Clever.


    Ignoring the apparent,
    Indulging in your attention
    We allowed you to penetrate
    Our minds, plant poisonous
    Images along with nourishment.


    Your spear spiked hearts,
    Opening all to love
    You. You, who may know
    An idea of larger love,
    But are incapable
    Of individual love, specific Empathy.
    Speaking of compassion, you are immune
    To compassion for the bleeding
    In your home.


    Always aiming for the sex
    Watching for the awakening
    Of desire. You hunt with
    Bait: flattery, focus and soft,
    Cunningly placed kindnesses.
    A net cast wide, your wandering
    Eye. You capture whatever
    Heart and body opens first.


    Moving like the sleeping shark,
    Never fully awake
    Nor asleep in peace,
    You hunger,
    A hungry ghost, you
    Feed on fear, growing fat on
    Our attention. Growing thin and
    Never sated.


    My heart would break
    For the unloveliness of
    You, who won’t be seen,
    But there’s precious few
    Places left, most taken
    By your broken and
    Healing sisters.


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

  31. TopTop #4457
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Burning of the Books

    When the Regime

    commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
    teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.


    Then a banished writer, one of the best,
    scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
    became enraged: he’d been excluded!


    He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
    to write fiery letters to the morons in power—
    Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen—
    Haven’t I always reported the truth?
    Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
    Burn me!


    - Bertolt Brecht


    (translation by Michael R. Burch)
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  32. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  33. TopTop #4458
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Muir Woods


    Last night, a giant redwood fell

    either from old age, disease, or
    "sometimes they just give up," the ranger said.

    Listen, I was in the woods, I
    heard it too, like my own death
    falling inside me.

    Here in the last of the old growth forests
    where some trees are still virginal,
    some older than Moses,

    I thought, then, of you. You are not the one
    dying, you said to me,
    and I quoted to you from Montaigne

    that death was not a proper object of fear
    but only the end of life.
    What is a proper object of fear, you asked,

    and I said death of the heart.
    But life, you said, was
    everything. And you were in love

    with that beautiful lie.
    Sometimes these trees send out
    all their sap at once
    making them vulnerable, sometimes,

    they grow burls of anxiety
    Look, the ranger said to us,
    the bark is so wet because the tree
    drinks hundreds of gallons of water a day

    from the fog that rolls in
    over the Golden Gate Bridge.
    That bridge which is so beautiful and which

    holds such promise for tomorrow
    with its blue shimmering bay.
    Every day when I see the fog now,

    I think of you and then I can almost
    feel the fog cover me with
    that enveloping mist, can almost feel

    the branches of the redwood
    being kissed by its cold
    ministrations. I would, if I could,

    stand here all day like these trees, but my
    heart is so sore, it is almost ready to burst,
    and I am filled, suddenly,

    with a wild and insatiable thirst.

    - June Besich
    Last edited by Barry; 02-20-2020 at 03:07 PM.
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  34. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  35. TopTop #4459
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Dot Over The I

    What's in the glint of a hummingbird?
    In the shorthand of the sweetheart rose?
    A meager now.
    A precious here.
    The dot God put in the i

    But I am in the wind;
    always somewhere else,
    scattering God.
    Not now.
    Not here.

    Punta Sobre La I

    Que resume el colibri?
    Que abrevia la rosa de pitimini?
    Un escaso ahora.
    Un precioso aqui.
    Dios hecho punto
    sobre la i.

    Pero estoy de viento
    siempre en otra parte
    a Dios diluyendo.
    Ni ahora.
    Ni aqui.

    - Ulalume Gonzales de Leon
    (translation by Terry Ehret, John Johnson and Nancy Morales)
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  36. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  37. TopTop #4460
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    A Riddle in Troubled Times


    A grain of It is next to naught
    a half is half corrupted,
    the whole…?
    if even a single
    link is compromised,
    the chain cannot
    secure its anchor


    If Its provenance is
    God Almighty
    as theologians claim,
    pray which deity
    do they mean,
    and for the love of God
    what is a Holy War?


