Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

In a Dark Time


In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood—
A lord of nature weeping to a tree.
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.


What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.
That place among the rocks—is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.


A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is—
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.


Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.


- Theodore Roethke

[Larry Robinson]

Voyage


I feel as if we opened a book about great ocean voyages
and found ourselves on a great ocean voyage:
sailing through December, around the horn of Christmas
and into the January Sea, and sailing on and on


in a novel without a moral but one in which
all the characters who died in the middle chapters
make the sunsets near the book's end more beautiful.


—And someone is spreading a map upon a table,
and someone is hanging a lantern from the stern,
and someone else says, "I'm only sorry
that I forgot my blue parka; It's turning cold."


Sunset like a burning wagon train
Sunrise like a dish of cantaloupe
Clouds like two armies clashing in the sky;
Icebergs and tropical storms,
That's the kind of thing that happens on our ocean voyage—


And in one of the chapters I was blinded by love
And in another, anger made us sick like swallowed glass
& I lay in my bunk and slept for so long,


I forgot about the ocean,
Which all the time was going by, right there, outside my cabin window.


And the sides of the ship were green as money,
and the water made a sound like memory when we sailed.


Then it was summer. Under the constellation of the swan,
under the constellation of the horse.


At night we consoled ourselves
By discussing the meaning of homesickness.
But there was no home to go home to.
There was no getting around the ocean.
We had to go on finding out the story
by pushing into it—


The sea was no longer a metaphor.
The book was no longer a book.
That was the plot.
That was our marvelous punishment.


- Tony Hoagland

[Larry Robinson]

The Grounding of Stone



Precious earth

I feel your pulse, solid under my feet



Our Mother carrying on her rhythms

of day and night

tide and wave


In the wax and waning of her moon

on into seasons – turning the wheel


of another year nearly gone


We wait

we shelter

we dream

we hold tight to what we love

we wholly wrap hope around our fear

feeling in through our toes

the ache of what matters



we stand unbroken

and dream our way to the other side

grounded, solid and still

unshakably trusting in each other



- M. Mariette

[Larry Robinson]

Try to Praise the Mutilated World


Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.


- Adam Zagajewski
(Translation by Clare Cavanaugh)

[Larry Robinson]

Full Moon on the Fourth Day


The days are tiring since we undertook the journey but because of that no less amazing. I often ask myself if my companions and I have not spent too much time in our observatories looking for causes in the stars. Since we left we have seen so much suffering, so much misery, so much kindness, so much joy in the common folk that has nothing to do with the stars.

What is it that I will remember of the trip? The four birdies we heard sing on arriving at the village this evening? The moon so big and bright that it dims the star itself? The misery and the kindness of the people?

Who knows what the memory chooses to keep. On the way we discussed so much the why of the trip itself. Who is this princeling who merits a star to announce his birth? Will he perhaps grow to be the king who will free his people from the yoke of the empire? ¿Or, like the present king, one who will accommodate to the yoke and under it prosper making himself more rich?

Well, at least we are assured a great welcome by his parents. Without doubt they will feast us and load us with gifts even more rich than those we bring, and we shall set out on the return journey burdened with more riches than our three offerings.

Be that as it may, I imagine that it will be this trip itself that is worth the trouble, what we learned of the suffering — and the capacity for joy —of the people. Or the singing of the four little birds. Or this moon, so near, so full, so brilliant that it overshadows the star itself and does not let me sleep.


© Rafael Jesús González 2020

---

Luna llena en el cuarto día


Son cansados los días desde que empeñamos el viaje aunque no por eso menos asombrosos. A menudo me pregunto si yo y mis compañeros no hemos gastado demasiado tiempo en nuestros observatorios buscando causas en las estrellas. Desde que salimos hemos visto tanto sufrir, tanta miseria, tanta bondad, tanta alegría en la gente común que nada tiene que haber con las estrellas.

¿Qué es lo que recordaré del viaje? Los cuatro pajarillos que oímos cantar al llegar a la aldea esta tarde? ¿La luna tan grande y luminosa que ofusca a la estrella misma? ¿La miseria y la bondad de la gente?

Vayamos a saber que es lo que escoge para guardar la memoria. Discutimos tanto en camino del porque del viaje mismo. ¿Quién este principillo que merece un lucero para anunciar su nacer? ¿Tal vez crecerá a ser el rey que libere a su pueblo del yugo del imperio? ¿O como el rey actual uno que se acomode al yugo y bajo él prospere haciéndose más rico?

