"Sweetheart when you break thru you’ll find a poet here not quite what one would choose. I won’t promise you’ll never go hungry or that you won’t be sad on this gutted breaking globe but I can show you baby enough to love to break your heart forever" --Diane di Prima
"I hope to define my life, whatever is left, by migrations, south and north with the birds and far from the metallic fever of clocks, the self staring at the clock saying, "I must do this." I can't tell the time on the tongue of the river in the cool morning air, the smell of the ferment of greenery, the dust off the canyon's rock walls, the swallows swooping above the scent of raw water." -- Jim Harrison
The Secret by Denise Levertov, 1964 Two girls discover the secret of life in a sudden line of poetry. I who don’t know the secret wrote the line. They told me (through a third person) they had found it but not what it was not even what line it was. No doubt by now, more than a week later, they have forgotten the secret, the line, the name of the poem. I love them for finding what I can’t find, and for loving me for the line I wrote, and for forgetting it so that a thousand times, till death finds them, they may discover it again, in other lines in other happenings. And for wanting to know it, for assuming there is such a secret, yes, for that most of all. [via Poetry Foundation↱]
GLOW "A star wrapped in skin, Clouded with fear. Embrace who you are, Feel the clouds clear. I am of you As you are of me; In closed eyes of faith, This truth can be seen. Blind your mind to the Facade of smiles, Face every lesson, Attend each trial, Then feel that love Spark up your soul. You're a star, holding night Just to feel your own glow." Heather Lea
Odi et Amo by Joy Davidman, 1937 I would have given you this flower or that, Tears for your pleasure, roses for your grief, Would bind my precious hair into a mat Before your feet, or bring a silken leaf To kiss your thirsty mouth away from dearth; Would bind my thoughts into a summer sheaf Of corn arisen from a barren earth To nourish you forever; and would bend This fire to sing contentment on your hearth. This little pleading image of your friend, This fabric knit and riveted for life, I would have brought you, careless of the end; A flare of laughter, and a fancy rife With spirits to inform the silver breath; All this for love; for this ungentle strife I shall find present ways to give you death. [via Poetry Foundation↱]
"No matter how much of a shitshow the modern world turns into, there’s still an unbroken stillness out there by the waters at dawn. And the trees still whisp in the wind and the birds still flutter in the sky and the lilacs still rise from the soil of springtime meadows. Regardless of it all, there are still sacred places to escape to when the blood begins to falter. Go there. Often. Don’t become the majority." -- Poetic Outlaws
~FORGIVE YOURSELF Forgive yourself For what you had to do to survive Forgive yourself, for who you were, before you knew better. Forgive yourself for being fallible, broken, and being less than perfect. Touch the earth in your small humanness Feel the dirt, beneath your feet, between your fingers and how your tears water the parched and cracked, soil. Forgive yourself For not being more, knowing more For having to learn through experience, or the hard way. For what you did to survive life's winters, over life's thin ice. For your mistakes. You survived. You are here. And in the forgiveness Let your hands reach down to soothe your broken heart and from there, the broken hearts of others. For we grow humble in our falls Compassionate through our imperfection, not our perfection. Forgive yourself Let the weight of these lessons hold you firmly in their dark wisdom to the earth. And from there, like a sky of shining lanterns~ set your soul free. ~Rachel Alana (R.A Falconer) Midwives of the Soul
You don’t have to be spectacular. Be a shack. Fall apart. Learn the immense grace inside of humility. Be honest. Let parts of yourself go in the name of truthfulness and love. This life is a shell. We don’t need to decorate it with other people’s impressions. Grow inside it through the ongoing and simple commitment to kindness. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Author unknown
"Our educational system tells us that we can all be big-ass winners it hasn't told us about the gutters or the suicides or the terror of one person aching in one place alone untouched unspoken to watering a plant." ~Charles Bukowski
In A Dark Time Theodore Roethke In a dark time, the eye begins to see, I meet my shadow in the deepening shade; I hear my echo in the echoing wood-- A lord of nature weeping to a tree, I live between the heron and the wren, Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den. What's madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, My shadow pinned against a sweating wall, That place among the rocks--is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. A steady storm of correspondences! A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon, And in broad day the midnight come again! A man goes far to find out what he is-- Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire. My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I? A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. The mind enters itself, and God the mind, And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
Poem by Harryette Mullen You are a ukulele beyond my microphone You are a Yukon beyond my Micronesia You are a union beyond my meiosis You are a unicycle beyond my migration You are a universe beyond my mitochondria You are a Eucharist beyond my Miles Davis You are a euphony beyond my myocardiogram You are a unicorn beyond my Minotaur You are a eureka beyond my maitai You are a Yuletide beyond my minesweeper You are a euphemism beyond my myna bird I've just discovered this poet, and plan to check out her book of poetry, Sleeping with the Dictionary.
"I know that I have died before— once in November, once in June. How strange to choose June again, so concrete with its green breasts and bellies . . . New York City will not mind. At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day." --Anne Sexton
