Langston Hughes

Before the month is gone, the great Langston Hughes.

---

Daybreak in Alabama When I get to be a composer I'm gonna write me some music about Daybreak in Alabama And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist And falling out of heaven like soft dew. I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it And the scent of pine needles And the smell of red clay after rain And long red necks And poppy colored faces And big brown arms And the field daisy eyes Of black and white black white black people And I'm gonna put white hands And black hands and brown and yellow hands And red clay earth hands in it Touching everybody with kind fingers And touching each other natural as dew In that dawn of music when I Get to be a composer And write about daybreak In Alabama.

e.e. cummings and Stephen Sondheim

[as freedom is a breakfastfood]
By E. E. Cummings 1894–1962

as freedom is a breakfastfood

or truth can live with right and wrong

or molehills are from mountains made

—long enough and just so long

will being pay the rent of seem

and genius please the talentgang

and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow

or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair

and every finger is a toe

and any courage is a fear

—long enough and just so long

will the impure think all things pure

and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind

and robins never welcome spring

nor flatfolk prove their world is round

nor dingsters die at break of dong

and common’s rare and millstones float

—long enough and just so long

tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy’s the voice

down shall go which and up come who

breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs

deeds cannot dream what dreams can do

—time is a tree(this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

GREEN FINCH AND LINNET BIRD
By Stephen Sondgeim

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
How can you jubilate,
Sitting in cages,
Never taking wing?

Outside the sky waits,
Beckoning, beckoning,
Just beyond the bars,
How can you remain,
Staring at the rain,
Maddened by the stars?
How is it you sing
Anything?
How is it you sing?

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
How is it you sing?
Whence comes this melody
constantly flowing?
Is it rejoicing or merely halloing?
Are you discussing
Or fussing
Or simply dreaming?
Are you crowing?
Are you screaming?

Ringdove and robinet,
Is it for wages,
Singing to be sold?
Have you decided it’s
Safer in cages,
Singing when you’re told?

My cage has many rooms,
Damask and dark.
Nothing there sings,
Not even my lark.
Larks never will, you know,
When they’re captive.
Teach me to be more adaptive.

Green finch and linnet bird,
Nightingale, blackbird,
Teach me how to sing.
If I cannot fly,
Let me sing.

To me, both poems speak of freedom although I am not sure of the cummings poem. The Sondheim poem seems to address the artist. Of course when addressing a work, it is in the eye of the reader. I chose these two poems because freedom has been much on my mind.

Freedom is a complex issue. Veterans have bumper stickers that state that "freedom isn't free, veterans pay for it." I believe that is true. On an individual basis, if you want to be free you have to pay for it too and no price is too dear. The foe of freedom is fear. If fear overwhelmed the desire to be free, then you will be forever in the cage even if the gate is unlocked.

Sondheim speaks of relative freedom. If he can't have total freedom or freedom to fly, then he insists on relative freedom, he must have freedom to sing from his cage. I know I want total freedom and someday I might not be able to have it. I can have it now. No price is too great for it. I remember listening to a man who lived in Russia under Soviet rule. He was making a good living as a scientist but he came to the USA where he earned less money. A journalist asked if he thought that was a good trade. He said without freedom, money wasn't worth it.

Fear is a strong emotion and it keeps people in chains long after the chains have been unlocked. It keeps people with their abusers and many people who escaped prisons and concentration camps all report being held in unlocked cells of fear. It takes a lot of treatment and love from family and friends for them to walk outside those cells.

As I wrote, freedom is a complex issue or at least for me. I have one foot outside my cell door and am trying to leave my prison and conquering the fear is the biggest barrier. We all have to be knights of the round table in seeking the Holy Grail. The Grail is what sets each of us free and it is different for each of us.

Belle Randall

Cast Off

By Belle Randall

If thy own hand . . . offend thee
—Matthew 18:8

Self-hatred? No, no dear: that seems inflated—

chagrin: the shame you feel when friends withdraw

for reasons they leave tactfully unstated,

leaving you to guess at your faux pas

From all you did and didn’t say for ages,

as in some vast congressional report,

your sin, at last, is lost among the pages;

a snow of detail cuts inquiry short.

In downtown windows where late sunlight glares,

you see yourself, as if you’d never met.

Who is this rumpled lookalike who wears

a blouse like yours, the armpits dark with sweat?

