"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
I have been studying the difference
between solitude and loneliness,
telling the story of my life
to the clean white towels taken warm from the dryer.
I carry them through the house
as though they were my children
asleep in my arms.
“White Towels” by Richard Jones from The Blessing: New and Selected Poems. © Copper Canyon Press.
Lesson 1:
When you find it, throw it as far away as you possibly can, preferably, at a vertical angle.
Know that there is no such thing as a friendly firework,
that it will tail you like a greedy sun
just waiting to ignite your everything
and claim ownership over the ashes.
If you survive, congratulations: you’re immortal.
You’ve mastered resurrection.
This is the wrong instruction manual for you.
Please move onto the one
RE: How to hold the woman without hands
How to love the girl without a voice box
How to nurse the cadaver back to life
Lesson 2:
The heart is giving war the middle finger and hiding a revolver in her left pocket.
The heart doesn’t actually know how to use the revolver.
It just hates being the only one with a body full of chambers where no one wants to go.
Lesson 3:
The heart doesn’t give a fuck about Wall Street. The heart is occupying you,
wondering how there can be so much life in your veins
when all you talk about is death.
The heart thinks you should stop making your mouth a picket sign and spread that excess resurrection instead.
There is too much love in your body to keep it all locked inside your head.
Lesson 4:
If you are finding this heart on eBay, it’s only because Craigslist mistook the foster system for spam.
Lesson 5:
Love doesn’t live in the heart anymore. Maybe agape, but never eros.
Maybe liver transplant, but never support group and always anonymous.
Lesson 6:
The heart is Anonymous.
Behind every good revolution stands a hopeless romantic,
imagination burning with desire.
Lesson 7:
When the heart was little, it wanted to be a forest fire, then a machine.
Now, it wishes it was a liar.
Lesson 8:
The heart survives on a consistent diet of Douglas Coupland novels, henna tattoos, coffee and contact highs.
It’s still straight edge, for all intents and purposes. It just loves everything that’s bad for it, other hearts included. Don’t get it started on the minds.
Lesson 9:
The heart doesn’t want to be a metaphor. The heart thinks poetry is bullshit.
Lesson 10:
There is a reason why the heart is a heart and not a mouth.
It needs you to remember this,
that the body is just a marionette,
a mess of broken strings and mistaken arrangements at best.
Lesson 11:
If the heart could find a way to leave you behind,
to speak a language other than pump and attack and ischemia,
trust that it’d wish you nothing but serendipitous amnesia
and prosthetic lovers that fell together like furniture from Ikea.
For now, though, it has to settle for this:
a textbook existence based on studies of what to do
in case of the worst possible demise
despite the fact that no researchers have stuck around long enough
to actually observe it in the light.
Lesson 12:
There is no instruction manual for the war inside.
no such thing as a safety
when your body
is mess of ventricles just waiting to explode
into a map of the unknown,
so destroy this guide.
Swallow your pride
and let the shotgun anatomy
redefine the etymology of your survival.
Lesson 13:
Enjoy the ride.
A small collection of peaceful thoughts, some previously shared here, some new.
In peace, kindness, and remembrance. May they bring you comfort.
***
A gunman carrying a handgun and an assault-style weapon opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., early Sunday (June 12, 2016), killing at least 50 people and wounding at least 53 others.
It is the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Read more at NPR.
***
***
“The Good News” by Thich Nhat Hanh
They don’t publish
the good news.
The good news is published
by us.
We have a special edition every moment,
and we need you to read it.
The good news is that you are alive,
and the linden tree is still there,
standing firm in the harsh Winter.
The good news is that you have wonderful eyes
to touch the blue sky.
The good news is that your child is there before you,
and your arms are available:
hugging is possible.
They only print what is wrong.
Look at each of our special editions.
We always offer the things that are not wrong.
We want you to benefit from them
and help protect them.
The dandelion is there by the sidewalk,
smiling its wondrous smile,
singing the song of eternity.
Listen! You have ears that can hear it.
Bow your head.
Listen to it.
Leave behind the world of sorrow
and preoccupation
and get free.
The latest good news
is that you can do it.
***
“Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
– Naomi Shihab Nye, “Kindness,” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems.
***
“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.