    If It is just
    a matter of consensus,
    can fast-talking-double-dealing
    politicians wear their slogans gauzy;
    then can a multitude of ranting-chanting,
    banner-toting, blindly-voting citizens
    be dead wrong


    Scientists insist Its place is in their forge
    to assay and refine for all mankind,


    but might It be the poets’ rightful realm,
    I mean the ones who understand the currency
    and can navigate in unpredictable terrain.
    Undeterred by what may be revealed,
    they spelunk ice caves at the poles
    to test their tolerance for stinging cold


    In search of It,
    they’ll sift through bones
    of buried civilizations
    unearthing at last
    none other than
    their own familiar skulls

    - b. armstrong
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  38. Gratitude expressed by 2 members:

  39. TopTop #4461
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Weighing


    The heart’s reasons
    seen clearly,
    even the hardest
    will carry
    its whip-marks and sadness
    and must be forgiven.

    As the drought-starved
    eland forgives
    the drought-starved lion
    who finally takes her,
    enters willingly then
    the life she cannot refuse,
    and is lion, is fed,
    and does not remember the other.

    So few grains of happiness
    measured against all the dark
    and still the scales balance.

    The world asks of us
    only the strength we have and we give it.
    Then it asks more, and we give it.


    - Jane Hirshfield
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  40. Gratitude expressed by 6 members:

  41. TopTop #4462
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The World Ended Today


    “We cannot live alone in a world of wounds.” A. Leopold


    The world ended today
    But no one noticed
    Just another day
    Business as usual.
    No one noticed
    The holocaust of animal genocide
    The ghost oceans, the withered soil
    Judas in the White House
    America hanging on the Cross.
    Trophies handed out for the best lies.
    Trophies for the head of a lion
    Tail of an elephant, feathers of a turtle dove
    Wings of a monarch butterfly.
    Children marinate in cages at the borders of greed and hate.
    The world ended again today.
    Floods and fires, air gasping for breath
    Wisdom shipwrecked on dead languages
    Rewritten history, swindled education
    Surrendered truth. Words disappearing
    As we speak in grunts and groans
    Whimpers and shrieks
    Or stunned silences
    Where are you lovers of liberty?
    “When in the course of human events”
    Again and again the world ends.
    The moon looks on pityingly
    As humanity shrinks away from the sight of
    Hell on earth.
    Paradise bleeds out from the rotting corpses
    Of love.
    “We hold these truths to be self evident”
    The world ends again beneath the avalanche
    Concussion after concussion of hope.
    But it is just another day
    Business as usual
    Crack open another beer or bottle of wine
    Eat up and shut up.
    Guns locked and loaded.
    Television casual distraction from the massacre
    Of justice. We are mesmerized like a school of fish
    Swept up in the sly antics of the internet.
    Who wins or who loses is so important that
    We cannot hear above the applause cheers furtive
    Buying and selling marching troops threats scandal
    The nuclear subs circling like sharks the climate ticking away
    Media frenzy, our own ravaged lives,some homeless and others
    Losing the home of self respect replaced by shame and terror.
    But it is just another day
    The world has ended again
    And no one noticed.


    - Gail Onion
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  42. Gratitude expressed by:

  43. TopTop #4463
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Medea
    For T. E.


    I had always been Rhea in Colchis
    but, at 14, I first spoke my own name
    in Circe’s shadow. A sunlit breeze
    lifted the red curtains in our candled rooms
    where the loom ran, healer and deceiver.
    Later, ambling along the barren coast
    I was a weave of sun and blackness.
    Far in the west, the gold flash of a prow.


    And when the oarsmen first saw the far shore
    they rose and cheered. A new fury seized them
    with courage and the ship of heroes leaped
    swiftly through the waves to a drum’s blows.
    In the first glow of the goddess’ fires
    my eyes were lost in sullen wonder,
    my breath came shallow as a grave in sand
    and the great vessel entered our small port.


    In worlds destroyed
    what still shines?
    Under shattered patterns
    run ancient lines.


    - Kevin Pryne
    Last edited by Barry; 02-25-2020 at 02:38 PM.
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  44. Gratitude expressed by:

  45. TopTop #4464
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Reuniting With Beauty


    It stops there!
    All the greed, blindness, hate, lies.
    Out there!



    I have been letting you in
    too much,
    too deep,
    for too long.
    I don't even know
    my own soul anymore,
    my own peace.
    My head is filled
    with your ill-will.
    No — Out There,
    it stops Out There.