Your eighth grade diary still makes you cringe

saved—for what?—that you might now despise

pages time has lent a jaundiced tinge

pouring forth their daisy-dotted i’s?

Some second-guesser in you finds untrue

the echo of your own voice in your ears,

and wants to ask which one most sickens you:

the voice that whines with neediness and fears,

Or one no doubts can ever undermine,

that speaks before a general assembly,

proclaiming loudly what to do with thine

own hand (or his, or mine), should it offend thee?

Source: Poetry (September 2009).

I am sure we have all been in situations in which a friend or even a set of friends turn against you and you are at a loss as to why this has happened. I think the above poem captures this awkward and terrifying moment or memory well. Sometimes, we find out the reason, and it is not just or it is based on a lie that is told by someone we thought was our friend. It can be based on a shared confidence that someone we trusted with our lives who decided to bare all for unknown reasons. Ah, yes. I have been there. After all these years I can remember with as much puzzlement as I had in those years. In some memories I have began to re-frame them with new insight and with that new information in understanding what had happened. It still hurts though.

It helps to read Randall's poem though. To have our pain and sorrow in someone's else's words, to have them echoed in someone's else pain but portrayed so well in a poet's ability to express it and with that talent and know how some detachment for it means nobility and the knowledge it has happened to someone else and someone as sensitive as this poet.

There are many reasons for the existence of poets and in this month of poetry this is one function I like to reflect on. Poets give us validity of feeling, of existence and of purpose. Reading of our pain and what we go through in their words makes things a bit better to bear and the tears are less because we feel more dignified. Yes, we say to ourselves, that was how it was. That was how I felt. Yes, this poet knows and can feel and say what it was to be me on that summer day when my friends turned against me. It felt like I hated me as they must have hated me too. Thank you poets of the world.

Poets become our representatives, our attorneys, our knights and with their swords they go out and create for each of us a sense of value in the courts of society and culture. We are not such bad people when the poets speak for us as they often do and they even speak for those who's voices have been silent forever by cruel tyrants and gods. They are the true equalizers as long as their voices cannot be silenced and few have been. They have been shot, hung, poisoned, gassed but their poems still speak loud and clear. We, as a human race, have much to be grateful for to this group of human beings. Thank you again.

Delmore Schwartz

POEM

Narcissus

Delmore Schwartz (1913-1966)

THE MIND IS AN ANCIENT AND FAMOUS CAPITAL

The mind is a city like London,

Smoky and populous: it is a capital

Like Rome, ruined and eternal,

Marked by the monuments which no one

Now remembers. For the mind, like Rome, contains

Catacombs, aqueducts, amphitheatres, palaces,

Churches and equestrian statues, fallen, broken or soiled.

The mind possesses and is possessed by all the ruins

Of every haunted, hunted generation’s celebration.

“Call us what you will: we are made such by love.”

We are such studs as dreams are made on, and

Our little lives are ruled by the gods, by Pan,

Piping of all, seeking to grasp or grasping

All of the grapes; and by the bow-and-arrow god,

Cupid, piercing the heart through, suddenly and forever.

Dusk we are, to dusk returning, after the burbing,

After the gold fall, the fallen ash, the bronze,

Scattered and rotten, after the white null statues which

Are winter, sleep, and nothingness: when

Will the houselights of the universe

Light up and blaze?

For it is not the sea

Which murmurs in a shell,

And it is not only heart, at harp o’clock,

It is the dread terror of the uncontrollable

Horses of the apocalypse, running in wild dread

Toward Arcturus—and returning as suddenly ...

THE FEAR AND DREAD OF THE MIND OF THE OTHERS

—The others were the despots of despair—

The river’s freshness sailed from unknown sources—

... They snickered giggled, laughed aloud at last,

They mocked and marveled at the statue which was

A caricature, as strained and stiff, and yet

A statue of self-love!—since self-love was

To them, truly my true love, how, then, was I a stillness of nervousness

So nervous a caricature: did they suppose

Self-love was unrequited, or betrayed?

They thought I had fallen in love with my own face,

And this belief became the night-like obstacle

To understanding all my unbroken suffering,

My studious self-regard, the pain of hope,

The torment of possibility:

How then could I have expected them to see me

As I saw myself, within my gaze, or see

That being thus seemed as a toad, a frog, a wen, a mole.

