Poem: Self-Help

     Home team suffers string of losses.—Time to change loyalties.

Quadruple bypass.—Hold the bacon on that next cheeseburger.

Poems tanking.—After stormiest days, sun comes out from behind clouds, or used to.

Marriage on rocks.—Nothing like Coke.

Election going the wrong direction.—Kick off slippers, take deep breathe, be here now.

 Boss says your performance needs boost.—A long hot bath smoothes wrinkles.

War toll tops 100,000.—Get your mind off it, switch to reality TV. 

Lake Tang Woo Chin Chicken with Lobster and Sweet Clam Sauce still not served and everyone else got their orders twenty minutes back.—Savor the water, feast on the company.

Subway floods and late for audition.—Start being the author of your own performance. Take a walk.

Slip on ice, break arm.—In moments like this, the preciousness of life reveals itself.

Wages down in non-union shop.—You’re a sales associate, not a worker; so proud to be part of the company.

Miss the train?—Great chance to explore the station!

Suicide bombers wrecks neighborhood.—Time to pitch in!

Nothing doing.—Take a break!

Partner in life finds another partner.—Now you can begin the journey of life anew.

Bald?—Finally, you can touch the sky with the top of your head.

Short-term recall shot.—Old memories are sweetest.

Hard drive crashes and novel not backed up.—Nothing like a fresh start.

Severe stomach cramps all morning.—Boy are these back issues of Field and Stream engrossing.

Hurricane crushes house.—You never seemed so resilient.

Brother-in-law completes second year in coma.—He seems so much more relaxed than he used to.

$75 ticket for Sunday meter violation on an empty street in residential neighborhood.—The city needs the money to make us safe and educate our kids.

Missed last episode of favorite murder mystery because you misprogrammed VCR.—Write your own ending!

Blue cashmere pullover has three big moth holes.—What a great looking shirt!

Son joins skinhead brigade of Jews for Jesus.—At least he’s following his bliss.

Your new play receives scathing reviews and closes after a single night.—What a glorious performance!

Pungent stench of homeless man on subway, asking for food.—Such kindness in his eyes, as I turn toward home.

Retirement savings lost on Enron and WorldCom.—They almost rhyme.

Oil spill kills seals.—The workings of the Lord are inscrutable.

Global warming swamps land masses.—Learn to accept change.

Bike going fast in wrong direction knocks you over.—A few weeks off your feet, just what the doctor ordered.

AIDS ravaging Africa.—Wasn’t Jeffrey Wright fabulous in Angels in America?

Muffler shot.—There’s this great pizza place next to the shop.

Income gap becomes crater.—Good motivation to get rich.

Abu Ghraib prisoners tortured.—Let’s face it, shit happens.

Oscar wins Emmy.—Award shows are da bomb.

FBI checking your library check-outs.—I also recommend books on Amazon.

Gay marriages annulled.—Who needs the state to sanctify our love?

President’s lies kill GIs.—He’s so decisive about his core values.

Self-Help.—Other drowns.

                               Charles Bernstein  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good conversation

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness.
Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears.
And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day;
the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said.
That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness;
your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

James Hillman, We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy-- and the world's getting worse

 

 

 

 

Our greatest invention

Kissing is our greatest invention.
On the list of great inventions,
it ranks higher than the Thermos bottle
and the Airstream trailer;
higher, even, than room service.

        Tom Robbins, Wild Ducks Flying Backward

 

 

 

 

Follow the leader

Sometimes, being true to yourself means changing your mind.
Self changes, and you follow.

        Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

 

 

 

 

 

 

The god in the machine

What a strange machine man is!
You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes,
and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.

            Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Green

 

 

 

 

One way improvement

The people I distrust most
are those who want to improve our lives
but have only one course of action in mind.

    Frank Herbert, interview in Mother Earth News 1981

 

 

 

 

Poem: Our Story

Remind me again—together we
trace our strange journey, find
each other, come on laughing.
Some time we’ll cross where life
ends. We’ll both look back
as far as forever, that first day.
I’ll touch you—a new world then.
Stars will move a different way.
We’ll both end. We’ll both begin.

Remind me again.

                    William Stafford 

Poem: Over and Over Stitch

Late in the season the world digs in, the fat blossoms
hold still for just a moment longer.
Nothing looks satisfied,
but there is no real reason to move on much further:
this isn’t a bad place;
why not pretend

we wished for it?
The bushes have learned to live with their haunches.
The hydrangea is resigned
to its pale and inconclusive utterances.
Towards the end of the season
it is not bad

to have the body. To have experienced joy
as the mere lifting of hunger
is not to have known it
less. The tobacco leaves
don’t mind being removed
to the long racks—all uses are astounding

to the used.
There are moments in our lives which, threaded, give us heaven—
noon, for instance, or all the single victories
of gravity, or the kudzu vine,
most delicate of manias,
which has pressed its luck

this far this season.
It shines a gloating green.
Its edges darken with impatience, a kind of wind.
Nothing again will ever be this easy, lives
being snatched up like dropped stitches, the dry stalks of daylilies
marking a stillness we can’t keep.

