Poems and Stories (145 Poem) – 10.13.16 — 9.14.16

Hundred and Fifty Seven 8.16.16

Danna Faulds
Just For Now

Just for now, without asking how, let yourself sink into stillness.
Just for now, lay down the
weight you so patiently
bear upon your shoulders.
Feel the earth receive
you, and the infinite
expanse of sky grow even
wider as your awareness
reaches up to meet it.
Just for now, allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience.
Breathe out
whatever blocks you from
the truth. Just for now, be
boundless, free, awakened
energy tingling in your
hands and feet. Drink in
the possibility of being
who and what you really are
so fully alive that when you
open your eyes the world
looks different, newly born
and vibrant, just for now.

If I were a giant,
I would let a heavy sigh,
And my breath would move the gray clouds across the land,
And dandelions would be free.
I would lay down on empty green fields and watch the clouds leave and dandelions dance,
(Have you seen anything dance better?)

I’ll lay there and I’ll feel the sun creeping on my skin from behind the clouds,
and I’ll taste the heat,
and I’ll drink the silence,
and I’ll touch the quietness with my eyes,
And then I would fall asleep sinking slowly to ground,
Like a heavy stone sinking into warm mud on a summer day.
Back to the earth,
Back to the creator,
Back to the no-thingness.

Hundred and Fifty Six 8.15.16

I am back in states and already had to deal with two customers service agency haha! Anyway, I want to write to you, but for some reason my heart is just telling me let it be.. like it doesn’t want me to, but not in a defensive way, it’s just like this; a leaf falling from a tree on hot summer afternoon, and no one is seeing it. Neither the leaf nor the eye that misses the drop cares – it’s really nice and light – I like it! Anyway, yes I am back in DC! Kind of jet lag, confused, and content!

Here’s a poem from an up and coming poet! This is new here, I usually send poems from poets whose fingers are stained from ink, and their mouths taste like years of poetry dipped in honey and gun powder! But I like this poem very much, I can see the space and I can see the breeze in it – My head is little jumbled and this poem feels like a nice silk sheet to lay on! Don’t know much about the poet tho, I know he has a wide smile, an interesting voice, and soft hair! #poetry #poem #newpoets #art #word

Will Rogers

If you feel lost in timespace

Remember
You are exactly
where were always meant to be
And while it’s true
You will always be here
And nowhere else,

True this moment
Lasts forever,

Its waves rippling out
And out,

It’s also true
You’ll never
Be here
Again.

This moment,
Gone.
And this one,
Gone.
And this,

Here,

Gone.

Where are you now?

Where are you going?

You’ll know before anyone else
After you get there.

The You who was lost
Will always have been lost,
Finding what
You were always destined
To find.
4052

Hundred and Fifty Five 8.7.16

I woke as old as time and as heavy as the piece of metal attached to the cartoony suicidal man’s leg, right before he jumped over the bridge into the ocean. That cheap Hollywood-esque image. I’ve got ton of shit to do; logistical matters to handle an ocean away, a few weddings to attend this week – so many people I know are getting married and so many people I know are getting divorce, and I am confused about why they are doing this -, friends and family to say goodbye to, I’ve gotta cross an ocean in a week, cross a massive nation in two weeks, the air is thick, the cleaning lady is using bleach and it is giving me a headache, and Tom Waits is singing in my head “Well, I’ve got a bad liver and a broken heart”, and today is going to be in 90s F. But there are worst things than these mornings, we all know this. He knows, as he says nothing is worst than too late.. This morning feels thick and warm like blood, but does not feel too late..

This morning feels like a slow and quiet B movie, but not too late, this morning is many things but it’s not the worst, it’s not sad, or lonely, it’s just rough on the edges and I know how to cut the edge, this is not my first…

I set on my bed and saw my face in my room’s mirror, my hair messy, my mouth dry from last night’s drinks, before I could put any of the puzzle pieces together I knew one that and that was only drowning in Bukowski could save me… he was broken himself before he was saved. So I sat down with a pitcher of coffee and read Bukowski after Bukowski… I red the Sunny Side, the Red Mercedes, I read stuff from “Love Is a Dog From Hell” and some more. I picked the poem is this letter for me, and as I wrote this, Tom sang, Bukowski grunted, and words filled my childhood living room masking the smell of damned bleach, words and sound afloat in the thick air and I am drinking a strong cup of coffee – one more please –

I am sitting here and watching the slow movement of hands of clock and let my eyes lay on curtains – they dance to the breeze, slowly (Can you see it? I wish you could!) – . I think I still like all these, this thick air, this ton of shit do to, smell of bleach, this warm blood like feeling, this being heavy. As I sit here with all these I think I like me being me..

Bukowski
well, that’s just the way it is…

sometimes when everything seems at
its worst
when all conspires
and gnaws
and the hours, days, weeks
years
seem wasted- —
stretched there upon my bed
in the dark
looking upward at the ceiling
I get what many will consider an
obnoxious thought:
it’s still nice to be
Bukowski.
2932

Hundred and Fifty Four 8.5.16

Oh uncle Walt, every time I come home – questions occurring. What is home and what do I want from here? I come here to this land with expectations to find answers, like many young men and women in search of purpose and identity, in search of something, in search of roots. I come here to go back go back to America with answers, yet every time I sit in this house, set step on these roads my vision gets blurry, time plays strange tricks, and my heart gets confused. As if I am looking at it, and not seeing it. I want my home, my mother, my dad, my sister, and friends teach me how to see. Then, you come running, uncle Walt, whit your big smile and ancient beard, your steps heavy, your skin rosy, you are large (btw how did you come to Iran? – oh silly me, you can go anywhere you want) we sit on giant rock and watch the people pass in a hot summer evening in my hometown. You tell me that I must seek the open road. You tell me you have no answer. Oh how I love the open and rough road with its new and harsh prizes. You remind me that no one has the answers, but me when I’m on the road! Cheers to roads and travelers on it! I know the answers are within, but perhaps I need to walk some more to wake up so that I can see better! We don’t rush the road, but we don’t give up on it either.

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
46

I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and never
will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooks you round the waist,
My right hand points to landscapes of continents and the public road.

Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.

It is not far, it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.

Shoulder your duds dear son, and I will mine, and let us hasten forth,
Wonderful cities and free nations we shall fetch as we go.

If you tire, give me both burdens, and rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,
And in due time you shall repay the same service to me,
For after we start we never lie by again.

This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the crowded heaven,
And I said to my spirit When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the
pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill’d and
satisfied then?
And my spirit said No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond.

You are also asking me questions and I hear you,
I answer that I cannot answer, you must find out for yourself.

Sit a while dear son,
Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink,
But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes I kiss you with
a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

Long enough have you dream’d contemptible dreams,
Now I wash the gum from your eyes,
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of
your life.

Long have you timidly waded holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, rise again, nod to me, shout, and laughingly
dash with your hair.
•
3231mth

Hundred and Fifty Three 8/1/16

Volcano baby volcano!

Adrienne Rich
XI

Every peak is a crater. This is the law of volcanoes,
making them eternally and visibly female.
No height without depth, without a burning core,
though our straw soles shred on the hardened lava.
I want to travel with you to every sacred mountain
smoking within like the sibyl stooped over his tripod,
I want to reach for your hand as we scale the path,
to feel your arteries glowing in my clasp,
never failing to note the small, jewel-like flower
unfamiliar to us, nameless till we rename her,
that clings to the slowly altering rock—
that detail outside ourselves that brings us to ourselves,
was here before us, knew we would come, and sees beyond us.
2531mth

Hundred and Fifty Two 7.30.16

Frank O’Hara
Morning

I’ve got to tell you
how I love you always
I think of it on grey
mornings with death

in my mouth the tea
is never hot enough
then and the cigarette
dry the maroon robe

chills me I need you
and look out the window
at the noiseless snow

At night on the dock
the buses glow like
clouds and I am lonely
thinking of flutes

I miss you always
when I go to the beach
the sand is wet with
tears that seem mine

although I never weep
and hold you in my
heart with a very real
humor you’d be proud of

the parking lot is
crowded and I stand
rattling my keys the car
is empty as a bicycle

what are you doing now
where did you eat your
lunch and were there
lots of anchovies it

is difficult to think
of you without me in
the sentence you depress
me when you are alone

Last night the stars
were numerous and today
snow is their calling
card I’ll not be cordial

there is nothing that
distracts me music is
only a crossword puzzle
do you know how it is

when you are the only
passenger if there is a
place further from me
I beg you do not go

Wow – Some of us here could maybe call this poem too dramatic.. but wow – the sentiment regarding despair, distance, space, and yearning is immense and the beauty of his mind and amazing for me. He will be the third New York School poet I have sent to you! I really like that style of post modern American poetry (I do not know that many styles of post modern – but from the ones I know) and it has been a huge influence on my own writings. It’s a little scattered and raw(?) but feels so honest so sincere and has a solid punch always in the end – man they know how to pack a punch, I’m telling ya! – and I like that!! It’s new, unstructured to an extend, kind of beat like, but a lot less angry!

“the car is empty as a bicycle” wow – the space!! That’s amazing! Oh man, I love moving my hands slowly in the air in front of my eyes and face. Sometimes, I feel like I am touching the space.. Isn’t that kind of silly / funny? we are living in this space, we are sharing this space, yet we don’t feel that we are touching it.. I feel like sometimes when I close my eyes and meditate for a few minutes I can tell there are people moving around me.. or there are times that feels like the air or maybe even the space thickens and becomes tangible and I turn to a fish and I can feel other humanfish around me through the vibration of the water! I feel the same way about some of the poems I send.. I feel you when you read it. Not always, not all of you.. not your actual self (whatever that means) .. but something about you.. I draw an image of you in the air as I type these words while water is being boiled for my coffee roasted in the capital of the United States of America to be drank on a summer Saturday morning in Islamic Republic of Iran, in Urmia… distance to others is not really a friend of mine.. it does not bother me.. but I am not good at keeping in touch conventionally speaking, but there are times it’s not real or of importance .. Just like now.. I can see your eyes movement reading the poem, the voice that you are using, your slow breathing, the sound outside, your heart beats vibration on your chest… ah yes so good so real so NOW!!
3811mth

Hundred and Fifty 7.26.16

Jet lag is real weird and not fun… but this motherland is good, it’s familiar and unfamiliar at the same time! I already had some Chelo Kabab – tho I am no Sulat, but had me some Sultani… We sat around last night in my house had some scotch and read poetry, talked about suffering middle east is enduring as well as rest of the world – we talked about ego, and how human ego might be the major cause of destructions we are facing environmentally and politically. A friend asked what you want to be if you come back to this life again? I wanted to be a cliff, she wanted to be a tree in some not-so-particular location, a friend wanted to be a stray dog in some small village, he said he wants to fancy home nor no masters. My sister wanted to be a moment of kindness, she said this as she was petting a feral cat that lurks around my house and my family feeds him.. My dad is in love with this cat, just like how his dad loved feral cats (My grandpa, was something like saint of feral cats of old town.. I remember at some point he fed like 10 of them.. When he passed away cats were hanging out around his house for months..) And you know, I have cat and I love my boy -It’s good to be home. I love that poetry is such an integrated part of Iranian life.. people use lines from poems very casually to describe a situation over a dinner table and I’m like YAS YAS!

Some lightness for your heart, don’t hold back come and kiss me!

Hafiz

The Happy Virus

I caught the happy virus last night

When I was out singing beneath the stars.

It is remarkably contagious –

So kiss me.

Hundred and Forty Nine 7.24.16

Kenneth Koch
In Love with You

We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider
Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you.
I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love
I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.

Inside the symposium of your sweetest look’s
Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood
Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain raspberries, when China’s
Still a country! Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that’s
Exactly when. If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill,
I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking-water, as baskets
Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor! O benches of nothing
Appear and reappear—electricity! I’d love to be how
You are, as if
The world were new, and the selves were blue
Which we don
Until it’s dawn,
Until evening puts on
The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of . . .
Water! your tear-colored nail polish
Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new
As a calm
On the sea, where, like pigeons,
I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—
Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

Damnnnn Boi! I love Kenneth Koch (Another one of him I sent on another Sunday) and post modern poetry! It’s just so imperfect and weird!

So many good ways to love and so many ways to ache. When I started writing this I had a sense of heaviness in me so I was looking for heavier poems.. I just got off a long-ass flight, and going home is always weird and sentimental. Where’s home? What is home? It just feels a funny kind of way writing this on my way home as I am approaching my 10th anniversary of living in different countries and calling different places home. It’s an occurring question.. Do I have a home? Will I have a home? What even is home? and Why should I have one?!

Sitting here in Istanbul airport in a Starbucks and watching people is weird and strangely heavy for me, or it usually is.. but then I stumbled upon some Kenneth Koch and just like a child who stops crying upon seeing candy or toys my perspective shifted, a breeze came through, a lightness, and suddenly there’s more space than ever way..the universe is truly expanding… and to be fair I am no different than a child.

It is fascinating to experience what could happen when we let artistic love and ecstasy take us over..It feels indulgence, and massively playful. I love Koch’s poetry in so many ways – but I really love it as art, I love looking at it, at each word at each sentence.. I love the poem, of course. But each of his words are weirdly alive, independent from the poem.. they just shoot out of screen and paper to my eyes, I feel like I can print out some of his poems and lay on them and absorb them through my skin! The words are alive and I am alive, then why shouldn’t we love each other? Consume each other? Is love draining and consuming? I don’t know, but I am feelin’ it! Ah fire! it nourishes and destroys at the same time. I love his skills, his lightness, his style.. yeah…

I kind of have a lot more to say, but gonna go walk around and look at people and listen some sweeeet music and just live in mu surreal world.. After all this is a poetry mail list and I have already given you the poem so my job here is done… I love you, I love loving you, I love being able to love.. I love being loved! I can see elephants walking around and can hear a purple scream of funky chair somewhere I can see what I can’t see.. Man my head is wild zoo with no gravity..

Also Tolstoy man – We all should read more Tolstoy, fam!

“I think… if it is true that
there are as many minds as there
are heads, then there are as many
kinds of love as there are hearts.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“He stepped down, trying not to look long at her, as if she were the sun, yet he saw her, like the sun, even without looking.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
4771mth

Hundred and Forty Eight 7.21.16

Adrienne Rich
Song

You’re wondering if I’m lonely:
OK then, yes, I’m lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I’m lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawns’ first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning

I have been reading some Adrienne Rich these days, what a powerhouse – and dope bangs! She, for me, is a bit “technical” – and there’s this hardness to her that I just love. Kind of no pity, no bullshit kind of poetry! It’s not raw like Bukowski, but it’s strong. And lines in this poem create an amazing imagery for me, fire fire fire!!! I can see her in a summer afternoon rolling through a quiet, middle of nowhere highway in a modest car. Maybe a gray Mazda 6, or something big like 2004 beige Toyota Crown, or maybe maybe maybe a Jeep. I can see her eyes looking at the highway signs, and not caring about getting closer to any town or city, just driving miles after miles.. the untroubled subtle eyes in the golden hours.

I have been playing around the difference between lonely and alone these days, working on untangling these two in my life- much easier said than done. All of us have moments of loneliness when we are alone, in pairs, in groups, you know how it is.. that moment of loneliness in a party. But what’s the trick to dive deep into solitude and not get distracted with loneliness? I don’t know yet….I have lived alone, traveled alone, and here and there practice being alone for days on. Sometimes it hurts, but I still love my solitude, my madness, my chaos. Every time I try going deep it takes me a few days to get used to it, then I can see my mind and thoughts. I think so much goodness comes out of solitude if it is not always distracted by loneliness. Not shit talking on loneliness tho, there’s beauty and creativity in everything.
3582mth1

Hundred and Forty Seven 7.20.16

Vladimir Holan
Human Voice
Stone and star do not force their music on us,
flowers are silent, things hold something back,
because of us, animals deny
their own harmony of innocence and stealth,
the wind has always its chastity of simple gesture
and what song is only the mute birds know,
to whom you tossed an unthreshed sheaf on Christmas Eve.
To be is enough for them and that is beyond words. But we,
we are afraid not only in the dark,
even in the abundant light
we do not see our neighbour
and desperate for exorcism
cry out in terror: ‘Are you there? Speak!’

Every time I read this poem I just sigh a little. Not a sad sigh – more like breathing in and letting it all come out – feeling my shoulders fall. I love the subtlety of stones so much, quiet of the woods, distance of stars. They are just the way they are – for me it feels like they do not seek affirmation.. affirmation is hard, we want it, it’s good for us.. but it’s hard to find it, it’s hard to accept it, it’s hard to digest it, it’s hard to give it – but stars, trees, and rocks they just are – with or without us. I like rocks – massive ones! When I grow up I want to be one – you can come and climb on me on summer night, I’ll be there all day soaking the heat so you can lay on me and feel the heat and breeze.
2202mth

Hundred and Fourty Six 7.19.16

Outta nowhere like the wild grass, I’ll die and born again. let the wild fires take me over and turn me to ashes, let the wind take my ash and clean the land from my image, let the heavy snow cover the land once I stood on, let the wind howl at me, let the skies strike me with lightning, I am not worry, why should I be? When it rains next time, and when the sun goes up in the eastern skies I’ll creep out of the dark and moist earth and will live once more, I have roots running deep to the soul of this earth, I have love in my heart, sun in my eye, a woodpecker in my heart, strength in my knees and foot, and the breeze is a young mother who loves me. When I am reborn I may not be the me who used to be, but it will be me there and then. Damn poets, always with their drama…

Man what a month! So much happened – not all of them to me, but still… Just yesterday I was staring at a tree after rain and I could see steam coming out of its wet body where the sun was shining. That was awesome! You know the water drops falling from trees after a heavy rain right? I think those are tears of joy coming out invisibles eyes of trees. I fell of my bike a week or so ago got few bruises and some bloody elbows and knees, and I remembered how I have not fell down in so many years. 3 weeks ago I locked myself in for 5 days and left my house only at nights to lurk around the quiet city, I watched my mind to be an uneasy and untrained lil brat.. I learned that when I can’t sleep I can count to 1000 – I usually fall sleep around 700 – I watched the boats float on the river.. I have learned that I love lilies, and sunflowers are prettier when they are in a field connected to the earth. I have learned that I enjoy summer ales, shrimp tacos, and Hemingway is a magician. I have learned it’s much easier to say Alone and Lonely are two different things. I have walked long hours at night, biked even longer hours and collected words from all around the town, from people’s eyes, gardens, parks, brick walls. And now I am going to motherland in 4 days, then to my America Home the bay area, then to my wild home BRC, then back to American home, then back to current home city D.C.

Mary Oliver
The Ponds

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapping light crowding the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them—

the muskrats swimming
can reach out and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.