Bueno, a lo menos se nos asegura una gran bienvenida de sus padres. Sin duda nos festejarán y nos colmarán de regalos aun más ricos de los que traemos y saldremos en el viaje de regreso cargados de más riquezas que nuestras tres ofrendas.

Sea como sea, me imagino que será este viaje mismo que valga la pena, lo que aprendimos del sufrimiento — y capacidad de alegría — de la gente. O el cantar de los cuatro pajarillos. O esta luna tan cerca, tan llena, tan brillante que opaca el lucero mismo y me espanta el sueño.

© Rafael Jesús González 2020

[Larry Robinson]

A year of loss and chaos draws to a close.

Stories from a thousand cultures remind us that the cosmos is born - and reborn again and again - from chaos.

We have passed the darkest night of the year but the light only returns slowly.

The old order has passed as well but the new is not yet apparent.

Life does renew itself and new forms emerge as old ones pass away.

It has always been this way.

For all the misery of the past year, we have also seen astounding acts of beauty and courage and generosity.

This liminal space we inhabit is a time to dream, to imagine and to plan.

There are times when seemingly small acts can have out-size impacts.

I believe that we are in one of these times - actually a hopeful time, a time of possibilities.

Cynicism is as perilous a path as naïveté.

Hope is a choice, not a feeling; we create it through our actions and through our words.

At this turning of the wheel I invite and challenge you to dream grandly of the world you wish to bequeath, to proclaim it proudly and boldly and to join with your brothers and sisters to take the practical steps to make it real.

Remember that every act of kindness bends the curve of our shared life toward love.




A New Year’s Blessing

Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude;
good work for the hand, the heart and the mind;
the smile of a friend, the laughter of children;
kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm.

Food on the table, with a place for the stranger;
a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath;
some time of ease in the arms of your lover;
then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips;

May all this and more be yours this year
and every year after to the end of your days.

- Larry Robinson

[REALnothings]

Wonderful! Grateful for such a perfectly-articulated "Firstie" for 2021!
And what a visionary phot! Best one yet!

[Ronaldo]

[Larry Robinson]

On Some Other Day



on some other day

i might sense the

drift of jasmine

breathing

through my being



on some other day

i might feel the soft cool of fog

the warmth of autumn-slanted sun

dancing their magic

on the skin of my hopes


on some other day

i might feel the love of my beloveds

coursing through my veins

as if they are

my very being



on some other day

i might be hopeful

for my progeny’s tomorrows



on some other day

i might know the nearness of angels



perhaps

some other day

rises soon

- Vilma Ginzberg

[Larry Robinson]

I Think That When I Die


I think that when I die,
I can breathe back the breath that made me live.
I can give back to the world all that I didn't do.
All that I might have been and couldn't be.
All the choices I didn't make.
All the things I lost and spent and wasted.
I can give them back to the world.
To the lives that haven't been lived yet.
That will be my gift to the world
that gave me the life I did live,
the love that I loved,
the breath that I breathed.


- Ursula LeGuin

[Larry Robinson]

Cento Between the Ending and the End




Sometimes you don’t die


when you’re supposed to


& now I have a choice


repair a world or build


a new one inside my body


a white door opens


into a place queerly brimming


gold light so velvet-gold


it is like the world


hasn’t happened


when I call out


all my friends are there


everyone we love


is still alive gathered


at the lakeside


like constellations


my honeyed kin


honeyed light


beneath the sky


a garden blue stalks


white buds the moon’s


marble glow the fire


distant & flickering


the body whole bright-


winged brimming


with the hours


of the day beautiful


nameless planet. Oh


friends, my friends—


bloom how you must, wild


until we are free.


- Cameron Awkward-Rich

[Larry Robinson]

Hozho


And you will see hozho all around you, inside of you.”
This morning she is teaching me the meaning of HOZHO.
It is dawn.
The sun is conquering the sky and my grandmother and I
are heaving prayers at the horizon.
“Show me something unbeautiful,” she says,
“and I will show you the veil over your eyes and take it away.