Knowing their certainty that I was only

A monument, a monster who had fallen in love

With himself alone, how could I have

Told them what was in me, within my heart, trembling and passionate

Within the labyrinth and caves of my mind, which is

Like every mind partly or wholly hidden from itself?

The words for what is in my heart and in my mind

Do not exist. But I must seek and search to find

Amid the vines and orchards of the vivid world of day

Approximate images, imaginary parallels

For what is my heart and dark within my mind:

Comparisons and mere metaphors: for all

Of them are substitutes, both counterfeit and vague:

They are, at most, deceptive resemblances,

False in their very likeness, like the sons

Who are alike and kin and more unlike and false

Because they seem the father’s very self: but each one is

—Although begotten by the same forbears—himself,

The unique self, each one is unique, like every other one,

And everything, older or younger, nevertheless

A passionate nonesuch who has before has been.

Do you hear, do you see? Do you understand me now, and how

The words for what is my heart do not exist?

THE RIVER WAS THE EMBLEM OF ALL BEAUTY: ALL

...

The river was the abundant belly of beauty itself

The river was the dream space where I walked,

The river was itself and yet it was—flowing and freshening—

A self anew, another self, or self renewed

At every tick of eternity, and by each glint of light

Mounting or sparkling, descending to shade and black

—Had I but told them my heart, told how it was

Taunted at noon and pacified at dusk, at starfall midnight

Strong in hope once more, ever in eagerness

Jumping like joy, would they have heard? How could they?

How, when what they knew was, like the grass,

Simple and certain, known through the truth of touch, another form and fountain of falsehood’s fecundity—

Gazing upon their faces as they gazed

Could they have seen my faces as whores who are

Holy and deified as priestesses of hope

—the sacred virgins of futurity—

Promising dear divinity precisely because

They were disfigured ducks who might become

And be, and ever beloved, white swans, noble and beautiful.

Could they have seen how my faces were

Bonfires of worship and vigil, blazes of adoration and hope

—Surely they would have laughed again, renewed their scorn,

Giggled and snickered, cruel. Surely have said

This is the puerile mania of the obsessed,

The living logic of the lunatic:

I was the statue of their merriment,

Dead and a death, Pharoah and monster forsaken and lost.

...

My faces were my apes: my apes became

Performers in the Sundays of their parks,

Buffoons or clowns in the farce or comedy

When they took pleasure in knowing that they were not like me.

...

I waited like obsession in solitude:

The sun’s white terror tore and roared at me,

The moonlight, almond white, at night,

Whether awake or sleeping, arrested me

And sang, softly, haunted, unlike the sun

But as the sun. Withheld from me or took away

Despair or peace, making me once more

With thought of what had never been before——

Delmore Schwartz, “Narcissus” from Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge. Copyright © 1967 by Delmore Schwartz. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation, www.wwnorton.com/nd/welcome.htm.

Source: Selected Poems (1938-1958): Summer Knowledge (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1967)

I used to go to the art museum in San Diego as a teenager and find a painting that had layers of meaning in it and sit on on the benches that was scattered throughout and just stare at it discovering the different things that were contained in it. Not every painting had it, of course.

The same would go for books and poems. the above poem definitely has many suggestions that one can discover for oneself that I am not going to attempt to put here. Poetry, great poetry must be tasted and relished, by the individual and all of us have different tastes. But it must be said there is so much in the above poem by Delmore Schwartz at least for me.

"They thought I had fallen in love with my own face"

Just that one line from the poem above flooded my mind with my own sense of its implication within the whole poem. The name of the poem is "Narcissus" and of course the line ties in with that. Is the poet a narcissist if he or she believes in their own poetry? In the muse that guides the pen over the paper? If the poet thumbs the nose at the non-poet who criticizes the work, is the poet necessarily a self-centered egotist? Personally, I don't think so.

This poem is an excellent defense of the poet, the writer and the artist who has developed a strong enough skin to withstand the arrows from bows of those who cannot create or see the magic of the world that exist. Poets are the seers and the gifted ones who can help the rest of us see what is there we cannot perceive, feel or comprehend. They are the guides on the trails of beauty and with their talents and skills we can almost catch a glimpse of the shimmering wonder they can penetrate into but we cannot without their help. Thank you Delmore Schwartz, where ever you are, for being that guide. You paid dearly for that vision.

I hear My World by Geneva Lorrain

From my window...