***
“A Vote For the Gentle Light” by Charles Bukowski
a vote for the gentle light
burned senseless by other people’s constant
depression,
I pull the curtains apart,
aching for the gentle light.
it’s there, it’s there
somewhere,
I’m sure.
oh, the faces of depression, expressions
pulled down into the gluey dark.
the bitter small sour mouths,
the self-pity, the self-justification is
too much, all too much.
the faces in shadow,
deep creases of gloom.
there’s no courage there, just the desire to
possess something––admiration, fame, lovers,
money, any damn thing
so long as it comes easy.
so long as they don’t have to do
what’s necessary.
and when they don’t succeed they
become embittered,
ugly,
they imagine that they have
been slighted, cheated,
demeaned.
then they concentrate upon their
unhappiness, their last
refuge.
and they’re good at that,
they are very good at that.
they have so much unhappiness
they insist upon your sharing it
too.
they bathe and splash in their
unhappiness,
they splash it upon you.
it’s all they have.
it’s all they want.
it’s all they can be.
you must refuse to join them.
you must remain yourself.
you must open the curtains
or the blinds
or the windows
to the gentle light.
to joy.
it’s there in life
and even in death
it can be
there.
“A Vote For the Gentle Light” by Charles Bukowski from What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (Available on Amazon HERE) published by Black Sparrow Press.
***
“Amazing Peace” by Maya Angelou
In our joy, we think we hear a whisper.
At first it is too soft. Then only half heard.
We listen carefully as it gathers strength.
We hear a sweetness.
The word is Peace.
It is loud now.
Louder than the explosion of bombs.
We tremble at the sound.
We are thrilled by its presence.
It is what we have hungered for.
Not just the absence of war. But true Peace.
A harmony of spirit, and comfort of courtesies.
Security for our beloveds and their beloveds.
We, Angels and Mortals, Believers and
Nonbelievers,
Look heavenward and speak the word aloud.
Peace. We look at each other, then into
ourselves,
And we say without shyness or apology or
hesitation:
Peace, My Brother.
Peace, My Sister.
Peace, My Soul.
***
“There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’
No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster…
When we meet real tragedy in life, we can react in two ways–either by losing hope and falling into self-destructive habits, or by using the challenge to find our inner strength.” ~ Dalai Lama XIV
*
“Every day, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” ~ Dalai Lama XIV
*
NEVER GIVE UP
No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up
~ Dalai Lama XIV
***
“Being Peace” by Thich Nhat Hanh
You may read Being Peace on-line in pdf format here.
***
The moon is trans.
From this moment forward, the moon is trans.
You don’t get to write about the moon anymore unless you respect that.
You don’t get to talk to the moon anymore unless you use her correct pronouns.
You don’t get to send men to the moon anymore unless their job is
to bow down before her and apologize for the sins of the earth.
She is waiting for you, pulling at you softly,
telling you to shut the fuck up already please.
Scientists theorize the moon was once a part of the earth
that broke off when another planet struck it.
Eve came from Adam’s rib.
Etc.
Do you believe in the power of not listening
to the inside of your own head?
I believe in the power of you not listening
to the inside of your own head.
This is all upside down.
We should be talking about the ways that blood
is similar to the part of outer space between the earth and the moon
but we’re busy drawing it instead.
The moon is often described as dead, though she is very much alive.
The moon has not known the feeling of not wanting to be dead
for any extended period of time
in all of her existence, but
she is not delicate and she is not weak.
She is constantly moving away from you the only way she can.
She never turns her face from you because of what you might do.
She will outlive everything you know.
~ Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, via PEN America
***
“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake
Because I have come to the fence at night,
the horses arrive also from their ancient stable.
They let me stroke their long faces, and I note
in the light of the now-merging moon
how they, a Morgan and a Quarter, have been
by shake-guttered raindrops
spotted around their rumps and thus made
Appaloosas, the ancestral horses of this place.
Maybe because it is night, they are nervous,
or maybe because they too sense
what they have become, they seem
to be waiting for me to say something
to whatever ancient spirits might still abide here,
that they might awaken from this strange dream,
in which there are fences and stables and a man
who doesn’t know a single word they understand.
Poem copyright ©2010 by Robert Wrigley from Beautiful Country, Penguin Books, 2010.
Words ... for the Time Being 