There is no direct translation from Diné Bizaad,
the Navajo language, into English
but every living being knows what hozho means.
Hozho is every drop of rain,
every eyelash, every leaf on every tree,
every feather on the bluebird’s wing.
Hozho is undeniable beauty.
Hozho is in every breath that we give to the trees.
And in every breath they give to us in return.
Hozho is reciprocity.
My grandmother knows the meaning of hozho well.
For she speaks a language that grew out of the desert floor
like red sandstone monoliths that rise like arms out of the earth
praising creation for all its brilliance.
Hozho is remembering that you are a part of this brilliance.
It is finally accepting that, yes, you are a sacred song that
brings the Diyin Dine’é, the gods, to their knees
in an almost unbearable ecstasy.
Hozho is remembering your own beauty.
My grandmother knows hozho well
For she speaks the language of a Lukachukai snowstorm
the sound of hooves hitting the earth on birthdays.
For my grandmother is a midwife and she is fluent in the
language of suffering mothers
of joyful mothers
of handing glowing newborns to their creator.
Hozho is not something you can experience on your own,
the eagles tell us as they lock talons in the stratosphere
and fall to the earth as one.
Hozho is interbeauty.
My grandmother knows hozho well
for she speaks the language of the male rain
that shoots lightning boys through the sky,
pummels the green corn children,
and huddles the horses against cliff sides in the afternoon.
She also speaks the language of the female rain
that sends the scent of dust and sage into our homes
and shoots rainbows out of and into the earth.
The Diné know what hozho means!
And you know what hozho means!
And deep down we know what hozho is not.
Like the days you walk in sadness.
The days you live for money.
The days you live for fame.
The days you live for tomorrow.
Like the day the Spaniards climbed down from their horses
and asked us if they could buy the mountains.
We knew this was not hozho.
But we knew we could make it hozho once again.
So we took their swords and their silver coins
and melted them

with fire and buffalo hide bellows
and reshaped them into squash blossom jewelry pieces
and strung it around their necks.
Took the helmets straight off their heads
and turned it into fearless beauty.
Hozho is the healing of broken bones.
Hozho is the prayer that carried us
through genocide and disease,
It is the prayer that will carry us through global warming
and through this global fear that has set our hearts on fire.
This morning my grandmother is teaching me
that the easiest (and most elegant) way to defeat an army of
hatred,
is to sing it beautiful songs
until it falls to its knees and surrenders.
It will do this, she says, because it has finally
found a sweeter fire than revenge.
It has found heaven.
It has found HOZHO.
This morning my grandmother is saying
to the colors of the sky at dawn:
hózhǫ́náházdlíí’ hózhǫ́náházdiíí’
hózhǫ́náházdlíí’
beauty is restored again...
It is dawn, my friends.
Wake up. The night is over.


- Lyla June Johnston

[Ronaldo]

Navaho Basket:

Expand

[Larry Robinson]

Burning the Old Year




Letters swallow themselves in seconds.
Notes friends tied to the doorknob,
transparent scarlet paper,
sizzle like moth wings,
marry the air.


So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems.
Orange swirling flame of days,
so little is a stone.


Where there was something and suddenly isn’t,
an absence shouts, celebrates, leaves a space.
I begin again with the smallest numbers.


Quick dance, shuffle of losses and leaves,
only the things I didn’t do
crackle after the blazing dies.


- Naomi Shihab Nye

[Larry Robinson]

26-1-1939




When Barcelona fell, the darkened glass
turned in the world and immense ruinous gaze,
mirror of prophecy in a series of mirrors.
I meet it in all the faces that I see.


Decisions of history the radios reverse;
Storm over continents, black rays around the chief,
Finished in lightning, the little chaos raves.
I meet it in all the faces that I see.


Inverted year with one prophetic day,
high wind, forgetful cities, and the war,
the terrible time when everyone writes “hope.”
I meet it in all the faces that I see.


When Barcelona fell, the cry on the roads
assembled horizons, and the circle of eyes
looked with a lifetime look upon that image,
defeat among us, and war, and prophecy,
I meet it in all the faces that I see.


- Muriel Rukeyser

[Larry Robinson]

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.


- W. H. Auden
(Excerpt from his longer poem "September 1, 1939")

[Jude Iam]

SEPTEMBER 1, 1939

by W.H. Auden


Auden: A poet for our times
by Christopher Hitchens

​I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism's face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
'I will be true to the wife,
I'll concentrate more on my work,'
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the dead,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenseless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

[Larry Robinson]

In God’s Time

A platitude meant to calm
But what can it mean?


God’s time is geologic,
Susan says. Frustrated wishes and demands tell her this.
She is right.