I hear
a owl somewhere
a woodpecker nearby
Canada geese honking as
they are fly over head

From my bed...

I hear
the clock's second hand ticking
the furnace kicking on and off
the small fridge humming, singing
the pages of my book turn
the pen move across a journal

The laptop on my lap...

I hear the beeping of it being turned on
the click of the change of programs
Twitter, Facebook, news, Google

I hear my world

The Apple Tree by GENEVA LORRAIN

The Apple Tree

echo of Eden
time long past
where we did not belong.
who is keeping a record
of all this?
do they even understand
you and me?

God waltzes in, beard unfrocked
except He didn't.
There was no apple tree there
It's in my garden
heavy with fruit.

Geneva Lorrain

The Lake
by GENEVA LORRAIN


There is comfort
in low fog
that hugs
the mountain sides.

There is peace
among the ripples
of the lake
that spread out on the water.

There is mystery
in the starless skies,
rain that is falling
on fertile ground.

And I fall asleep...

Forgotten by Geneva Lorrain

Forgotten
By GENEVA LORRAIN


Colorful paperclips lie at the bottom
of a drawer
unused
left over from a time, forgotten
when there was a plan.

Names lie on letters
at the bottom of a box
unread
left over from a time, forgotten
when there was a friendship.

Coins lie on the bottom
of the lake
covered with green
unspent, forgotten
left over from a swim.

Stones smoothed over
by wind and rain
unread
left over from a time, forgotten
when there was life.

William Carlos Williams

Between Walls

by William Carlos Williams

the back wings

of the

hospital where

nothing

will grow lie

cinders

in which shine

the broken

pieces of a green

bottle

William Carlos Williams and Geneva Lorrain

Blizzard
By WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down-

Winter Times
By GENEVA LORRAIN

Winter times:
skeletons reinstated
on the landscape
for another year,
gray skies, the default,
and many behind horizontal lines
yearn for azure climes
that exist only in cyberspace,
eyes close,
minds grind out the coffee beans
and television screens blare out fantasies
being watched on eyelids.

Geneva Lorrain

Don't Tell Me Too Much
BY GENEVA LORRAIN

Don't tell me that Spring is coming
or that things will change.
Show me the swelling on the bare limbs
of the pregnant trees.

My heart will not see it today
with the rain that is falling
on unsung blue violets
under the oak trees
nor the roses that have only
the thorns.

The old woman will walk alone
under skeletons waving in the winds,
gray and sullen stones will lie cold,
letters erased by age
and books will mold and become
unreadable.

There is a thin line on the horizon
and that is all I need.

Shel Silverstein

About the Bloath

By Shel Silverstein

In the undergrowth

There dwells the Bloath

Who feeds upon poets and tea.

Luckily I know this about him,

While he knows almost nothing of me.

Geneva Lorrain

She was just a child
BY GENEVA LORRAIN

She was just a child

then

sitting
standing
waiting
looking at the trees and mountains
trying to see her escape
and
what she should be...

Not there.

Why not?

Not there, my child. Not there.

She saw the hawks floating on wind currents
and looked at them so free.
She looked at their wings
and yearned to fly up into the air...

Not there.

Why not?

Not there, my child. Not there.

She watched the streams flow down,
its clear and crystal breath bubbled
and she looked for her truths within
so she could follow with the silver and golden trouts...

Not there.

Why not?

Not there, my child. Not there.



Mountains turn into deserts
deserts into oceans
youth into old age
life into death

Seek your place in
An alchemy of many worlds
with hymnals of energy that exists within.



That world will never fail you, child, never.

Dogen

The world? Moonlit
Drops shaken
From the crane's bill.

- Dogen
Zen Poems of China and Japan, p. 81
Translated by Lucien Stryk

Edward Hirsch

Early Sunday Morning
By EDWARD HIRSCH

I used to mock my father and his chums
for getting up early on Sunday morning
and drinking coffee at a local spot
but now I'm one of those chumps.

No one cares about my old humiliations
but they go dragging through my sleep
like a string of empty tin cans rattling
behind an abandoned car.

It's like this: just when you think
you have forgotten that red-haired girl
who left you stranded in a parking lot
forty years ago, you wake up

early enough to see her disappearing
around the corner of your dream
on someone's else's motorcycle
roaring onto the highway at sunrise.

