07 Thursday Feb 2019
06 Wednesday Feb 2019
Posted in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry
The answers cosmic to questions
tragic, mystical creation yielding
to childlike intuition.
Is love in the brain?
Heart to heart, the toddler
finds the sandbox and a parent
will remark: look how he plays,
does he know he’s loved?
Does he give and receive with
grace, does he say “thank you,”
Does he have the courage to love?
To be himself? To give his gifts?
What if he is rejected?
***
We have no power to overcome well
the hurt you feel when your dreams
and feelings expressed get waved off
or denied.
God bless us to a spiritual space,
pass along to our kids not only the
self-confidence to be true;
but the wisdom to keep a Higher Power
there for our appeals in failure.
The higher, mystical truth outside
the lines on structured drawings,
the native Great Spirit—the Hebrew
LORD, Allah, Muhammad and Jesus,
their words, those who raise hands
and praise—
Matoax and her blessings saving a
new white race, the scar of murder
on their face, all forgiven when we ask
for help—
accept her furs, the earth a spaceship
with room for all views, check your
energy, check in prayer every detail.
Are you with Faith or Fear? How do
we reside where the questions stop,
in peace of mind?
Is love in the brain becomes question
no more on the wind of Spirit, live
for it not her or him, fly with the eagles
and magic, love lost wives and beware
the snares that are mere human
hang-ups, grounding us as long as
resentment lasts.
Ask, receive, love, blast!
Give your song to God and wind
and the denied sandbox dream becomes
only a part of the dance David called
us to before slaying along with
Goliath every prayer-resisting fear.
Wake up, skip the rock and see the
smile on the wind for your life, the hope
the universe has for you being endless
as the pool and its rings in rainstorms.
The rainbow is in the heart;
wait there for all things loving past
insane; it’s all in balance when
love is in the brain.
05 Tuesday Feb 2019
Posted in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry
How we wonder, standing, sitting
even dancing on Earth—
about our place, why, and who we are.
I think we’re moving pretty fast,
words chosen almost arbitrary
to describe the true Tao which cannot
be spoken, Borges admonishing the
effort getting paid to write them…
Law writes down what philosophically
or by a vote seems right.
We clap our hands like LeBron James
and the powder flies so high I think
it reaches the stars;
I am awake by word definitions, but
primarily through five senses un-named.
Mom is pleasant but is not a person;
she defines love as I chase LeBron’s
powder off the screen and out my door,
up above the clouds in that dream where
you can fly.
Mom has them, too!
I dream of heat, think Earth is Star-like
in a wind so powerful all is upheld
in Einstein’s space fabric, the listening-
challenged harping on Newton’s
laws and limits saying that’s where most
of the work gets done.
Then Lao Tzu busts in cavalier and sharp
pushing away accolades like Bill Wilson
of AA, everybody vulnerable to the right
punch in the gut, usually coming from
attractive female advance—
the sperm must swim somewhere,
so why not with me on LeBron’s star
so far away until the lava bursts
and all around me is a dance of death—
rebirth to flowers on the mountainside
after the lightning strikes.
So chargy is life, dancing on a star!
03 Sunday Feb 2019
Posted in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry
War shoots up through the ages,
depending on where you’re standing
and on how you define your terms.
Law lays down when men and women
require an even playing field on which
to play. Folks start bullying, using
“God” or another name for evil,
try to push us around, until the winds
blow, the sun again shines, and Congress
forms to check the king. Battles are
“won” but lost if from afar you see
the forest from the victory that
folks got hurt, even died… Does
death exist? Depends on where you’re
standing and on how you define terms.
Language is a funny fertilizer, one of
many great measures, as the universe
expands and contracts into big people
banging and creating new beings,
the egg or chicken appearing first
or last—it doesn’t really matter, just
more words you can throw up into
the sky like stars, fly away or plant
yourself to them define; take a stance
and write your Congress person, unless
you are one, then what? Do you win
when you take more than you need,
store up money and goods?
It depends on where you’re standing
and on how you define your terms.
Sometimes when you win, you lose
said some movie down the bluff
from me. I used to be a potted plant,
then broke away to live or die as
a wildflower on the hill, you know
like the ones along the route to San
Francisco.
Take the bus not the train, if in
Spring you care to from L.A. to the
north express for God the song
you sing.
Orange, purple and yellow blossoms on
a green hill above blue water, white
clouds above coagulating while I
ruminate on how buses in Mexico
are better than ours.
Free lunches and movies again, down
the bluff from me and Einstein—
depending on where you’re standing
and on how you define the terms.
31 Thursday Jan 2019
Be Quiet.
You may be the next Useful Idiot
God uses to spread joy through
pain; wake up asleep, go back
to bed again!
Shhh!
Eat cake for breakfast, if you can
get away with it, smile now
before the wind changes, bringing
Poppins, Toppins, love…
Then crash, the constant in life
of course being change, the wind’s
at it again!
Did you know, little boys, that your
body changes a lot? When a teen,
you’ll hear that from lots of folk,
but beware a second change at
thirty!!!
What you thought was firm suddenly
doth sag, you can’t believe your luck,
the fate of getting old is not just
for those with white hair it starts
sooner, long after the thrill is
gone life traveling on said the
Cougar, do you know how to camp?
I love you, friends, and I tell you this:
Stop all motion to help a baby, child
or new flower stand.
Do not offend a young person, Jesus
warned us about God’s angels that
bear God’s face—imagine that,
that might be pain!!!
