Poems that I love

by Rebecca del Rio You are hanging from a branch by your teeth. No way to save yourself or others who hang, too. Arms that cannot reach any branch, legs stretch but cannot find the smooth safe trunk. All around, your loved ones, friends, strangers hang-- teeth clamp bony twigs that suspend necessary hopes and plans. It is hopeless. No rescue will arrive. So you relax, taste the clean, unfamiliar tang of sap, feel the forgiving wind against your waving arms, arms that swim through emptiness. Without hope, life is focused, fluid, a ledge of fragile earth suspended over the ocean of unknowing, the end of the branch. Life is the glorious moment before the fall when all plans are abandoned, the love you give as you hang, loving those who hang with you. * I think that the reader might be interested to know about Case 5 of the Mumonkan .

by Leonard Cohen It's coming through a hole in the air, from those nights in Tiananmen Square. It's coming from the feels that it ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming through a crack in the wall, on a visionary flood of alcohol; from the staggering account of the Sermon on the Mount which I don't pretend to understand at all. It's coming from the silence on the dock of the bay, from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. It's coming from the sorrow on the street the holy places where the races meet; from the homicidal bitchin' that goes down in every kitchen to determine who will serve and who will eat. From the wells of disappointment where the women

by 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

I saw you this morning. You were moving so fast. Can’t seem to loosen my grip On the past. And I miss you so much. There’s no one in sight. And we’re still making love In my secret life. Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934 – November 7, 2016)

I once knew a girl whose father was filthy rich. He built row upon row of tacky boxes  that mar the views on the outskirts of San Francisco, a wilderness that chokes out coffee houses and bars and brothels, all the places where freedom and language get down. He passed his declining years trying to rhyme 2 x 4, pencil and Uncle Sam, verse that would make Ogden Nash blush. Once she asked me and some friends to her hot tub. We all had big dicks that she tried to rhyme with fun. We were naked and she wore a bathing suit. I was thankful her father had trained her well in the art of really bad poetry. Ken Ireland

I saw myself a ring of bone in the clear stream of all of it and vowed, always to be open to it that all of it might flow through and then heard “ring of bone” where ring is what a bell do BY  LEW WELCH Lew Welch, “[I Saw Myself]” from  Ring of Bone: Collected Poems of Lew Welch .  Copyright © 2012 by Lew Welch. Reprinted by permission of City Lights Books. Source:  Ring of Bone: Collected Poems of Lew Welch  (City Lights Books, 2012)

by Larry Robinson Unhurried mornings, greeted with gratitude; good work for the hand, the heart and the mind; the smile of a friend, the laughter of children; kind words from a neighbor, a home dry and warm. Food on the table, with a place for the stranger; a glimpse of the mystery behind every breath; some time of ease in the arms of your lover; then sleep with a prayer of thanks on your lips; May all this and more be yours this year and every year after to the end of your days.