And so now I'm sitting in a dimly lit
cafe full of early morning risers
where the windows are covered with soot
and the coffee is warm and bitter.

My theme for the day comes from a Edward Hopper painting called "Nighthawks". In the painting that was painted in 1942, people are drinking coffee at night or it could be in the early morning hours. It could have been someone thinking about a red-haired girl who left the coffee drinker 40 years before in a parking lot and roared away with someone on a motorcycle.

There is a sub-culture in the large cities that drink coffee in the 24 hour cafes or at least they used to. They certainly don't do it in the Starbucks of this world for no one can drink coffee and get free refills there. The cafe in the painting is one such place. I live in a town that does not have one of those places or if they do I am not aware of it. I don't live the kind of life I used to live back in my younger days. If I am not at home, I am at Starbucks or at the lake drinking my Starbucks coffee.

The sub-culture of those who drink the coffee in the cafes are men for the most part. I used to envy the easy way they could just walk into a place and order coffee and remain unmolested for hours, drinking their coffee and saying hello to the regulars. Women generally don't do that. If I go to a cafe, I end up writing in my journal because I never see another woman unless she is a waitress. I guess we have too much to do at home. I think men are at the cafes because they live alone at home or because they need some sort of break from who live with.

I see women meet for lunch and it is rare to see men to the same. It is a business lunch if they do. Men just have coffee to hang out. They hang out in bars although they don't do that all that much anymore or at least that is what I have been told. People are afraid of getting DUI's now. It's like having a club that one reads about in Sherlock Holmes stories. You go to the club for a smoke and a drink while you read the paper or talk with one's fellow members unless you are a member of the Dionysus Club. They have the rule of not talking. Oh yes, and no women. Sigh...

Geneva Lorrain

Lavender
by Geneva Lorrain

You found some lavender in a field of green
that stayed in your memory
as did the scents of that summer day
so long ago.
They were left over patches
that escaped from the neat rows
from the farmer's field.
You wondered if they would ever be harvested too.
Would they stay and live out their lives unmolested
or would they be gathered
by someone to be put into the kitchen
window of the house on the hill?
You tell me this ...
as you lay in your bed.
You look outside at the sheets of ice forming
over your window
and sigh.

The person in the bed is in his or her last illness. They are remembering the summer of their last years when they could see the colors of life and smell the seasons. The memories of the person in the last illness remembers life as the ice of death is slowly forming over the end of life.
The person is also wondering what will happen to the soul once it leaves. Will there be life afterwards? No one can tell until it happens. We all have to wait and see.

William Carlos Williams

Winter Trees
By WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.


I can look outside my window and see the skeletons of the trees as we all can who live in the Northern Hemisphere of Earth today. I live in Northern California where there are plenty of trees and where there were plenty of them where the poet lived and practiced medicine going on house calls in his large car. He would have seen them as he drove past and the people as himself attired for the cold wintry days. Those who were going to stay inside were inside and those who were going to do something outside had completed the preparations and there is an exclamation at the end of that line. I have known people who never went outside for an assortment of reasons such as the aged and the sick and those afraid of the cold and the reality of the seasons.

Williams' imagery is clear and simple as it describes a moon behind the bare branches of the trees as we have all seen the moon glide gently in the sky but only when it is behind the branches can we gauge the movement. When I lived in Southern California, I never saw bare branches and it was when I lived in Kansas that I first saw this and felt astonishment. I could actually see the moon move.

I was at the Whiskeytown Lake Park yesterday and noticed that there were small buds on the branches of the bare trees in the park where the leaves will be peeping out in a month or two. Leaves and buds don't come out at the same time everywhere in the world. I thought they did until I traveled around the world a bit.

The trees do seem to be sleeping waiting for the warmth of spring and the joys of summer. We, as humans, enjoy autumn because of the colors but it must be a sad time for the trees or maybe they are looking forward to the winter. They, unlike us, always wake up. When we go to sleep under them in the deep earth, we don't wake, not in this life.

I suppose if I have a favorite poet, it would have to be William Carlos Williams who as a doctor saw birth and death. Sometimes, he could help slow down the rate of death, but no one can stop it completely. He would have to know that. He would see life beginning and life ending and he saw the beauty of life everywhere. He would see tears and laughter. I love his poetry because it is full of layers of meaning. I don't know if he knew about zen, but his poetry has it.

