Poet's Corner

[Dhara]

This Poem Belongs to You

This poem
belongs to you
and is already finished,

it was begun years ago
and I put it away

knowing it would come
into the world
in its own time.

In fact
you have already read it,
and closing the pages
of the book,

you are now
abandoning the projects
of the day and putting on
your shoes and coat
to take a walk.

It has been long years
since you felt like this.

You have remembered
what I remembered,
when I first began to write.

-- David Whyte
from The House of Belonging
©2007 Many Rivers Press

 

[Dhara]

Everything is Waiting for You

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into
the conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

-- David Whyte
from Everything is Waiting for You
©2003 Many Rivers Pre

 

[Impenitent]

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

Wendell Berry

I've seen you forgive your enemies, and turn the other cheek.

 

[Dhara]

If you are not to become a monster,
you must care what they think.
If you care what they think,

how will you not hate them,
and so become a monster
of the opposite kind? From where then

is love to come—love for your enemy
that is the way of liberty?
From forgiveness. Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;
they are to you as sunlight
on a green branch. You must not

think of them again, except
as monsters like yourself,
pitiable because unforgiving.

Wendell Berry

I've seen you forgive your enemies, and turn the other cheek.

 

[Dhara]

The Cabin in the Woods

He sat there in his very favorite chair all comfy and warm.
The wind howled outside rattling the large windows.
There was no reason to feel anything but happy.
He was reading one of his most cherished books.

The fire was roaring in the huge fireplace.
The logs had been cut and split before the snow flew.
The house smelled of fresh cut wood and heavenly candles.
It was almost time to tend to the fire again.

The days were passed like this in the winter, in Oklahoma.
One needed to prepare out here in the forest.
The cupboards were full with all sorts of goodies.
Everything needed was near at hand.

The snow was now drifting two feet in depth.
It was blowing horizontally at times.
This was the time of year he loved like no other.
The isolation and desolation made him smile inside.

When the tree fell nobody heard the sound.
The loud crack and splintering was a foreboding
Of the soon to be disaster; as the immense oak headed down.
It hit that lonely house in the forest with a mighty crash.

The peace and feelings of pleasure turned to pain;
As the tree smashed through the house destroying everything
In its path; including the fireplace, and cutting the house in half.
He knew what would happen now that the calm was destroyed.

Death came soon to the lonely cabin, and its owner, in the woods.
The mighty oak had severed his arm and he knew, even without pain,
The end was near, no power, no heat, no cabin, no chance.
He had no regrets that fateful day; it had been a good life,
The one he had chosen to live, out here by himself.

It was calm again, out here in the woods, now that the cabin was gone.
Mother Nature had eaten the remains, as well as his flesh in
This lonely spot in the woods; where he had built his home sweet home.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we'll all be gone, of that you can trust.

J.B. LeBuert

 

[Dhara]

Sekhmet, The Lion Headed Goddess of War

He was the sort of man
who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Many flies are now alive
while he is not.
He was not my patron.
He preferred full granaries, I battle.
My roar meant slaughter.
Yet here we are together
in the same museum.
That's not what I see, though, the fitful
crowds of staring children
learning the lesson of multi-
cultural obliteration, sic transit
and so on.

I see the temple where I was born
or built, where I held power.
I see the desert beyond,
where the hot conical tombs, that look
from a distance, frankly, like dunces' hats,
hide my jokes: the dried-out flesh
and bones, the wooden boats
in which the dead sail endlessly
in no direction.

What did you expect from gods
with animal heads?
Though come to think of it
the ones made later, who were fully human
were not such good news either.
Favour me and give me riches,
destroy my enemies.
That seems to be the gist.
Oh yes: And save me from death.
In return we're given blood
and bread, flowers and prayer,
and lip service.

Maybe there's something in all of this
I missed. But if it's selfless
love you're looking for,
you've got the wrong goddess.

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise.

Margaret Atwood

 

[Impenitent]

Hurricane
(new lyrics to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean)

Disasters come more often it seems
And so Pat Robertson and I prayed
Everybody knows exactly what it means
It had to be that gay parade - that party on Fire Island - that nightclub down in Queens

It was worse than a disaster scene
You see on the movie screen
I said, pardon me, what do you mean,
by 'anthropogenic global warming?"
She said, 'That is why the hurricane came aground'
That is why - the hurricane - came aground

She told me the hurricane's name was Sandy
And it was the corporate modus operandi
They pump carbon dioxide in the air
Then these come aground
They pump - in the air - these come aground

Now I've always trusted corporations are careful what they do
They don't pump poisons in the air
I don't think the problem could be co2
Or that the corporations - just don't care

Hurricanes are not global warming
She's just a girl who claims
They caused this one
But Sandy is not Koch's spawn
She says they are the one
But the hurricane is not their son

Hurricanes are not global warming
She's just a girl who claims
They caused this one
But Sandy is not Koch's spawn
She says they are the one
But the hurricane is not their son

For Bush's two terms,
The law was on our side
But who can stand with Obama in charge and his business death march
But then - this hurricane - came aground

I went back to my corporate job
But what she said laid heavy on my heart
When I looked at the smoke stacks
My head began to throb - i thought about those slobs - and longed to join their mob!

