Poet's Corner

[Dhara]

Human Family - by Maya Angelou

I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.

Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.

The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.

I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land,
I've seen the wonders of the world
not yet one common man.

I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.

Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.

We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.

We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.

I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.

 

[Dhara]

Movement Song

I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.

Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
away from each other
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.

Audre Lorde

 

[Dhara]

Mother to Son

Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So, boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps.
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now—
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.

Langston Hughes

 

[Dhara]

A Father To HIs Son
By Carl Sandburg

A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.

 

[Dhara]

The gathering family
throws shadows around us,
it is the late afternoon
Of the family.

There is still enough light
to see all the way back,
but at the windows
that light is wasting away.

Soon we will be nothing
but silhouettes: the sons'
as harsh
as the fathers'.

Soon the daughters
will take off their aprons
as trees take off their leaves
for winter.

Let us eat quickly--
let us fill ourselves up.
the covers of the album are closing
behind us.

Linda Pashtan

 

[Dhara]

Victory

All night the ways of Heaven were desolate,
Long roads across a gleaming empty sky.
Outcast and doomed and driven, you and I,
Alone, serene beyond all love or hate,
Terror or triumph, were content to wait,
We, silent and all-knowing. Suddenly
Swept through the heaven low-crouching from on high,
One horseman, downward to the earth's low gate.

Oh, perfect from the ultimate height of living,
Lightly we turned, through wet woods blossom-hung,
Into the open. Down the supernal roads,
With plumes a-tossing, purple flags far flung,
Rank upon rank, unbridled, unforgiving,
Thundered the black battalions of the Gods.

Rupert Brooke

 

[Dhara]

Victory

a poem by Justin Christopher Laud

Take every emotion
Anger, Frustration, Pain
Take every experience
Failure, Rejection, Disappointment
Bottle it up
Till you’re ready to burst like a powder keg

Then it’ll happen,
Your mind goes dark and empty
Like nighttime in the desert.
You don’t know why you’re doing it,
But you’re doing it to the best of your abilities.

You run, hit, tackle
You don’t feel a thing
But you know the other team’s
Feeling every little bit of it.

Like a hungry wolf gorging itself
You don’t want to,
You need to.
When it’s over
And you’re standing over your opponent
Like a victorious Warrior
You feel eerily satisfied.

This is why you spend your summers
In the blistering heat,
Why you make your winter home the weight room
All this to feel like a God
All this to gain Victory.


-

 

[Dhara]

Poems about Victory

by Sri Chinmoy

Victory usually means
Temporary peace.
But peace is
Eternity’s victory.

~

Victory comes and victory goes.
Defeat weeps and defeat lingers.
Experience soars and experience lasts.
God smiles and God dances.

~

The body’s victory
Is often
The soul’s tremendous loss.
The soul’s victory
Is always
The body’s amazing progress.

~

I felt the victory
Of the world-saviour: Peace.
Therefore
I smiled and danced.

I see the victory
Of the world-devourer: War.
Therefore
I sigh and die.

~

Yesterday
your victory’s crown
was possession.
Today
your victory’s crown
is renunciation.
Tomorrow
your victory’s crown
shall be liberation.

~

In the inner world
Each victory is a help.
Each defeat is a help, too.
But each surrender to God’s Will
Is a victory unparalleled,
A victory invincible.

~

God’s Smile is the victory
Of today’s man.
Man’s smile is the Victory
Of Eternity’s God.

~

The victory of human love is confusing.
The victory of divine love is illumining.
The victory of supreme love is fulfilling.

~

Victory and defeat are interwoven.
Do not try to separate them,
But try to go beyond them
If your heart longs for abiding peace.

 

[Dhara]

I Ask You

What scene would I want to be enveloped in
more than this one,
an ordinary night at the kitchen table,
floral wallpaper pressing in,
white cabinets full of glass,
the telephone silent,
a pen tilted back in my hand?

It gives me time to think
about all that is going on outside--
leaves gathering in corners,
lichen greening the high grey rocks,
while over the dunes the world sails on,
huge, ocean-going, history bubbling in its wake.

But beyond this table
there is nothing that I need,
not even a job that would allow me to row to work,
or a coffee-colored Aston Martin DB4
with cracked green leather seats.