Wishes for My Sons

Wishes For Sons
By Lucille Clifton

i wish them cramps.
i wish them a strange town
and the last tampon
I wish them no 7-11.

I wish them one week early
and wearing a white skirt.
I wish them one week late.

later i wish them hot flashes
and clots like you
wouldn't believe. let the
flashes come when they
meet someone special.
let the clots come
when they want to.

let them think they have accepted
arrogance in the universe,
then bring them to gynecologists
not unlike themselves.


Oh, to my sons. May you some day have the cramps I had when I birthed you and had to listen some son of a bitch tell me that having a child was like an exaggerated sexual organisms and that I would not remember the pain. Then during these huge wells of pain having to contend to the whimpering mass of psychic pain that was your father because I was not paying attention to him. One time, I reacted in anger and said one sentence to him and he never forgave me.

I moved to a strange town so your father could return to his job after he got out of the military. No thought was made to me and how lonely I was for my family and friends. It was expected that I would adjust. After all, my mother did it when she came to San Diego from Manchuria and no one gave her a thought on how she would miss her family who she never saw again.

May you two have the thrill of discovering that you are down to the last tampon in a full period and everywhere you look there is no store opened late for you to get more. You roll toilet paper and hope it does not leak through your pants and ruin your clothes. Then in desperation you go to your husband and ask him to go in the car and search for tampons from any open store and he is too embarrassed to do it. You get into the car without a license and do it yourself and hope you don't get caught or lost.

I wish they would experience being in junior high or high school and discovering that you are one week early or one week late and you are wearing a white skirt and the tell tale spot is there for the boys to make fun of you and they do. Your skirt is ruined. If you are late, you are worried that you might have started life and your life will be ruined because the father would not stop when you said no. Not rape because he was your boyfriend and you were making out in the back seat but still you would be the one to pay the price. The slow feeling of dread, the knowledge that all of life for you would be over.

Later, when all of the pain of raising you, going through the anger of you trying to be men by rebelling against one's mother and being like your father who is gone more times than he is there, I wish you those hot flashes that come unbidden when you are sitting at your desk trying to make a living and sweat starts to pour off of you. I hope you, my sons, go to the bathroom and experience the huge blood clots that fall on the floor and you have to scoop them up and flush them down. Even pads cannot absorb them now.

Or when you are at a special function and you meet someone you have been wanting to meet for so long and you start to sweat as if you have the plague. The other person looks like he can't wait to run out the door. Oh, yes I want you to experience that.

Then, my sons with all of your arrogance has to offer, I want you to be in a situation in which you are young, in a full pregnancy and needing help with the coming arrival of someone such as you and you are escorted into the presence of someone just like you who has no real idea what it is like to birth someone like himself.

You might think your mother is cruel, but I really wish all of the above would happen to you so you would know what it is like to have spent so many years being your mother and now that I am in my senior years to be treated as you two have been treating me. Yes, it would make me feel so much better.

Ed Meek

AT THE END
By Ed Meek

He was so old his bones seemed to swim in his skin.
and when I took his hand to feel his pulse
I felt myself drawn in. It was as faint
as the steps of a child
padding across the floor in slippers,
and yet he was smiling.
I could almost hear a river
running beneath his breath.
The water clear and cold and deep.
He was ready and willing to wade in.

I wish I wrote this poem. I had a aunt who was dying, and it was exactly as this poem described it, every word as the poet put down. When I have been around relatives who were ready to go, it is like so. She was so afraid for so long. She was afraid that death would be cold and uninviting and empty. Then towards the end, she was willing. Many are. I hope I am. The imagery so clear and concise, "as faint as the steps of a child padding across the floor in slippers..."Yes, it was like that, exactly like that.

Wu Men

The Great Way
By Wu Men

(No translator listed)

The Great Way has no gate;
there are a thousand paths to it.
If you pass through the barrier,
you walk the universe alone.


Should there be a reader you wants to know the truth about the above poem, you won't get it here. It is located within you. Each of us knows the Way. The poem says "a thousand paths" but I suspect there are many more as there are grains on all of the beaches of the universe and all are valid. Push through and you do walk alone.

There has been many times that I knew the truth about something but could not put it in words. I used to think that English just did not have the right words and that may be true. It may be that words cannot contain it, cannot surround it with meaning enough to describe it. It is like the definition of "Zen" and the "Tao". It cannot be defined but I know what it is. Here, within...

