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Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

~ Words For You, Just Ask

Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet

Category Archives: Life

Thanks, Grandpa

13 Friday Dec 2019

Posted by Bill Watkins in Cycle of Life, Eternity, Life, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Soul

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Aging, Cycle of Life, Eternal Life, Inspirational, Inspire, Joy, Life, Love, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Spirituality

Life Cycle1

What are the last words you
want to hear?

Thanks, Grandpa.

What is better than a doctor’s
room, full of drugs?

Thanks, Grandpa.

Letting go does not have to be
a horror or bad—

Thanks, Grandpa!

Or if you are just a dad, that’s
okay, too!

We live our lives honestly, and
our rewards, too, will be true.

Jump on board the cycle, the
pure life is ours one day at a
time; flush out fear with a higher
power, pray often, turn it over,

Love completely and without
guards, deny the fear that locks
us into someone else’s version
of life and be you.

The true life still goes to heaven,
work and wait for it, love it,
and never fear the body’s
expiration date not troubling in
any single way to the soaring soul.

Living free of fear is the goal

Life

17 Friday Aug 2018

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

God, Joy, Life, Love, Peace, Poetry

It hits you all at once, don’t be late.
Study, give what you can, never forget
to smell the flower, love the first
girl God gives you to love.  Tell her
how you feel today, if rejected or
hurt—take it to the grave, or, better
yet:

Pray.

Powerless.  Wordless.  Heaven an open
gate to the ones who try hard, Peace
of mind for the astute.

We are nothing until the moment calls
our name; step up.

Love her forever: the first girl, remember
her?  Don’t look on, look for more, she’s
enough and enough is as Mary Poppins
proposed, “as good as a feast.”

Higher Powers are good; supplicate to one
now, call it, him, her what you will, just
know humbly that you are not It.

Love the first girl, did I say?

Am I talking to the boy or his beloved,
is this reaching you today?

Love the first one, and never mind the
doubters and Puritanical wind that lies,
says you gotta have X, Y, Z before love.

You gotta be such and such Age before
you love?  Before you vote?  Before you
matter?

How Puritan American of you to fall
for the lie that children are second to
adults.  True the Native American life
touted the elder, but Jesus rightly came
along, pointed to the younger.

Solomon and Malachi talking of “Wives
of your youth,” while the priest
masturbates alone or with the altar boy,
bringing us full circle to our needs and
wants.

Follow your heart.

Love the first girl; the first one.  For me
her name was Anne, and I did not properly
respond.

My favorite time and person, to see her
meaning so much, but was I bedeviled
having already had alcohol on Dad’s lap?

Bedeviled!

Liquid courage?

C2H5OH, ethyl not Lucy I’m home the
day I decide Not to drink a flammable
liquid, never mind what Jesus said.

The Commandments talk of One God, not
many:

like College, what a joke!

American Politics, take another toke!  Or
think on Samuel’s curse, the thought when
Jews rolled with God as their direct king!

Aborigine the same thing!  Natives with their
life’s circle, the elders, wise as children
defending their culture under, over and around
the pollution of Columbus’ own masturbation,
the lies mounting with God climbing, calling
himself “Naked Horse” because he or she
will not be shackled.

African people hurting themselves, feeding the
insanity by handing over their brother to
the white master.

Forty acres and a mule similar to “Blacks
for Trump,” there are plenty of things
to say to fulfill the curse.  Samuel looking
down with me, rooting for you all to do
what this poet did:

Declare God king again, ignore politics at
a point, beat my chest and consider the
brave warrior inside me because I, too,
am native American.

God help us to remember our walk
barefooted on the ground, stars above,
the European obsession with buildings,
noise, weapons and mankind.

We share this land with little things, big,
and in between, totally lonely unless
we see we were all painted with the same
brush, don’t make a fuss, Heart yours, LORD,

the Hebrew walk in and out of the Egyptian
jungle of chains and pain, God the good
orderly direction like the rainbow after
rain, the song of the hour sung and won
because someone stepped up to the computer
at the right time, allowed God to speak through
a poem and set Life down for the next
generation, this one lost to the police
helicopter and shooting for the torso, calling
it defense.

The second amendment a perversion while
the sixth commandment still says “Yes.”

No.  Don’t kill.  Not anyone.  Not ever.

***
Life the dream we can be as the road
less travelled perhaps in yellow gold covered
with devil’s asphalt send the chosen (you
can also choose) slowly but surely to
heaven.

Those killing, hurting or acting out that which
is acted out without parents or guides:

Forgive them, hold them, and get them on
the path before you forget your role to
love the first woman God gives you forever.