But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided–
and that one wears an orange blight–
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away–
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled–
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing–
that the light is everything–that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

And shouldn’t we all?
2812mth1

6/21/2016 (Taking a Break)

Happy Summer! “If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.”

I have been thinking about a break for a while for various reasons, and first day of the summer feels like a right day to take a break – I am planning on a month long break after 144 poems in 264 days.. but we’ll see. Some of y’all been here since day Zero! I’ll still post stuff on FB here and there.. but you won’t get an email from me at least for a month, unless, of course, I decide to change my mind.. “Radical Freedom”

Anyway, I am adding two links to this email. (Hyperlinked)

1) A mini poetry DJ set of 28 poems – you can treat it as a mini selected poems booklet form some of my favorite poets and humans. Feel free to share the link with whoever you like.

2) A mini rant selection of 10 rants (they all come with a poem) – these are those long stories that I have told you. This would be a kind of a random read I guess. I see them as poems without breaks, I see them as rants, I see them as words making out with me.

Anyway, here’s the last poem before the break! It’s been good y’all, real good!

Mad love to everyone on this list!

Walt Whitman
Songs Of Myself
#52

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

Links:

https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://docs.google.com/document/d/158bOD7tW-pUw9GXzmggsr3V2yBWsD4-d0TxMAMa0nSw/edit&source=gmail&ust=1466882497723000&usg=AFQjCNG_qFPPysunkTInNZsfVDYY1U3Bpg

https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p-uFwtXgcCop3Cl8mTVHb5 toIjOAqsbAqVNQkKAt0/edit&source=gmail&ust=1466882497723000&usg=AFQjCNGF50VksBI4WcXx9irLaUdwfTQHWA
4343mth1

Hundred and Forty Four 6/20/16

Man! I’ll be howlin’ tonight!! (And then I’ll take it easy haha)

Happy Summer – Happy Strawberry full moon ye wild being – mad lovers, free mind and open souls! Dads, moms, grandmas, grandpas, sisters and brothers!

I’ll be on a rooftop tonight howlin to the wild moon reminding myself of my untamed self and I will let my soul pour outta my body, and I’ll let it merge with the soul of the universe! Let your soul outta this earthly body, dance your soul out, howl, be!

Summer Solstice in Washington DC, District of Columbia, USA is on
Monday, June 20, 2016 at 6:34 PM EDT

Mad Love,
Peyman
Rumi

“Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
3663mth

Hundred and Forty Three 6/15/16

1) Happy Birthday Tom Kim!
2) IMAGINE IMAGINE IMAGINE!! Rarwwwww Rawrrr !!! I feel kind of crazy haha

Mary Oliver
What Do We Know
The sky cleared
I was standing
under a tree.
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain —
imagine! Imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
3373mth

Hundred and Forty Two 6/14/16

Vladimir Holan
She Asked You

A girl asked you: What is poetry?
You wanted to say to her: You are too, ah yes, you are
and that in fear and wonder,
which prove the miracle,
I’m jealous of your beauty’s ripeness,
and because I can’t kiss you nor sleep with you,
and because I have nothing and whoever has nothing to give
must sing…

But you didn’t say it, you were silent
and she didn’t hear the song.

oh man I love this line – “and because I have nothing and whoever has nothing to give
must sing…”

Someone asked me few days ago “But what is love?” and all I could think was “what is not love?” of course.. I tried answering the question that I was asked.. and I became a dumb man.. my mind tried and failed.. I felt like I’m on a bike that skipped a gear and slipped the chain..pedaled to nothingness..so I gave up and the bike stopped, I sighed.. the question remained unanswered.. and on my way home I sang.. I sang on my bike all the way home.. “because when you have nothing to give you must sing”. And here I am days later still thinking.. What is love? What is not love? And now this girl is asking what is poetry? I don’t know.. – what is not poetry? – tying your shoes laces, poetry. Sighing while holding your cat, poetry. opening a can of cold beer in an empty house and being hunted by the eco, poetry. Deleting a name from your phone book, poetry. Looking at eyes of mother looking at her child, poetry. You, definitely poetry.
3813mth

Hundred and Forty One 6/13/16

Vladimir Holan
She Asked You

But you didn’t say it, you were silent
and she didn’t hear the song.

oh man I love this line – “and because I have nothing and whoever has nothing to give
must sing…”

Read with this Track!
4883mth22

Hundred and Forty 6/13/16

sometimes poetry is the lost item right in front of your eyes.. like your glasses, the car keys, the pen your dad gave you, the ring you bought at a yard sale, or your lover.. you keep looking for it… for hours.. for days.. and it’s right in front of your eyes..yet you don’t see it.. You know what I mean, donchu? You always say, I know I just saw it… but can’t find it now.. Do stuff hide? They must! so what shall we do? How do we look for something that does not want to be seen? (They are surely hiding) I guess I can pour myself a glass of wine.. give my eyes to public so they can fill it with their love.. and wait for a poem to come calling my name.. in an early Monday morning with a cup of coffee, two scones, and a bag of words… who knows… I have been looking in to my head to write you something.. not just to say something..but to say something… My heart and my fingers tips feels like they have poetry stuck to them.. but my mind… can’t see it… So anyway.. here’s me.. here’s life…here’s a song for drinking while I wait…

WB Yeats

A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
4313mth1

Hundred and Thirty Nine 6/10/16

Rilke

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Fear not suffering, the sadness—
Give it back to the weight of the earth.
The mountains are heavy, heavy the oceans.
Ah, but the breezes, ah, but the spaces—
3663mth1

Hundred and Thirty Eight 6/6/16

EEC
Who Knows If The Moon’s
who knows if the moon’s
a baloon,coming out of a keen city
in the sky—filled with pretty people?
(and if you and i should

get into it,if they
should take me and take you into their baloon,
why then
we’d go up higher with all the pretty people

than houses and steeples and clouds:
go sailing
away and away sailing into a keen
city which nobody’s ever visited,where

always
it’s
Spring)and everyone’s
in love and flowers pick themselves
3103mth1

Hundred and Thirty Seven 6/4/16 (Caturday Edition)

I think it’s national hug your cat day and Jean-Luc is living in DC now so… we just reading some Bukowski and chillin’

Charles Bukowski
My Cats

I know. I know.
they are limited, have different
needs and
concerns.
but I watch and learn from them.
I like the little they know,
which is so
much.
they complain but never
worry,
they walk with a surprising dignity.
they sleep with a direct simplicity that
humans just can’t
understand.
their eyes are more
beautiful than our eyes.
and they can sleep 20 hours
a day
without
hesitation or
remorse.
when I am feeling
low
all I have to do is
watch my cats
and my
courage
returns.
I study these
creatures.
they are my
teachers.

3363mth2

Hundred and Thirty Six 6/2/16

Happy Birthday Loren Baxter! Love you BUDDAY – you are a wise wildflower brother!

Wendell Berry
I Dream of a Quiet Man

I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not by his own will.
2973mth

Hundred and Thirty Five 6/1/16

“Only lovers [and artist] left alive” More on this waaaaay bellow after my rant and dreaming and after the poem..

I listened to this mix while I read this poem and wrote this email.

As I sit here behind this bright screen I wish I could touch your face. I wish I could look you in the eye for a few long seconds. I wish I could hold your hands and I wish I could watch the reflection of your soul in your eyes. You know that subtle trembling in the eyes when you start staring at them, I think that’s your soul vibrating your cornea, the transparent curtains of your eyes, right under the blinds. Your soul is like a summer breeze, moving the curtain of your windows to this world. The list has grown so much so that I don’t know many of you in person. I don’t know how your eyes look like. I have no idea what color your hair is, or how does your voice sound like. What side of the bed you sleep? How do you like your eggs? What is it that you ache for? How does that little sound in your head sound like? Do you own pairs of red vanes like me? I have three pairs of red vans. Will you read this? I have no idea..

Sometimes it happens that I feel like I could take the whole world in, and then a sorrow comes to me, I wish I could. (It does not hurt, but it’s that very soft sorrow). Sometimes, I see beautiful things and it makes me want to cry – sometimes I feel hopeless in front of your beauty, oh world. And sometimes, I wish I could turn the whole worlds into a small ball and swallow it whole, the same way I eat strawberries – whole – in one bite – with its calyx. I would eat the world with all of its sadness and sufferings.. and then I’ll lay on the ground and will touch my belly with joy, I will lay on the ground so long that I will become part of this earth. I will lay there so long that plants will start to grow out of me, large trees, and I will be covered with moss. Don’t leave me laying there without moss in your imagination, because I love moss so much. I will lay there so much that hills will start forming, and I will cry so much (out of joy) that rivers will start flowing, and they will forms seas and oceans. My chest would be a forest, my eyes springs, my head will be caves (ears, mouth, and nose).. I will just lay there digesting the world as we know..I will just lay there digesting wars, lies, hate, greed, and pain. And one day you’ll come, you will not know I was there once, you will not know that you are walking on my chest (that now is a wild flower garden you stumble upon on your forest hike) and you will sit there with your lover, and watch the most perfect sunrise, and the most perfect laughter would come out of your perfect heart, and I would see you.

Pablo Neruda
Ode To A Naked Beauty

With a chaste heart
With pure eyes I celebrate your beauty
Holding the leash of blood
So that it might leap out and trace your outline
Where you lie down in my Ode
As in a land of forests or in surf
In aromatic loam, or in sea music

Beautiful nude
Equally beautiful your feet
Arched by primeval tap of wind or sound
Your ears, small shells
Of the splendid American sea
Your breasts of level plentitude
Fulfilled by living light
Your flying eyelids of wheat
Revealing or enclosing
The two deep countries of your eyes

The line your shoulders have divided into pale regions
Loses itself and blends into the compact halves of an apple
Continues separating your beauty down into two columns of
Burnished gold
Fine alabaster
To sink into the two grapes of your feet
Where your twin symmetrical tree burns again and rises
Flowering fire
Open chandelier
A swelling fruit
Over the pact of sea and earth

From what materials
Agate?
Quartz?
Wheat?
Did your body come together?
Swelling like baking bread to signal silvered hills
The cleavage of one petal
Sweet fruits of a deep velvet
Until alone remained
Astonished
The fine and firm feminine form

It is not only light that falls over the world spreading inside your body
Yet suffocate itself
So much is clarity
Taking its leave of you
As if you were on fire within

The moon lives in the lining of your skin.

James Baldwin – The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity (An Excerpt).

“What we might get at this evening if we are lucky – is what the importance of this effort is. If it seemed to me, that however arrogant this may sound – I want to suggest two propositions: The first one is that the poets, by which I mean all artists, are finally the only people that know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t, statesmen don’t, priests don’t, union leaders don’t… only the poets. That is my first proposition.
The second proposition is what I really want to get at tonight. And it sounds mystical, I think, in a country like ours, at a time like this, but something awful is happening to a civilization when it ceases to produce poets, and when its more crucial when it ceases anywhere whenever to believe in a report that only poets can make. People, millions of people, that you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness… which you if have that funny terrible thing – which every artist can recognize, and no artist can define – you are responsible to those people, to lighten their darkness – and it does not matter what happens to you.
You are being used, in a way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function, it is impersonal. This force that you didn’t ask for, this destiny you must accept – is also your responsibility. And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope. Because only an artist can tell and only an artist have told, since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone that gets this planet, to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die, what it is like to fear death, what is it like to fear, what it is like to love, what it is like to be glad. Hymns can’t do this, Churches really cannot do it. The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you. You can only have it by letting it go. You can only take if you prepared to give, and giving is not an investment. It is not a day at the bargain counter. It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go—everything, and this forever, forever…”
1.09K3mth1

Hundred and Thirty Four 5/31/16

Happy 197 Birthday ye old wild one! Happy Birthday Walt Whitman! Happy Birthday Uncle Walt! I know me and many others have walked on open roads, loos’d from imaginary lines yawping, weeping, growing, singing, and expanding because of you, with you, and for you! I have shouted your poems in deserts and mumbled in busy super markets under my lips. When I walk around I carry a book of yours in my pocket, I carry you in me.. and when I am afraid I know you are there pointing to the open road and telling me that you will give me your love which is more precious than money! You have done such good to me, and I hope to do the same to anyone I meet! You have thought me so much – thank you for being born!

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself – I & LII
I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.
4874mth

Hundred and Thirty Three 5/30/16

Walt Whitman
From Leaves of Grass – 1860 Edition.

I tramp a perpetual journey, my signs are a rain proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair, I have no chair, no church, no philosophy, I lead no man to a dinner table, library or exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and a plain public road

As I am sitting outside of my house facing the forest that I live next to – Facing the same forest that Walt Whitman took long walks during the 10 year he lived in Washington, D.C. — I will drink some coffee after this email, read some more poetry (Reading this one a couple more time – and Bukowski’s letters to various people on life art, and poetry), I will take a walk in the forest, and I will touch the forest, I will try to allow myself to surrender to its ancient wisdom, I want it to take me and I want move through it and not on it. Every time I walk in this forest, I wish to lay on the damp ground, I wish to sleep on soft moss, and even the cut off trees are alive, I know – I know! Long weekend – yes! yes! yes!
3804mth1

Hundred and Thirty Two 5/27/2016

For Jack Roberts (4) and George Bahij (25). You were not just visitors to this world, you are part of it, and we will remember you.

Anne Bronte
Farewell

Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.
O, beautiful, and full of grace!
If thou hadst never met mine eye,
I had not dreamed a living face
Could fancied charms so far outvie.

I have been reminded of the impermanence and fragility of life twice in less than 24 hours. I have been reminded of lack of compassion and desire to be loved. I have been reminded how everything happens only at the moment and so suddenly. My head feels very empty. How sudden and final is death.

Miller Williams

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

Saadi
United we are to one supreme Source
created and molded by the same Divine Force.
When one person suffers and heart breaks with pain
other creatures will feel it when empathy reigns.
If nothing you feel for those suffering grief
you are less then a Human, more like a beast.

My heart goes to Jack, who I never met, and George my co-worker’s families . May they be at peace now.
3864mth1

Hundred and Thirty One 5/26/16

I am just a boy from North!

A coupla things:
1)Catherine – oh my gawd! What a wonderful being you are happy birthday!
2) P$ rant without an end all the way below!

Charles Bukowski
An Almost Made Up Poem

I see you drinking at a fountain with tiny
blue hands, no, your hands are not tiny
they are small, and the fountain is in France
where you wrote me that last letter and
I answered and never heard from you again.
you used to write insane poems about
ANGELS AND GOD, all in upper case, and you
knew famous artists and most of them
were your lovers, and I wrote back, it’ all right,
go ahead, enter their lives, I’ not jealous
because we’ never met. we got close once in
New Orleans, one half block, but never met, never
touched. so you went with the famous and wrote
about the famous, and, of course, what you found out
is that the famous are worried about
their fame –– not the beautiful young girl in bed
with them, who gives them that, and then awakens
in the morning to write upper case poems about
ANGELS AND GOD. we know God is dead, they’ told
us, but listening to you I wasn’ sure. maybe
it was the upper case. you were one of the
best female poets and I told the publishers,
editors, “ her, print her, she’ mad but she’
magic. there’ no lie in her fire.” I loved you
like a man loves a woman he never touches, only
writes to, keeps little photographs of. I would have
loved you more if I had sat in a small room rolling a
cigarette and listened to you piss in the bathroom,
but that didn’ happen. your letters got sadder.
your lovers betrayed you. kid, I wrote back, all
lovers betray. it didn’ help. you said
you had a crying bench and it was by a bridge and
the bridge was over a river and you sat on the crying
bench every night and wept for the lovers who had
hurt and forgotten you. I wrote back but never
heard again. a friend wrote me of your suicide
3 or 4 months after it happened. if I had met you
I would probably have been unfair to you or you
to me. it was best like this.

Ok ok – sharing personal shit is really interesting here and somewhat challenging, mostly because of Ego, and not because I am holding back from y’all “I’ll tell you all my secrets, but I’ll lie about my past” — It’s partly art, partly it ruins the art.. Art being poems and this projetc and partly it is just space and noise… But I like it – it’s a good practice for me turn the raw experience into a from that I like..poetry and stories. Also, this is my damn projetc and my show I’ll do what I want – Like Bukowski said “In my writing I am the king baby, you do what you want in your movie” Laughs with naughty eyes and stumps his feet and does a crazy dance

Anyway, This morning a line from a song* shook me so hard for a few reasons.. I liked the song ok, but a few lines in that song made me pause, sigh, and breath and stare to the window in front of me in the cafe that I am working from on this hot and still day..my mind went quiet, I saw the leaves of tree enjoying the sun and hanging from tree and being as lazy as they could be, and everything around me went quiet, song ended, and I just listen to silence in my headphones.. You know that pause in life, that moment when you are most alone, that split second. And as I read the lines a few more times and listened to the same song again, my eyes started to turn into a reel of my life..all images of me and my past and my soul.

Some of you know that I have been through some fire in my life, and just like most of us, I have passed through some hell in this life and many more to come.. and for those of you don’t know my past.. I have had some accidents with flames and burned myself, and I think they make so much of who I am or became. I don’t think any of us gets an exemption when it comes to sufferings of this world and this being human, we all have our forms of wars, flames, illness, loss, heartbreaks. We all have our own suffering and limits, because suffering is part of this existence. That’s just how things are..Suffering is a part of life. Not good, not bad. Just the way things are. I get cocky with pain and suffering sometimes, and sometimes I play with it and in it.. – How Naive- and I get my elbows and knees bloody as a result of this behavior, and sometimes I go quiet and sit in the corner and sometimes I yell with a bloody head Invictus! and that’s why these lines got me.. especially the bolded line..

“Theres light streaks making there way through the trees,
but you can’t see it clear.
You’d survive anything but this has no end
oh boy from the north your hollow soul
will never feel purposeful”

These lines are almost for me and about me.. I am from the North of Iran, I think we humans can survive anything, I think I can survive anything.. and it also reminds me so much of, perhaps, one the harshest and realest line I have heard about myself “I love you but you burn too hot”.. I don’t really know where I am going with this.. but I liked the experience I went through, I like the taste of it in my mouth, I liked the pause I felt, that sudden stumbling into loneliness and despair.. and it feels nice to write about it.. It feels nice to take it in and think about it.. I don’t know, maybe there will be something I won’t survive and maybe that’ll be an end or a new beginning. #Dramaaaa haha — Will I stop? Will there be an end to this journey? To this path(s) I go on? I don’t know.. I know I am going, moving, and burning. I wonder if it is curse or blessing to be a Phoenix. Maybe not everyone gets an end.. maybe not in this life.. It’s hard to take that in for me.. These words made my need for understanding the impermanence clear! It scares me..but hey what’s a boy from north to do, except dancing, living, and being for now in now!