It is so easy but so hard. It is like the nothingness of meditation. I have experienced it on very rare occasions. It is unlike anything I have ever felt. It took so many years of training to obtain those few times. It was worth it. I still remember. Pressing the foot beyond the barrier is easy to do but not many do it. It is the attachments that bind one to this side and the unwillingness to give them up. Still, I remember.

Richard Eberhart

The Eclipse
By Richard Eberhart

I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As man's hope of light in the face of darkness.


I did not know about Richard Eberhart before. He lived from April 5, 1904 to June 9, 2005. He had helped bring attention to the Beat Poets by writing about them in the New York Times in 1956. What drew me to this poem was the recent eclipse. It was an experience that I did not see directly since I was here in rain-bound Northern California but it was echoed on Twitter. The pictures were fantastic.

Years ago, I remember sitting in an apartment complex watching a partial eclipse and the slow trail of the Comet Hale-Bopp in another part of the sky. I think it was one of the most exciting cosmic event I ever saw. There were a bunch of us residents all sitting in beach chairs gazing up at the black sky and feeling amazed. I felt as if I was part of the human experience, a feeling of togetherness that I rarely feel, and it had to be something that was happening in space that induced that feeling in me. It was similar to what was happening when the pictures and information went out on Twitter except I was smug in my bed looking out at the rain but seeing the sun and moon on my computer screen.

I don't know about "man's hope of light in the face of darkness" for I felt the connection to humankind. I felt the proximity of standing shoulder to shoulder to people and all of us looking out from our small planet into the dark and cold universe at something that we had no control over. Many of us stopped running around, carrying our packages and children, and just looked out in one direction at the cosmic event in amazement. I wonder in wars if soldiers stop fighting and killing to look at it as well.

This last time it happened, it was on the day of Winter Solstice. The top of the planet was tilted away from the sun. I will not be around when it happens again, not in this life, not in this identity. Just think, it is summer in Australia. They are not standing in the cold. Well, I have gone too far with this poem. I wonder when this happens on the next Winter Solstice will there be a twitter and what form will it be? Or would Global Warming fried us all up by then?And on it goes....

Sara Teasdale

The Crystal Gazer
By Sara Teasdale

I shall gather myself into my self again,
I shall take my scattered selves and make them one,
I shall fuse them into a polished crystal ball
where I can see the moon and the flashing sun,
I shall sit like a sibyl, hour after hour intend,
Watching the future come and the present go -
And the little shifting pictures of people rushing
In tiny self-importance to and fro.

I can understand the scattered selves and the desire to see them gathered into one. I had that wish for a long time until it was accomplished, so that I could see the world as one person. I am not writing this to say that was the poet's meaning here is the same. I don't know. The meaning can be anything the reader wants it to be. I know that I had the vision of watching the world go around me thinking that everyone was running around in their smug little worlds little knowing the Hellfire that I was in. That was then and not now.

One time, I connected with a man who I knew in junior high school and high school and he told me about many of the people that I identified as those smug well-adjusted people. It was one of those websites where you could re-connect with those you knew in high school. He had paid his dues to the site and was connecting with those he remembered. He told me that many of them were not so happy. One woman who was a straight A student who I thought would be a very successful intellectual somewhere had committed suicide shortly after high school graduation. Another young man who I was not surprised had done the same. I remember talking to her. She had taken an interest in me, but I was sure it was not real and ignored her. Others he told me about had been going through similar situations. I guess I was egotistical enough to think I was the only one. He thought I was well adjusted. I had to laugh.

Poets have the gift to re-connect us with our forgotten selves because they are sensitive to the forces that tear our lives apart and cause us so much grief except they can write about it. I suffered in silence. I wrote in my journal but not in any great amount of honestly. I was trying so hard to change things and thought no one else was going through what I was. I now know that wasn't true.

Ikkyu

My Hovel
Bu Ikkyu
Translated by John Stevens

The world before my eyes is wan and wasted, just like me.
The earth is decrepit, the sky stormy, all the grass withered.
No spring breeze even at this late date.
Just winter clouds swallowing up my tiny reed hut.

I remember when I was nine years old. I look in the mirror and see some old lady staring back at me, wan and wasted, hair gray. Who in the hell is that? My skin sags. I could lose weight more but can't lose the years. The woman is wearing glasses. How did that happen? I never thought it would happen to me. Still, it is not so bad. It could be worse.