Now I feel revulsed and conflicted
To this life of excess I've become addicted
I sold my soul as if money was eternal youth
Now that lie is - an inconvenient truth

All Man's wealth comes from cheap fossil fuel
I jumped at that because I'm nobody's fool
Now that cost has come home to roost, as deadly as a viper
And now we've got to pay - pay the piper

So take my strong advice
Just remember to always think twice
Do think twice - do think twice

She told my baby, we were swimming til three
Then she looked at me, and showed me a photo
My baby cried, her family had died, oh no
All because - this hurricane - came aground

Hurricanes are not global warming
She's just a girl who claims
They caused this one
But Sandy is not Koch's spawn

Hurricanes are not global warming
She's just a girl who claims
They caused this one

She says they caused this one
But the hurricane is not Koch's spawn

She says they caused this one
But the hurricane is not Koch's spawn

Hurricanes are not global warming
She's just a girl who claims
They caused this one
But Sandy is not Koch's spawn

She says they caused this one
But Sandy is not Koch's spawn

She says they caused this one
She says they caused this one
She says they caused this one

Hurricanes are not global warming
Hurricanes are not global warming
Hurricanes are not global warming

...

 

[Dhara]

Keeping Hands Full

You are always grasping, my friend
Says my therapist
You must learn to let go:
Whenever your hands are not full
You want to get hold of something
Or indeed anything
Now a bird in your left hand
And a bunch of flowers in your right
That’s why you are unhappy all this time
Because you do not have more hands
To grasp more things
Like green backs, purple ribbons
tall titles, soft sex and charming children
If you empty your left hand to catch the ribbons
You became unhappy about the departure of the bird
If you put down the flowers to take the greenbacks
You feel unlucky about the loss of beauty
But if you let go
Just let go
Whatever you are grasping
You can get happiness whenever you can
Since your hands are free

Changming Yuan

 

[Dhara]

Maya Jewell Zeller

HONESTY

It’s true I drove an SUV once
through Fresno with a backseat full
of college boys to whom I found myself
having to explain you could still catch herpes
even while wearing a condom. One of them
in particular was incredulous, he was listening to his iPod
and he removed his headphones and said he had
a few more questions. These were my husband’s
varsity runners, and I was a volunteer, so I was awarded
the new rental with only four miles on it when we left
the lot. I’m not going to lie—
I liked driving it. It was nothing
like riding coach or making love
with protection. There were so many buttons
to push, and they all did something satisfying,
like drop from the ceiling a DVD player
for passengers or warm the driver’s legs
in just the right places. The seats were leather,
the kind you feel guilty just sitting on,
the good kind of guilty when you can’t help
but imagine parking somewhere with someone
so you can watch the stars rise over the city,
take time to check out all the automatic features.
The boy you’re with will want to know
how things work, and you’ll end up showing him,
because he is young, because he has a bag of sour apple
or peach fruit rings he’s willing to share, because his face
can look so becoming in the streetlights.
But mostly it’s because you can no longer remember
where you were going. Was it to dinner?
Were you taking him back to his hotel, where
he’ll sleep, dream of winning?
Or maybe it was a nighttime snack
run. The SUV is black
and the night is blacker. You can feel it
closing, like a fist around a steering wheel.
You’re not the fist. You’re the wheel.

 

[Dhara]

Courtney Kampa

SELF-PORTRAIT BY SOMEONE ELSE

The afternoon we traced our 2nd grade bodies
with poster paint, legs V-shaped on paper
like the outlines of victims at a crime scene,
I was the only girl stuck partnered with a boy—
his fists filthy from prying back scalps
of onion grass, bug shells crushed up in his teeth
because he’d liked the sound. He refused
all paint-colors but blue. Leaned over me,
complaining loudly to his friends. Then his lip,
heavy with focus. And the red wing
of his tongue. Dragging his paintbrush
like a match in a room of gasoline. The week before
Debbie Kaw passed a note saying babies
came from standing too close to a boy,
or if one sweat on you, or spat
in your direction. So the girls called it brave, what I did,
letting one trace me. And I let them think so—
let them run ahead in the carpool line,
the blood still returning to my knees.
Let my mother hang it full length on the refrigerator.
The white space something I’d stepped from.
Its thick blue line sort of wobbly
between my thighs, where his hands shook.
In the mornings my little sister would stand
on one foot, looking at it. Her groggy pajamas.
Her hands playing in her lunatic hair.

 

[Dhara]

A Community of the Spirit

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight

of walking in the noisy street

and being the noise.

Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.

Close both eyes
to see with the other eye.

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Sit down in the circle.
Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd’s love filling you.

At night, your beloved wanders.
Don’t accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover’s mouth in yours.

You moan, “She left me.” “He left me.”
Twenty more will come.

Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.

Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being.

RUMI

 

[Gracie]

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in an Australian country town, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through his meagre possessions, They found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Melbourne. The old man’s sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editions of magazines around the country and appearing in mags for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this ‘anonymous’ poem winging across the Internet.