I think I am made of two main elements – flames and rivers – and I have a deep admiration of mountains. All of these are from my homeland, from North of Iran. Orumieh, West Azarbaijan province. Azar means fire ( I was born on 5th of Azar, 1368), Orumiyeh in old Assyrian means Watertown, and 16 river floats into the Lake Orumiyeh. North, my part of Iran, is in high elevation and we have tall ancient mountains. (Orumiye – 4,370′)

Song is hyperlinked in the lyrics.
6064mth1

Hundred and Thirty 5/25/16

Wendy Cope
The Orange

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I got a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Man there is so much magic in our daily life, so many little connections to be made, and so much poetry. There is poetry in everything, in your shoe laces, in the oranges you buy, in that split second when your hand touches someones hand as you hand them something.. This poem maybe a little too cute or too happy go lucky for me, but I love the modern style of it.. also it has this indication that she’s seen some shit in her life.. “This is peace and contentment. It’s new. ” I like i like!
2754mth1

Hundred and Twenty Nine 5/23/16

Ellen Bass
Remodeling the Bathroom

If this were the last
day of my life, I wouldn’t complain
about the shower curtain rod
in the wrong place, even though
it’s drilled into the tiles.
Nor would I fret
over water marks on the apricot
satin finish paint, half sick
that I should have used semigloss. No.
I’d stand in the doorway
watching sun glint
off the chrome faucet, breathing in
the silicone smell. I’d wonder
at the plumber, as he adjusted the hot
and cold water knobs. I’d stare
at the creases behind his ears and the gray
flecks in his stubble. I’d have to hold
myself back from touching him. Or maybe
I wouldn’t. Maybe I’d stroke
his cheek and study
his eyes the amber of cellos, his rumpled
brow, the tiny garnet
threads of capillaries, his lips
resting together, quiet as old friends—
I’d gaze at him
as though his were the first
face I’d ever seen

I am loving loving this poem and I love Ellen Bass !! My inner Bukowski and Tom Waits are banging on tables and yelling at people and saying “Damn with trivialities of life!” and my inner Whitman is making out with the rivers and trees – Naked! We are so freaking caught up in so many little things and we forget that we will die, and we forget that life is passing by and we never see the grass dancing, moon resting in the sky like a half cut melon..so many things … In Zen there’s so much talk around coming to meditation with a beginners mind.. Seeing the world with a beginners mind or from a child’s eyes is amazing and powerful..for me that is. Sometimes if I am lucky enough, and if everything is align I get that sense and suddenly everything is alive – suddenly this is the first and last day of my entire being…
5254mth

Hundred and Twenty Eight 5/20/16

Ay ay ay! Happy Friday Kids! Say hi to someone for me! Anyone! Just tell them I said Hi, better if I don’t know them! And here’s a poem and a hi from me to your and your perfect heart!

Robert Desnos
I Have Dreamed Of You So Much

I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamed of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.

I have dreamed of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom, that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow the
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life
2744mth

Hundred and Twenty Seven 5/19/16

EE Cummings
[i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]
Related Poem Content Details

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my #heart)

.برای او. برای قلب کوچکش. برای موجهای طلایی‌. برای ما. برای کویر. برای چادر کوچکمان. برای این روز. برای ۴ سال.
4194mth

Hundred and Twenty Six 5/18/16

For your daily dose of P$ rant go all the way to the bottom!

Charles Bukowski
The Crunch

Too much
too little
or not enough

too fat
too thin
or nobody

laughter or
tears
or immaculate
non-concern

haters
lovers

armies running through streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking virgins

or an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe

many old guys in cheap rooms without
any photographs at all

many old women rubbing rosaries
when they’d prefer to be rubbing cocks

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movements of
the hands of a clock

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it blinking in neon signs
in Vegas, in Baltimore, in Munich

there are people so tired
so strafed
so mutilated by love or no
love
that buying a bargain can of tuna
in a supermarket
is their greatest moment
their greatest victory

we don’t need new governments
new revolutions
we don’t need new men
new women
we don’t need new ways
wife-swaps
waterbeds
good Columbian
coke
water pipes
dildoes
rubbers with corkscrew stems
watches that give you the date

people are not good to each other
one on one.
Marx be damned
the sin is not the totality of certain systems.
Christianity be damned
the sin is not the killing of a God.

people are just not good to each other.

we are afraid
we think that hatred means strength
we think that New York City is the greatest
city in America.

what we need is less brilliance
what we need is less instruction

what we need are less poets
what we need are less Bukowskies
what we need are less Billy Grahams

what we need is more
beer
a typist
more finches
more green-eyed whores who don’t eat your heart
like a vitamin pill

we don’t think about the terror of one person
aching in one place

alone
untouched
unspoken to
watering a plant
being without a telephone that will never
ring
because there isn’t one.

more haters than lovers

slices of doom like taffeta

people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other
people are not good to each other

and the beads swing and the clouds cloud
and the dogs piss upon the roses
and the killer beheads the child like taking a bite
out of an ice cream cone
and the ocean comes in and out
in and out
under the direction of a senseless moon

and people are not good to each other.

So I wrote the rant below this morning before work, and just re-read it — It feels very personal and vulnerable to share it.. partly because it has this paternalistic / dickish tone to it.. And I don’t want to abuse this platform I have. All I am tryna do is to touch this bubble of loneliness that has trapped so many of us in it, so maybe I can burst it.. It’s just so confusing for me.. Like how the hell we are so lonely so often in this over crowded world? Or why? Maybe humans have always been lonely! But then we have these crazy mirror neurons that makes us empathetic, so we are not genetically designed to be lonely, so it gotta be a byproducts of our society. Hell I don’ know! Are fish lonely? Are trees lonely? Are those majestic redwoods that never move from their spot, never go to parties, never go on date, never go to happy hours lonely? How about the clouds? How about the wind, is wind lonely? Wind seems to me be everywhere and no where.. Can a smile be lonely? I think so. I think chairs get lonely, some buildings get lonely, junk food is definitely gets lonely.. Anyway..

I work from cafes a lot and I work alone, so I get to see so many different faces everyday. I like to go to bars alone too, and I like to eat alone in restaurants. I like to take a book with me and read and between lines and pages I get to look at people just peopling. Some days, I can’t look at people and not feel so sad and lonely or outraged. It hurts me to see how lonely some(?) people are. Not alone! Lonely! Somedays it feels like no one is alone and everyone is lonely… Lonely in over crowded public transportation tubes, lonely in cafes, lonely on the street rushing to happy hour, lonely in groups, lonely in every bite of the kale salad, cheeseburger, lonely from canned food to multi course michelin star dinner. In every sip of coffee, lonely in every sip of beer, whiskey, wine, gin, and martini. Lonely in loving, fucking, sucking, in hating, in making, and giving. Lonely in kisses, in walking under the rain, in reading the news. There is such so much loneliness in this world that you can see it just by glancing at people and things.. Maybe if we were nicer to each other on the street, in small interactions, in lines while waiting for that cup of coffee, or in the grocery store we could be better at being alone and we would be less lonely.. Maybe if were nicer to each other if we were more sincere in our interactions, more raw, more honest. We don’t think we are going to die and others are going to – would that change anything? Would we be less lonely and more nicer if we embrace death more, if we drop our personalities, names, IDs, and monies.. I DO NOT KNOW…But I do know that there is a great loneliness in this world we live in that you can see it when you look at people’s face when they are busy being someone.. I know there’s sunshine, and soft serve ice cream, loving and kindness. I know there’s hugging and loving and kissing and touching.. I know I know.. call me greedy but it’s not enough.. there is way too much loneliness and lack of compassion in this world..blegh!
9954mth1

Hundred and Twenty Five 5/17/16

Wislawa Szymborska
The Three Oddest Words

When I pronounce the word #Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word #Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word #Nothing,
I make something no non-being can hold.

Writing anything for this poem, of this poem, and with this poem is so difficult, yet so attractive! So I am turning my format upside down, maybe that’ll help. This format also allows you to just read the poem and not get too involved in wanderings of my mind and my fingers. I may be sending poems like this from now on, and may be not – “From this hour, freedom! From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines”

It’s raining outside and Jason Molina is quietly singing. (I hope you listen to this). In my strange calmness I am thinking of a wall I touched yesterday. Yes, a wall. Not mine, not public’s, not painted. Just a naked brick wall.

Until yesterday I had never thought about the idea of intimacy with a house in words. See I have always been living in a world in which you own a house, or you make it yours by living there and having possessions. Or a house is familiar to you, because of the sweet smell of the rice pudding grandma used to make or the steam that comes out of the rice cooker telling you that dinner is not far away. But yesterday, I touched the red brick wall of a house that I have been in three times now for no particular reason. Maybe the wall was speaking to me in their steady and silence tongue.

As I let my fingers wander on the dry and red skin of the wall, as I let my palm push against the wall and feel its strength and temperature I felt a certain type of intimacy or at least that was the first word that came to my mind, intimate. And all the sudden, just from that one random word which came to my mind I felt intimate with this newly acquainted house. I knew where the bathroom was (upstairs), and I know how the wall feels when you touch it (coarse). I knew where the forks laid, and spoons slept all cuddled up and knives stood guard. I realized I even know the creaking sound of the stairs (each house has its own sound and music). I stood there with a mind of three years old boy, and thought about putting my feelings into words, searching and falling short. I gave up, put my hands on the wall once more and soaked it all (I even smelled and sniffed the wall and no one saw me doing that, thanks goodness). I took it all in with an amazement that only a child can experience, with an amazement that can only be experienced with your wholeness, because you do not have enough words to describe things yet, just like a 3 years old child; wordless yet still connected to the soul of the universe, I felt connected to that one wall and I heard it all. I stood there without thinking about the future and what I was about to do before I stood by the wall, before the wall called me I forgot that I was about to go pee. In the silence nothing mattered but the solidness of that wall and the intimacy I felt with that house, and how easy it is to get lost in this world and how little we need to be amazed.
youtube
6074mth

Hundred and Twenty Five 5/16/16

Hips don’t lie yo!

Lucille Clifton
Homage To My Hips

these hips are big hips.
they need space to
move around in.
they don’t fit into little
petty places. these hips
are free hips.
they don’t like to be held back.
these hips have never been enslaved,
they go where they want to go
they do what they want to do.
these hips are mighty hips.
these hips are magic hips.
i have known them
to put a spell on a man and
spin him like a top
2154mth

Hundred and Twenty Four 5/15/16

Spending most of this Sunday reading Rilke, listening to Mary Oliver, Bach, Krista Tippet, and now sending this to you, whoever you are. Rilke is drawing the map solitude from the memory, Mary Oliver is telling me Don’t Worry, Krista Tippet facilitates the flow with her ease and perfect laughter. leaves are dancing to the wind oh and how untroubled they are, and how free of any worry and judgment the wind signs. Happy Sunday to you.

Mar Oliver

Things take the time they take.
Don’t worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow
before he became St. Augustine?
2604mth

Hundred and Twenty Three 5/13/16

Meow! #Sexy #Friday! This poem can make you feel some type of way. These metaphors, caves, coves, and roses- hot like fire, delicious like fresh cut figs. #art

Adrienne Rich
(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)

Whatever happens with us, your body
will haunt mine — tender, delicate
your lovemaking, like the half-curled frond
of the fiddlehead fern in forests
just washed by sun. Your traveled, generous thighs
between which my whole face has come and come —
the innocence and wisdom of the place my tongue has found there —
the live, insatiate dance of your #nipples in my mouth —
your touch on me, firm, protective, searching
me out, your strong tongue and slender fingers
reaching where I have been waiting years for you
in my rose-wet cave — whatever happens, this is.
6764mth

Hundred and Twenty Two 5/12/16

Rumi
There’s Nothing Ahead

Lovers think they’re looking for each other,
but there’s only one search: wandering
this world is wandering that,
both inside one
transparent sky. In here there is
no dogma and no heresy.

The miracle of Jesus is himself, not what he said
or did about the future. Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.

On the way you may want to look back, or not.
But if you can say, There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms
and take hold of the cloth of your clothes
with both hands. The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed. If you don’t have both,
you don’t belong with us.
When one of us gets lost,
is not here, he must be inside us. There’s no
place like that anywhere in the world.
2984mth

Hundred and Twenty One 5/10/16

Law

by Charles Bukowski

“Look,” he told me,
“all those little children dying in the trees.”
And I said, “What?”
He said, “look.”
And I went to the window and sure enough, there they were hanging in the trees,
dead and dying.
And I said, “What does it mean?”
He said, “I don’t know it’s authorized.”

The next day I got up and they had dogs in the trees,
hanging, dead, and dying.
I turned to my friend and I said, “What does it mean?”
And he said,
“Don’t worry about it, it’s the way of things. They took a vote. It was decided.”

The next day it was cats.
I don’t see how they caught all those cats so fast and hung them in the trees, but they did.
The next day it was horses,
and that wasn’t so good because many bad branches broke.

And after bacon and eggs the next day,
my friend pulled his pistol on me across the coffee
and said,
“Let’s go,”
and we went outside.
And here were all these men and women in the trees,
most of them dead or dying.
And he got the rope ready and I said,
“What does it mean?”
And he said, “It’s authorized, constitutional, it passed the majority,”
And he tied my hands behind my back then opened the noose.
“I don’t know who’s going to hang me,” he said,
“When I get done with you.
I suppose when it finally works down
there will be just one left and he’ll have to hang himself.”
“Suppose he doesn’t,” I ask.
“He has to,” he said,
“It’s authorized.”
“Oh,” I said, “Well,
let’s get on with it.”
3384mth

Hundred and Twenty 5/9/16

You, yes you are the God in this poem!

I danced Straight from Saturday noon till Sunday night.. with some breaks for sleep, food, stretches, and hugs! I started thinking about today’s poem and words I wanted to say, but I realized how quiet my brain is, even for poetry.. Hours of dancing alone does that sometimes.. few words, lots of booty shakes.. (I am so sore now).

So here’s what I’ll do – I’ll just send you a big ol’ hug and imagine us sitting somewhere chillin’ and nodding at each other in agreement of how amazing it is to just be, as we watch the boats in the river of life carry all the heaviness..all the heaviness of world. I imagine us, just the two of us, leaning back on a tree on a Sunday afternoon around 3:10 PM and watching the river flow slowly yet surely in front of our eyes.. The sun is warm, shade is nice and we don’t want to move much. I love the way you look at me and nod. We see the boats, we see them carrying the loads of the world..politics, love, hate, sorrow, everything… We know how hard it was for us to carry that load all the way to this river bank on our shoulders.. but we are here now and the river carries everything away.. and one day it’ll carry us!

E.E. Cumming
i thank You God for most this amazing

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
5374mth

Hundred and Nineteen 5/6/16

This poem like many other poems deserves a re-read! And you deserve a hug! It’s all right, just take a deep breath, drop your shoulders, take another deep breath. Ok. Become aware of your breathing for a few seconds.

Look you made it, it’s Friday. Why not take a deep breath, why not be gentle with your beautiful self. Allow this poem move through you, allow it dissolve in your mouth and let it go to your body through your veins. Allow your mind and soul be aware of this moment. Allow your breath to go in and come out. It’s all right. Sending you a big solid hug! You can be here now – for now – at now! If it feels right, say it after a deep breath. It’s all right. Much love to you my dear. Wherever you are, whoever you are, no matter how busy, happy, or lonely you may be the sky will be there for you, the wind will always touch you, and the nights will be always there to hold you. And I will be here – you know how to find me! If you want you can listen to this track while reading the poem below.

Happy Friday!

Williams Stafford
It’s All Right

Someone you trusted has treated you bad.
Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.
Did you expect anything different?
Your work–better than some others’–has languished,
neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,
and you failed. Maybe weather or bad luck
spoiled what you did. That grudge, held against you
for years after you patched up, has flared,
and you’ve lost a friend for a time. Things
at home aren’t so good; on the job your spirits
have sunk. But just when the worst bears down
you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,
and outside at work a bird says, “Hi!”
Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;
it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.
3164mth

Hundred and Eighteen 5/4/16

Gibran Khalil Gibran
A Lover’s Call XXVII

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers?

Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice?

Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge,
While you are replete with heavenly wisdom?

Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you
Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the
Field, haven of your dreams?

Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the
Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and
Filling their hands with your bounty?

You are God’s spirit everywhere;
You are stronger than the ages.

Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of
You spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love
Floated about, singing the praise of the soul’s deed?

Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the
Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs
Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury?

Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands
Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if
We were hiding ourselves within ourselves?

Recall you the hour I bade you farewell,
And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips?
That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love
Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter!

That kiss was introduction to a great sigh,
Like the Almighty’s breath that turned earth into man.

That sigh led my way into the spiritual world,
Announcing the glory of my soul; and there
It shall perpetuate until again we meet.

I remember when you kissed me and kissed me,
With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said,
“Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose,
And must live apart impelled by worldly intent.

“But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of
Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God.

“Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate;
Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower
The cup of the sweetness of life.
As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my
Comforting groom; your memory, my Eternal wedding.”

Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in
The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey
To you my heart’s every beat and affection.

Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image
Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his
Shadow on my happy countenance of the past.

Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty
And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses.

Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping
From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need?
Do you know the greatness of my patience?

Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying
To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any
Secret communication between angels that will carry to
You my complaint?

Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life
Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me.

Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me!
Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me!

Where are you, me beloved?
Oh, how great is Love!
And how little am I!
5334mth

Hundred and Seventeen 5/3/16

I am attaching a picture of the house that I just started living.. you’ll see why! I feel loos’d and kind of crazy but it’s not without fear and timidness – How are you? have you ordained yourself loos’d recently? You know you don’t need to be loos’d all the times or be I am not here to tell you what to do. But getting loos’d is good for yo skin, ears, eyes, and fingers! Remember Danna Faulds “Please, oh please, don’t continue to believe
in your stories of deficiency and failure”**

Washington, D.C. 68°
Orumiyeh 59°
San Francisco 60°
Nairobi 66°
Tehran 73°
Cairo 82°
London 58°
Tokyo 68°
Chicago 65°
Tunis 70°
Dushanbe 64°
Suva 73°

Walt Whitman
Songs of the Open Road
#5

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently,but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.

I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.

All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women You have done such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.

3644mth

Hundred and Sixteen 5/2/16

TL;DR – HAHA this one is all long – About Rilke, About Solitude, and From Rilke! Happy Mondaz Kids! (Some lines from Rilke all the way in the bottom)

I could just go on writing paragraphs of Rilke to you, if you you like what you read below read Letters To A Young Poet (Heyo Kate, Thanks). I have been reading, eating, and breathing this short book. I re read each page many times, go back, wake up in the middle of the night and read a little and go back to sleep..