I look outside my one room and the leaves are off the trees. The grass is withered and there is no breezes and not even a cloud. I live in my small room as I lived in my small apartment in Korea. I have privacy that way. I can see sycamore seeds hanging onto the branches of he trees. They are not giving up for rebirth, not just yet. My back aches as I stand looking outside. There are no birds, no sounds, no children, no one walking on the street. It used to be different when there wasn't non-stop televisions, computers and darken rooms when people sat on couches watching dvds, earphones on heads; but that was centuries ago. Radios are silent. Books stay closed. Do they touch?

Old huts disappear, old houses fall down, lakes flood towns, mountains are leveled for gravel and bombs create new lakes and the oceans grow larger as the ice shrink. Everything changes and the stones multiply until they become buildings.

I was sad in the earlier years but not now. Gray will turn into white and then grass as it does for everyone if we are lucky.

William Shakespeare

Sonnet CXLIV:Two loves I have of comfort and despair
By William Shakespeare

Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell, my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride.
And, whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell,
But being both from me both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell.
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.

It has been said many times by many people everyone desires to be happy. Every time I see this I wonder the truth of it. There has been too many instances where people have worked very hard at being unhappy and uncomfortable that I have wondered about the so-called truth of that saying.

Another saying that seems to be related to that of people wanting to be happy is the ones in which people blame all sorts of other people other than themselves for their unhappiness and discomfort such as the sonnet above. Some men would say that everything would be so perfect if it wasn't for women tempting them away from God. Men have been blaming women for just about everything since the beginning of human time; and to be fair the blame has been returned. It's just men are free enough to write about it. Women just grumble about it in the pot boiling on the stove or the wash they are pounding on the riverbank.

I know that I am no different. It is so much easier to blame someone for my unhappiness, for my dysfunctional childhood, for my bad habits, for just about everything. And in truth I did have some very bad parents who would probably be arrested these days. I know of a middle aged man who still blames his mother for everything that goes wrong in his life. What a waste. It's my life now and I am responsible for it now. I know of a woman who is angry at her brother for raping her as a child. She should be angry and I am not dismissing her claims that the act did have damages. Its just the man is dead now and she needs to start her healing and get on with her life now. She can't keep blaming him for her life now. If she remains attached to a dead man, her life can't begin.

Many men blame women for their sexual desires so they make the women they have control over wear veils and long dresses. That does not remove their sexual desires. They are still angry at them for having those feelings which are natural extensions of their humanity. They penalized their family members for their own desires. Its a cycle that isn't broken.

Poetry is a wonderful thing in which we express what we feel, hope and want. Few of us have the talent and ability of a William Shakespeare but we can read him and see that with all of his expertise, he has the same problems we all have and need to address some attention to the inner self a bit more and stop blaming people outside of himself for what was inside of him. Considering the cause of his death at a fairly young age, it was certainly understandable. He died of syphilis at the age of 52.

Mark Twain

WARM SUMMER SUN
By Mark Twain

Warm summer sun,
Show kindly here,

Warm southern wind,
Blow softly here.

Green sod above,
Lie light, lie light.

Good night, dear heart,
Good night, good night.


For a change, the sun is out today. It is 45 degrees F. and at the beginning of January. The warm summer wind is not here but I remember it. I remember how it blew in the faces of us kids so many years ago and I lived in San Diego and it was summer all of the time. I took so many things for granted then, but not this poet. Those friends that I knew in those days are in the cemetery now as the memories he was thinking about. I want the wind to blow softly for them too.

Death is the uninvited guest and it was certainly for me too as it was for Mark Twain who lost his wife and daughter. I lost my childhood playmates. They died so young in traffic accidents, some killed by loved ones, some by illness and then I have to think of myself as the poet did, no doubt. Soon he would be there too which is where he is now. I will be gone too. Life is impermanent. We love them and miss them and know we will join them.

There are some Jehovah Witnesses that come to my door ever so often with fairy tales of a life sometime in the future where the devil dies and there is no more death. I wonder if they can visualize what life can be without death. I know I can't. Death is a part of life as much as the devil is a part of a god. It is yang and yin. Still, it is interesting to think about. I miss my childhood friends and our lost innocence as much as the times we had as children. Good night, good night dear friends.