I Find it Fair

18 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by Bill Watkins in Gratitude, Life, Overcoming, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

John Travolta, Joy, Kelly Preston, Love, Peace, Poem, Poetry

Life is sweet, no matter
what a pessimist may say,
over the rocks, poor me over
a drink of scotch on the back
of a bad bender on a perceived
bad day.

God will overcome, if we cannot,
and if “God” is a four letter
word to you—

re-count, there’s three, and
look the word up in your
nearest dictionary.

God bless us to smile and take
it in; when we get hurt to turn
the other cheek, but hope
we don’t get hit again—

this thing is lighting me up!

Life can be everything we ever
dreamed of, perfect!

Wet in sun makes the flower
grow, apples know, avocado
in Spring needing sunshine to
dream,

this cycle repeated, the over and
over game of batting eyelashes,

sporting moves, jumping fences
to land in park benches, drawing
hearts in the sky, so we can be
the coolest guy!

“Tell me more, tell me more,
did you get very far?”

Not until I stopped dying, stopped
drinking flammable liquid long
enough to—yeah—look it up
on Google—

It’s flammable!

So why…

put it inside?  Me?

Huh?

It’s fair, this life, between the
pipes, one two three, Jam-
Master Jay Run DMC.

Hope to live, flip death with
a smile that lasts forever in the
eyes of the young ones who
long past you survive.

They take a peace of us,
a song we sung, so sing it loud
for the band’s begun, God is
what God does, and so far so
good we reap what we sow,

the atheists know, it’s a wordfest
doing our best, Kelly Preston
helped me write this—

Johnny Travolta disco danced
a smile on my chest, a cross
that’s blessed, a total to the
equation that means two plus
two does not always equal four;

it depends what you’re adding,
Love the final ingredient to any
good cooking.

Don’t forget to thank the wind
for blowing your leaves around, Dad—
reminds us we’re moving and that
Seasons happen, the pain changes
to rain changes to the colored
‘bow, snow to skis to Riddick Bowe.

Life is a fair fiddle, it plays
the notes you command it to play,
unless the storm comes in,
pretends to ruin your day.

The Zen master says “We’ll see,”
so listen, wait, allow the Earth
to move past your current pain,
without it no joy at overcoming,

no rainbows, no flowers, no trees,
no peace without war, nothing.

Which is… everything.

Borges turns again, we’re free.

I Like Life

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Bill Watkins in Life, Nature, Peace, Poem, Poems, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Recovery

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Gratitude, Joy, Life, Love, Peace, Poetry, Recovery, Sobriety

Just as it is.

It needs not our sour rot,
the grape is better than the
wine—a reason they call war
trophies spoils,

the disease of more plundering
the till that is perfect as is,
Lao Tzu’s quiet, uncarved block.

I like Life!

Sunshines and rays against the
mist making ready rainbows of
our worst rains and pains…

I like life!

Just as it was; God, Higher Power
the mantra hated by an atheist,
his or her right but look not to
altered states—

Put up a fight!!

Do not say good bye until true
fatigue sets in, the eyes close
in a smile—

Good night!

I like life, citizens of Rome, nothing’s
wrong until we think too much,
adult games forgetting that philosophy
that to get to heaven (peace of mind)
one must be like a child.

I like life—

Calm in the middle of strife.

The worse thing that can happen
often out of our control, ask
the powers above for Wisdom,
be like King Solomon and grow
very old!

Not 100 years like today, but
hearken back to the Old Jews’
day.

“He was 946 years old, and was
gathered to his people.”

I like life!

Sunny, rainy, put up a fight!  Sing
song, God, good, no?

Rain.  Sunshine.

Bow.  Rainbow?  Fine—the end?

no.  Beginning?

Always

The Great Mistake

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by Bill Watkins in Life, Love, Native America, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Black Hawk

I think that wherever the Great Spirit places his people,
they ought to be satisfied to remain, and thankful for
what He has given them, and not drive others from the
country He has given them because it happens to be
better than theirs!
—Black Hawk

We shoved off.  White, tanned
by sun, a coastal breeze beckoning,
calling.

Religious persecution was another
thing.

Freedom.  Freedom to believe
and worship.

Freedom to advance past a certain
station, to be socially mobile.

Some just wanted to escape, some
forced out, some came in shackles.

A long trip across a tough ocean in at
first small vessels was so dangerous,

That I think by the time the survivors
made it to the shore of Virginia or Carolina
or Massachusetts:

There was a pride.  Perhaps by then a damning
one that made the folks
Blind.

Folks who saw a land, but failed
to truly see the Greatness of the People
who already lived there.

Great as the waterfalls, green and splendor
of any Eastern coast was a people to
match the hills and valleys of the land.