I like thinking about solitude, being there, and living it. I yearn for it when I don’t have it, and of course, when I’m there I fear it.. It breaks me sometimes… but, let it crack me that’s where the light gets in (I hope).. Anyway, yeah!

There are so many doubts in life, aren’t there? So much pain in life, and we just want it to be over. And so much joy! – It’s so hard to not get fully drown in the oceans of joy when the rivers of life take us there.. and then when the ocean dries out, or when a sorrow bird grabs me and pulls me out of the oceans of joy I feel naked and betrayed. What happened to my joy? What should I do? Why is this happening to me? When the pain is present I want it to end as quick as possible, when the joy comes I forget that there is pain.. I think Rilke is another teacher who will teach me how to see pain where the soul meets my bones, and the flower among the garbage. He teaches how to be in our solitude, how to take its pain and fear caused by it. How to use it as a tool – remember that Hafiz poem “Don’t Surrender to your loneliness to quickly” Yeah Rilke goes bananas and nuts on that subject.

Anyway, I moving in to my new house today (fuck yeah), and had cray weekend! I went to a bluegrass festival, and took a free hugs sign with me, which ended up me giving near 200 hugs.. toward the end of hug session my heart was beating fast, and I could not stop giggling. I was a little soar (Yeah – who knew you get soar from hugging all day) and I was overwhelmed by the experience.. wow.. I heard sighs, laughs, thanks, I heard people say they needed that.. and that was a reminder how lonely we could be even if we are among thousands of people.. and how we could see that if we look closely. Someone hugged me and said, “You look alone” She was right. ( I loved that so much ) I was alone – but I was not lonely.. that tasted good in my mouth.. And yesterday I cook 11lbs of mussels! Never hugged that many in one day, never cooked that much mussels in one go!

Ok – Enough – Here are some paragraphs from Rilke – From letters he wrote to a young poet, who sought help from Rilke.

On Going into solitude – Creating Space to Grow:

Near Bremen – July 16, 1903:

But everything which one day will perhaps be possible for many, the solitary individual can prepare for and build now with his hands which are more unerring. For this reason, my dear, love your solitude and bear the pain it causes you with melody wrought in lament. For the people who are close to you, you tell me, are far away, and that shows you are beginning to create a wider space around you. And if what is close is far, then the space around you is wide indeed and already among the stars; take pleasure in your growth, in which no one can accompany you, and be kind hearted toward those you leave behind, and be assured and gentle with them and do not plague them with your doubts or frighten them with your confidence or your joyfulness, which they cannot understand. Look for some kind of simple and loyal way of being together with them which does not necessarily have to alter however much you may change; love them in the form of life different from your own and show understanding for the older ones who fear precisely the solitude in which you trust.

On The pain of solitude (Encouragement to be there)

Rome – 29 October, 1904:

Only the solitary individual is subject, like a thing, to the fundamental laws, and if someone goes into the morning as it is breaking, or looks out into the evening full of occurrence, and if he feels what is happening there, every hint of his station slips from him as if from a dead man, although he is standing in the midst of life himself…. and if you sought only fleeting and non-committal contact with society, you would not have been spared this feeling of constraint. — It is the same everywhere; but that is no reason for anxiety or sadness; if there is no communal feeling between you and other people, try to be near things – they will not abandon you. The nights are still there and the wind that goes through the trees and over many the many lands; among things and among animals all is still full of happening in which you can take part; and the children are still as you were when you were a child, just as sad and happy, and whenever you think of your childhood you live among them again, among the lonely children, and adults are nothing and their dignity has no worth.
4914mth

Hundred and Fifteen 4/28/16

I love the rain “without knowing how, or when, or from where” It’s Thursday, It’s raining in the district, birds are bathing in cool spring showers, plants are washing their leaves and cleaning themselves from the dust and dirt of the city. I saw a rat baptizing her children in the holy waters of a back ally. Folks covering their bike seats with plastic bag. Cats staring out of windows. I see people with heads sunk in the jacket collars, hands in pocket, or holding an umbrella walking briskly. Streets are quieter, calmer, pure and cleansed with what it looks like to be the last April rain. I live close to a park, and smell of the earth is just like when I was a kid. Wherever I may go in this journey called life, the sky is mine, the smell of damp earth, and the salty tears are mine!

When I was a boy (I love the sound of that) my mom used to collect April rain on the roof in glass jars, filter them, and we would drink it. Not as a source of hydration, but as a some sort of magical or healing water. April rain is sacred in the part of the world I am. So, I went out and opened my mouth to the rain, and drank a few drops. For my mom, for my childhood, for magic, and for love!

Pablo Neruda
One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz, elated Poem Content Detai
lsI don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.
4134mth

Hundred and Fourteen 4/26/16

Rumi went full pirate with this one! Yarrrr! Alons, come along with me, Rumi, Charles, and Whitman! We’ll ride through the night, drink whiskey and wine, and spit fire! Yarr!! Or we can just sit around and chill – we be pirates tonight!

Rumi

I want a trouble-maker for a companion,

Blood spiller, blood drinker, a heart of flame,

Who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate,

Who burns like fire on the rushing sea.
2285mth

Hundred and Thirteen 4/25/16

TL;DR – actually not saying anything – the one who speaks, yet says nothing right meow! I love this poem – it’s long – I highlighted some of the lines. for some reason or no reason!

Ok yes – this poem is pretty long.. but not longer than waiting in line for brunch on a sunny day (yes, we have all been there).. or longer than the wait period for a text to come back after you said something you think you should not have said it, but it’s too late and you have sent it. Long is the time away from loved ones, long is the line to get food, if you have no money. Long is the distance to get to safety, if you are on a boat. Long is the hour spent in the hospital waiting room.. Long is the loveless life. We’ve been there, all of us.. and we know these minutes last longer than they ought to last. We know time is not always on time.

There are so many thing longer than this poem in life. As we sit behind our desks or in our houses, or maybe waiting in a line on this Day, no need to rush the poem or ourselves, or take it all at once. Life comes like rushing rivers, wild, untamed.. It’s easy to get carried away and let it all fall on us.. it’s easy to forget that we live only one breath at a time (unless any of you can do two breath at a time). I know this (This forgetting) because this happens to me a thousands time a day, suddenly out of no where a log period shows up, suddenly out of no where life shows up, coming down on me like the mad rivers, unwilling to remain in it’s bed.. eager to wash away this village called self..suddenly I forget that I breath for many hours.. and if I am lucky enough I get to remind myself that I am here and just here and in now. When I can do that, I can think of you, and how wonderful your beautiful face is, your smile, your hair, and the shape of your head. I remember to look at the trees and branches, dancing in the wind. “Illustrious every one! ”

Today as I read this poem, let us not take life at once, unless we want to. Let us not eat the whole pint of ice cream, unless we want to. You can treat this poem like a good, solid, loaf of bread. You know that multi grain, seedy, hefty, fancy loaf of german bread – cut in slices, eat a slice or two a day – share it with a friend – idk – it’s your bread it’s your belly do whatever you want! I take this poem in two slice if I am reading alone – and drink it in one go if I am reading it out loud!

Walt Whitman
Song At Sunset

SPLENDOR of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat—you, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,

Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnumber’d spirits;
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect;
Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky!
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.

Good in all,

In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,

In the superb vistas of Death.

Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
To breathe the air, how delicious!

To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed—to look on my rose-color’d flesh;
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large;
To be this incredible God I am;
To have gone forth among other Gods—these men and women I love.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)

How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the tree—some living Soul.)

O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents—now reaching me and America!

I take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.

I too carol the sun, usher’d, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.

As I sail’d down the Mississippi,

As I wander’d over the prairies,
As I have lived—As I have look’d through my windows, my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning—As I beheld the light breaking in the east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea;
As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago—whatever streets I have roam’d;

Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.

I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues—Glory continues;

I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.
4295mth

Hundred and Twelve 4/22/16

Been bouncing around so much these days, and feeling somewhat tired. Missing ma boys (cats) and yearning to a get a house of my own. Everywhere I have slept in the past two months has been great, but a man needs his own cave – I think I am about to get one! Anyway, yesterday, I went into a building that has 1100 units – an apartment building – and I think that’s the loneliest I have felt in so long.. so weird – so many people living in this spaces, in this lonely hallways, behind those door, yet so lonely, so estranged… now I like to go to those places and pretend like I am renting and just look around and ask the agent how many people live there… I think if you want to know how other houses in your city looks like you should go on the rental market.. I get to see so many houses that I could never do otherwise…

Emily Dickinson

“Nature” is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse— the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.
2265mth

Hundred and Eleven 4/15/16

Happy Tax day, Yo! I hope you had a somewhat of a smooth tax season!

John Brehm

Dear Internal Revenue Service

Thank you for your letter informing me of the errors
in my 2005 filing. I’m enclosing a check for
$5,657.00 to cover the tax which I evidently
still owe and the interest on that tax.
I would hereby like to ask, however,
that you forgive the penalty of $1,136.00
since the employer failed to send me a 1099
for the income I made as a consultant that year.
Of course I realize it’s my responsibility to report
all my income, but in the absence of a 1099
I simply forgot. I have a number of clients
and I’m (obviously) not the best bookkeeper.
Nor am I particularly “good with money.”
I am a poet as well as a freelance writer,
and being a poet isn’t quite as lucrative
as you might imagine. You may notice,
for example, that for all of last year I received
$57.00 in royalties. (A friend of mine helpfully
observed that I could have made more money
“as a parking meter,” to which I replied that
I could have made a lot more money as a parking meter,
and gotten a lot more respect as well.)
Unlike most hard-working poets in America,
I don’t teach, mainly because I don’t know anything.
I’m probably not all that far from the clichéd notion
of the romantic poet you yourself may hold.
I get stoned sometimes and stare at trees and clouds
for hours on end, try to see the wind, etc.
I weep for no reason, remember real or imagined
slights for ages, and lick my wounds with words.
I live in a studio apartment, a garret if you will.
I have a huge desk—it’s like the deck of a ship,
and I its landlocked captain, gazing out to sea.
It sits underneath my sleeping loft, which
my girlfriend likes to call “the lofty loft,”
for reasons I won’t go into here as they may seem
inappropriate, or too personal, or perhaps
irrelevant to my purpose, which is to ask your
forgiveness of the penalty and to offer reasons why
by explaining the hardships of the poet’s life.
I’ll just say that sometimes it gets pretty lofty up there
and sometimes we imagine we’re on a magic carpet
drifting smoothly above the city below, in its state
of semi-controlled, slow-motion collapse,
and on out over the ocean, which she loves and fears,
just like I do, or over the summer-campy Catskills,
where we can’t afford to buy a country house,
with their worn-down mountains and charmingly
self-effacing trees, so unlike the impossibly massive
and overly serious cedars and hemlocks and
Douglass fir trees of the Pacific Northwest,
where I used to live until poverty forced me East.
Those trees are brooders—dignified, mist-shrouded
monsters—beautiful, of course, and awe-inspiring
(I wonder if you have felt this), but too damply
archaic and imposing and uncomprehendable
for my taste. I like a tree you can take in with
a single steady gaze. I wonder if you are as bad
at poetry as I am at accounting. Perhaps we are
the inverted mirror-images of each other.
I don’t imagine you get asked that question
very often or receive many letters like this one.
Maybe you’re reading this out loud even now
to your office (I almost said “cell”) mates. Of my book
a reviewer once said that “one simply can’t resist
reading these poems out loud to someone else,”
and I wonder if you feel this—the irresistible
need to read this poem aloud. I’m sure
the letters you receive are mostly angry ones,
the kind that say things like, “Here, take my
Goddamn money and buy Dick Cheney a few more
gallons of puppy blood for his nightly ablutions,”
or “Dear IRS, please use the enclosed check to
purchase some hand-held rocket-launchers to blast the fuck
out of some poor Iraqi’s house, which you prefer
to call ‘a suspected insurgent stronghold.’”
Or, “Please give this money to the CEO of Exxon
so he can buy silk socks while I regurgitate
my supper and try not to starve.”
I thought of taking that approach, I felt
that desire to get in a shot or two, to give voice
to righteous indignation, treat you like
a non-person, someone mindlessly
and heartlessly saying “no” all day long.
But I’m done with all that, I want to reach you,
to speak to you as a fellow human being immersed
in the same joys and suffering as I am—didn’t you
once write poems yourself, poems of anguish
and loss and loneliness?—and to remind you
of the karmic delights of forgiveness that
await you if you release me
from this debt.
3895mth

Hundred and Ten 4/14/16

You know how it goes. We want a better job, a nicer bed, more vacation time, more sun, less heat, less work, more money, less money, health, we want a partner, we want to be single, we want to gain weight, lose weight, sleep more, party more, we want taxes to be easy, friendships richer, avocados ripe at all time – not too ripe-, we want the car in front of us to always signal, the person who we held the door open to always say thank you, we want buses to run on time, we want the world to slow down, we want parents not to get old, we want to live in cheap houses, next to our friends, and families, and our favorite burrito shop, and the list goes on..

And then, suddenly, we have them all, and then we want more, because there’s an emptiness in existence that cannot be filled with things or desires, and when we see that we sigh.. a deep silent sigh.. Then we sit in a quiet room, close our eyes, and try to breath, try to calm the woodpecker in our chest, calm the locomotive in our head, we try to calm the earthquake in our body .. we keep on breathing, and then everything is just about right. I know you know that sometimes truly being here is so much, sometimes this whole being a human is so much, yet so beautiful, so alive, so exciting, so perfect the way it is. So all we can do is go one day at a time, one breath at a time, one smile at a time, one day at a time, one breath at a time, one day at a time, one bre…

Wendell Berry
What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.
2615mth

Hundred and Nine 4/11/16

Watch out D.C. there’s a new kid on the block! Roar! As my new “friend” put it yesterday, Señor Nathan, 70 “One step at a time kid”.

Walt Whitman
Songs of the Open Road
#1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)
1835mth

Hundred and Eight 4/8/16

Happy Friday kids,

So – I’ve thought about saying these words for a bit – one those write, delete, write, delete,… kind of moments… but you know… I have told you about so many things.. This one is a little cheesy, a little dramatic, a little silly, but all the way sincere.. so here it is..First poem of another new chapter.. Yes, I miss you, even if we have not met!

As I am settling in this new land, in this new cafe, I am settling in some old lands as well; the soul and the heart. The old and new questions, Narcissus and Goldmund. Grandpa and the eternal boy.. So much has happened in this short life of mine, I have said goodbye to so many people who I love so deeply.. I have lived in bunch of places, moved from bunch of places.. and almos in all of these places I have loved and been loved! For me, distances are frightening, and I am not great at them, yet sometimes gravitational force of new cities, oceans, and roads are too great to resist… I am looking at this question.. (How long a man should keep on searching?) Sometimes solitude is all I need, even if I love spending every moment of this life. Uncle Walt said it once; “I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, You express me better than I can express myself, You shall be more to me than my poem” Sometimes, darkness is what need to cultivate the light in me. So, “if I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less” if I say goodbye, if you don’t hear from me, please don’t be mad at me, and don’t be sad. I know it is selfish, but I’ll go on seeing you.

With love from Washington D.C.

Rilke
To the Beloved

Extinguish my eyes, I’ll go on seeing you.
Seal my ears, I’ll go on hearing you.
And without feet I can make my way to you,
without a mouth I can swear your name.

Break off my arms, I’ll take hold of you
with my heart as with a hand.
Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.
And if you consume my brain with fire,
I’ll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.
1845mth

Hundred and Seven 4/3/16

I have spent almost a month living in the “Last week” in the past four months. So many times I have said, “Actually, this is my last week here”. I am starting to think that, maybe, I have said more goodbyes than I like in the past four months. Perhaps, I, also would like to live like the lilies. Or maybe I am a lily that it either is pretending to be Peyman or my ego has taken over my awareness, and I have forgotten that I am a lily. Until I turn to a lily or remember my true self I will keep reading poetry, who knows, maybe one day I’ll remember my true self!

Happy Sundaz kids! I’m getting on a plane in coupla days again to end another “Last week” and to start a new week in a new time zone!

Mary Oliver
Lilies

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful

as the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of coarse he wanted to save someone–

most of all himself.
He wasn’t a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river–

where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues–
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.
1565mth

Hundred and Six 3/29/16

For Honorable Jake Wachtel and hours we have spent shouting, singing, and reading uncle Walt’s poetry. He sang this one to me very recently when I told him that I do not feel empowered and free to shout Walt Whitman these days! He looked at me from his wild and kind eyes, and said listen my MadMan, Walt Whitman is not all happy and smooth, Walt is not all about watching naked boys swim in the lake, and smelling your own armpit and loving it. Walt Whitman is sometimes about rough prizes and difficulties of the road. Then we spent the evening eating sausage, drinking beer, and singing, and getting hella weird!

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass
Songs of The Open Road
#11

Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you.
1545mth

Hundred and Five 3/28/16

Think of the woodpecker
I read somewhere they can bang their head to trees 1000 times of gravity force. That’s 956 times more than what humans are known to survive. This living as human is o so much..Sometimes I wish I was a woodpecker, but, what I really am is a man with a woodpecker for heart..

Langston Hughes
Life Is Fine

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn’t,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn’t a-been so cold
I might’ve sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!
I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn’t a-been so high
I might’ve jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!
So since I’m still here livin’,
I guess I will live on.
I could’ve died for love—
But for livin’ I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry—
I’ll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine!
1336mth

Hundred and Four 3/23/16

When I thought I can’t hear no longer, I can’t read no longer, see no longer, feel no longer. When I thought there are no poems for me to read anymore, eat anymore, feel anymore. When I thought all the poets are sleeping and death is just a child. When I thought no poem will knock on my door anymore, I heard Shamloo’s voice, screaming my name!

This poem is translated from Farsi by Mahnaz Badihian, and I edited parts of it!

Ahmad Shamloo
Public Love

Tear is a secret
Laughter is a secret
Love is a secret
The tear of that night was laughter of my love
I am not a story you can tell
Not a melody you can sing
Not a voice you can hear
Or something you can see
Or you can know

I am a common pain, scream me!

Tree speaks to the forest
Grass with a meadow
Stars with the universe
And I
I speak to you

Tell me your name
Give your hands to me
Tell me your story
And give me your heart

I have understood your roots
With your lips I have spoken for all the lips
Your hands are familiar with my hands
For the sake of those who are alive
I wept with you in solitude
I have sung the most beautiful songs
In the darkness of cemeteries
Because this year’s dead
Were in love more than anyone alive

I am talking to you
Whom I found very late
Give me your hands
Your hands are familiar with me
Like the clouds with the storm
Like the grass with the meadow
Like the rain with oceans
Like a bird with spring
And like a tree that talks with the forest
Because I have understood your roots
Because my voice knows your voice
1006mth

Hundred and Three 3/22/16

I read this poem after hours of reading and breathing Bukowski. Such a gentle soul!