No, it's all here,
the clear ovals of a glass of water,
a small crate of oranges, a book on Stalin,
not to mention the odd snarling fish
in a frame on the wall,
and the way these three candles--
each a different height--
are singing in perfect harmony.

So forgive me
if I lower my head now and listen
to the short bass candle as he takes a solo
while my heart
thrums under my shirt--
frog at the edge of a pond--
and my thoughts fly off to a province
made of one enormous sky
and about a million empty branches.

Billy Collins

 

[Dhara]

Coyote Song
BY MARSHA DE LA O

Inside the night, this hospital, asylum,
this party for those undone by desire, forever
unslaked, inside a house inside the night,
I'm inside

this house with eight beams and moonlight
pulling on the past through skylights, this house
of white noise, wind and dry heat, lonely
house on a ridge line, house of ordinary
shame,

my sister's house with corrals and outbuildings
around it, and beyond that, the dog
patrolling, and beyond that, skirts and folds
of the mountain rising in rumpled geologic
scrolls into the range.

At the center
beneath the moon's silence that nothing
ever changes, muffled in blankets with fear
beside me on my little bench of sleep,
I can hear their voices,

could be three or twenty-three,
unhinged saints gabbling to their shadows,
or panty-sniffers, drug-trippers in all flavors
past vanilla, could be Birnam wood
on the move, the shriek of its roots thirsty
and air-brushed, or a pack of lunatics
crooning norteño songs.

What is certain is advent.
They're coming down,
coming towards
the heart beneath the feathers,
coming for
what can't be protected,
on a beam of dread,
riding that ray.

I'm listening, my eyes snapped-open
inside darkness, other people in other rooms
who know how to sleep through a night
like this night, thrown against the roundness
of the world which is desire.

The old bitch guards this night on the ranch,
half shepherd, half other, this is her watch,
she gallops the perimeter, anxious to sound like
more than one dog, though she's going arthritic
and her paws strike the hard ground.

Now they quiet, penitents, lunatics,
marauders and ragpickers, quiet.
Only one left behind and the moon
is his hieroglyph,
one creature padding
down the mountain,
coming closer.

Coyote knows a good joke,
he only wants to let her in on it.
He can't stop laughing, can't stop
crying, can't stop licking the crevices
clean, licking safety and duty
until they're empty.

I hear the dog listening, ears lifted.
Coyote's tongue slides into night
air, pressing narcotic vowels through
wonder, through longing
and longing and wonder awaken. She's close
to that edge, that border in the night
where one thing becomes another and even
an old dog who's worked a ranch eleven years
feels the urge to let loose, blow this little
settlement, go wild.

Clouds loose and blue in the arms
of the moon, slant light on this mountain raking
us, the dog and I, we feel the pull. Imagine
a woman trying to come between
coyote and the female he's after
when she knows

what is dark and offers itself and vanishes
has come for her at last? The body wants
what it can't have, to follow the path
of thirst through the rent in the wire
beyond the corral.

The dog doesn't move, but who knows
better than she the small outpost
death has set up in her, maybe she's all
desire now to slip under the moon
and chase down that lure.

Coyote wheedles and croons another minute
or two, then lopes off, calling over his shoulder
in a language even I can understand,
the right names for things
not kept in heaven.

 

[Dhara]

A Poem for Myself

I was born in Mississippi;
I walked barefooted thru the mud.
Born black in Mississippi,
Walked barefooted thru the mud.
But, when I reached the age of twelve
I left that place for good.
My daddy chopped cotton
And he drank his liquor straight.
Said my daddy chopped cotton
And he drank his liquor straight.
When I left that Sunday morning
He was leaning on the barnyard gate.
Left my mama standing
With the sun shining in her eyes.
Left her standing in the yard
With the sun shining in her eyes.
And I headed North
As straight as the Wild Goose Flies,
I been to Detroit & Chicago
Been to New York city too.
I been to Detroit & Chicago
Been to New York city too.
Said I done strolled all those funky avenues
I'm still the same old black boy with the same old blues.
Going back to Mississippi
This time to stay for good
Going back to Mississippi
This time to stay for good-
Gonna be free in Mississippi
Or dead in the Mississippi mud.

