Category: Poems

I’m gonna ban the phrase “a wannabe poet”

I’m gonna ban the phrase “a wannabe poet”
A poet writes poetry, good or bad
If you’re one or the other you probably know it.

I can put pen to paper and push out the words
Any alternative is just absurd
The ink don’t make it a poem
The pen don’t make it a poem
The fingers don’t make it a poem
The poet makes it a poem
And I know it

I can be a wannabe gangster
I can be a wannabe sharpshooter
I can be a wannabe dog trainer
I can’t be a wannabe poet
If I am writing a poem
I’m a poet
And I know it

I’ve been a poet ever since I wrote my first poem
Something about this life being just an instant in eternity
Who coulda guessed I’d be so profound
in the middle of the night
When that poem was found
Bouncing around in my head
The words told me how,
They just said
Come out and be a poem right now

I may still not know all I wanna be
But this poet things just stuck inside of me
The words don’t always just flow
Any good writer has to know
Time and practice and a random phrase
Turn into some words on a page
Some write of summer sun or winter snow
Sometimes words just know where to go
Mediocre, or so and so, or truly inspired
All come together whether alert or tired
Just pay attention to rhythm and words that flow together
Like none before or after have gathered
We can be poets for all of our days
We wanna, we gotta, we’re just made that way

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/08/13

January 18, 2014
Which falls from the sky?

Omar’s Rubaiyet
Neither sky nor earth answers
Drink wine and feel fine
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/01/13

This is one of those times when we’re blowing wind through the mustard seeds.
We scatter our hopes across the fields of life.
Like a tenacious oak sprout, we don’t know what the future may hold.
All we know is that the thing to do is push through the dirt and reach for the sky.
All we hope for is sunshine and water and the breeze of God’s breathe to blow through our world to make this effort bear fruit.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/08/2013

Winter birds jumping
Fighting for food with themselves
Confounding they’re search
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/15/14

Full Moon with the mists
Moving in the western sky
Cold crisp blue new day
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/19/13

Icarus ascends
Orion runs swiftly
Which falls from the sky?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 12/26/13

January 18, 2014
Indio to Blythe

Indio to Blythe
Open desert and hot vista
Where I first heard the Western Wall
And cried for Lauren, the dancer

Place where war machines were tested
So they could go triumph on the African continent

Driving space
To reflect on the seen and unseen
Seen across the distance
The potential
Unseen in the near distance
The potential

A place where a strange entrepreneur lived
He sold gas to the travelers
He raised llamas in the heat
He planted palm trees in rows and triangles and circles
Just like he planted conflict in his own family
I wonder if any of them escaped
Across the desert

Heat,
heat and wind,
heat and wind and vastness

One hundred miles
Across this space
So many came west
and saw this as only the last desolate miles
before the promised land
so many went east
and escaped this way through desolation of space and heat
the wind blowing them
further off the path of their lives

One hundred miles
With little of the water of life
And wind to blow our cares
Back as dust in our faces
If that be where our mind is
or to blow them to other places.

It’s another hundred miles
To the ones who sit in the vast space
Or turn off the road
To see the thousand year old petroglyphs
And wonder what beauty there was
When other people came here
To live, to carve, to gaze at the sky

Indio to Blythe
Blythe to Indio
A passage in space
A passing of time
A path through life, westward or eastward
Raw emotions heated to the edge of tolerance
One hundred miles

<><><><><>
See an earlier piece about this place.

December 1, 2013
Drops in the river – Lagunitas

Lives like water
flowing past my place in the river
Dark stories
Eddies of grief and need.
Do I offer a genuine harbor
Or a weak line tied to a branch?

Lives bounce on little waves
Keeping heads above the water
That’s all it takes sometimes
But when can they paddle to the edge
To stand and rest as the river flows past?

I’ve got a little extra to offer
Something unexpected
Here is a float to hold
Here is a paddle if you are lucky enough to have a craft

Without a boat
We are bobbing in the river of life.
When we fall below the surface
Gasping

Wondering if it’s worth the effort
Will anyone throw a life raft?
We grasp as if for a floating log
Help me hold onto a branch
To keep from being swept away.
Help me
Help me

Lives like water flowing past
Fast and rough
Slow and placid
Water, ever flowing
Like life
Like wind
Like thoughts

Are we swimmers or are we flotsam?

We’re all paddling toward another shore

Mist off the water as a new day dawns
It obscures our fates
As it awaits the mid day sun

Lives like water
Drops in the river
Flow down to the ocean of being
That is all being
As the river changes the life
The life in turn changes the river.