            Jorie Graham 

 

 

 

 

 

No time for despair

There is no time for despair.
No place for self pity.
No need for silence.
No room for fear.
We speak.
We write.
We do language.
That is how civilizations heal.

        Toni Morrison, 2015 article in The Nation 

 

 

 

 

Marvel anti-hero

Man is always marveling at what he has blown apart,
never what the universe has put together,
and this is his limitation.

        Loren Eiseley, The Lost Notebooks

 

 

 

 

Over the edge

There are no safe paths in this part of the world.
Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now,
and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go.

                J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

 

 

 

 

Multitudes

There are a hundred thousand species of love,
separately invented,
each more ingenious than the last,
and every one of them keeps making things.

            Richard Powers, The Overstory

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding

If we understood something just one way,
        we would not understand it at all.

                 Marvin Minsky, Music, Mind, and Meaning

 

 

 

 

 

 

Absence and presence

 St. Teresa of Avila wrote: 'All difficulties in prayer can be traced to one cause: praying as if God were absent.'

This is the conviction that we bring with us from early childhood and apply to everyday life and to our lives in general. It gets stronger as we grow up, unless we are touched by the Gospel and begin the spiritual journey. This journey is a process of dismantling the monumental illusion that God is distant or absent.

                        Thomas Keating, Fruits and Gifts of the Spirit

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: For Those Who Would Govern

 ( I know this is not a poem but......)

 First question: Can you first govern yourself?

Second question: What is the state of your own household?

Third question: Do you have a proven record of community service

             and compassionate acts?

 Fourth question: Do you know the history and laws of your principalities?

 Fifth question: Do you follow sound principles? Look for fresh vision to lift all the inhabitants of the land, including animals, plants,

             elements, all who share this earth?

 Sixth question: Are you owned by lawyers, bankers, insurance agents,

             lobbyists, or other politicians, anyone else who would unfairly

             profit by your decisions?

 Seventh question: Do you have authority by the original keepers of

             the lands, those who obey natural law and are in the service of

             the lands on which you stand.

 

                                       Joy Harjo, A member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation

The chief happiness

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods.
Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life.
If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man
about a place to live, I think I should. say,
'sacrifice almost everything to live
where you can be near your friends.'

        C.S. Lewis, They Stand Together

 

 

 

 

Everything is music

Don't worry about saving these songs!
And if one of our instruments, breaks
It doesn't matter!
We have fallen into the place
where everything is music.

                    Rumi    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where to

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

        Martin Buber, The Life of the Hasidim

 

 

 

 

A little more

We need a little more compassion, and if we cannot have it
then no politician or even a magician can save the planet.

        Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama, Words Of Wisdom

 

 

 

 

Moving on

The really frightening thing about middle age
        is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

                Doris Day, Doris Day: Her Own Story

 

 

 

So it goes

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral,
begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy.
Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it.
Through violence you may murder the liar,
but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth.
Through violence you may murder the hater,
but you do not murder hate.
In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes.
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

        Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here 

 

 

 

 

Poem: At Last the New Arriving

Like the horn you played in Catholic school
the city will open its mouth and cry

out. Don't worry 'bout nothing. Don't mean
no thing. It will leave you stunned

as a fighter with his eyes swelled shut
who's told he won the whole damn purse.

It will feel better than any floor
that's risen up to meet you. It will rise

like Easter bread, golden and familiar
in your grandmother's hands. She'll come back,

heaven having been too far from home
to hold her. O it will be beautiful.

Every girl will ask you to dance and the boys
won't kill you for it. Shake your head.

Dance until your bones clatter. What a prize
you are. What a lucky sack of stars.

         Gabrielle Calvocoressi 

 

 

 

 

In case you were wondering

We are here to see and contemplate the great spectacle.

        John Burroughs, Accepting the Universe

 

 

 

 

Triple threat

The real problem of humanity is the following:
        we have Paleolithic emotions,
                medieval institutions,
                        and god-like technology.

            E. O. Wilson, Harvard debate 2009

 

 

 

 

 

What matters

Gender mattered a whole lot less to Shakespeare 

            than it seems to matter to us.

                        John Irving, In One Person: A Novel

 

 

 

 

 

No kidding

The true New Yorker secretly believes
that people living anywhere else
have to be, in some sense, kidding.

        John Updike The New Yorker, 1976

 

 

 

Wake up

Morning comes
    whether you set the alarm or not.

            Ursula K. Le Guinn, Dancing at the Edge of the World

 

 

 

 

 

Hear our prayer

That it may please thee to inspire us,
    in our several callings,
        to do the work which thou givest us to do
            with singleness of heart as thy servants,
                and for the common good.

                        The Great Litany, Book of Common Prayer

 

 

 

 

 

Poem: won’t you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

        Louise Clifton