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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Monthly Archives: April 2014

“At Sixteen” by S.K. Rolle

30 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in African American

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

At Sixteen

I was sixteen
Kind of Blue
A lot Blue
Blood thin
Body weak
Missing Home
Mad at whites

I heard Miles
Away from Home
Birdland was after Bird
I didn’t know Bird
I just met Miles
But I didn’t know Bird
I knew Diddley
But I didn’t know Bird
So I really didn’t know Diddley

Take Five took me
Like a tributary
Epiphanic proportions
Existential longings
But I didn’t know
I should have been
On the A-train
Instead of a slow boat
From Brooklyn
It took years
To get to Birdland

Put it on the Cross

25 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Religious

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

Cross1

Hard times, coming to your town,
loose paraphrases of rap on your map
mazes, something dawns in me the
moment I let go the hurt—

Put it on the cross.

“Bear yours” Jesus said, your plans
for revenge dead, this is what was
said, dead, red rivers to reasons and gold
Seasons past cold, the road is easy up
ahead—season your loss with a daily
Win—

Put it on the cross.

Savour life, write in English
your Spanish strife!! God help us,
at that point when others grudge, they
remember bad things, times in past
where no one was at their best, then
keep score, put you on a black
list—seem to write it on your chest;

Put it on the cross.

Easter Poem

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Easter

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Forgiveness, Joy, Love, Peace

Roof Today

If you have your roof today—
Warmth, love enough, a place to sleep,
to sleep perchance to dream:

Cherish and say thanks.
Help others, you’re free to do so,
you are set, find someone without
their roof… give them Dodger
tickets, hope—

Thought a rainbow, fresh peace is sun
after the rain, clouds dispersing in
that cool crisp sting of clear.

Rain mists too, slows down, go
to Passage Ways in Pasadena they’ll
give you a poncho. I know because
I used to go, I lived without a roof,
sober but homeless,

Having discarded all that goes
with fancy private schools and
country clubs. If I a writer wanted
to be, how could I write from BMW’s
and souped up SUV’s? I had to
drop, write from the streets, only
taking enough of Mom and Dad’s
money to avoid being an SVU suspect
on TV.

Pee-yew!! Who knew? You knever
know when you start a rhyme whether
it will come back in books and shine.

And when you let the street be you?

Curious we all are to know how “I’d
do out there.” Thank God Mom and Dad
care. Not enough to have given me
a bunk they called me out for a punk
but we take what we can get,

And in this find what we can find,
growing, loving, singing in rain

as clouds close to pray for more rain.

The sun, it breaks, the clouds—

try to relate, this is me
dealing with tough neighbors
on Easter Break grateful for a roof
overhead, and all the pain
endured from Jesus to Mom to make
my life more than a goof

One for Beautiful, Inspirational Petra Nemcova:

20 Sunday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Tribute

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace, Petra Nemcova

Petra

You wanna be a model? Model
after this:

Work hard, come up from humble
origins and be willing.

Being tall can help, I won’t lie
but Petra almost died.

She did not perish, she held on,
she held on tight to a tree
all night, survived a great and
horrible storm, the tsunami wrecking
turning life upside down.

Broken bones, a pelvis shattered,
clothes torn and gone, a fiancé
gone, life upside down!

But she hung on, she held on to
be a model, to be alive, to show
others how to live, to give back—

To LIVE!!!

In case you are ever down, there are
lots of recourses, things to do, to
turn your life back around—get things
like after a horrible storm, right side up…

Make one of them Petra, the thought of
Petra fighting right, correct against wrong
she would not die, because of the tree
that God gave, and the earnest love she
had and has for life.

Think of Petra

In Memory of Stan Sheinkopf, PhD (1931-2014) — A Great English Teacher

19 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in dedication

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

The Route

Picked from poor, the gift
is within like a statue in stone
a figure inside, unique and capable—

We wander head down until lifted.

English teachers come, English teachers go
And the best of them stay past
going, inspiring even the worst
to be their best, their passion transferred
making you dream things

you thought only others capable
of dreaming.

Sports and beer could have been
all, if not for such a teacher, the
dark of the classroom brightened,
some school room
after lunch so eager to be free,
and then the lunch bell rings, time
to roll, at least with Dr. Sheinkopf
we’d have some fun.

Charge, let’s get it going, drive the
man toward his blackboard,
“Make him draw!” Get him
excited, make him draw
Raskolnikov’s mind in the turmoil
of guilt, holy cow, point it out,
passages to stay with us
instilling belief we could read and write.

“Anything more than the truth would
have seemed too weak” to his earnest love
that kept youth in lines, don’t tell him
lies, did you do the reading?

You get what you put in, your
life is yours, in English class
it’s up to you, but count on one
thing from Stan S., the Doc:

Passion, joy, knowledge is yours
with effort go beyond the words
and feel.

Make it a habit and years later,
on the route, you may find in your
inner poem peace of mind,
mine as we celebrate Stan’s life
that a great spirit transferred, grows
and lives on.

We owe it now to look down
on the next kid looking down,
lift another statue out of rock,
animate pages with the spirit
of the Doc.

Stan S.

February 7th, 1995

11 Friday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Spiritual Awakening

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace, Truth

The scales lifted, the eyes clear.

Honesty, finally the truth at
twenty-two given with a tear.

“I’ve never had a girlfriend”
coaxed when the moment was right,
I let down my guards to finally
see the light.

You can’t be helped ‘til you ask
for it. You can’t ask ‘til safe,
I looked left and right before I
truth supplied and saw that it was all
right—I came out!!!

I was unhappy, even though I had
friends after friends coming to my
bar-b-que party.