Etheridge Knight

 

[Dhara]

He Sees Through Stone

He sees through stone
he has the secret
eyes this old black one
who under prison skies
sits pressed by the sun
against the western wall
his pipe between purple gums

the years fall
like overripe plums
bursting red flesh
on the dark earth

his time is not my time
but I have known him
in a time gone

he led me trembling cold
into the dark forest
taught me the secret rites
to make it with a woman
to be true to my brothers
to make my spear drink
the blood of my enemies

now black cats circle him
flash white teeth
snarl at the air
mashing green grass beneath
shining muscles

ears peeling his words
he smiles
he knows
the hunt the enemy
he has the secret eyes
he sees through stone

Etheridge Knight

 

[Impenitent]

Another wintry blast!
They're calling the cold, "Polar Vortex,"
and the snow, "Lake Effect,"
but all I know is that my house will be crushed like the local Wal-Mart
if I don't get this crap
Shoveled off my roof in a hurry!

We got seven feet of
'Global Warming' (yet again!)
in three day's time,
and by God, if I so much as hear Al Gore's name mentioned on the news tonight,
i'm gonna[ throw my beer bottle right through the TV screen!

I believed! How I believed!
But this can't be!
Stop testing my faith;
I've already failed ...

What's all the big commotion?
It snowed just yesterday.
And the rising of the ocean
Is only dramatic overplay.
He's defrauding me with Science.
Defrauding me with Science!
And ignoring simple history.

When he's flying in his Learjet,
(Defrauding me with Science - Science!)
They say he leaves a footprint.
(Science, Science!)

But it's all a big promotion,
When it snowed just yesterday.
And I see no rising of the ocean.
On the young and naive he preys.
But he defrauded me with Science.
He defrauded me with Science!
And disregarded meteorology.

When Gore is flying ever nearer.
(Defrauding me with Science-Science, Science!)
I can see Al Jazeera.
(Defrauding me with Science - Science, Science!)

I thought he had such devotion,
But now he's mocking me.
He sold out the Arctic Ocean,
To pump and dump Current TV.
He defrauded me with Science.
He defrauded me with Science!
And got off on a technicality.

Good God Al Gore -
He's terrible.
I can't believe it!
There he goes again!
He's hidden his dossier,
And I must get an FOIA,
To see his inner secrets,
And little pet tricks.

It's simple harmonic motion,
When it snowed just yesterday.
And the rising of the ocean,
A cycle repeated every day.
But he defrauded me with Science.
He defrauded me with Science!
While promoting an immorality.

Without a "Wonderful Life" emotion,
A White Christmas he never sees.
He talks only in slow motion,
About polar vortex mysteries,
He defrauded me with Science.
He defrauded me with Science!
And failed in philanthropy.

I shoveled and struggled,
and huffed and puffed my way through several mini-avalanches, until at last my roof was clear, around 8 P.M.
Finally resting and relaxing in front of my TV,
beer in my hand,
Who did I see but none other than Al Gore,
presenting his first of 24 episodes of “It’s Urgent to Rendezvous with Reality to Save the Future of Civilization."

I should have flipped him off when he began his soliloquy!
Too tired to react, or just too lazy,
Again I heard the song that was so familiar:

'Darkness falls across Greenland"

The ice gone, now only barren sand.
Animals crawl in search of food
In packs or alone in two-legged broods.
And whosoever shall be found
That can't withstand the killing ground
Must face a million degrees of hell
And speak from inside a skeptic's shell.

The foulest chemicals are in the air,
The carbon dioxide of two hundred years.
A mere 24 hours from your tomb,
Six feet below to seal your doom.
The earth may fight to stay alive
But from pole to pole to pillar.
No force of nature can survive
The evil anthropogenic killer

Now he"a talking to a skeptic,
and discussing the "Pause."
The skeptic thinks this is an indication of "Gobal Cooling," rather than warming!
It looks like Al has painted himself into a corner!
I'm gonna enjoy this!

Al: Oh, Heaven, Dear Heaven!
If the trend is as you decry,
The Ice Age has already begun,
And we will all freeze and die.

You foresee a frigid earth,
And of humanity there is a dearth:
With frozen hearts bleeding red
Fallen, both cold and dead.

Even tho' your theories might belie
A forcing agent, a greenhouse gassing,
Would it not be worth a try
To forestall our frosty passing?

