Some words are too heavy to write.
Their weight bears too much pain
To stay alive on the page,
nor offer any light.
Thus, the poet keeps them
out of sight.
To ink such words upon a page
might fill a fragile world
with hopeless and destructive rage.
Such is the darkened fate
of the chronically ill forced to hide,
all energy drained and waiting
for life to open wide,
and poetry find its way again
in a new and open light.
Filed under POETRY
There are no words.
Not even thoughts nor prayers
can escape beyond the grief.
Three nine year old Nashville children
could not hold the line
we asked and trained them to do.
The line has grown and stretched
and wrapped itself around
Columbine, Margory Stoneman Douglas,
Uvalde, Sandy Hook, Amish school,
Pulse, Binghampton, Carthage nursing home,
University of Texas tower, University of Virginia,
Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University
Washington Navy Yard, Fort Hood one and two,
San Bernardino, Edmund Post Office,
San Ysidro Mc Donald’s, LA dance studio,
El Paso and Virginia Walmarts, Planned Parenthood,
Birmingham church potluck, Living Church of God,
Sacramento and Texas First Baptist Church,
Tree of Life synagogue, Sikh Temple,
Buffalo and Boulder supermarkets, IHOP
Molson Coors and Hartford Beer,
Fed X, UPS, Xerox, Lockheed Martin.
The list goes on and on stretching ever longer
the lines we should never cross
until lines wrap our feet and ankles
no longer able to march in the streets.
Until lines wrap our hands and fists
no longer able to wrap them around a pen to write new law,
nor lift them in the air with promise to end what we saw.
Until lines wrap around around our heads and stuff our mouths
no longer able to speak out loud, only muffled groans of despair.
There are no words.
There are no words.
There are no words.
But, words have never been enough.
Filed under POETRY
TIME
A single moment
is all. And time is only
a way to forget.
Filed under POETRY
After the cheeping rattle of ice chips beat against the window
and replaced the quiet drift of falling snowflakes
silence descended and coated the ground.
Now there is no sound,
as if Earth, herself, is holding her breath.
The freeze is so profound that even the tires on cars
silently whirl round and around and around,
trying to grip as the cars slide and slip,
like ideas trying not to collide,
unable to take purchase of a single thought;
awakened from silent dreams fraught
with swallowed screams and naught
to do with this newly frozen world.
New snowflakes, smaller and tighter now twirl
hidden by silent vows made on quiet streets
to freeze out life and cover the Other,
refusing to see them as sister and brother.
The only remarks that life remains for sure
are three breaths controlled and held in check:
the warmth of hot air blown from furnace grates,
the kettle of water heated to steep tea,
and the certainty that I am still me.
Breathe in and breathe out, and never doubt
that frozen days come silently to give us time
to redesign and renew Earth,
and a new birth
of a new humanity.
Warming brings the thaw of words hidden
by the freeze of words now bidden
to silence by those who fear trust hidden by design.
I find the hidden poetry in this silent freeze.
I make those hidden words mine.
I wake with you and your warm spirit to shout
across the deep freeze all about.
Sound carries farther on cold air.
So shout and sing and show you care
in this heavily silent deep freeze.
Never let silence shout you out.
Filed under POETRY
Your fear weighs heavily in my arms.
I can only carry you so long
before muscles lock and pain sets in
and you drop, leaden as a casket,
one your fear places us in.
Together we stand on soil loosened
by the heavy weight of two.
Do you not know each one of us
must carry his own cross to Golgotha?
Do you not know your own strength,
hard won with all you have been through?
Or did I so lessen your load by carrying you
that your legs are now too weak to move on
to a solid, firmer ground.
I let you go now. I set you free.
Be on your way, without me.
Carry on.
Carry on.
Filed under POETRY
It snowed again during the shortening night;
A staggering and mighty sight
to those who yearn for Spring sun.
I, among them, am one.
The daffodils, though, delight
standing as tall and as resolute as they might
to bear the weight of our expectation,
cheering us on heartily in exultation
that winter’s quiet and tight hold on us all
yet allows the cheerful to stand tall,
and welcome with unabashed delight
another snowfall during the night.
And, somehow, the world, again, seems right.
Filed under POETRY
The rich are the retaining wells of culture they believe.
They wear their wealth and status on their sleeves
or on their pockets front or back, across their chest,
or from their shoulder purses hanging slack.
Declaring status for all to see.
If there were no caste system there would be
no racism.
If there were no racism there would be
no climate change nor earth destruction.
For where would we put the poison men create?
Not near the wealthy classes’s gate.
They neither see nor suffer unsafe states.
Where do we bury their wealth-earned waste?