So to know this particular God,
We must become as patient as mountains,
Sand or the very evolving beasts
We already are. To know


This odd God. We must shrug off
Hurry and fearful fantasies,
Learn to love the Unknown.
To feel this God’s presence


Learn to wait, wishing
For no more than the waiting,
Sweet for itself, for the
Exquisite taste of timelessness.


Learn to see God as
The gourd that holds
Gaseous new stars, baby birds, Wind and water.
Watch how God’s time cradles felons
Walking four square feet
And refugees scaling fences Into the Unknown Present.


This specific God’s time is geologic, despite Time’s
Cruel evidence etched
In the aging bodies
We inhabit reluctantly.
Silly how our egos demand
We resolve the problems
We create in our tiny time,


While all around us
Evidence of eternity
Spins and sparkles
If only we see and come
To know we, too, are
Geologic and timeless.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Ronaldo]

Glacier illustration 1875:


In-God's-Time.pdf

[Larry Robinson]

Waves, Oceans and Flip-flopping


think of a wave and then also, the ocean,
a young branch and the trunk of a tree,
a spent blossom and the stem of a rose,
a broken heart and an act of forgiveness.


each a willing sacrifice, a dying, a birthing,
a doing what each was ordained to do.


the branch, the perfect broken wing of the limb,
the blossom, emitting the flower’s last fragrance,
and forgiveness, the ultimate human reckoning.


how can we be both the fallen branch and
the sturdy tree itself, the rose and its fragrant
scent, the broken heart and the one forgiving?


by remembering that we are both human and divine,
flip-flopping between tiny ephemeral splashes near
the shore and then, in a moment, the vast expanse
of the great ocean.

of the great ocean itself.


- Bruce Silverman

[Larry Robinson]

Trying to Be Thoughtful in the First Brights of Dawn

I am thinking, or trying to think, about all the
imponderables for which we have
no answers, yet endless interest all the
range of our lives, and it's

good for the head no doubt to undertake such
meditation; Mystery, after all,
is God's other name, and deserves our

consideration surely. But, but -
excuse me now, please; it's morning, heavenly bright,
and my irrepressible heart begs me to hurry on
into the next exquisite moment.

- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

My Wish For You




I wish you happiness
Each and every day
Mornings filled with pink golden clouds
Laden with unlimited possibilities


May this New Year
Open doors in unexpected ways
Bringing you renewed abundance
Grace, ease and satisfaction


May you be blessed with good health
In mind, body and soul
Untouched by the pandemic
Still in the air around us


May you always see rainbows
Stretching across the heavens
Leading your imagination
Towards unknown treasures awaiting


May the sunlight warm you
Like the golden orange poppies
Opening fully when touched by light
Greeting the new day once again


May the winds of time
Blow softly from behind
Gently moving you forward
With strong, loving support

May nature beckon you
Venturing forth often into forests
Meadows, beaches, anywhere nearby
Reconnecting with the wonder of all


May the waters run deep
Clear, cool, rushing along
Carrying you around all obstacles
Flowing with life’s good intentions


But most of all
I wish you Love
Love felt from within
And from all your relations


Knowing that you are always loved
By family, special friends, community
Loved by each breathe of air
Graciously filling your body each moment


In deep Gratitude
I wish you Love
From the depths of my heart
And a New Year worth living


- David Lieberstein

[Larry Robinson]

Too Many Names




Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.


No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.


When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.


It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.


When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?


This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formallities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.


I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.


- Pablo Neruda


(English version by Anthony Kerrigan)




Demasiados nombres


Se enreda el lunes con el martes
y la semana con el año:
no se puede cortar el tiempo
con tus tijeras fatigadas,
y todos los nombres del día
los borra el agua de la noche.


Nadie puede llamarse Pedro,
ninguna es Rosa ni María,
todos somos polvo o arena,
todos somos lluvia en la lluvia.
Me han hablado de Venezuelas,
de Paraguayes y de Chiles,
no sé de lo que están hablando:
conozco la piel de la tierra
y sé que no tiene apellido.


Cuando viví con las raíces
me gustaron más que las flores,
y cuando hablé con una piedra
sonaba como una campana.


Es tan larga la primavera
que dura todo el invierno:
el tiempo perdió los zapatos:
un año tiene cuatro siglos.


Cuando duermo todas las noches,
cómo me llamo o no me llamo?
Y cuando me despierto quién soy
si no era yo cuando dormía?