To form a blanket, with warmth abound
To defeat the impending crisis,
Before we all are found
Frozen stiff and lifeless!

Now can you not see how some
Want to save the planet we cherish;
Otherwise our home will become
A barren desert where all perish.

Al explains,
We don't need catastrophic global warming to experience catastrophe.
We need only to get close.'

'There will not be enough resources to sustain us all.
There will be oil wars, food wars, water wars.
People will kill those who they perceive to stand in the way of their own survival.
Both the killers and the killed
will be the wealthy and the poor,
the educated and the illiterate,
the young and the old.
Alliances will be made and broken.
Chaos will ensue.

Will we survive?
Models don't tell us."

But I was already dead asleep where I was sitting,
buried under ten more feet of snow.

 

[Dhara]

Dedicated to Transphobic Bigots

Prejudice is a pernicious virus,
the sinister germ of a hideous disease.
It mushroomed from an old papyrus
and spread around the world with ease.

Now bigotry corrupts the mind,
it poisons the soul, perverts the spirit.
Alas, good medicine is not easy to find,
no painless cure for the malady to quit.

You cannot stamp out prejudice by logic.
You cannot eradicate racism by reason.
Intolerance defies wisdom and is allergic
to critical thinking in every season.

Stilll we must persist and cherish a hope
in educating youth, so new generations
will fare fairer and have a purer scope,
untainted by bigoted misconceptions.

Four Quatrains On Bigotry By


Paul Hartal

 

[Capstone]

Spirits O' the Season

Affectionately known as St. Paddy's
is a day for the lasses and laddies
to savor the head
of the Killian's Red
sans the grief from their mommies and daddies.​

 

[Dhara]

Leprechauns peeking,
Around a willow tree,
Pussy willows waking,
Longing to be free.
Colleens and shamrocks
And castles old and gray,
Put them all together
To make St. Patrick's Day.

 

[OldLady]

Walt Whitman (1819–1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.

254. Song of the Universal

1
COME, said the Muse,
Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted,
Sing me the Universal.

In this broad Earth of ours,
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Enclosed and safe within its central heart,
Nestles the seed Perfection.

By every life a share, or more or less,
None born but it is born—conceal’d or unconceal’d, the seed is waiting.

.....

 

[Dhara]

Heavenly Grass

My feet took a walk in heavenly grass.
All day while the sky shone clear as glass.
My feet took a walk in heavenly grass,
All night while the lonesome stars rolled past.
Then my feet come down to walk on earth,
And my mother cried when she give me birth.
Now my feet walk far and my feet walk fast,
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.
But they still got an itch for heavenly grass.


Tennessee Williams

 

[Dhara]

Pairs of Shoes

My future lives come to me in dreams
Come silently with torn soles.
I am like a skilled shoemaker
Greeting the wandering breath of these feet.

These dreams-my other selves
Sprawl out to sleep like a litter of puppies,
Pinches of ashy fur standing up in tufts
Their young hair like hens fluffed feathers
They lie on their stomachs, pressing against my shadow.

Pairs of shoes from yesterday will come tomorrow
Am I their native land, or a land foreign to them?
Their house, or an inn?
Which road guided them to me?

Tonight I decide to open myself to these dreams,
As anxious for their arrival as a child yearning for milk.
Perhaps fireflies will draw them in a different direction
And perhaps the shoes are no longer ripped.

I feel as empty as a new-born creatire.
I spread out like a homeless evening
To meet these footprints turning toward me.


- Nguyen Quyen

 

[Dhara]

The Children
BY MARK JARMAN

The children are hiding among the raspberry canes.
They look big to one another, the garden small.
Already in their mouths this soft fruit
That lasts so briefly in the supermarket
Tastes like the past. The gritty wall,
Behind the veil of leaves, is hollow.
There are yellow wasps inside it. The children know.
They know the wall is hard, although it hums.
They know a lot and will not forget it soon.

When did we forget? But we were never
Children, never found where they were hiding
And hid with them, never followed
The wasp down into its nest
With a fingertip that still tingles.
We lie in bed at night, thinking about
The future, always the future, always forgetting
That it will be the past, hard and hollow,
Veiled and humming, soon enough.