The moon will shine for God knows how long. As if it still matters. As if someone is trying to recall a dream. Believe the brain is a cage of light & rage. When it shuts off, something else switches on. There’s no better reason than now to lock the doors, the windows. Turn offContinue reading “To Live in the Zombie Apocalypse”
Category Archives: Words Written
You’ve discovered a wellspring, simply allow it to flow and it will fill your world. Don’t try to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don’t wait to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect.Continue reading
I Have Not Come Here to Compare Notes But to Sit Together in the Stillness at the Edge of This Wound
Asked if it isn’t weird to be at an awards ceremony with Gregory Peck, Dylan says, “Well, listen, everything’s weird. You tell me something that’s not weird.” He might as well have said “big,” that his songs are a witness to magnitude, that your poems are. And why shouldn’t they be? Look at the epicContinue reading “I Have Not Come Here to Compare Notes But to Sit Together in the Stillness at the Edge of This Wound”
An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow lotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves upon the sea. ~ Herman Melville Photo by Darrell Robinson | Kihei, Maui, Hawaii
from “Please Bury Me in This”
Now my neighbor through the wall playing piano, I imagine, with her eyes closed. When she stops playing, she disappears. I am still waiting for the right words to explain myself to you. When there was nothing left to smoke, I drew on my lips with a pen until they were black. Or is thisContinue reading “from “Please Bury Me in This””
Come out into the world about you, be it either wide or limited. Sympathize, not in thought only, but in action, with all about you. Make yourself known and felt for something that would be loved and missed, in twenty thousand little ways, if you were to die; then your life will be a happyContinue reading
Song of the Open Road, IV
The earth expanding right hand and left hand, The picture alive, every part in its best light, The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not wanted, The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the road. O highway I travel, do you say to meContinue reading “Song of the Open Road, IV”
Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself. ~ Desiderius Erasmus Photo by Andrew Mills, www.a-mills.com | North of Vesturhorn, Iceland
Lacquer Prints [By Messenger]
One night When there was a clear moon, I sat down To write a poem About maple trees. But the dazzle of moonlight In the ink Blinded me, And I could only write What I remembered. Therefore, on the wrapping of my poem I have inscribed your name. ~ Amy Lowell
Forests, lakes, and rivers, clouds and winds, stars and flowers, stupendous glaciers and crystal snowflakes – every form of animate or inanimate existence, leaves its impress upon the soul of man. ~ Orison Swett Marden Photo by Jim Maloney | The Metolius River, a tributary of the Deschutes River in Central Oregon https://flic.kr/p/PCTChS
Divine Overdose
We are even more modern we are free not to know pining pining til the trees are in their autumn beauty who knows why we are free an LP of poetry left on in the apartment while I walk my love to the subway she turns to gold in the light banking off the ball-fieldsContinue reading “Divine Overdose”
Only in the darkness can you see the stars. ~ Martin Luther King Jr. Photo by John Behrends | Along the Oregon coast at Shore Acres State Park, Oregon
Lunchtime With Woodwinds
I wish I could write a song to make the world yield to this rushing lapping what starts tonguing what parts any possible other world than this inertia for pink medallion inertia for those skeptics in the building who think of the unknown as hemorrhage—quick stop that thing from surfacing I want to rub alongContinue reading “Lunchtime With Woodwinds”
Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind. Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things. Their language has been lost. But not the gestures. ~ Vera Nazarian Photo by Tom Elliott | Sauk County, Wisconsin
Wander into the center of the circle of wonder. ~ Hongzhi Zhengjue Photo by Alice Cahill | Sequoia National Park, California
The Map
The failure of love might account for most of the suffering in the world. The girl was going over her global studies homework in the air where she drew the map with her finger touching the Gobi desert, the Plateau of Tiber in front of her, and looking through her transparent map backwards I didContinue reading “The Map”
Hot Springs
after Robert Francis’s “Silent Poem” rain storm rock pore flow path earth crust thrust fault drip slope trough dam blue ooze tile floor stained glass sitz bath rust stain sun porch deck chair sky light gas lamp foot bridge leaf twitch dirt trail red oak white tail hoof prints moss stump wood thrush chert flakeContinue reading “Hot Springs”
While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. ~ William Wordsworth Photo by Tony Varela | Prairie Creek Redwoods Sate Park, California
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart. ~ Alice Walker Photo by Cheryl Strahl | Polar bear in the Arctic Ocean near Kaktovik on Barter Island, Alaska
What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do
Dawn oversees percolating coffee and the new wreckage of the world. I stand before my routine reflection, button up my sanity, brush weary strands of hair with pomade and seal cracked lips of distrust with cocoa butter and matte rouge. I ready myself once again for morning and mortify. Stacking poetry and bills in aContinue reading “What Would Gwendolyn Brooks Do”
Love is not consolation. It is light. ~ Simone Weil Photo by Ronnie Goyette | Great egret at Morro Bay, California
You’ve discovered a wellspring, simply allow it to flow and it will fill your world. Don’t try to keep a safe distance so as to see what happens. Don’t wait to be certain before you take a step. What you give, you will receive, although it might sometimes come from the place you least expect.Continue reading
Where there’s hope, there’s life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again. ~ Anne Frank Photo by Fred Moore | Escalante, Utah
Time I’m Not Here
All day on all my days, the lives I’m not to process wash in; anxieties lullaby on and quite like to be gotten among; but now—and now—one old, abundant flower just screws up the room. ~Graham Foust
Letter to the Northern Lights
The light here on earth keeps us plenty busy: a fire in central Pennsylvania still burns bright since 1962. Whole squads of tiny squid blaze up the coast of Japan before sunrise. Of course you didn’t show when we went searching for you, but we found other lights: firefly, strawberry moon, a tiny catchContinue reading “Letter to the Northern Lights”