Turn into it now, learn how
to master it! The moment is gold—
the moment you master life
and growing old,
by admitting its pain, accepting it,
sitting or standing with a Higher
Power and your cards in the game…
It’s not the fun you have but the
pain you endure serving others and
even that voice inside challenging you
that counts to fight, fight, fight.
God give us the courage to stand
up like a U.S. Marine on a dime,
forget ourselves a moment and
be a part of this great thing called
Life.
30 Wednesday Jan 2019
Posted in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry
Inching like an optimistic caterpillar,
across the hot sidewalk of regret;
fifty-five years since Kennedy died,
CIA still above the law in need of vet.
I am not mad that we killed our Earth
in search of gold and easy living;
I cannot be mad and simultaneously
fend off temptation to keep on drinking.
I love my enemy, and if not bring hell
into life as a grave, sad possibility!
We can let Fear guide us or some version
of God, coincidence or serendipity!
I love the calm lines of the lonely lass,
who picks me up because she knows…
She is aware that I’m lonely, too, not
consciously but truthfully as it often goes…
I inch along, the inchworm ready to plant!
The tide is low a while, the garden prepped;
Sunshine lurks behind the Summer clouds,
Goodness a rainbow out of fog leapt.
God forgive our mistakes, one at a time
made in the path to oblivion far and wide…
“Keep swimming,” saith the Disney swimmer,
We’re not that great but could be…
Henry’s blessed Heroes in the strife!!!
28 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in African American, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry
To remind you
of the suffering
of the innocent child
misused
To remind you
of the promise
of Yusuf Hawkins
unfulfilled
Reminding you
Of Emmett Till
forgotten
young unwitting warriors
to remind you
of four girls
swaddled
in unheralded graves
Of forsaken lots
of infant trees cut in stride
Toward the dream
unrealized
young blood reddening
Alabama clay
Mississippi mud
New York streets
Young hearts stilled in mid-beat
tender memories waiting fertile
tragic martyrs shining
28 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in African American, Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, SK Rolle
I am a black poet
I claim Nikki Giovanni
4 albums, gospel choirs,
ego-tripping all
Invictus
Out of the night
that covers me…
I claim the church
black and white
Holy Ghost and Methodist
I’ve got to claim
The Bible
Genesis
And Psalms
Solomon
And Revelations
I claim the music
Jesus and Porgy
I claim Sunday
And all the mornings
that come
I claim the drummers
And the singers
The rhythm setters
And the beat keepers
The footstompers
And the handclappers
The signifiers
And the silent criers
Both my grandmothers
And my mother
And Miss Hicks and
Miss Ruffin
I claim the Slab Town
Convention
Arriving on the Pea Vine Line
I claim Paul Robeson
And James Weldon Johnson
I claim Paul Lawrence Dunbar
I claim Langston Hughes
I claim Maya
And Gwendolyn
And Lucille
And Sonia
I’m claiming the fact
And the fiction
I’m claiming
The Color Purple
This Blue Body
And the Bluest Eye
The two Toni’s
And the two Walkers
For My People, Everywhere
Baldwin
Nina Simone
‘Cause they all
Made me come in
From the void
Into the universe of hues
Into the dreamed whirl
I’ve got to claim
The heavens
I’ve got to claim
The trees
The maples and the oaks
The spreading chestnut
The weeping willow
And
Water
Oh my, water
Magic elixir
And
Birds
No way one could begin to name
The flock the feather
And light
And hate
And love
I claim love
21 Monday Jan 2019
Posted in Poem, Poems, Poesia, Poetic Blog, Poetry, Ted Hughes Poems
From Collected Poems for Children (Faber & Faber 2005 — https://www.faber.co.uk/9780571215027-collected-poems-for-children.html)
***
Gulls are glanced from the lift
Of cliffing air
And left
Loitering in the descending drift,
Or tilt gradient and go
Down steep invisible clefts in the grain
Of air, blading against the blow,
Back-flip, wisp
Over the foam-galled green
Building seas, and they scissor
Tossed spray, shave sheen,
Wing-waltzing their shadows
Over the green hollows,
Or rise again in the wind’s landward rush
And, hurdling the thundering bush,
With the stone wall flung in their faces,
Repeat their graces.
13 Sunday Jan 2019
Tags
God, Higher Power, Joy, Love, Nature, Peace, Spirituality
Who’s listening?
There is a pulse and a spirit
under and over our lives,
giving us sanity, clues, natural
grooves to those who are
willing to stop, walk up the backs
of crevasses and ravines, nature’s
cherry, tall mountains yielding
peace in the mind of the sound.
We come out fighting—sperm to
egg, out Mom at whatever pace
gets results.
We have to develop sixth senses,
cosmic attachments to energy
there when we ask. I asked
for poetry, travelling the song
that is Mexico.
I don’t like music anymore,
because it gets in the way of
God’s voice.
Shhh.
Who’s connecting today? Where
is the medicine man, the prophet
designated to go up the hill and
ask for God’s blessing.
A priest denying himself sex?
Folks who meditate in buildings?
Who knows what the earth wants,
can report the facts to others,
pick up an instrument to play again
only when we’re on the same
page, one pulse attempting to please
the LORD, like the Jews in the desert.
Burn the incense, retreat back to
the dirt and calm—
God forgive our running around
with cotton in our ears, so eager
and ready to spout what others
say—
We “Edged Out God” the acronym
for ego used today.
Shhh.
Give us peace, God, and with it
your voice to teach us the way!
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 