    Morning is here.
    I awake to the newness
    of the day.
    I awake to the adventure
    it holds.



    Today, like every day,
    I have a chance to start over,
    to greet the sun,
    to smell the flowers,
    to bathe in nature
    and breathe her in.



    Today I smile
    with the universe.



    Today I accept
    the invitation
    that beauty brings.



    - Sherrie Lovler
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  46. Gratitude expressed by 3 members:

  47. TopTop #4465
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    In Passing

    How swiftly the strained honey
    of afternoon light
    flows into darkness

    and the closed bud shrugs off
    its special mystery
    in order to break into blossom:

    as if what exists, exists
    so that it can be lost
    and become precious

    - Lisel Mueller
    (February 8, 1924 – February 21, 2020)
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  48. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  49. TopTop #4466
    Ronaldo's Avatar
    Ronaldo
     

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Name:  In-Passing.jpg
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Size:  160.8 KB
    Last edited by Barry; 02-28-2020 at 01:20 PM.
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  50. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

  51. TopTop #4467
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Auction

    I am old and do not want
    to be bothered about it.
    So I rejoice at bearing witness
    to these interesting times.

    I see
    that the deep recognition
    of a righteous guide
    is not happening
    because the model
    in the rear view mirror
    cannot come up front
    far enough to help us.

    She knows
    that the backbone
    of humankind
    has never cracked
    like this
    before.

    Now
    the truth comes
    in many artificial flavors
    and core baby sweet Jesus
    is no longer up for adoption.

    - Rabon Saip
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  52. TopTop #4468
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Sincerely

    Dear Whole Planet Boy from another world
    it is I, Excalibur Orchid Door, coming in
    from the page to greet your full eyes
    which are looking by way of sky into
    every house of trees.
    These trees, always whispering to me of
    the half-sung wing, are the place I rest.
    We are calling out from the handmade
    word, white stones laid down soft from
    our mouths like bad puppets.
    Still, we fly together at the end of a long
    crying string, and each fresh day earned alive
    is a new kind of moon,
    soft with its light dust, thick with floating.
    In the sky my eyes are wild too,
    sorting the bones,
    sorting the caches, sorting the petals.
    I am wearing my heartbeat like your small coat;
    time my favorite jumping rope is helping me
    Hello

    - Kalia Mussetter
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  53. TopTop #4469
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    The Fawn




    Sunday morning and mellow as precious metal
    The church bells rang, but I went
    To the woods instead.

    A fawn, too new
    For fear, rose from the grass
    And stood with its spots blazing,
    And knowing no way but words,
    No trick but music,
    I sang to him.

    He listened.
    His small hooves struck the grass.
    Oh what is holiness?

    The fawn came closer,
    Walked to my hands, to my knees.

    I did not touch him.
    I only sang, and when the doe came back
    Calling out to him dolefully
    And he turned and followed her into the trees,
    Still I sang,
    Not knowing how to end such a joyful text,

    Until far off the bells once more tipped and tumbled
    And rang through the morning, announcing
    The going forth of the blessed.

    - Mary Oliver
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  54. Gratitude expressed by 5 members:

  55. TopTop #4470
    Larry Robinson's Avatar
    WaccoBB Poet Laureate

    Re: Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

    Stardust




    What’s in a star? We are.
    All the elements of our body and of the planet
    were once in the belly of a star.
    We are stardust.
    15,000,000,000 years ago we were a mass
    of hydrogen floating in space, turning slowly, dancing.
    And the gas condensed more and more
    gaining increasingly more mass
    and mass became star and began to shine.
    As they condensed they grew hot and bright.
    Gravitation produced thermal energy: light and heat.
    That is to say love.
    Stars were born, grew, and died.
    And the galaxy was taking the shape of a flower
    the way it looks now on a starry night.
    Our flesh and our bones come from other stars
    and perhaps even from other galaxies,
    we are universal,
    and after death we will help to form other stars
    and other galaxies.
    We come from the stars, and to them we shall return.


    - Ernesto Cardenal
    January 20, 1925 - March 1, 2020)
    ( Translated from the Spanish by Jonathan Cohen)
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  56. Gratitude expressed by 4 members:

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