November 22, 2013
Looking out to the east

Photo by Andy Berg http://www.flickr.com/photos/akad

Looking out to the east
As color fades from pink to gray
Having gone to the edge of the continent
On the western edge of the great north America
The tide was out
Exposing what lies beneath
Perhaps there are lies beneath
Exposed by the thrusts of the geological crusts
Over the long time
and the now
The blowing winds
and waves crashing down
on lies
Until truth is exposed
But who was there to see it?
The ravens have their dance of flight
Paired off in their playful riffs
The truth is exposed
But they don’t care
Their truth is in fields and forest
The lone tern or the seagull flock
Stand on the windswept shore.
They stand near that truth
But are oblivious to it
The lone man
Observes the truth
In the light of a late day
And doesn’t know what to do with it either.

My mysticism
Lies deep down under the sea
of reality

November 13, 2013
The way of the world is the blessings we bestow

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

The great sages and lesser minds
Down through time
Have pondered
The way the world works.

They ask the powers of the universe,
Or each other,
Why things are the way they are.

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

It is our nature
Passed down through thousands of generations
To wonder why.

Why did this happen to me?
Why did this happen to those I care about?
Why were my opponents not stopped in opposing me?
Why does disease and hardship and struggle persist?

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other

The answers to all our inquiries
Are inevitably incomplete.
However, how well we see the world
And our place in it
Is defined by the constellation
of goodness and support we get from each other.

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

You may not realize
How much you helped me.
I may not realize that what I did,
Or said,
Or did not say,
Was just what you needed
Right there, in that moment.

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

Oh, my dear friends,
And casual acquaintances,
And wonderful people
You have taught me
That I do not stand alone.

I do not grieve alone.
I do not struggle alone.
I do not cry alone.
I do not laugh alone.
I do not sigh alone.

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

You,
My friends,
My wife’s friends,
My sons’ friends,
My friends I have not met
My friends of days gone past,
You give me blessings.
Thus you and I
Move through the world
Much stronger,
Much better,
Much more at peace.

Hence, I know,
The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

You don’t take away my sadness
You share my sadness.
You don’t end my loneliness
You make my loneliness more bearable.
You don’t miss my laughter
You restore my ability to laugh.
You don’t negate my perceptions
You validate my perceptions and make the world clearer.
You don’t question my beliefs,
Nor do you have to share my beliefs,
You hold a space for me to have my beliefs.
And share them with you.

In this last part, I see,
I could be talking about teachers and students.
I could be talking about educational professionals.
I could be talking about leaders and staff.
I could be talking about a parent and child.
I could be talking about you.

The way of the world
Is the blessings we bestow
Upon each other.

“Sent from the top of the world.”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 11/02/13

photo by James Lin http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlin45d/

November 2, 2013
Orion returns in the Fall

The sky does not change
Like the earthly dwellers do
Orion still runs
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/14/13

Orion at dawn
Moving across a dark sky
Lifts my lonely heart
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/18/13

Misty morning fog
Like a mind’s sadness and grief
Dissipates slowly
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/22/13

Orion does the
Same thing every day, running
Why can’t I do that?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 11/01/13

November 2, 2013
Living in love is better

Inspired by the end of this wonderful sharing at minute 4:32

StoryCorps (StoryCorps): Never Say Goodbye: A Love And Life Kept Vivid

When a guy is happily married, no matter what happens….there’s a shelter when you get home.”

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Life is too short
To live in sadness
Living in love is better

Every day the simple things
Go unrecognized as gifts
They are

Every smile and caring comment
Rests upon the ground of a relationship
Like snow

Until it piles high and gives
A brilliant color to the world
And all that lies below

The ground we cover
Makes the landscape brilliant
Then brings forth new growth
In the Spring

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/25/13

October 25, 2013
Lost on a hillside?

Anise and asphalt
At the county line marshes
Smells of life passing
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 09/21/13

Is it possible
For a dragonfly to be
Lost on a hillside? (Sunday at Taylor Mountain)
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 09/22 13

Standing higher than the cross
Higher than the houses of the rich and powerful
Standing in the wind, unblocked since it came off the vast ocean
Alone, looking out at the plain of my existence
Standing where the gliding vultures ride the winds to the crest
Alone, no longer waiting for a miracle
Standing by myself
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 09/22/13

Sun glare through the mist
Foggy mornings in the Fall
Fosters noble rot?
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> 10/22/13

Living on the edge
Of pain like a trench too deep
Not falling but close
<><><>written about work<><><> 10/25/13

October 25, 2013
Like life inevitably

Color changes trees
Like life inevitably
Grace and wind blow through

October 18, 2013