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Dharma by Billy Collins

The way the dog trots out the front door every morning without a hat or an umbrella, without any money or the keys to her doghouse never fails to fill the saucer of my heart with milky admiration. Who provides a finer example of a life without encumbrance— Thoreau in his curtainless hut with a single plate, a single spoon? Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers? Off she goes into the material world with nothing but her brown coat and her modest blue collar, following only her wet nose, the twin portals of her steady breathing, followed only by the plume of her tail. If only she did not shove the cat aside every morning and eat all his food what a model of self-containment she would be, what a paragon of earthly detachment. If only she were not so eager for a rub behind the ears, so acrobatic in her welcomes, if only I were not her god.

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Epitaph on a Tyrant

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

WH Auden

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from: Requiem The word landed with a stony thud Onto my still-beating breast. Nevermind, I was prepared, I will manage with the rest. I have a lot of work to do today; I need to slaughter memory, Turn my living soul to stone Then teach myself to live again. . .

Anna Akhmatova

Seems appropriate for today.  I still hope that a woman’s view of oppression can still have power in the face of so much hatred.

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Hats by Glenis Redmond

Next

Sistahs have always been able to style in hats.

You know they got it going on.

Those women can wear hats from dust ‘til dawn.

You’ve got to be bold and have snap to sport a hat.

You’ve got to have it and know where it is at.

You’ve got to stop and cock it to the side.

Check them out and continue with your stride.

Profile it. Style it.

Then let them wow it.

Tilt it, lean it, or wear it straight in place.

A well worn hat is a symbol of grace.

You have heard people say it. I have too.

“Oh, she can wear a hat.

She sho’ ’nough knows what to do.”

Oh, a hat can get those oohs and aahs.

If it is totally bad, it gets applause.

Some hats are so bad, they are just bad to the bone.

People stop and say, “that girl has got it going on.”

Or say “You just go girl, you just go on, girl,

‘cause with that hat you’re the finest thang in the world.”

           HATS

                                   HATS

HATS

Big ones, tall ones, small ones, fruity ones,

pointy ones, veiled ones, flowered ones

sporty ones,

polka-dot ones,

plain ones,

and kufis too!

Lean it,

           cock it,

style it,

           profile it,

                                   tilt it,

                                                tip it,

                       check it,

           sport it.

                       HATS

HATS

                                   HATS

Do you dare to wear? How do you fare? Do you want to be bad to the bone? Then, get you a hat and get it going on!

Copyright  2000 by

Glenis Redmond

I saw Ms Redmond perform this many years ago.  There is a video floating around out there - worth a watch.  Hearing her speak is half the poem.

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Somewhere in Philly a woman calls 911 and pretends to order a pizzaso the police will come and get her boyfriend to stop driving uppercuts into her solar plexus. Inside a dorm room, a college...

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The Bustle in a House (1108)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

The Bustle in a House

The Morning after Death

Is solemnest of industries

Enacted opon Earth –

The Sweeping up the Heart

And putting Love away

We shall not want to use again

Until Eternity –

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson Edited by R.W. Franklin (Harvard University Press, 1999)

In memory of Goober, pictured above, who had to go after a brave fight.

Photo by K. Keating

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Hermes of the Ways, by H.D.

The hard sand breaks, and the grains of it are clear as wine.

Far off over the leagues of it, the wind, playing on the wide shore, piles little ridges, and the great waves break over it.

But more than the many-foamed ways of the sea, I know him of the triple path-ways, Hermes, who awaits.

Dubious, facing three ways, welcoming wayfarers, he whom the sea-orchard shelters from the west, from the east weathers sea-wind; fronts the great dunes.

Wind rushes over the dunes, and the coarse, salt-crusted grass answers.

Heu, it whips round my ankles!

II

Small is this white stream, flowing below ground from the poplar-shaded hill, but the water is sweet.

Apples on the small trees are hard, too small, too late ripened by a desperate sun that struggles through sea-mist.

The boughs of the trees are twisted by many bafflings; twisted are the small-leafed boughs.

But the shadow of them is not the shadow of the mast head nor of the torn sails.

Hermes, Hermes, the great sea foamed, gnashed its teeth about me; but you have waited, were sea-grass tangles with shore-grass.

Originally published in the January, 1913 edition of Poetry Magazine

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“Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins first appeared in the February 1990 issue of Poetry. Who reads it better - Billy Collins or Bill Murray (above)? More Bill Murray poetry videos at Open Culture. Subscribe to Poetry.

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i saw three little black boys lying in a grave yard i couldn’t tell if they were playing or practicing.

baba lukata, rehearsal.  (via theblacksophisticate)

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Star Trek Bacon by Jesse Azarain

Jesse’s contemplative spaceart evokes the deep, meditative connection between space and bacon, though were I to invoke logic, however, logic dictates that bacon is clearly awesome.   

(via: Neatorama)

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The only thing to come now is the sea.

From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,   

Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.

These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.

I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me   

To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock   

That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space   

Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths   

Beating and beating at an intractable metal.

from:  Blackberrying

Sylvia Plath

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The Spring Offensive of the Snail

Living someplace else is wrong

in Jerusalem the golden floating over New England smog, above paper company forests, deserted brick textile mills square brooders on the rotten rivers, developer-chewed mountains.

Living out of time is wrong. The future drained us thin as paper. We were tools scraping. After the revolution we would be good, love one another and bake fruitcakes. In the meantime eat your ulcer.

Living upside down is wrong, roots in the air mouths filled with sand. Only what might be sang. I cannot live crackling with electric rage always. The journey is too long to run, cursing those who can't keep up.

Give me your hand. Talk quietly to everyone you meet. It is going on. We are moving again with our houses on our backs. This time we have to remember to sing and make soup. Pack the Kapital and the vitamin E, the basil plant for the sill, Apache tears you picked up in the desert.

But remember to bury all old quarrels behind the garage for compost. Forgive who insulted you. Forgive yourself for being wrong. You will do it again for nothing living resembles a straight line, certainly not this journey to and fro, zigzagging you there and me here making our own road onward as the snail does.

Yes, for some time we might contemplate not the tiger, not the eagle or grizzly but the snail who always remembers that wherever you find yourself eating is home, the center where you must make your love, and wherever you wake up is here, the right place to be where we start again.

Marge Piercy

Snail image by Amanito See http://www.flickr.com/photos/amanito/513566490/

thanks to kathleen for sharing this poem

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“Calling Him Back from Layoff,” Bob Hicok

I called a man today. After he said hello and I said hello came a pause during which it would have been confusing to say hello again so I said how are you doing and guess what, he said fine and wondered aloud how I was and it turns out I’m OK. He was on the couch watching cars painted with ads for Budweiser follow cars painted with ads for Tide around an oval that’s a metaphor for life because most of us run out of gas and settle for getting drunk in the stands and shouting at someone in a t-shirt we want kraut on our dog. I said he could have his job back and during the pause that followed his whiskers scrubbed the mouthpiece clean and his breath passed in and out in the tidal fashion popular with mammals until he broke through with the words how soon thank you ohmyGod which crossed his lips and drove through the wires on the backs of ions as one long word as one hard prayer of relief meant to be heard by the sky. When he began to cry I tried with the shape of my silence to say I understood but each confession of fear and poverty was more awkward than what you learn in the shower. After he hung up I went outside and sat with one hand in the bower of the other and thought if I turn my head to the left it changes the song of the oriole and if I give a job to one stomach other forks are naked and if tonight a steak sizzles in his kitchen do the seven other people staring at their phones hear?

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      Haiku

forced to write haiku

I rebel and rise against

The arrogant words

       -pmk-