Not in Esher. Nor in St. Germain-des-Pres.
Not in Tribeca. Nor in Oud Zuid.
Not in Medina. Nor in Atherton.
Not in Port Royal. Nor in Kensington.
Not in Assiniboine Park. Nor in Port Royal.
Not in Patterson Hill. Nor in The Peak.
Not in any of the places only the rich speak
with cultured voice and true concern
for what the world has now become
with each season’s unusual turn.
These richest places to live on this earth
are retaining ponds which only confuse
the deadline for earth’s destruction
which we all face.
And those who have been cast aside.
who carry bottles governments provide,
or heavy jugs of polluted water
about the countryside,
from deadened rivers
and from polluted, toxic wells
live where the poorest live, unwelcome
to live among the swells.
They live where the poorest dwell,
said to be the lower class,
and are placed among the lowest caste,
selected by race, color or birthplace.
we have no time to waste.
The retaining ponds must survive
to protect and pursue untainted water and skies,
to use their wealth to break down barriers,
to deconstruct the racist muck
they have placed us all in.
Clean air and water should be there for all.
If not, even the mighty and wealthy will fall
as earth reclaims what once was hers
an untainted world free of all humanity
and it poisonous thoughts and actions.
No racism, no caste sytem.
This I long to see.
If only earth can survive you and me.
Retaining wells we all be.
In the darkness are points of light
jewels strung across the sky
by unseen hands of strength and might,
or an unknown someone’s
imagination taking flight.
I stand in awe, feeling smaller somehow.
I become more minute by the minute,
a small measure of who and what I am
or what I could impossibly become.
I watch Venus and Jupiter
hanging in the western sky,
nearing closer each night and wonder why.
My tiny self on tiny earth joins them
in silent and solemn trajectory
around our sun, in blazing mystery.
I stand and wonder at the beauty naked to my eye,
joined by history with ancient watchers such as I.
Each night I watch planets appear
to grow closer and embrace
in the dark expanse of space.
And suddenly,
I want to fly!
Filed under POETRY
Up and down the street
garbage cans line the curb
waiting for the garbage truck
and men to pick them up,
to clear the debris left
from those trying to stay alive,
and leave something behind
before they die.
Garbage cans on streets and alleys
are on public thoroughfares,
public vessels that can be opened wide
to anyone who cares to look inside
at trash that can disclose truths
hidden inside plastic bags of deceit
filled with their discarded
food containers, chicken bones,
greasy rags and purchase receipts.
All else goes onto compost piles,
or gets recycled into bins
for later pick-up, by different men,
in different trucks, on different days.
Is this how death works?
Are we trash to be decayed
until we become dust
picked up by interstellar winds
and returned to the stars
waiting to be consumed by black holes?
Or, are we picked up
by different trucks to be recycled
into new lives, like a glass bottle or shipping box
to be used anew in some new way?
Or do we become compost for a new garden
in a galaxy far-far-away where lovely flowers grow?
The truth is that no one knows.
So we build stories of future glories
as we place our selves by the curb
afraid to live and use up all we are.
We, imperfect people all,
too often place ourselves in the trash can
and simply wait to be picked up.
Filed under POETRY
It is easy to become disillusioned
with institutions which we know,
and which have gotten us this far,
when we see the mess we are in.
So, what do we do? Organize anew?
And create institutions to do
what we have always done.
Does anyone believe our churches,
companies, and governments
were created out of hate?
Our newly formed groups are not new.
It is always the same.
Each tries to do its best, the best it can do.
The first rule of any group or institution,
like the first rule of each individual,
is to survive, and hopefully thrive.
Membership dues, costs and fees
keep each institution alive.
And money corrupts with greed
to be more, have more, do more.
It seems to be a human need.
As usual, we see the angry diatribe renewed
against religions and governments
for what they have failed to do.
I ask, what do you do?
How many soup kitchens do you run?
How many hospitals have you built?
How many roads do you maintain?
How many times have you failed
to do your best, and ignore the rest
of us? We are only human.
Should our institutions be better?
If so, then so must we be.
Love is not a verb, but an action word.
Love helps us feel the way to act
better than we ever knew we could.
Love erases the word “should”
with the act which rebuilds
institutions of which we can once again be proud.
Tearing down is much easier, I know,
than rehabilitating the world
wherever we are, wherever we go.
Find your hammer, whatever it is.
Mine is words on a page.
Grab some nails and form a crew.
The whole world is depending
on me, and, on you.
Let us rebuild, not tear down
what worked so well before
it became what we chose to ignore,
and let rot
under the weight of heavy storms.
Filed under POETRY
annarino writes 