Lorca
(Vega de Zujaira)

The afternoon says: “I’m thirsty for shadow!”

And the moon: “I want stars.”

The crystal fountain asks for lips,

the wind, for sighs.

I’m thirsty for scents and for laughter.

Thirsty for new songs

without irises or moons,

without dead loves.

A morning song that can shiver

quiet backwaters

of the future and fill

their waves and silt with hope.

A luminous and tranquil song

full of thought,

virgin to sadness and anguish,

virgin to reverie.

A song skinned of lyric, filling

silence with laughter.

(A flock of blind doves

tossed into mystery.)

A song to go to the soul of things

and to the soul of winds,

resting at last in the bliss

of the eternal heart.
1006mth

Hundred and Two 3/21/16

I have known Nazim Hikmet since 2007, since the Turkey years, since the hammer and sickle years, but never like today – I read so many Hikmet’s today and having real hard time deciding which one to send..

Nâzım Hikmet

The most beautiful sea
hasn’t been crossed yet.
The most beautiful child
hasn’t grown up yet.
The most beautiful days
we haven’t seen yet.
And the most beautiful words I wanted to tell you
I haven’t said yet
1046mth

Hundred and One 3/17/16

TooLong; Didn’tRead (Like real long): Umm IDK I’m saying things and talking about goats eating balloons and a man going mad, poem is all the way in the bottom – it’s a good one! Take it with this song

Welcome to your sort of daily, poetry and madness podcast (sort of again).. Where we talk about everything, yet we say nothing! We are half a year old, and some of you have been here since day Zero! I can’t tell if I am the real crazy or you for being here with me for that long!

Things we have talked about here, things we have seen!

I have showed you the goat who reads poetry to the grass, I told you about urban tumbleweeds, of the dog man, of penis models, of the dreams, of despair (“Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine”) , of joy, of darkness (lots of darkness)!

You have told me about me (a lot – sometimes without words), about your break ups, about the lines and lies, you have told me of revolutions, you have shouted YAS so many times through this digital skylight, you have told me of naked bodies, of awakenings, of fears, of your joys (Oh how much I love you and your joy, you and your sorrow).. you have told me that you love me, or the poems I send, or the rants I go on! I take it; few more poems, little bit more whiskey, little bit more coffee, and I can take the whole damn world in me! ” I am large, I contain multitudes”. (No, I’m not drinking whiskey now, but will be soon, right before I take the whole damn world on and in)

You ask how will I take my world?

First, I’ll drink the oceans, and seas, and lakes, and pools, and ponds, and every tear in every lover’s sad eyes. Then I’ll flatten the earth, then roll the emotions, loves, sorrows, despairs, wars, and violence in it like a sushi. I’ll break the guns, I’ll burn the monies, I’ll throw away trivialities. Damn with those trivialities and guns and monies! Then, I’ll take that roll and I’ll eat it in my tiny boat like a Japanese fisher man on fishing trip on an overcast Thursday morning in November 25th of 1943, just a day before his 74th birthday! At ease, without a doubt, with hunger, until the last crumb!

I slept in today, and when I woke up I knew I had to send this poem, the one below. I read this a few days ago..And Yesterday, yesterday I found a hole, a window, a portal that opened to darkness, and I stared at it and in it, and I shouted into it and waved my long arms at it… but I heard nothing..I saw nothing.. I felt nothing. Then when the night came, I laid in my bed, I closed my eyes and slipped into the darkness like a fish slipping into water, nimble, wet, soundless. Like a ring falling into the sink and going down the drain.. so slow, yet so fast! I saw it, but couldn’t do anything, so I surrendered. As I was slipping into the darkness, my arms wrapped around me, my legs curled into my stomach, I remembered the Buddhist story for the thousand time “You are falling off of the edge of a cliff. Bad news, you don’t have parachute. Good news, there’s no ground” I breath in, I breath out and when I woke this morning I was as old as time, as young as the first rain drop! I went to bed only 26!

I am Not suggesting that you should go into the darkness or you should go seek it, but oh boy, when it comes to me I try to get into it as there are few things in life that can shape us like darkness. It’s a gift! It doesn’t come that often, but when I find myself dancing with darkness, when the darkness comes to me from thousands of miles away I let my body move in into it slowly, like sinking into warm mud. I let it take me..

So yes – here’s the poem – here’s the darkness! Here I am naked, honest, exhausted, exalted, half mad and half man. My mustache conscious, my hands a refuge camp for my face, my mouth tasting like bitter coffee and scrambled earth!

Rilke
You Darkness

You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything:
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them! –
powers and people –

and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.

I have faith in nights.
1536mth

Hundred 3/16/16

I’ve been staring to the small Van Gough portrait I have in my tiny room in Guy’s house. I have been doing this for two weeks now, I just stand in front of him and stare at him, and he stares back. We do a lot of staring competitions…I alway end up losing, I am not mad enough to win against Vincent, yet! He says, don’t worry you still have time.. and I sigh.. and stare into his eyes.. printed on a cheap piece of paper hanging right above my bed.. He is watching me day in day out trying to find the secret to winning the game..One day I will, one day I will stand there and stare at him, and he will blink, and we’ll start to laugh..

Khayyam
Beyond the earth,
beyond the farthest skies
I try to find Heaven and Hell.
Then I hear a solemn voice that says:
“Heaven and hell are inside.”
1176mth

Ninety Nine – 3/14/16

So much white noise.. such a grand whiteout… Spoke to some Tarot cards last night.. they whispered a thing or two to my ears and the suddenly the world started to gain shape again.. who knew people can leave their shadow behind and spiders liked coffee beans.. who knew darkness can stick to you after a long wrestle with despair, like sweat. We ought to wash ourselves after long battles.. we ought to wash our eyes.. our words.. wait what? hahaha – I don’t even know anymore… it’s all falling apart, it’s all coming together..again and again and again

Rilke

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.
1156mth

Ninety Seven 3/8/16

Happy international Women’s Day to YOU Phenomenal women on this list and all around the world! Happy IWD to my mother and sister and aunts and grandmothers too! Thank you – Bow!

Maya Angelou
Phenomenal woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
‘Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.
1036mth

Ninety Six 3/7/16

Oh you crazy diamond you!

Walt Whitman
Out of the rolling ocean the crowd

Out of the rolling ocean the crowd came a drop gently to me,
Whispering, I love you, before long I die,
I have travell’d a long way merely to look on you to touch you,
For I could not die till I once look’d on you,
For I fear’d I might afterward lose you.

Now we have met, we have look’d, we are safe,
Return in peace to the ocean my love,
I too am part of that ocean, my love, we are not so much separated,
Behold the great rondure, the cohesion of all, how perfect!
But as for me, for you, the irresistible sea is to separate us,
As for an hour carrying us diverse, yet cannot carry us diverse forever;
Be not impatient – a little space – know you I salute the air, the ocean and the land,
Every day at sundown for your dear sake, my love
956mth

Ninety Five 3/4/16

Poems are like windows through poet’s lives’. Sometimes you are invited to look through to see the green fields, alps, beauty of a naked body, or revolution. And sometimes as you pass by their window you catch a glance of their living room and see them naked passed out on their couch.

You know what I mean? Like when you walk down the street on your way to work and someone has an open window facing the street, with open curtains, and you see inside their house as you pass by..some poems are like that..Sometimes you see a beautiful house with a vase full of spring flowers, sometimes you see a man maddened by existentialism and whiskey and passed out on a pile of laundry.. or a house destroyed by kids and a mother taking taking a nap while the kids pour ketchup on a Persian rug. When that catches your eyes the time freezes and you look at them partly ashamed partly curious. You look at the madman, the children, the flower, the house, the mother, you look at it all, you take it all in, in that split second. You know you should not be looking inside their house, but that window pulls you deep into lives of these people you don’t know.. You look at them and they won’t see you..Be careful of windows and poems, they can pull you deep..

Yılmaz Erdoğan
Now You Are Leaving

Now that you are leaving
Everything and everyone will look like you
Everyone who says good morning to me on the street will be you
Now that you are leaving
In every picture I look at, I will see you
And every song will sound like it has been written for you

(You think it will be obvious if I start writing songs for you?)

Now that you are leaving without looking back
Everyone whose back is toward me will remind you to me
Now that you are leaving
Everyone around me will start to look like you
Until you come back…
1056mth

Ninety Four 3/3/16

My aunt used to tell me “calm seas won’t make you a brave sailor”… Now that I think maybe you don’t need to be brave to live your life…Maybe you can sail in a bath tub… and be the bravest sailor in the shower. I mean I don’t even know how to swim and I keep finding myself picking strawberries in the ocean…NUTS. It’s hard to know what thin line divid stupidity from bravery.. But boy o boy, if you haven’t had ocean strawberries, ought to try them sometimes they are good..

Bukowski
Coffee

I was having a coffee at the
counter
when a man
3 or 4 stools down
asked me,
“listen, weren’t you the
guy who was
hanging from his
heels
from that 4th floor
hotel room
the other
night?”

“yes,” I answered, “that
was me.”
“what made you do
that?” he asked.

“well, it’s pretty
involved.”

he looked away
then.

the waitress
who had been
standing there
asked me,
“he was joking,
wasn’t
he?”

“no,” I
said.

I paid, got up, walked
to the door, opened
it.

I heard the man
say, “that guy’s
nuts.”

out on the street I
walked north
feeling
curiously
honored.
1056mth

Ninety Three 3/2/15

There are some of you who don’t know me, maybe you never will. And maybe you sat next to me on the train last night and stared out of the same window as I did. Maybe we passed each other this morning on the street walking to the opposite directions. I have a mustache, and my mustache grows conscious sometimes and tells me all sorts of things, weird things. Not these days tho, we just tolerate each other and stare out of windows without saying a word, “because truly being here is so much”.

Rainer Maria Rilke
The Ninth Elegy
Why, if this interval of being can be spent serenely
in the form of a laurel, slightly darker than all
other green, with tiny waves on the edges
of every leaf (like the smile of a breeze)–: why then
have to be human–and, escaping from fate,
keep longing for fate? . . .
Oh not because happiness exists,
that too-hasty profit snatched from approaching loss.
Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart, which
would exist in the laurel too. . . . .
But because truly being here is so much; because everything here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
And so we keep pressing on, trying to achieve it,
trying to hold it firmly in our simple hands,
in our overcrowded gaze, in our speechless heart.
Trying to become it.–Whom can we give it to? We would
hold on to it all, forever . . . Ah, but what can we take along
into that other realm? Not the art of looking,
which is learned so slowly, and nothing that happened here. Nothing.
The sufferings, then. And above all, the heaviness,
and the long experience of love,– just what is wholly
unsayable. But later, among the stars,
what good is it–they are better as they are: unsayable.
For when the traveler returns from the mountain-slopes into the valley,
he bings, not a handful of earth, unsayable to others, but instead
some word he has gained, some pure word, the yellow and blue
gentian. Perhaps we are here in order to say: house,
bridge, fountain, gate, pitcher, fruit-tree, window–
at most: column, tower. . . . But to say them, you must understand,
oh to say them more intensely than the Things themselves
ever dreamed of existing. Isn’t the secret intent
of this taciturn earth, when it forces lovers together,
that inside their boundless emotion all things may shudder with joy?
Threshold: what it means for two lovers
to be wearing down, imperceptibly, the ancient threshold of their door–
they too, after the many who came before them
and before those to come. . . . ., lightly.
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can’t impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
lives as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the ropemaker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing–, and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin.–And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within–oh endlessly–within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible? Isn’t it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday?–O Earth: invisible!
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over–one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller . . . . . Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.
1076mth

Ninety Two 3/1/16

Today my mind is in “too loud a solitude” state…
Today my mind is a child lost in a busy train station
Today my mind is parent looking for his lost child.
Today I am breaking my promises.
Today you are getting bunch of Poems.

“Somewhere the flower of farewell is blooming.
Endlessly it yields its pollen, which we breathe.
Even in the breeze of this beginning hour we breathe farewell” Rilke

I asked, “Where is your home, beautiful moon?”

She said, “In the wreck of your drunken heart.

I am the sun shining into your ruin.

Long may you call this wild wasteland your home.” Rumi

This one is not a poem, but I like it..
Warren Zevon
“Keep Me In Your Heart”

Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for awhile

If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile

When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for awhile

There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for awhile

Sometimes when you’re doing simple things
around the house
Maybe you’ll think of me and smile

You know I’m tied to you like the buttons on
your blouse
Keep me in your heart for awhile

Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you

Engine driver’s headed north to Pleasant Stream
Keep me in your heart for awhile

These wheels keep turning but they’re running out
of steam
Keep me in your heart for awhile
986mth

Ninety One 2/29/16

Rumi

I asked you for one kiss, you gave me six.

What teacher taught you, that you’re such an expert at this?

You’re so deep a source of goodness, so kind

That you’ve set the world free a thousand times.
836mth

Ninety 2/26/16

Oh le Vendredi. Oh la Vie…

Ay ay ay… This one hurts..there are so many lines in this poem that are both a source of my drive and source of my sufferings.. a dance.. sometimes I get confused and forget if I dance because I like to, or because that is the only way I can remain connected to the “reality”.. same goes for swimming… since I don’t really know how to swim, there are times that I am not sure if I am swimming to enjoy myself or not to drown.. fine-lines define life’s illusions (see what I did there?)

Wislawa Szymborska
Preferences

I prefer movies.
I prefer cats.
I prefer the oaks along the river.
I prefer Dickens to Dostoyevsky.
I prefer myself liking people
to myself loving mankind.
I prefer keeping a needle and thread on hand, just in case.
I prefer the color green.
I prefer not to maintain
that reason is to blame for everything.
I prefer exceptions.
I prefer to leave early.
I prefer talking to doctors about something else.
I prefer the old fine-lined illustrations.
I prefer the absurdity of writing poems
to the absurdity of not writing poems.
I prefer, where love’s concerned, nonspecific anniversaries
that can be celebrated every day.
I prefer moralists
who promise me nothing.
I prefer cunning kindness to the over-trustful kind.
I prefer the earth in civvies.
I prefer conquered to conquering countries.
I prefer having some reservations.
I prefer the hell of chaos to the hell of order.
I prefer Grimms’ fairy tales to the newspapers’ front pages.
I prefer leaves without flowers to flowers without leaves.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
I prefer light eyes, since mine are dark.
I prefer desk drawers.
I prefer many things that I haven’t mentioned here
to many things I’ve also left unsaid.
I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.
866mth

Eight Nine 2/25/16

La familia, when you signed up to this list you had no idea what are you getting yourself into, now you know. Let me know if you’d want to take a break from me and the list, so I can set your email free from my madness, I will not be offended or upset, I will miss you, but that’s ok. Of course, you can Always come back…

Pablo Neruda
Always
I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth
to start our life!
846mth

Eighty Eight 2/24/16

Just a reminder..
Also, winter storm warning for Chicago!

Ryōkan
Blending With The Wind

Blending with the wind,
Snow falls;
Blending with the snow,
The wind blows.
By the hearth
I stretch out my legs,
Idling my time away
Confined in this hut.
Counting the days,
I find that February, too,
Has come and gone
Like a dream.
726mth

Eighty Seven 2/23/16

Oh mon chéri, It’s ok. And if it feels alright, take a deep breath, release it, drop your shoulders, and then say it’s ok. You don’t have to say it out loud, but say it if it feels alright. I’m listening, and when you say it I will hear it no matter how far you are, and you’ll hear me saying it’s ok too, if you listen.

Hafiz
My Brilliant Image

One day the sun admitted,
I am just a shadow.
I wish I could show you
The Infinite Incandescence
That has cast my brilliant image!

I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The astonishing Light
Of your own Being!
756mth

Eighty Six 2/22/16

“When we wake up in bed on Monday morning and think of the various hurdles we’ve got to jump that day, immediately we feel sad. Bored and bothered. Whereas actually we’re just lying in bed.” Alan Watts.

Rilke
The Future

The future: time’s excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart’s mouth.

Future, who won’t wait for you?
Everyone is going there.
It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.
737mth

Eighty Five 2/21/16

I sent the first poem on 10/1/15. This is the 85th one, and that is much better than being the 100th one.

Miller Williams
Birth of the Blues

John Keats never read Dylan Thomas or Yeats.
Dante didn’t know Shakespeare. Neither did Jesus.
I think of those I will never know, from countries
whose languages sound to me like mathematics,
that prince, for instance, who wrote in Siamese
in the seventeenth century, who could well have been
the best of all of us for all I know

I think about that poet born today
in Montreal whose verses will go with vessels
blown by the lights of stars to the curling edge.

I know he is there. Listen. This is the time.
Or she is. Lord. Lord. I feel like Herod.
597mth

Eighty Four 2/19/16

For the Best of Bests, Dearest of the Dearests. For Molly Irene Oshun. For Life.

Rumi

God forbid I’d compare the moon to your face

Or the tall cypress to your stature and grace.

Where in the moon are ruby sweet lips to be found?

What cypress sways with the luminous grace of your ways?

You’re the road of love, and at the end, my home,

One of the crowd, and yet I see you crowned;

I see you in stars, in the sun, in the moon,

Here in the green leaves, and high on the throne.

If love makes you thirst, never fear: you have wine.

If your body’s a ruin, don’t worry: there’s treasure inside.

You’ve run out of water? No, your water is near.

Wake up: this world that you dream holds nothing to fear.
727mth

Eighty three 2/17/16

Mark Strand
Giving myself up.

I give up my eyes which are glass eggs.
I give up my tongue.
I give up my mouth which is the constant dream of my tongue.
I give up my throat which is the sleeve of my voice.
I give up my heart which is a burning apple.
I give up my lungs which are trees that have never seen the moon.
I give up my smell which is that of a stone traveling through rain.
I give up my hands which are ten wishes.
I give up my arms which have wanted to leave me anyway.
I give up my legs which are lovers only at night.
I give up my buttocks which are the moons of childhood.
I give up my penis which whispers encouragement to my thighs.
I give up my clothes which are walls that blow in the wind
and I give up the ghost that lives in them.
I give up. I give up.
And you will have none of it because already I am beginning
again without anything.
897mth

Eighty two 2/16/16

This is for you and your perfect heart, just the way it is..