I was empty even though the trophies
and plaques on walls increased
and filled—attempted to fill, this would
have to be enough!

Spiritual Awakening—LORD, have me!
Done hiding it was safe to bloom,
and now, no more garden parties,

I separate the happy with the gloom
and see the world in poems—

I did not ask for permission and leave
another world behind: self-doubt, beer,
hollering around death, we put up
our hands at fear.

Trapped no more at Betty Ford
the 7th of February a.d. ‘95
ready to turn the boat around…

Trapped no more you want more
and more so ditch tomorrow for today.

They criticize you and analyze you
as you smile and accept today

By Bill Watkins:

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Alcoholism

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Joy, Love, Peace

Spirit without Alcohol

I never…

I never heard the words said
to me in earnest tones:

This is my first time, too.

Enhancing brain cells, not killing
them was never in my mind,
mine letting in too many things,
the filter of Mom or Dad, Christianity
faulty and clogged, I had to replace
it at twenty-two when cornered in
A.A. I had to tell the truth.

I never gave up in all those hospitals,
one checking me in for “Self-doubt,”
I wrote it down and learned they
were not my friends, those paid a
lot of money to with me time spend.

I wrote Longfellow on the walls,
perhaps the first life coach.

I never saw certain friends again,
but hope to see them after fences
mend, the magic of the rhyme
ahead of me, games long and
heading toward darkness without
lights, but I charge on, charge on,
the game not over,

It’s where you finish not where you
start that will determine whether peace
of mind is mine and heaven revin’.

I never knew a bloke to choose the
baggage to tote down or up life’s golden
mazy lane. We are dealt cards to sort
out loud, some gifts we keep close
to the vest to make sure it’s safe to
share, we’re at our best.

We look left and right as the poet says,
standing up—

This is exciting, this sober life!!

One day at a time was all we ever
had. We never lived in others,
awareness is all, acceptance second
base, third to act and home the
dream fulfilled, the gay-meaning-
happy at-bat leaving you content
as you fade saying thanks before
the eyes close at night.

“To overcome,” is never the pair
of words you’d consider while adapting
with bad habits, surviving.

Then you are alone and must overcome
the bad habits you needed to be
safe years ago. Let go, rise up!!

Spirit without alcohol, the mall
with the girlfriend you never had…

Think on, think deep: God help
me be patient as I wake, to go
softly back to mend, advance, love
and never be mad

“Portrait of David” by J.F. Hendry

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Scottish

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

J.F. Hendry, Joy, Love, Peace, Poem, Poetry, Scottish, Scottish Poetry

Out of a lightning void who clutched blue rivers
Spins a shell-flower head on sea-screened floors.
An echo coils an ear in Fingal’s Cave
Along whose flickering shores he plucked his eyes
And hirples lighthouse space down pebbled chin.

His frowning knuckles doubling are the rainbow
Clenching fists of cloudy Scottish thunder.
Ribs, once wrecked ships sunk on a broken beach,
Now swell a chest of treasure in screw sand, or
Blast a southron air with Highland spleen.

Sabre-toothed, the tiger Hebrides thrust
And parry sea.  The sleeping lipline pins
On space awakened purpose, is a mastodon.
A gnarled kneecap, or an elm down a glen,
Forge spring-knots for the kilted saunterers.

Out of the dark-green jar who grasped light arching,
Hoards electric sun in branching arms.
The mottled trunk-one, wrenched from silver birch,
Remembers brindling Cluny in a Braemar storm,
Fire-talk, venison, we happy winterers.

cave1

“Inverbeg” by J.F. Hendry

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Scottish

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

J.F. Hendry, Joy, Love, Peace, Poetry, Scotland, Scottish Poetry

Sliced with shade and scarred with snow
A mountain breaks like Mosaic rock
And through the lilt of mist there flow
Restless rivers of pebble, pocked
And speckled, where moss and the centuries grow.

Tree, married to cloud as stem is to feather,
Branches and straddles the convex of sky
Death is aflame in the bracken where heather
Rears semaphore smoke into high
Blue messenger fire through soundless weather.

Below, like bees, the ivies swarm,
Cast in leaping veins, their trunk, a crippled
Animal of thighs pounced from loch-water, storms
The slated shores of the past into ripples
Interpreting man’s fretted cuneiform.

loch1

“Ardlogie, Christmas Eve, 1939” by Douglas Young:

08 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Bill Watkins in Nature, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Scottish, Winter

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Douglas Young, Joy, Love, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Scottish

winter flowers2

The mild midwinter evening ebbs, leaving
wreckage of gold and purple on the hill.
The full round moon sails up from eastward, cleaving
dim veils of star-split cloud, tenuous and still.

Winter has jewels yet, leaf, flower, and berry,
berberis, holly, crab, and many more;
wych-hazels’ golden straps, a starry cherry,
primroses, heaths, a purple hellebore.

There’s a viburnum by the porch, some vagrant
botanist found in Western Yunnan.
It’s flowering now, exquisitely fragrant,
waxy white umbels, scent of marzipan.

Moon-white the naked beeches tower, wreathing
lichened limbs above the laurel glooms;
beyond the lawn a ground-air faintly breathing
stirs the white torches of the pampas plumes.

About me as I walk an odour lingers
of cypress logs I sawed; the pungent scent
clings in my tweeds, and when I raise my fingers
I get the resinous smell, and am content.

Cock-pheasants from the neighbouring pinewood chortle,
a blackbird whistles from the red-twigged lime.
There’s enough pleasure here for any mortal
with eyes, ears, nose, this mild midwinter-time.

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