Cranky Old Man

What do you see nurses? ……What do you see?
What are you thinking .. . when you’re looking at me?
A cranky old man, … …not very wise,
Uncertain of habit .… … . .. with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food .….… and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . .'I do wish you’d try!’
Who seems not to notice …the things that you do.
And forever is losing … …… A sock or shoe?
Who, resisting or not … … lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding … .The long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking?. .Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse .you’re not looking at me.
I’ll tell you who I am … . .. As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, .… . as I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of Ten . .with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters .… .. . who love one another
A young boy of Sixteen … .. with wings on his feet
Dreaming that soon now …… a lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty … ..my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows .. .. .that I promised to keep.
At Twenty-Five, now … . .I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide … And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . .… . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other …. With ties that should last.
At Forty, my young sons .. .have grown and are gone,
But my woman is beside me . . to see I don’t mourn.
At Fifty, once more, .. …Babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children … . My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me … . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future … … . I shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing .… young of their own.
And I think of the years … And the love that I’ve known.
I’m now an old man … … .. and nature is cruel.
It’s jest to make old age … … . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles .. .. . grace and vigour, depart.
There is now a stone … where I once had a heart.
But inside this old carcass . A young man still dwells,
And now and again … . . my battered heart swells
I remember the joys … . .. . I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living … … . life over again.
I think of the years, all too few …. gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact … that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people .… . .… open and see.
Not a cranky old man .
Look closer … . see .. .…. …. . ME!!

 

[Dhara]

Self-Observation Without Judgment

By Danna Faulds

Release the harsh and pointed inner
voice. it's just a throwback to the past,
and holds no truth about this moment.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,
learned ways of beating yourself up
for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind
to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift
out of inner criticism and life
suddenly looks very different.

i can say this only because I make
the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to
acknowledge the real me.

What's needed here isn't more prodding toward perfection, but
intimacy - seeing clearly, and
embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the
seeds of tranquility and change.

 

[Dhara]

A PLACE TO SIT

By Kabir

Don't go outside your house to see flowers.
My friend, don't bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the void and out of it,
before the gardens and after garden

 

[Dhara]

The Gift By Hafiz

We Have not Come to Take Prisoners
We have not come here to take prisoners
But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.
We have not come into this exquisite world
to hold ourselves hostage from love.
Run, my dear,
from anything that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings,
Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.
We have a duty to befriend
those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason
"o please, o please
come out and play."
For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom,
and Light!

 

[Dhara]

You shall be free indeed
not when your days are
without a care nor your nights
without a want and a grief,
but rather when these things
girdle your life and
yet you rise above them
naked and unbound.

(Kahlil Gibran)

 

[Dhara]

Karaniya Metta Sutta

This is what should be done
By those who are skilled in goodness,
And who know the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: in gladness and safety,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born “
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings;
Radiating kindness over the entire world;
Spreading upward to the skies,
And downward to the depths;
Outward and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down,
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.

Buddha

 

[Dhara]

There was a little turtle.
He lived in a box.
He swam in a puddle.
He climbed on the rocks.

He snapped at a mosquito.
He snapped at a flea.
He snapped at a minnow.
And he snapped at me.

He caught the mosquito.
He caught the flea.
He caught the minnow.
But he didn't catch me.

The Little Turtle By Vachel Lindsay

 

[Impenitent]

Schadenfreude Schadenfreude
Every evening you deplore me
Sharp and fleet
Precise and neat
You seem so happy to gore me
Hatred though
Destroys the soul
It will grow forever
Schadenfreude Schadenfreude
A self defeating endeavor

 

[Dhara]

Love Poem at Edge of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch


Not a solid, sweetheart. Nothing we could land a plane on.
More like plastic soup spinning in a salt-stun cauldron—

flip-flops and orphaned toothpaste caps, pill bottles with
Hindi labels, the ones I ordered off the internet in college.

Like sex, like Xanex, the soup has ways of making us dumb
and chatty all afternoon on deck, the sleeves of your ochre

windbreaker darkening with spray. Mt. Everest must look
cathartic from outer space, all those empty oxygen bottles

rusting at the summit, you say. The world is very small,
suddenly, and duct tape is not biodegradable. Still, God is love

and love is the mercury swimming through my bloodstream.
With this finger under your tongue, I can almost taste your

temperature. With this finger, I can conjure Travel & Leisure
beaches peppered with paper lanterns and the kinds

of creatures that make marine biologists hold their breath.
So, let us follow the converging paths of bikini lines

and fortune cookies: You will enter an age of abundance.
If abundance is a oceanic desert on a dune-colored planet,

then a standing ovation. Maybe this is no place for ceremony.
Maybe this is the only place for it—here, where everything

we waste aches with phantom music, the sexual squeals
of toothless eels writhing beneath the waves.

When the albatross, envious of our stamina, drops a disposable
razor on your brow, we will dream the coming parousia,

just the two of us—skewed edges of an abyss, the last, lonely
pathogens loosed from the chamber of a secondhand syringe.

By Kara Condito