John Brehm
On The Subway Platform

Where are you going I said
and she said I’m going

to look for a book
and I said what kind

of book? A book on
PERFECTIONISM

she said and I said
make sure you get

the right one—
which brought forth

such perfect laughter
from her perfect heart.
547mth

Eighty One 2/15/16

Hafiz

You Don’t Have to Act Crazy Anymore –
We all know you were good at that.

Now retire, my dear,
From all that hard work you do

Of bringing pain to your sweet eyes and heart.

Look in a clear mountain mirror –
See the Beautiful Ancient Warrior
And the Divine elements
You always carry inside

That infused this Universe with sacred Life
So long ago

And join you Eternally
With all Existence – with god!
607mth

Eighty 2/14/16

X’s & O’s

Rumi

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.
527mth

Seventy Nine 2/12/16

Danna Faulds
Go In and In

Go in and in…
Be the space
between the cells,
the vast,
resounding
silence in which
spirit dwells…
Be sugar dissolving
on the tongue of life.

Dive in and in…
as deep as you can dive.
Be infinite, ecstatic truth.
Be love conceived and born in union…
Be exactly what you seek,
the Beloved,
singing Yes,
tasting Yes,
embracing Yes
until there is only essence,
the All of Everything
expressing through you
as you…

Go in and in…
and turn away from
nothing
that you find…
557mth

Seventy Eight 2/11/16

TL;DR – I had a dream…. You can scroll all the way down for the poem that I have promised to send :).

The Dream,

Last night I dreamed that I was a dog and I was lost in a building, then as I was wondering in the fire escape stairs ( you know the ones in the back, with no window and with gray cement walls – like the ones you take if you don’t want to take the elevator, those ones.) I found bunch of other dogs. Suddenly we were trying to escape a building or leave it.

We couldn’t open the doors, we were not trained to open doors (not fancy dogs, just bunch of lost ordinary dawgs – we probably couldn’t fetch your beer or slippers either), so we waited until someone opens the door on the ground floor to the street. And someone did, and we made our escape. But, only two of us made it, me and a large dog… the rest of them were caught.. the door slammed shot before they could make it.. I felt it, but didn’t look back.. we ran out of the door to the main street to the back a back ally. As we entered the ally we started transforming to humans… I was a gray dog, the other was a big hairy dog.. the gray dog transformed as we walk to me to Peyman, the big dog transformed to a man that I don’t know.. he was large, tan, kind of like a tan Walt Whitman – messy hair, big beard. We were both wearing towels around our waists. As we walked slowly in the back ally as full humans he told that he is a penis model.. I nodded. That was the only conversation we had.. and we parted ways or I can’t remember the rest. I think I drifted to another dream.. in the next dream I remember seeing Molly, Reed, and Jake.. in a Palo Alto or Berkeley Co-Op. in a loft I think. lots of trees, high ceilings, big windows, really light air and fluffy beds and blankets. Kind of like a hipster Instagram morning photo with mellow filters.. I could feel the sunrays through the pine and redwood leaves, I could feel the air..I could taste the atmosphere, It was pleasant, but I was a little lost..I was keep trying to remember someone.. maybe still confused in my human body.. maybe I was trying to remember who I was..

I woke up in the morning (like for reals, I think). I felt lost, heavy, and feeling sad for all the dogs who couldn’t make it out the door to the ally, and remained dogs, and remained locked in that tall gray building.. I woke up older than I went to bed, and heavier than I was.. almost like I gained weight (I haven’t).. I cursed, scratched my head, sat next to bed.. and then I knew I had to get up.. As I was getting up I remembered what one of my spirit animals told me once; “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

My spirt animals are Tom waits, Bukowski, a bon fire, a river, and a bag confetti..

There is fear, there is darkness, there is heaviness, but this not the end… no darkness no light…

And the actual Poem….

John O’Donohue
For Courage

When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside . . .

Know that you are not alone
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night-corner.

Close your eyes,
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive
To urge you toward higher ground
Where your imagination
Will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!
657mth

Seventy Seven 2/10/16

When you know you need to go, you can’t think of anything but going.. even if it hurts, even if the whole world yells at you. When you know deep inside that it’s time to go, you should go, and if you go far enough you’ll be on your way back to home at some point..

San Francisco 60° F
Orumiyeh 28° F
Chicago 17° F
Kyoto 34° F
Sidi Bou Said 59° F
Buenos Aires 84° F
Pyongyang 29° F
Freetown 88° F

Mary Oliver
The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
877mth

Seventy Six 2/6/16

” ‘But I don’t want to go among mad people,’ Alice remarked.
‘Oh, you can’t help that,’ said the Cat: ‘we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.’
‘How do you know I’m mad?’ said Alice.
‘You must be,’ said the Cat, ‘or you wouldn’t have come here.’ ”

Gibran Khalil Gibran
The MadMan

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long
before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all
my masks were stolen,–the seven masks I have fashioned an worn i
seven lives,–I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting,
‘Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.’

Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear
of me.

And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top
cried, ‘He is a madman.’ I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed
my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun
kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for
the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I
cried, ‘Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.’

Thus I became a madman.

And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from
being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in
us.

But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail
is safe from another thief.
587mth

Seventy Five 2/5/16

Oh my goodness.. It’s Friday! What are you planning to do with your one wild and precious Friday? As dear Mary would say..
It’s Friday and I have found the poem about eating poem eating poem eating poem… I am honored to have with us today another Pulitzer prize winning poet. La Familia, please make some noise for poetry eating monster Mark Strand…. nom nom nom

Mark Strand
Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.

The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.

The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.

Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.

She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.

I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
567mth

Seventy Four 2/3/16

I love this Neruda.. I really wish I could eat this one, reading is just not enough.. I wish I could put this poem in my mouth and chew on it and go for a walk in the fog and mist of this city. I would feel its hotness slowly move in my body. From my mouth to my tongue to my vain to my heart to my brain to my soul and finally my eyes would cry it out… and this poem would come out like liquid gold out of my eyes.. weird…

Pablo Neruda
Rain

No, better the Queen not recognize
your face, it’s sweeter
this way, my love, far from the effigies, the weight
of your hair in my hands. Do you remember
the Mangareva tree whose flowers fell
in your hair? These fingers are not like
the white petals: look at them they are like roots,
they are like stone shoots over which the lizard
slides. Don’t be afraid, we will wait for the rain to fall, naked,
the rain, the same as falls over Manu Tara.

But just as water inures its strokes on the stone,
it falls on us, washing us softly
towards obscurity down below the hole
of Ranu Raraku. And so
don’t let the fishermen or the wine-pitcher see you.
Bury your twin-burning breast on my mouth,
and let your head of hair be a small night for me,
a darkness of wet perfume enveloping me.

At night I dream that you and I are two plants
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain. Sometimes
I think that with death we will seep below,
in the depths at the feet of he effigy, looking over
the ocean which brought us here to build and make love.

My hands were not ferrous when they met you, the waters
of another sea went through them as through a net; now
water and stones sustain seeds and secrets.

Sleeping and naked, love me: on the shore
you are like the island: your love confused, your love
astonished, hidden in the cavity of dreams,
is like the movement of the sea around us.

And when I too begin falling asleep
in your love, naked,
leave my hand between your breasts so it can throb
along with your nipples wet with rain.
837mth

Seventy Three 2/2/16

Ah!
Some poems, I seek and find.
Some poems, I wait and they come running to my cry.
Some poems, like this one, will fall off the sky unconquered!

William Ernest Henley
Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud,
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
847mth

Seventy two 2/1/16

TL;DR – scroll all the way down for the “actual” poem…

Hey,

How are you? It’s been so long since I have seen you, if I have ever seen you! If I haven’t met you, I hope to meet you some day. But tell me, How does your head feel like? How about your heart? Do you grow flowers on your chest and collect rain in your hat? Have you seen a goat that eats balloons and confetti and calls the grass with honorific titles? Have you looked at your reflection in a mirror and ask yourself about yourself? (I know cheesy, but I am sure you have). Have you wondered how does it feel when your hair grows longer? Or how do emotions tastes on toast? I think you have!

You know, recently I might be sending poems that are leaning more toward the dark, heavy, sad, or the rebellious end of the spectrum, but poems leaning the other way are either in children’s book or in yoga studios, and I am not familiar with either of them. (I am kind of joking here, can you see it in my eyes? that naughty child?).

Most poems that I like are a little darker, a little sadder, maybe heavier. At least for me, I like a poem to shake me, sometimes that feels good, and sometimes it doesn’t. This is one way for me to connect with that part of my life and self. It’s winter after all. Without death there won’t be life. Without darkness, there won’t be light. You gotta keep the balance. Anyway, I like to call this the poetic nudity (as of this morning). Poetic nudity is when you see me naked through the poems I send to you, through these weird and strange lines with awkward sentence structure. I am not poetically nude at all time, not with every poem. I send some poems just because I can send them. And sometimes I feel like this is my silly little radio show.. and I get to talk to you through this show, whoever you may be.. wherever you may be..

Here, uncle Walt has an answer for you, for when lay awake on your bed at night and try to read the secret answer on the ceiling at dark..

Walt Whitman
O Me! Oh Life! (1892)

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

Answer.
That you are here—that life exists and identity,
That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

PS: I am NAKED NOW! haha
1128mth

Seventy One 1/31/16

Allen Ginsberg
America

America I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.
America two dollars and twenty seven cents January
17, 1956.
I can’t stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb.
I don’t feel good don’t bother me.
I won’t write my poem till I’m in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I’m sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don’t think he’ll come back
it’s sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
joke?
I’m trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I’m doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven’t read the newspapers for months, everyday
somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle
Max after he came over from Russia.

I’m addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
Time Magazine?
I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It’s always telling me about responsibility. Business-
men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
Everybody’s serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven’t got a chinaman’s chance.
I’d better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
I’m a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
individual as his automobiles more so they’re
all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and
sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
cere you have no idea what a good thing the
party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
must have been a spy.
America you don’t really want to go to war.
America it’s them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia’s power
mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers’
Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
Him need big black niggers. Hah. Her make us
all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
the television set.
America is this correct?
I’d better get right down to the job.
It’s true I don’t want to join the Army or turn lathes
in precision parts factories, I’m nearsighted and
psychopathic anyway.
America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

Berkeley, January 17, 1956
1208mth

Seventy 1/29/16

Never enough Ellen Bass. I got in a fight with the wind this morning, she threw me around like a plastic bag that was supposed to be recycled.. I am still blowing in the wind, and tumbling on the dirty streets, like a tumbleweed but urban version.

Who knows, maybe I’ll get stuck in a tree, or maybe a small child will use me as a flag, I am colorful, and I’ll wave at his small kingdom’s door. or maybe a raccoon finds me and fills me with all the delicious food that he stole from your dog’s bowl or the compost bin.. You know never know what will happen to you when you get in a fight with the wind..

Relax.
Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus
and your cat will get run over.
Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream
melting in the car and throw
your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–
the one you never really liked–will contract a disease
that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth
every four hours. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.
There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.
When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine
and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.
And two mice–one white, one black–scurry out
and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point
she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.
She looks up, down, at the mice.
Then she eats the strawberry.
So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse
in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,
slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel
and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart
the red juice is, how the tiny seeds
crunch between your teeth.
1148mth

69 – 1/28/16

Maybe you have seen me in action, eating pomegranates I mean. And if you haven’t, boy I am good at it. I eat it whole, I eat seeded, I squish it till the red liquid fire comes out, you know a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground. But my favorite way is this, I cut the head first, then the sides, and gently tap the body of it with a back of a spoon until all those rubies fall in my bowl. So, if you have any pomegranates bring them to me love, we’ll eat them together!

Ellen Bass
Basket of Figs

Bring me your pain, love. Spread
it out like fine rugs, silk sashes,
warm eggs, cinnamon
and cloves in burlap sacks. Show me

the detail, the intricate embroidery
on the collar, tiny shell buttons,
the hem stitched the way you were taught,
pricking just a thread, almost invisible.

Unclasp it like jewels, the gold
still hot from your body. Empty
your basket of figs. Spill your wine.

That hard nugget of pain, I would suck it,
cradling it on my tongue like the slick
seed of pomegranate.

I would lift it tenderly, as a great animal might
carry a small one in the private
cave of the mouth.
888mth

Sixty Eight 1/27/16

I am adding Lil’ sumpin here from my part of the world, whatever that means! Enjoy!

Sohrab Sepehri

If you come to visit me
You will find me beyond the Neverland
Behind Neverland there is a place
Where the veins of the air is full of dandelions
Who bring the happy tidings of flowers blossoming
At the farthest bush
Over the sands also you can see the delicate footsteps of the horseman who mounted the
Anemone hill of ascension at morning
Beyond the Neverland the umbrella of desire has been spread

So that the breeze of thirst can run into leave’s root
The siren of the rain resounds
One is lonely here
And in this loneliness the shade of an elm
Stretches to eternity

If you come to visit me
Come gently and slowly
Lest the fragile china of my
Solitude cracks.
838mth

Sixty Seven 1/26/16

Rainer Maria Rilke

Initiation

Whoever you are, go out into the evening,
leaving your room, of which you know each bit;
your house is the last before the infinite,
whoever you are.
Then with your eyes that wearily
scarce lift themselves from the worn-out door-stone
slowly you raise a shadowy black tree
and fix it on the sky: slender, alone.
And you have made the world (and it shall grow
and ripen as a word, unspoken, still).
When you have grasped its meaning with your will,
then tenderly your eyes will let it go.
788mth

Sixty Six 1/25/16

No mud, no lotus.. I woke up with some mud on my face, maybe a lotus is coming out of my eyes soon. I’m dealing with some headache these days, I think I am pregnant in my head.

E.E.C
O Sweet Spontaneous

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

thou answerest
them only with

spring)
938mth

Sixty Five 1/22/16

I’ve got rain in my head, I’ve got flowers in my hat, and I’ve got birds nesting in my ears. Let me jump out of window with confetti in my hair! Happy Fridaz!

Shel Silverstein
Rain

I opened my eyes
And looked up at the rain,
And it dripped in my head
And flowed into my brain,
And all that I hear as I lie in my bed
Is the slishity-slosh of the rain in my head.

I step very softly,
I walk very slow,
I can’t do a handstand–
I might overflow,
So pardon the wild crazy things I just said–
I’m just not the same since there’s rain in my head.
728mth

Sixty Four 1/21/16

Hafez
What Happens?

What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears

And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world

To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?

O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafez.
1018mth

Sixty three 1/20/16

Yarrrr!!!

Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass,
Songs of Myself,
32.

I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince them plainly in their possession.

I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous, and the like of these among them,
Not too exclusive toward the reachers of my remembrancers,
Picking out here one that I love, and now go with him on brotherly terms.

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead, wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes full of sparkling wickedness, ears finely cut, flexibly moving.

His nostrils dilate as my heels embrace him,
His well-built limbs tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.

I but use you a minute, then I resign you, stallion,
Why do I need your paces when I myself out-gallop them?
Even as I stand or sit passing faster than you.
498mth

Sixty Two 1/19/16

What is a poem anyway? If I were giant I would read poetry in big chunks, like the one below, with my big eyes. Maybe I am a giant, just a little one who happens to do human things. Or maybe I am just regular size giant who dreams of a man who works behind a desk, who stares at a laptop for making a living.. ,who makes money.. worries about his health, a man who worries about career, life, tax, banks, traffic..

Maybe I am a giant with dark black eyes and electric blue hair who is just dreaming of a man who escapes from dull routines of life by reading poetry and fancying himself a giant, and this moment, this now, is just part of a giant’s dream.. who knows maybe we are all giants sleeping peacefully in the Alps, awaiting our awakening..

Herman Hesse
Farm

I wish I could be a giant, then I could lie with my head near the snows on one of the Alps, lie there among the goats, with my toes splashing below in the deep lake. So I would lie there and never get up again, between my fingers the bushes would grow, and the wild roses of the Alps in my hair, my knees would be alpine foothills, and vineyards would stand on my body, and houses, and chapels. And so for ten thousand years I lie there, and gaze into the heavens, and gaze into the lake. When I sneeze, there’s a thunderstorm. When I breathe, the snow melts, and the waterfalls dance.

When I die, the whole world dies. Then I journey across the world’s ocean, to bring back a new sun.

Where am I going to sleep tonight? Who cares!

What is the world doing? Have new gods been discovered, new laws, new freedoms? Who cares!

But up here a primrose is blossoming and bearing silver fuzz on its leaves, and the light sweet wind is singing below me in the poplars, and between my eyes and heaven a dark golden bee is hovering and humming — I care about that. it is humming the song of happiness, humming the song of eternity. Its song is my history of the world.
698mth

Sixty one 1/18/16

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

“Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim…when you see the vast majority of twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky…when you take a cross-country drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you…when…your wife and mother are never given the respected title ‘Mrs.’…when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’—then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”

― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can’t Wait

Maya Angelou
Phenomenal woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Sixty 1/17/16

TL;DR – La familia, I present you a cold glass of poetry by Margaret Atwood, enjoy!

I met her 3 maybe 4 in the morning of January 17th, and wow she holds such an unapologetic wisdom, she’s not exactly what you’d call “nice” but she’s sincere – as real as it gets –

I met her after I have spent a good chunk of yesterday grumbling about future, hope, society, youth, and how feels it could be dangerous to set our lives on these concepts and create false securities – As I laid there next to Molly on our red couch she looked me in the eye from Molly’s phone just using her voice and said “My favorite word is End, I think it’s very hopeful” -and the she said young people worry, old people don’t worry too much. oh to be young and naive..what a drag haha

IDK, maybe because my spirit animal is a potent mixtape of Tom Waits and Bukowski I grumble like this once in while – You’ll read more from her in the future! Thank you, Molly!

Margaret Atwood
The Rest
The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
488mth

Fifty Nine 1/15/16

Next time you are sexting… or you know trying to eat an apple..

Pablo Neruda
Ode to the Apple

You, apple,
are the object
of my praise.
I want to fill
my mouth
with your name.
I want to eat you whole.

You are always
fresh, like nothing
and nobody.
You have always
just fallen
from Paradise:
dawn’s
rosy cheek
full
and perfect!

Compared
to you
the fruits of the earth
are
so awkward:
bunchy grapes,
muted
mangos,
bony
plums, and submerged
figs.
You are pure balm,
fragrant bread,
the cheese
of all that flowers.

When we bite into
your round innocence
we too regress
for a moment
to the state
of the newborn:
there’s still some apple in us all.