Esto quiere decir que apenas
desembarcamos en la vida,
que venimos recién naciendo,
que no nos llenemos la boca
con tantos nombres inseguros,
con tantas etiquetas tristes,
con tantas letras rimbombantes,
con tanto tuyo y tanto mío,
con tanta firma en los papeles.




Yo pienso confundir las cosas,
unirlas y recién nacerlas,
entreverarlas, desvestirlas,
hasta que la luz del mundo
tenga la unidad del océano,
una integridad generosa,
una fragancia crepitante.


- Pablo Neruda

[Larry Robinson]

If any of you who read my poetry posts would like to receive them in your in-box after the demise of Wacco, you can send me a message at [email protected] and I will add you to the mailing list.

Larry

[BManna]

When Larry recently offered the poem "Dawn" I shared it with friends I thought would appreciate it as I do. They forwarded back the author speaking the poem aloud: https://asusjournal.org/issue-1/lyla...n-spoken-word/

[Lilith Rogers]

Oh, thank you sooo much for sharing this beautiful video of this beautiful poem. I watched and listened to it several times. I find so much peace and hope in it in these difficult times. "Wake Up--the night is OVER!!" Lilith

[Larry Robinson]

It’s Time


Stop the digging
There is no pony down here
Despite the stink


It’s time to look upward
At the narrow ribbon of sky
The climb will be steep—expect slippage
Widen the ribbon until clouds appear


Rain will come—more slippage
Find the toe-holds and the handles
Until the ribbon widens to a sash
And the ascent reveals the true panorama
Of sea-level possibilities
The stars, the green earth


Breathe deeply
We have been disinterred
Arising from a would-be grave
The will to live surfacing
And enabling a new shot at adventure
And a new ability to recognize an abyss


- Katherine Foster

[Larry Robinson]

The Ear That Speaks

I have been a standing self in this world.
I have braved both pleasure and disgust.
I have lived my words.
The stranger appeared and I did not look away.
The crazy youth wandered by and I sometimes followed him.
The virgin cried and I investigated her tears.

I am a man, a person, an elder, shining and wise.
I am someone who happily discovered the use of my ears.
I am someone who happily discovered the use of my mind.
I am someone who happily discovered the use of my heart.

I meet the young people, the soldiers, the prisoners,
The students, the poor people, the people of color,
The Indians and the women of the planet,
And I am not afraid of them.
And for their part, they do not seem to be afraid of me.

I sit and eat quietly the bread of resistance
On the wrong side of the barricade.

I am an elder, shining and wise.
I have lived my words.
I have discovered the use of my heart, my mind, my tongue.
And for that reason alone, I have become devout,
A listener devoted to the sound of the human voice.

I have lived long enough to be able to tell you
That I prefer it to sound happy.
For the sake of the generations, I have become magic.
I have become the ear that speaks.

- Alice Walker

[Larry Robinson]

Quilts


for Sally Sellers

Like a fading piece of cloth
I am a failure


No longer do I cover tables filled with food and laughter
My seams are frayed my hems falling my strength no longer able
To hold the hot and cold


I wish for those first days
When just woven I could keep water
From seeping through
Repelled stains with the tightness of my weave
Dazzled the sunlight with my
Reflection


I grow old though pleased with my memories
The tasks I can no longer complete
Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past


I offer no apology only
this plea:


When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end
Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt
That I might keep some child warm


And some old person with no one else to talk to
Will hear my whispers


And cuddle
near


- Nikki Giovanni

[Larry Robinson]

"Why has there never been a coup in Washington D.C.? Because there is no U.S. Embassy in Washington D.C.”
- Ira Kurzban attorney, following the 2004 U.S. Coup deposing Jean-Bertrand Aristide of Haiti.

The Domino Apocalypse

Albania, Argentina, Afghanistan,
Guatemala, Ghana, Greece,
Somalia, Syria,El Salvador,
Haiti, Honduras,Palestine,
Iran, Iraq, Indonesia
Congo, Kosovo, Cambodia, Chile,
Laos, Libya, Mexico, Myanmar,
Panama, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Brazil, Turkey, Zaire,
the United States of
America.**

Looking for Four Horsemen,
Babylon's Whore or
A beast bearing a sign of
XXX, we look for symbols where

A mirror will suffice.
The end times have arrived
Have always been here, have come
Home.

- Rebecca del Rio

**a partial list of the countries in which United States government officials, including presidents, have supported, authorized and/or engineered fascist coups.