Poems that I love

If they gun me down in my own street someday may my crime be compassion. May the record show  from every angle  that I was helping a woman up  after they pushed her to the ground, that not even their weapons  could stop me from extending  my hand to those in need.  that I was a walking example  of the best my elders taught me --   that everyone is equal  and worthy of defending. If they tell the nation,  from the highest podium,  that I was a domestic terrorist,  let it be known that my radical act  was believing the best in people  when they wanted nothing more  than to divide us. By Michael F Dubois 

When one of them moved through the marketplace of Selefkia just as it was getting dark—  moved like a young man, tall, extremely handsome,  with the joy of being immortal in his eyes,  with his black and perfumed hair—  the people going by would gaze at him,  and one would ask the other if he knew him,  if he was a Greek from Syria, or a stranger.  But some who looked more carefully  would understand and step aside;  and as he disappeared under the arcades,  among the shadows and the evening lights,  going toward the quarter that lives  only at night, with orgies and debauchery,  with every kind of intoxication and desire,  they would wonder which of Them it could be,  and for what suspicious pleasure  he had come down into the streets of Selefkia  from the August Celestial Mansions.  Reprinted from C.P. CAVAFY: Collected Poems Revised Edition, translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, edi...

 By Kenneth Rexroth Who are you? Who am I? Haunted By the dead, by the dead and the past and the Falling inertia of unreal, dead Men and things. Haunted by the threat Of the impersonal, that which Never will admit the person, The closed world of things. Who are You? Coming up out of the Mineral earth, one pale leaf Unlike any other unfolding, And then another, strange, new, Utterly different, nothing I ever expected, growing Up out of my warm heart's blood. All new, all strange, all different. Your own leaf pattern, your own Flower and fruit, but fed from One root, the root of our fused flesh. I and thou, from the one to The dual, from the dual To the other, the wonderful, Unending, unfathomable Process of becoming each Our selves for each other. Left to right: Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, and James Laughlin.

by Danielle Coffyn If Adam Picked the Apple There would be a parade, a celebration, a holiday to commemorate the day he sought enlightenment. We would not speak of temptation by the devil, rather, we would laud Adam’s curiosity, his desire for adventure and knowing. We would feast on apple-inspired fare: tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies. There would be plays and songs reenacting his courage. But it was Eve who grew bored, weary of her captivity in Eden. And a woman’s desire for freedom is rarely a cause for celebration.

What was teaching in that first Pennsylvania winter but listening to directions and learning how to drive on icy two-lane roads from Easton to Bethlehem? You were tested by a deer standing starkly on the yellow line and a dead opossum freezing in the gravel and the radio playing spirituals about going home on a lonesome highway. The sun skidded to a halt in the smokestacks over the river and I can still see you climbing the snowy hills and coasting past the empty factories and abandoned warehouses to a Catholic school on the edge of town. You were a skeptic in the Valley of the Lord who carried “Pied Beauty” in your jacket pocket and drank scalding coffee in the teacher’s lounge with two old priests and a lanky young nun who played pickup basketball and noticed all things counter, original, spare, strange. What was teaching but quieting a classroom and learning how to stand at a blackboard with an open book and praise the unfathomable mystery of being to children writing poems or praye...

For my sisters, Julie and Elen. For brother John, who is no longer with us. Tradition bids me tie a ribbon on your wrist  To say that you and I are related, And it will always be No matter what What husband, what wife,  what daughter, what son, What lover, what friend, May kisses, caresses Abound. May wounds be few. No matter, There will be love. What prizes and honors won,  Include the ones you lost, What joy, what laughter,  what grief, what loss, What trouble, what pain,  what fear, what tear, what discovery,  Embrace it freely. In this moment You are my world. We are blood and yet so different It makes no difference What barrier, what fence What wall, what boundary. Cross, venture, explore, A postcard now and then might be nice. Calls are also cheap these days, But neither is required. I know there are only so many  Seconds, minutes, years granted to us. Use them as best you can. As best we can. I will try. Make mistakes, I will join you. We are fo...