I want
total abundance,
your family
multiplied.
I want
a city,
a republic,
a Mississippi River
of apples,
and I want to see
gathered on its banks
the world’s
entire
population
united and reunited
in the simplest act we know:
I want us to bite into an apple.
688mth

Fifty Eight 1/14/16

Ego and attachments are like honey raining from the skies, sweet yet sticky… So when I walk under rain of ego everything starts to sticks to me and when I want to let go it hurts, so I tend to just stay sticky, well sometimes. And then I remember what once a drunk man said “If you are irritated by every rub, how will you become a shiny mirror”.*

You know it is kind of weird talking to you like this, sometimes it feel like I am just talking to myself, and sometimes it feels like I am talking to someone specific… you… In just sending these I have felt my ego being tickled a little.. I don’t even know how many people will read this one.. It’s kind of nice and weird, and weird is nice.. so it’s like double nice. Kind of anonymous without trying hard..like when you take a long walk in a city, you don’t have to hide, no one knows you anyway and no one cares, that’s one of the reasons why I love cities, I’ll give you more reasons later. Here, I get to say what I feel and no one watches me or tries to create a sympathetic relation with me with their eyes.. you may feel sympathy but you don’t have to know how to show it, it’s so subtle so organic. You allow me to seek it and feel it. I like it.

I thank you for being you, for being there, for being here, and thank you for feeling the feels. Even if I don’t see you, when you feel the feels I can sense the energy of this universe change just a tiny bit.. oh and how sweet that is…

Danna Faulds
Let It Go

Let go of the ways you thought life would unfold:
the holding of plans or dreams or expectations. Let it all go.

Save your strength to swim with the tide.
The choice to fight what is here before you now will
only result in struggle, fear, and desperate attempts
to flee from the very energy you long for. Let go.

Let it all go and flow with the grace that washes
through your days whether you received it gently
or with all your quills raised to defend against invaders.
Take this on faith; the mind may never find the
explanations that it seeks, but you will move forward
nonetheless.

Let go, and the wave’s crest will carry
you to unknown shores, beyond your wildest dreams
or destinations. Let it all go and find the place of
rest and peace, and certain transformation.
488mth

Fifty Seven 1/13/16

For Mercedes and our poetry reading session, and for everything that comes from the heart and falls on the ground.

Ann Lauterbach
Clamor

It was a trance: thieves, clowns, and the blind girl
Passed symmetrically under the wide structure
As a floor passes under a rug,
Was this enough to go on, this scrap?
Had I entered, or was I pacing the same limits:
The room brought forward to another landscape,
Its odd birds, its train, its street lamp
Stationed like an unmoving moon. At night, the cries
Assembled into the ordinary speech of lovers before love
As the train pulled up the space, passing and passing.
Were these categories to be kept – thief, clown, blind girl –
Or were they too narrowly forensic, too easily found,
The whining insatiable drift insufficiently modeled.
They were an invitation to appear, appease, applaud,
In short to respond, be magical.
In the old days we howled.
In the old days we chanted our lists until they
Were deciphered, lifted the leaves, touched the broken clay,
Counted the steps quickly, saying this is the one with the key,
This is the one for whom I will awaken.

Affection is merciless: the wind, the excluder.
So much ruptured attention, so much pillaged from the stalk.
Even the nerves stray from precision, announcing
their stunned subject. Merciless: a field of snow
Flying like jargon, sweeping the issue away
In a halo of cold, its purpose
Lifted from the flat climate, from its nub or throb.
Lifted on impossible wings we are generous, we dare.
But affection is merciless: the dead in their thin garb
Walking the ruined streets, inventing us in stride and envy.
It is said they will make their way
Back to us, as what rises saves itself, falls.
What is the speed of this doctrine, what dividends,
What annual yield?
When will he give it back,
When will I laugh in the untidy yard
And when will her eyes, starting at me
Because she sees only her departure from me,
See me left here. Further adventure is further delay.
I used to count the days. I do not want to count the days.
438mth

Fifty Six – 1/12/16

I have a lot to say about this poem and the poet, but for some reason they all seem too much. This poem is so simple and so light it makes me cough and cry.. subtlety is scary and beautiful. More than reading it I want to touch this poem..

Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani – I did edit a few of the lines and words.

Sohrab Sepehri
Light, Flower, Water and I
There aren’t any clouds,
There is no sign of the breeze-

I sit next to the pond:
The goldfish, the dancing rays of light, flowers, water, and I:
The Immaculate and pure Tree of Life.

My mother is picking basil-
about the fence of the yard;
Some bread, a few leaves of basil, a piece of cheese-
and a clear sky, above the heap of moist Petunia:
Salvation is nearby!
It hides behinds the flowers-
in the yard.

The lights are caressing the clear water in my brass bowl-
And there it seems, the figment of stars are inviting the sun-
to this earth.
I think to myself:
everything tries to veil itself-
behind the shield of a lightly shell.

And then I see:
the hedge of time has a few wide-enough tears,
to let disclose my face- to the other world.
True, there are things that I don’t know,
And things that I know.

But I know,

I will die if I pluck the grass
I can fly up to the top of that hill: I am full of feather and wing.
I can see in dark: I am full of torch.
I am full of light and sand,
full of flower and plant,
full of lane, full of bridge, full of river and wave.
I am full of reflection of a leaf on the pond

How alone is my soul.
788mth

Fifty Five 1/11/16

“I am proud of my heart alone, it is the sole source of everything, all our strength, happiness and misery. All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own” – Werther/ Goethe

Walt Whitman
Songs Of The Rolling Earth. No. 3

I swear the earth shall surely be complete to him or her who shall
be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only to him or her who
remains jagged and broken.

I swear there is no greatness or power that does not emulate
those of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account unless it corroborate the
theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior, or what not, is of account,
unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality, rectitude of the
earth.

I swear I begin to see love with sweeter spasms than that which
responds love,
It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never
refuses.

I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words,
All merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings
of the earth,
Toward him who sings the songs of the body and of the truths
of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of words that print can-
not touch.

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best I find I cannot,
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.
748mth

Fifty Four 1/10/16

Just got back from helping Bukowski with his drinking problem, it was too cold for him to go out and get some wine.
It is cold, quiet, and unholy around here.
The wind slaps you in the face, but you just can’t fight back, because they say it is “authorized”.
Anyway, I got him a bottle of red wine and went over to his place.
We shared the bottle, fried some frozen words, and each had pint of grunt and a bowl of groan, he says hi.
On my way back I took my shirt off, kicked the street light, spat on the wind, and fought with my own shadow, now I’ve got a bad cold and bloody elbows..

Charles Bukowski

Style

Style is the answer to everything.
A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing
To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it
To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art

Bullfighting can be an art
Boxing can be an art
Loving can be an art
Opening a can of sardines can be an art

Not many have style
Not many can keep style
I have seen dogs with more style than men,
although not many dogs have style.
Cats have it with abundance.

When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,
that was style.
Or sometimes people give you style
Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Jesus
Socrates
Caesar
García Lorca.

I have met men in jail with style.
I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.
Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.
Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,
or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me
1308mth1

Fifty Three 1/9/16

Mary Mon ami est sur le feu le feu le feuuuuuuuuuu!!! Oh Mary, you are no visitor.

Mary Oliver
When death comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world
708mth

Fifty Two 1/8/16

11:11 AM! Congratulation! You made it through first week of the new year and it’s Friday. Maybe you can go for a walk this evening, drink some wine, smile, spin a few lines (of poetry or whatever you like) who knows maybe you’ll ran into me filling my hat with rain and confetti, or see Hesse getting drunk and selling piles of smile for dirt cheap, or even better you may see Walt Whitman and Oscar Wild flirting… Happy Birthday – you know who you are!

Herman Hesse
Evenings

Evenings the lovers walk
Slowly through the field,
Women let down their hair,
Businessmen count money,
Townspeople anxiously read the latest
In the evening paper,
Children clench tiny fists,
Sleeping deep and dark.
Each one with his own reality,
Following a noble duty,
Townspeople, infants, lovers –
And not me?

Yes! My evening tasks also,
To which I am a slave,
Cannot be done without by the spirit of the age,
They too have a meaning.
And so I go up and down,
Dancing inside,
Humming foolish street songs,
Praise God and myself,
Drink wine and pretend

That I am a pasha,
Worry about my kidneys,
Smile, drink more,
Saying yes to my heart
(In the morning, this won’t work),
Playfully spin a poem
Out of suffering gone by,
Gaze at the circling moon and stars,
Guessing their direction,
Feel myself one with them
On a journey
No matter where.
768mth

Fifty One 1/7/16

Hafiz is keepin’ it real y’all!

It’s 38° in Chicago with real feel of 35°.
It’s 70° in Nairobi with real feel of 66°
It’s 47° in San Francisco with real feel of 46°
It’s 36° in Orumiyeh with real feel of 39°
It’s 27° in Seoul with real feel of 29°
It’s 61° in Tunis with real feel of 57°
It’s 82° in Mogadishu with real feel of 82°
It’s 49° in Aleppo with real feel of 42°
It’s -54° in Oymyakon with real feel of -50°

Stop Being So Religious

Hafiz

What
Do sad people have in
Common?

It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.

What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
So religious
Like That.
1008mth

Fifty 1/6/16

I don’t know how I do it, but I do it. I look for poetry in all sorts of wrong places…few days ago I was thinking of how free the birds are when I was laying down on someone’s grave in a cemetery in northern California. Or I was trying to suck poetry out of the frustrated transit passengers at the Istanbul airport… But then I found them, I found some of them in someones’s grave, some of them are just thrown out of a window and I just pick them up from the streets.. And some of them grow in me, I call those poems “Succulents of Loneliness”

Jane Hirshfield
Poem Holding It’s Heart In Ones Fist

Each pebble in this world keeps
its own counsel.

Certain words–these, for instance–
may be keeping a pronoun hidden.
Perhaps the lover’s you
or the solipsist’s I.
Perhaps the philosopher’s willowy it.

The concealment plainly delights.

Even a desk will gather
its clutch of secret, half-crumpled papers,
eased slowly, over years,
behind the backs of drawers.

Olives adrift in the altering brine-bath
etch onto their innermost pits
a few furrowed salts that will never be found by the tongue.

Yet even with so much withheld,
so much unspoken,
potatoes are cooked with butter and parsley,
and buttons affixed to their sweater.
Invited guests arrive, then dutifully leave.

And this poem, afterward, washes its breasts
with soap and trembling hands, disguising nothing.
1088mth

Forty Nine – 1/5/16

It’s been such a dance with this poem, a strong push and pull. I have decided to send this one 17 times, and I have changed my mind 16 times… I guess I don’t love this poem except because I love this poem..

Also,

It’s 26° in Chicago with real feel of 19°.
It’s 48° in Tokyo with real feel of 46°
It’s 51° in San Francisco with real feel of 47°
It’s 34° in Orumiyeh with real feel of 33°
It’s 23° in Seoul with real feel of 29°
It’s 61° in Tangier with real feel of 54°
It’s 45° in Brussels with real feel of 36°
It’s 54° in Damascus with real feel of 47°

Pablo Neruda
Sonnet LXVI: I Do Not Love You Except Because I love You

I do not love you except because I love you;
I go from loving to not loving you,
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire.

I love you only because it’s you the one I love;
I hate you deeply, and hating you
Bend to you, and the measure of my changing love for you
Is that I do not see you but love you blindly.

Maybe January light will consume
My heart with its cruel
Ray, stealing my key to true calm.

In this part of the story I am the one who
Dies, the only one, and I will die of love because I love you,
Because I love you, Love, in fire and blood.
708mth

Forth Eight 1/4/16

If you know Reed go find him, give him my regards, a small bag of fine nuts, a solid hug, and throw a pinch of confetti on his hair. If you know Reed go and find him and ask him to read you this poem, then remember falling in love, remember crying and laughing at the same time.. and if you don’t know Reed, well, read this one slow…very slow… let the poem guide you, don’t hold back, but don’t push either…

Ellen Bass
And What If I Spoke of Despair

And what if I spoke of despair—who doesn’t
feel it? Who doesn’t know the way it seizes,
leaving us limp, deafened by the slosh
of our own blood, rushing
through the narrow, personal
channels of grief. It’s beauty
that brings it on, calls it out from the wings
for one more song. Rain
pooled on a fallen oak leaf, reflecting
the pale cloudy sky, dark canopy
of foliage not yet fallen. Or the red moon
in September, so large you have to pull over
at the top of Bayona and stare, like a photo
of a lover in his uniform, not yet gone;
or your own self, as a child,
on that day your family stayed
at the sea, watching the sun drift down,
lazy as a beach ball, and you fell asleep with sand
in the crack of your smooth behind.
That’s when you can’t deny it. Water. Air.
They’re still here, like a mother’s palms,
sweeping hair off our brow, her scent
swirling around us. But now your own
car is pumping poison, delivering its fair
share of destruction. We’ve created a salmon
with the red, white, and blue shining on one side.
Frog genes spliced into tomatoes—as if
the tomato hasn’t been humiliated enough.
I heard a man argue that genetic
engineering was more dangerous
than a nuclear bomb. Should I be thankful
he was alarmed by one threat, or worried
he’d gotten used to the other? Maybe I can’t
offer you any more than you can offer me—
but what if I stopped on the trail, with shreds
of manzanita bark lying in russet scrolls
and yellow bay leaves, little lanterns
in the dim afternoon, and cradled despair
in my arms, the way I held my own babies
after they’d fallen asleep, when there was no
reason to hold them, only
I didn’t want to put them down.
958mth

Forty Seven – 12/30/15

Mary Oliver
In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go
1229mth

Forty Six – 12/29/15

I can see ancient redwoods and a fading sun from my window as I am sending you this poem and I wonder whether it matters if this moment is real or a dream within a dream.. I wonder about your facial expression as you read this poem.. I wonder how this poem will taste in your mouth as you put these words in your mouth. I wonder how you will eat them, will you eat them word by word like you would eat grapes? Or you’ll take a big bite out of it and chew it slowly… I don’t know.. As for me I took it, pour it in my hat mixed it with some confetti left from sun’s funeral and then pour it over me… I absorbed it through my head’s skin…

Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within A Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
919mth

Forty Five 12/28/15

Mary Elizabeth Frye
Do not stand at my grave and weep

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.
809mth

Forty Four – 12/27/15

Hola La Familia! Returning to the first motherland trip after three years (Arrived in SFO 12/23/15), trying to answer many questions (and failing in doing so – who needs to answer questions when you get be loved and eat kabab), packing three years of missing into a month, and returning back to second home turned out to be heavier and trickier than I was anticipating, how naïve I could be! Anyway, I like these few paragraphs and found them appropriate to the lives that are transforming. Ah… my English needs some love too! Happy Birthday Molly and Aynaz!

Haruki Murakami

From Kafka on the Shore

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
739mth

Forty Three – 11/26/15

Much love, kabab, and baklava from the motherland! oh and homemade raisin booze – Birthday.

Danna Faulds
Walk Slowly

It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgment drops to a whisper and I
remember again that life isn’t a relay
race; that we will all cross the finish
line; that waking up to life is what we
were born for. As many times as I
forget, catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I’m going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly into the mystery.
769mth

Forty two – 11/23/15

Oh Pablo! From Istanbul with love!

Pablo Neruda

If You Forget Me

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.
7910mth

Forty one 11/22/15

Flying home in a couple of hours!

Ryōkan

Though travels take me to

a different stopping place each night

the dream I dream is always

the same one of home
7210mth

Forty 11/20/15

This is the fourth Mary Oliver I have sent so far.. there will be more! Also – Happy Birthday Lindley!

Mary Oliver
Wild Geese*
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
8410mth

Thirty nine – 11/19/15

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

How do I love thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
8510mth

Thirty Eight 11/18/15

Oh brother! I read this poem so many times this morning, and decided not to send it so many times, even if every single word in this poem echoed in my mind all morning… I thought to myself, I am not a mother, I am not that son, most of you are not mothers, nor that son, nor have a son… Then I thought of my mother.. I thought of all these years I have been gone.. and I thought about all the mothers I know and all of their sons and daughters who grew out of their cloths, who have become men and women.. and as I am writing this I hear it in my head “Think of the mothers who lost their children just this month to hate” and I hear ” Aren’t we all mothers, at least a little” ..

So, how could I not send this one? After all these years of efforts to be free from the box and after all these years trying so hard to be back in the box..I am going to my mother after three years in 4 days… So yeah this is for my Mother! Take a second and smile for your mother whoever she is, wherever she is…if you want you can call her too..xo

Sharon Olds
My Son the Man

Suddenly his shoulders get a lot wider,
the way Houdini would expand his body
while people were putting him in chains. It seems
no time since I would help him to put on his sleeper,
guide his calves into the gold interior,
zip him up and toss him up and
catch his weight. I cannot imagine him
no longer a child, and I know I must get ready,
get over my fear of men now my son
is going to be one. This was not
what I had in mind when he pressed up through me like a
sealed trunk through the ice of the Hudson,
snapped the padlock, unsnaked the chains,
and appeared in my arms. Now he looks at me
the way Houdini studied a box
to learn the way out, then smiled and let himself be manacled.

P.S. It’s a beautifully written poem IMHO.
10110mth

Thirty Seven – 11/17/15

I have a request! I invite you to take a deep breath and say It’s All Right, It’s Ok. And actually say it in words with sound using your mouth and feel the sensation and the vibration. Don’t half ass it, because you are at your office. You can say it quietly but say it! Once you did this poem!

Williams Stafford
It’s All Right
Someone you trusted has treated you bad.
Someone has used you to vent their ill temper.
Did you expect anything different?

Your work–better than some others’–has languished,
neglected. Or a job you tried was too hard,
and you failed.

Maybe weather or bad luck spoiled what you did.
That grudge, held against you
for years after you patched up, has flared,
and you’ve lost a friend for a time.

Things at home aren’t so good; on the job your spirits
have sunk.

But just when the worst bears down
you find a pretty bubble in your soup at noon,
and outside at work a bird says, “Hi!”
Slowly the sun creeps along the floor;
it is coming your way. It touches your shoe.
7510mth

Thirty six – 11/16/15

Sometimes neither poems seek me nor I go knocking on their doors. And sometimes they come rushing like an untamed river. Sometimes it feels like everything is poetry, like this morning, my shoe laces did not wanted to be tied, they said they want to be free, they want to be poets. Then I saw plastic bag tumbling down the street drunk on some Whitman vomiting free words… Oh Mondays!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Brahma

If the red slayer think he slays,
Or if the slain think he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep, and pass, and turn again.

Far or forgot to me is near;
Shadow and sunlight are the same;
The vanished gods to me appear;
And one to me are shame and fame.

They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me they fly, I am the wings;
I am the doubter and the doubt,
I am the hymn the Brahmin sings.

The strong gods pine for my abode,
And pine in vain the sacred Seven;
But thou, meek lover of the good!
Find me, and turn thy back on heaven.
8110mth

Thirty five 11/15/15

Before you go to bed.