I can only say “sorry,” and plan
my return trip back across the sea to
Wales.

May all white eyes follow me who
can, and reset.  Let the native peoples
make their land great again.

Wipe out the white man’s roads, cement
and trash.

Its guns, sirens and helicopters.

Welcome back the coyote, wolves, the
deer and birdsong, decorate again the
country with silence.

A peace in mist.

I dream to make Wales Great like
America was before we called it
“America.”  It had an indigenous
name, and was doing fine.

We thought only of ourselves.

We failed to see them.

The Great Mistake.  Someone told me
recently that it “just isn’t practical
to go back, to do anything about our
errors.”

I disagree.  The only thing to do when
you make grave mistakes is to go back,
make amends.  Fix the mess.

And the “Metro,” half-dead with
zombies and trash: will die.

The corruption in suits will parish.

And the land will thrive, the Great Spirit
will soar again:

Me in Wales—

My gift to God, to leave this land and people
alone.

Just one white man gone.  My amends.

I’m sorry.

I Am

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by Bill Watkins in Life, Love, Poem, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

God, Peace, Serenity

Words fail.

Ask Borges. Or Shakespeare,
where a rose by any other name
would smell as sweet, Borges a writer
and philosopher who criticized
words as fictions.

We journey to childhood, advancing
this or that, trying to help having
experienced something.

We transfer what we know and experience
to others, try to help, use words—

Whatever we can to improve a world
that according to Lao Tzu:

cannot be improved.

Stop. Go. Love. Hate. Be you,
be truth. Be human, be all things
under the sun or rain to bend or
move with pain—

Be that rainbow after the rain, be the
sunshine filtering through Spring,
a bead of sweat from a good game.

Be alive.

Be dead, where sleep takes us away
hopefully when content with waking
life—we
did enough to feel peace of mind.

The “Devil” is a word, for me conjuring
total perfect evil, temptation, “sin” bringing
more words into a poem which celebrates
the absence of nothing, the need to need—

words failing time and again to say anything
the next generation can use, but still
they use us.

Trapped in words and freed by thought
we smile and return to innocence—if
for only a moment, because the complex
rhythm of words so juxtaposed on paper
or on stage—spoken against wind
through ears ring.

And the pulse shortens.

And we return to our child, the
Native American her home with
God and Nature, the Great Spirit
awakening when we decide to walk
instead of fly.

When we pray on grounds instead of
burning fuel from above.

When we accept the slow pace, as the
real pace, and see that we cannot
enjoy this thing if going too fast,
so hear a Jack Johnson record, slow
down everybody, dilly-dally with some
words, and
let’s pretend.

Life Changer

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Bill Watkins in Life, Sports

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK, Joy, Justice, Lack of Justice, LBJ, Love, Peace, PTSD

Sports Anonymous

Weird waking up from apparent truth.

You wake to a new you, the one that failed
a wreck on the floor.

Step on him and walk away now—

Truth, justice, the American way,
no system above corruption we had
a coup too in 1963 not two, and you?

You told me sports was fun, you watched
it on TV, signed me up, it’s what was done;
be a kid, mess around, get a summer job,
go to school, college then you’re set.

I’m forty-two and not set yet.

Fight a war and “win,” where should
I start with that, I can’t hardly begin—

Peace is not a riddle; it’s written all over
the U.N. charter, beginning end and middle.

It’s easy except the Devil’s will to muck up
perfect, alter flows until who knows?

Even you can be an enemy of the state. Or
a new one create? When this one doesn’t
serve, retire to the peace in your mind
called peace of mind, knowing you did
your best take that John Wooden poster
out of your chest, fall down and get up again,
all heart and no play, makes Jack a healthy
president until they take him away…

Killed in the middle of the day. Blood and
wives, new president sworn in that red pool,
smiling and winking at his congressman friend,
LBJ—I guess he’s got a library too,

We have plenty of money to kill the enemies,
That Devil at work, convincing the shadow it’s you.

I leave and I live, have walked away from two
addictions: Sports and alcohol.

The game I played, the goals I scored, all at
the expense of the homeless man’s lack
of sleep, Jacqueline Kennedy’s PTSD,
we should have been her comfort and arrested
the men responsible for death and pain.

Instead we sent Dulles to manipulate results
away from Truth to Oswald the St. Patty’s Day
of Patsies, and we all stood stupefied,

Because if like me you had family money?

You went to college, played sports, kept
your grades up, and thanked God
for National Security.

And the U.N., shining blue in the night,
seeks our day, the light in us to shine.

Give up the sport, the fight, the clinking
golden false delight, Lord Dewar out of
sight!!

And Try. Just try…

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