When things are too hard
to take, take to creation
within and without.
Tag Archives: WRITING
ART THERAPY& Haiku
D.E.I. and I
I have stayed away from words,
breathless, in my grief,
for too long.
Diversity is my faith.
Equity is my hope.
Inclusion is my love.
Each breath I take is a promise
that things will be better someday.
And, they have been for a time,
in places expanding across space,
across multiple divides.
In a school, then university.
In a church, then a community.
Across a state, on national forums
Each breath inhaled the hate,
expanded and expelled love in its place.
Breaths took down barriers, created programs,
enacted policies, changed syllabi,
created courses and news ways of seeing,
new avenues of progress, new ways of being.
The backlash always came,
in drips and drabs, all the same.
But this! This! It is a fearsome game.
It is not D.E.I. which they decry.
They want to see us hold our breath
and die.
They SNAP food from the mouths of babes.
They ask the aged and disabled to work their own miracles,
heal themselves without medic-aid,
waste away, and die.
They place tariffs on those who stood at our side.
Making us all pay more for less to save their pride.
They fill their pockets with our labor,
changing coins to crypto for their greedy favor.
They extort heroes who fight to protect freedom world-wide
so that dictators and killers can be by their side.
They miss the days when the few controlled the many.
They refuse to compete, or share even one penny;
pennies earned from our labor, not theirs.
Lately, it seems we have not got a prayer.
We seldom did. But, do not despair.
What we did have was the freedom to try.
Now, our hard-won freedom to speak and act is denied.
We are being denied the right to even try.
We still have one another, and our God-given rights.
We will never allow those to be shoved aside.
And at the end of this life we shall hold hands and sigh
We tried.
We tried.
We tried!
POETRY FUN
I cannot wait to write a poem.
Let thoughts begin to roam
across the blank spaces
where I see only faint traces.
Whatever lurks beneath the surface
is always a surprising surfeit
of what has passed and is to become
a new creation time rolled into one.
Nothing it seems is ever lost.
Experience is the cost
of facing new challenges sent
across the waves of time unbent.
Around and round again I go.
Where I shall end up I never know.
And where I have been becomes new.
And where I go is merely a clue.
When I arrive I shall share with you
the route I took to be renewed.
I hope you will join me on the route.
That is what companionship is all about.
Knowing I shall return at the end of the journey
to your company holds me firmly
upright and focused with eyes wide open
to the beauty of words never-before spoken.
I play today to remind myself in this space
that there is always a time and place
to relax and let go, and just have fun;
to remind myself, I have just begun.
Filed under POETRY
CIVILITY
Civility is not servility.
Civility ends when aggression begins.
Civility ends when sexism begins.
Civility ends when racism begins.
Civility has no place
when legislation threatens harm.
Civility has no place
when incitement threatens harm.
Civility has no place
when lawlessness threatens harm.
Civility has no place
when disinformation and lies threaten harm.
Servility cannot become an excuse for civility.
Are we to be lead by uncivil hate and greed?
And should we then be civil and agree to bend a knee?
Servility must never be mistaken for civility.
Civility must not become servility.
No bending knees before hate and greed.
No bending knees at the death of democracy.
No bending knees at any man above the law.
No bending knees at freedom’s last straw.
No servility for me.
I resist any suggestion to show civility
to those insisting upon my servility.
USE YOUR WORDS
How often we tell children
“Use your words.”
But, we forget too easily
that words have power
only if they are heard,
and not dismissed breezily.
Men decided long ago
not to listen to women.
So many lies are told
to quiet women’s voices.
Eve has never been forgiven
for opening men’s eyes
to painful truths.
Women’s voices are not more shrill.
Women’s screams are not made
to give men their thrills.
Women’s truths are too often
pushed aside to save male pride.
Doors are slammed shut
against voices women can trust.
“Use your words?”
How soon we forget.
Pain is the great motivator
of forgetfulness.
It deadens speech.
It silences words.
Bullies remind us of our pain
to shut our mouths
and drown truth out.
“Use your words!”
Do not forget their power
in the kitchen, in the bedroom,
in the schoolroom, in the boardroom.
“Use your words,” minute by minute,
hour after hour, until the day comes
you can vote your own power
to “use your words.”
Filed under POETRY
THE SPACES BETWEEN
Words on the page matter not at all.
It is the space between the words
where mystery dwells.
I fist my hand around the pen,
my defending weapon of choice,
while I struggle with stories to tell.
I do not explore the words;
but, the spaces between and aside
while I open my self wide.
We may read the words together,
and search the space between words
hand in hand, eye to eye, heart to heart.
No hate can break the bond of words,
shared in the spaces between, apart.
And, then, we can know all there is to know
as we join our empty spaces
deep and dark, side by side.
Reach for the stars if you will.
I prefer to explore one another
between the the words of languages
unknown, unable to be spoken.
None of what is written matters at all.
It is the space between words
where love rises and falls.
Hate cannot find its way in the dark.
But, love can.
Love carries its own light within
the spaces between the words.
Love glows in the dark.
Filed under POETRY
HAIKU/ POETRY
Wildly careening
prose portrayed as poetry
fools no one but me.
Filed under POETRY
A POET’S VIEW
Paper of every color and hue
unrolls from thousands of inner tubes
that I might write upon a page;
so bright, it dims the sight
and opens the mind to such delight
in cerulean, amaranth, celadon,
garnet, crimson, vermillion
violet, tangerine, ecru and Eton-blue;
colors I can taste and feel
as they unroll reel by reel
so real they dance and sing and swell
until the pen dips in the well.
I wrap each page around each cell
and feel the energy seep through
blood and bone and sinew
into every soft tissue
that pulses with breath
and laughter and tears,
and beats with heart-felt truth
so hard and fast it hardly knows
what words spill out upon the page,
which black marks ink signs
to tell me the way
while you can see and understand
before I can even comprehend
that a poem has unfurled from tubes
not of cardboard but of gold.
Writing is the treasure of stories untold
and waiting to be wrapped
then given as gifts as colors unfold.
w’s
Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.com
what use words
when loneliness fills
wells long in drought
where the only wet thing
wipes ink on the page
while we die of thirst
waiting.
annarino writes 
FIGHTING WORDS
Poetry has fled.
Art hides in plain sight
behind clouds of flame,
beyond winds of change,
before plutocrats take the stage,
no longer waiting behind the scenes
which hide their rage.
Words have lost all meaning
when facts go unchecked
flung too fast to sustain truth
and belief in its power to right wrongs
for the weak and the poor,
tossed aside by courts which cower
fearing loss of wealth and power.
Which words are safe when lies procure
the party in power’s silent vote to score
total control of each life, each thought,
each breath threatened by dirty schemes
to pollute the earth, water and air?
Words cannot be spoken, claimed by death
of the rule of law.
No words exist to describe the depravity
some of us saw
as our words lay dying
first inside
then outside
where meaning can be lost.
Words remain frozen in heavy frost,
weighed down by cold hearts
and dead souls
seeking total control.
Freedom resides in words
which too often remain unsaid.
Words too softly spoken to wake
those asleep, escaping, all hopes dead.
Too few words of truth must compete
with an onslaught of unchecked lies.
I listen and watch, lost in thought.
I write and I plead against what we have wrought.
Poetry, I fear, carries too-little weight.
Poetry, perhaps, has waited too late
to escape the threat when so many lies
have buried the truth for power and greed.
Money has always been the creed
clothed in religion and faith
which grants God’s grace
to those who deserve to see His face
on dollar bills and hung on towers.
False gods seek our praise as they devour
a country whose best citizens
refuse to use their power to remain free,
and would rather lose their democracy.
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