Langston Hughes

Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
8410mth

Thirty four 11/12/15

It’s getting cold in Chicago, and when I am done with my “work” day it’s already dark.. I wake up in the morning put on my clothes and head out to my “office” which is really a cafe day after day and unlike my “office” in SF no one knows me here so I get to watch people without them interrupting me to remind me I am not alone here…I watch the random customers come in and get a cup of coffee and leave in rush, and I observe the “regulars” routines, I do my work… And I forget about the woodpecker hearted man, I forget about goat who reads poetry to grass, I forget about the invisible hand that opens the door for the wind and says You first, Please! so easy to forget what our real job is, good thing we have Mary to remind us!

Mary Oliver
Messenger
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.
12410mth

Thirty three 11/10/15

This is no easy poem to send to a large group but very worth it… Drinking a smoky mezcal cocktail and reading a smoking poetry in dark bar. Mezcal breaks the barriers, her words break through the papers of my poetry anthology and hit me hard in the head and heart. It’s cold and autumnal in Chicago and words are burning hot!

First Turn to Me…
Bernadette Mayer

First turn to me after a shower,
you come inside me sideways as always

in the morning you ask me to be on top of you,
then we take a nap, we’re late for school

you arrive at night inspired and drunk,
there is no reason for our clothes

we take a bath and lie down facing each other,
then later we turn over, finally you come

we face each other and talk about childhood
as soon as I touch your penis I wind up coming

you stop by in the morning to say hello
we sit on the bed indian fashion not touching

in the middle of the night you come home
from a nightclub, we don’t get past the bureau

next day it’s the table, and after that the chair
because I want so much to sit you down & suck your cock

you ask me to hold your wrists, but then when I
touch your neck with both my hands you come

it’s early morning and you decide to very quietly
come on my knee because of the children

you’ve been away at school for centuries, your girlfriend
has left you, you come four times before morning

you tell me you masturbated in the hotel before you came by
I don’t believe it, I serve the lentil soup naked

I massage your feet to seduce you, you are reluctant,
my feet wind up at your neck and ankles

you try not to come too quickly
also, you dont want to have a baby

I stand up from the bath, you say turn around
and kiss the backs of my legs and my ass

you suck my cunt for a thousand years, you are weary
at last I remember my father’s anger and I come

you have no patience and come right away
I get revenge and won’t let you sleep all night

we make out for so long we can’t remember how
we wound up hitting our heads against the wall

I lie on my stomach, you put one hand under me
and one hand over me and that way can love me

you appear without notice and with flowers
I fall for it and we become missionaries

you say you can only fuck me up the ass when you are drunk
so we try it sober in a room at the farm

we lie together one night, exhausted couplets
and don’t make love. does this mean we’ve had enough?

watching t.v. we wonder if each other wants to
interrupt the plot; later I beg you to read to me

like the Chinese we count 81 thrusts
then 9 more out loud till we both come

I come three times before you do
and then it seems you’re mad and never will

it’s only fair for a woman to come more
think of all the times they didn’t care
20810mth

Thirty two 11/9/15

EEC
In The Rain-
in the rain-
darkness, the sunset
being sheathed i sit and
think of you

the holy
city which is your face
your little cheeks the streets
of smiles

your eyes half-
thrush
half-angel and your drowsy
lips where float flowers of kiss

and
there is the sweet shy pirouette
your hair
and then

your dancesong
soul. rarely-beloved
a single star is
uttered,and i

think
of you
6810mth

Thirty one 11/8/15

Holy metaphor Sundays!

Kenneth Koch
Alive For An Instant

I have a bird in my head and a pig in my stomach
And a flower in my genitals and a tiger in my genitals
And a lion in my genitals and I am after you but I have a song in my

heart

And my song is a dove
I have man in my hands I have a woman in my shoes
I have a landmark decision in my reason
I have a death rattle in my nose I have summer in my brain water
I have dreams in my toes
This is the matter with me and the hammer of my mother and father
Who created me with everything
But I lack clam I lack rose
Though I do not lack extreme delicacy of rose petal
Who is it that I wish to astonish?
In the birdcall I found a reminder of you
But it was thin and brittle and gone in an instant
Has nature set out to be a great entertainer?
Obviously not a great reproducer? A great Nothing?
Well I will leave that up to you
I have a knocking woodpecker in my heart and I think I have three

souls

One for love one for poetry and one for acting out my insane self
Not insane but boring but perpendicular but untrue but true
The three rarely sing together take my hand it’s active
The active ingredient in it is a touch
I am Lord Byron I am Percy Shelley I am Ariosto
I eat the bacon I went down the slide I have a thunderstorm in my inside I will never hate you
But how can this maelstrom be appealing? do you like menageries? my

god

Most people want a man! So here I am
I have a pheasant in my reminders I have a goshawk in my clouds
Whatever is it which has led all these animals to you?
A resurrection? or maybe an insurrection? an inspiration?
I have a baby in my landscape and I have a wild rat in my secrets from

you.
8610mth

Thirty 11/7/15

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”

Charles Bukowski
Raw With Love

little dark girl with
kind eyes
when it comes time to
use the knife
I won’t flinch and
I won’t blame
you,
as I drive along the shore alone
as the palms wave,
the ugly heavy palms,
as the living does not arrive
as the dead do not leave,
I won’t blame you,
instead
I will remember the kisses
our lips raw with love
and how you gave me
everything you had
and how I
offered you what was left of
me,
and I will remember your small room
the feel of you
the light in the window
your records
your books
our morning coffee
our noons our nights
our bodies spilled together
sleeping
the tiny flowing currents
immediate and forever
your leg my leg
your arm my arm
your smile and the warmth
of you
who made me laugh
again.
little dark girl with kind eyes
you have no
knife. the knife is
mine and I won’t use it
yet.
7310mth

twenty Nine – 11/6/15

Fridays are great for dreamin’

Langston Hughes
Dreams

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
7310mth

Twenty Eight 11/5/15

Remember remember… the 5th of November…

I love shouting the poem below, I can feel its wild and fearless energy run in my body as I shout it and as I bang on the table when I read it! It is very physical for me..and I’m sure Good Ol’ Walt would have loved seeing me wearing nothing but a vest and shouting this poem to the stranger at the Burn!

Walt Whitman
Song of the Open Road #15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
7310mth

Twenty Seven – 11/4/15

Maya #Angelou
Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
7010mth

twenty six – 10/30/15

Oh my, Pablo!

Señor #Neruda
Love Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
7411mth

Twenty five 10/29/15

Derek Walcott
Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

#love #self #poetry
10211mth

Twenty Four 10/25/2015

Mary Oliver
Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-the one who the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

#Maryoliver
8011mth

Twenty Three 10/27/15

Good Ol’ Walt

It is that which contains itself, which never invites and never refuses.

I swear I begin to see little or nothing in audible words!
I swear I think all merges toward the presentation of the unspoken meanings of the earth!
Toward him who sings the songs of the body, and of the truths of the earth,
Toward him who makes the dictionaries of the words that print cannot touch.

I swear I see what is better than to tell the best,
It is always to leave the best untold.

When I undertake to tell the best, I find I cannot,
My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots,
My breath will not be obedient to its organs,
I become a dumb man.

The best of the earth cannot be told anyhow—all or any is best,
It is not what you anticipated—it is cheaper, easier, nearer,
Things are not dismissed from the places they held before,
The earth is just as positive and direct as it was before,
Facts, religions, improvements, politics, trades, are as real as before,
But the Soul is also real,—it too is positive and direct,
No reasoning, no proof has established it,
Undeniable growth has established it

#waltwhitman
9111mth

Twenty two 10/26/15

It’s windy out here, gotta learn how to #trust, gotta learn how bend and lean, gotta learn how not to break with every wind.. but then there are winds that’ll break me and that’s ok too! #poetry

Danna Faulds
#Limitless
Sun says, “Be your own
illumination.” Wren says,
“Sing your heart out,
all day long.” Stream says,
“Do not stop for any
obstacle.” Oak says,
“When the wind blows,
bend easily, and trust
your roots to hold.”
Stars say, “What you see
is one small slice of a
single modest galaxy.
Remember that vastness
cannot be grasped by mind.”
Ant says, “Small does not
mean powerless.” Silence
says nothing. In the quiet,
everything comes clear.
I say, “Limitless.” I say,
“Yes.”
6611mth

twenty one – 10/23/15

#Khayyam is one the harshest teachers out there, not messing around! #poetry

Khayyam
Rubai’yat

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain – This Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies –
The Flower that once has blown forever dies

There was a water-drop, it joined the sea,
A speck of dust, it was fused with earth;
what of your entering and leaving this world?
A fly appeared, and disappeared.
7511mth

twenty – 10/22/15

Read this to someone or imagine reading this to someone. Maybe let your fingers and imagination become one and maybe let them wander on that someone’s body as you read this to them, your fingers going up and down their spine as a wanderer would walk up an down a new street, soaking everything, enjoying every step. Or maybe feel your own body as you read this, let these words linger on your lips, then chew them , then swallow them, and let your body absorb the fresh juice of these words…

E.E. Cummings
I Like My Body When It Is With Your

“i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones,and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the,shocking fuzz
of your electric furrrr,and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh….And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new”
13411mth

Nineteen – 10/21/15

Sufisticated pickup lines by your favorite romantic… Señor Rumi!

#Rumi

“You have no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring You.

Nothing seemed right.

What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine,

or water to the ocean.

Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.

It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.

So I’ve brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me.”
6911mth

Eighteen 10/20/15

Gray and windy day in #Chicago. #Coffee and lamentation seems appropriate.

#Rilke
The Second Elegy

Lovers secure in one another, I ask you about us.
You hold each other. Have you assurance?
It sometimes happens my hands grew conscious of each other,
or else my weary face takes refuge in them.
That give me a slight self-sensation.
Yet who, from something so unwarranted, would dare to conclude,”I am”?
You, though, who keep increasing through the other’s rapture, until, overwhelmed, each begs the other:
“No More”;
you who in each other’s hands flourish like vines in vintage years; you who disappear sometimes only because the other grows rampant: I ask you about us.
I know you touch so fervently because the cares protects,
because the place you cover,
O tender ones,
Don’t vanish; because, underneath, you feel pure permanence.
This your embrace almost promise you the eternity. And yet, when you’ve passed the terror of the first look, and the long yearning at the window and the first walk – the one walk- together through the garden:
Lovers, have you survived? when you lift yourselves each to the other’s lips and kiss: drink unto drink. O how strangely then the drinker slips from the dead.
Weren’t you amazed by the caution of human gesture
on Attic steles?
Weren’t love and departure laid so lightly on shoulders, they seemed to be made of other matter than ours?
Think of the hands how they rest without weight, though there is power in the torso.
Those self-controlled ones know, through that: so much is ours, this is us, to touch our own selves so: the gods may bear down more heavily on us.
But that is the gods’ affair.

If only we too could discover a pure, contained human place,
a strip of fruitful land of our own, between river and stone!
For our own heart exceeds us,

even as theirs did.
And we can no longer gaze after it into images, that soothe it, or into godlike bodies, where
it restrains itself more completely.
8711mth

Seventeen 10/19/15

Some mornings I wake up, sit on the edge of my bed and my mind is the loudest place in the world, and my body is the heaviest stone I’ve had to lift, the I remember Bukowski and I laugh…We’ll get through this too!

Danna Faulds
Self-Observation Without Judgment
Release the harsh and pointed inner
voice. it’s just a throwback to the past,
and holds no truth about this moment.

Let go of self-judgment, the old,
learned ways of beating yourself up
for each imagined inadequacy.

Allow the dialogue within the mind
to grow friendlier, and quiet. Shift
out of inner criticism and life
suddenly looks very different.

i can say this only because I make
the choice a hundred times a day to release the voice that refuses to
acknowledge the real me.

What’s needed here isn’t more prodding toward perfection, but
intimacy – seeing clearly, and
embracing what I see.

Love, not judgment, sows the
seeds of tranquility and change.
7411mth

Sixteen – 10/18/15

a lot of us has suffered and wanted the suffering to end as fast as possible. Happy Sunday!

#Hafiz

Don’t surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice
So tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.
7211mth

I have felt similar to Allen many times myself, and maybe you have too. Hangover or high or both with my old copy of Walt Whitman in my pocket wandering through the streets. Touching the book every so often and feeling encouraged, letting my fingers move on it slowly as if I can touch the words, as if I can absorb uncle walt’s madness and wisdom through my pores. Feeling that quiet pain behind my eyes, creeping slowly through my forehead. Or looking at a tree and wondering how was it when he laid under a tree and drift to dream… Anyway, Happy Saturday! Oh by the way, this is one of those times I am breaking my promise, this is one of those emails that contains two poems…

Allen Ginsberg
A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the side streets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!–and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be
lonely.

Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
Berkeley, 1955

Walt Whitman
Song of Myself
#51

The past and present wilt — I have fill’d them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.

Listener up there! what have you to confide to me?
Look in my face while I snuff the sidle of evening,
(Talk honestly, no one else hears you, and I stay only a
minute longer.)

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I concentrate toward them that are nigh, I wait on the door-slab.

Who has done his day’s work? who will soonest be through
with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?

Will you speak before I am gone? will you prove already too
late?
8411mth

Fourteen – 10/16/15

This poem is by Ahmad Shamlu, and translated by Sholeh Wolpé and Ahmad Karimi- Hakkak. I edited a few lines in it based on the original poem in farsi. I read this poem and think of my little sister who is growing up in Iran.

Ahmad Shamlu
Of Your Uncles

Not for the sake of the sun

not for the sake of epics

but for the sake of a tiny rooftop shadow,

but for the sake of a song

Smaller than your hands.
Not for the sake of forests

or for the sea

but for a leaf

for a drop

brighter than your eyes
Not for the sake of walls

but for the sake of a hedge

Not for the sake of who humanity

but for the sake of your home

and for your childish certainty

that each person is a world himself.
For the sake of my wish to be with you for a moment,

for your small hands in my big hands,

and my large lips on your innocent cheeks.

For the sake of a swallow in the breeze,

when you shriek with excitement.

for the sake of a dew drop on a leaf,

when you are asleep.

for the sake of a smile,

when you see me beside you.

For the sake of a ballad,

a story on the the coldest of the nights, on the darkest of the nights,

for you dolls, not for the sake of big people,

for a cobble stone path that leads me to you,

not for the sake of distant highways.

For the sake of the gutters when it rains,

for the sake hives and honey bees,

for a cloud’s white proclamation in the big serene sky.

For you sake,

for the sake of everything small

and everything pure, they fell to the ground.

Remember them!

I speak of your uncles,

I speak of Morteza*

*Morteza Keyvan (1922-1954) was an Iranian poet, writer, and journalist who worked in for briefly for the government during Mossaddeq era and was executed by the Shah’s regime a year after U.S led coup d’état in Iran against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mosaddeq.

Thirteen – 10/15/15

Rilke
The First Elegy

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angels’
Orders? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly to his heart: I’d be consumed
in his more potent being. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we can still barely endure,
and while we stand in wonder it coolly disdains
to destroy us. Every Angel is terrifying.
And so I grip myself and choke down that call note
of dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we turn to
in our need? Not Angels, not humans,
and the sly animals see at once
how little at home we are
in the interpreted world. That leaves us
some tree on a slope, to which our eyes returned
day after day; leaves us yesterday’s street
and the coddled loyalty of an old habit
that liked it here, lingered, and never left.
O and the night, the night, when the wind full of worldspace
gnaws at our faces—, for whom won’t the night be there,
desired, softly disappointing, setting hard tasks
for the single heart. Is it easier on lovers?
Ah, they only use each other to mask their fates.
You still don’t see? Fling the emptiness in your arms
out into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds
will feel the increase of air with more passionate flight.

Yes, the Springs needed you. Many a star was waiting
for your eyes only. A wave swelled toward you
out of the past, or as you walked by the open window
a violin inside surrendered itself
to pure passion. All that was your charge.
But were you strong enough? Weren’t you always distracted
by expectation, as though each such moment
presaged a beloved’s coming? (But where would you keep her,
with all those big strange thoughts in you
going and coming and sometimes staying all night?)
No, in the grip of longing sing women who loved;
their prodigious feeling still lacks an undying fame.
The abandoned ones you almost envy, since you found them
so much deeper in love than those whom love allayed.
Begin ever anew their impossible praise.
Remember: the hero lives on, even his downfall
was only a pretext for attained existence: his ultimate birth.
But nature, exhausted, takes women in love
back into herself, as though she lacked strength
to create them a second time. Have you praised Gaspara Stampa
intently enough that any girl left by her lover
will be moved by this heightened instance
of a woman’s heart to cry out: Let me be as she was!
Isn’t it time these most ancient sorrows
at last bore fruit? Time we tenderly detached ourselves
from the loved one and, trembling, stood free:
the way the arrow, suddenly all vector, survives the string
to be more than itself. For abiding is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Listen, my heart, the way
only saints have listened till now, as that vast call
lifted them from the ground; while they kept on kneeling
and noticed nothing, those impossible ones:
listeners fully absorbed. Not that you could bear
God’s voice—not at all. But listen to the wind’s breathing,
the unbroken news that takes shape out of silence.
It’s rustling toward you now from all the youthful dead.
When you entered a church in Rome or Naples,
didn’t their fate speak quietly to you?
Or an inscription echoed deep within you,
as, not long ago, that tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.
Their charge to me? —that I gently dispel
the air of injustice that sometimes
hinders a little their spirits’ pure movement.

Granted, it’s strange to dwell on earth no more,
to cease observing customs barely learned,
not to give roses and other things of such promise
a meaning in some human future;
to stop being what one was in endlessly anxious hands,
and ignore even one’s own name like a broken toy.
Strange, not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once so interconnected
drifting in space. And death exacts a labor,
a long finishing of things half-done, before
one has that first feeling of eternity. —But the living
all make the same mistake: they distinguish too sharply.
Angels (it’s said) often don’t know whether they’re moving among
the living or the dead. The eternal current
sweeps all the ages with it through both kingdoms
forever and drowns their voices in both.

In the end, those torn from us early no longer need us:
slowly one becomes unaccustomed to earthly things,
in the gentle way one leaves a mother’s breast. But we, who need
such great mysteries, for whom so often blessed progress
springs from grief—: could we exist without them?

Is it a tale told in vain, that myth of lament for Linos,
in which a daring first music pierced the shell of numbness:
stunned Space, which an almost divine youth
had suddenly left forever; then, in that void, vibrations—
which for us now are rapture and solace and help.

Poems and Stories (145 Poem) – 10.13.16 — 9.14.16

Published by Peyman A.

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