Poem of the Day – 04272026

2026/04/272026/04/26Posted in PoetryTagged Amiri Baraka, Poem of the Day2 Comments

In Memory of Radio

by Amiri Baraka

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to haved loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake’s hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts…
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn’t like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let’s Pretend
& we did
& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn’t throw stones?) ‘Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.’

O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.

Poem of the Day – 04262026

2026/04/26Posted in Poetry, ProseTagged Ezra Pound, Poem of the Day, poetryLeave a comment

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley [Part I]

By Ezra Pound

(Life and Contacts)

“Vocat aestus in umbram”
Nemesianus Ec. IV.

E. P. ODE POUR L’ÉLECTION DE SON SÉPULCHRE

For three years, out of key with his time,

He strove to resuscitate the dead art

Of poetry; to maintain “the sublime”

In the old sense. Wrong from the start—

No, hardly, but, seeing he had been born

In a half savage country, out of date;

Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;

Capaneus; trout for factitious bait:

“Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie

Caught in the unstopped ear;

Giving the rocks small lee-way

The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

His true Penelope was Flaubert,

He fished by obstinate isles;

Observed the elegance of Circe’s hair

Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

Unaffected by “the march of events,”

He passed from men’s memory in l’an trentiesme

De son eage; the case presents

No adjunct to the Muses’ diadem.

The age demanded an image

Of its accelerated grimace,

Something for the modern stage,

Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries

Of the inward gaze;

Better mendacities

Than the classics in paraphrase!

The “age demanded” chiefly a mould in plaster,

Made with no loss of time,

A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster

Or the “sculpture” of rhyme.

III

The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.

Supplants the mousseline of Cos,

The pianola “replaces”

Sappho’s barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus,

Phallic and ambrosial

Made way for macerations;

Caliban casts out Ariel.

All things are a flowing,

Sage Heracleitus says;

But a tawdry cheapness

Shall reign throughout our days.

Even the Christian beauty

Defects—after Samothrace;

We see to kalon

Decreed in the market place.

Faun’s flesh is not to us,

Nor the saint’s vision.

We have the press for wafer;

Franchise for circumcision.

All men, in law, are equals.

Free of Peisistratus,

We choose a knave or an eunuch

To rule over us.

A bright Apollo,

tin andra, tin eroa, tina theon,

What god, man, or hero

Shall I place a tin wreath upon?

These fought, in any case,

and some believing, pro domo, in any case …

Some quick to arm,

some for adventure,

some from fear of weakness,

some from fear of censure,

some for love of slaughter, in imagination,

learning later …

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;

Died some pro patria, non dulce non et decor” …

walked eye-deep in hell

believing in old men’s lies, then unbelieving

came home, home to a lie,

home to many deceits,

home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick

and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.

Young blood and high blood,

Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,

disillusions as never told in the old days,

hysterias, trench confessions,

laughter out of dead bellies.

There died a myriad,

And of the best, among them,

For an old bitch gone in the teeth,

For a botched civilization.

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,

Quick eyes gone under earth’s lid,

For two gross of broken statues,

For a few thousand battered books.

YEUX GLAUQUES

Gladstone was still respected,

When John Ruskin produced

“Kings Treasuries”; Swinburne

And Rossetti still abused.

Foetid Buchanan lifted up his voice

When that faun’s head of hers

Became a pastime for

Painters and adulterers.

The Burne-Jones cartons

Have preserved her eyes;

Still, at the Tate, they teach

Cophetua to rhapsodize;

Thin like brook-water,

With a vacant gaze.

The English Rubaiyat was still-born

In those days.

The thin, clear gaze, the same

Still darts out faun-like from the half-ruin’d face,

Questing and passive ….

“Ah, poor Jenny’s case” …

Bewildered that a world

Shows no surprise

At her last maquero’s

Adulteries.

“SIENA MI FE’, DISFECEMI MAREMMA’”

Among the pickled foetuses and bottled bones,

Engaged in perfecting the catalogue,

I found the last scion of the

Senatorial families of Strasbourg, Monsieur Verog.

For two hours he talked of Gallifet;

Of Dowson; of the Rhymers’ Club;

Told me how Johnson (Lionel) died

By falling from a high stool in a pub …

But showed no trace of alcohol

At the autopsy, privately performed—

Tissue preserved—the pure mind

Arose toward Newman as the whiskey warmed.

Dowson found harlots cheaper than hotels;

Headlam for uplift; Image impartially imbued

With raptures for Bacchus, Terpsichore and the Church.

So spoke the author of “The Dorian Mood,”

M. Verog, out of step with the decade,

Detached from his contemporaries,

Neglected by the young,

Because of these reveries.

BRENNEBAUM

The sky-like limpid eyes,

The circular infant’s face,

The stiffness from spats to collar

Never relaxing into grace;

The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,

Showed only when the daylight fell

Level across the face

Of Brennbaum “The Impeccable.”

MR. NIXON

In the cream gilded cabin of his steam yacht

Mr. Nixon advised me kindly, to advance with fewer

Dangers of delay. “Consider

”Carefully the reviewer.

“I was as poor as you are;

“When I began I got, of course,

“Advance on royalties, fifty at first,” said Mr. Nixon,

“Follow me, and take a column,

“Even if you have to work free.

“Butter reviewers. From fifty to three hundred

“I rose in eighteen months;

“The hardest nut I had to crack

“Was Dr. Dundas.

“I never mentioned a man but with the view

“Of selling my own works.

“The tip’s a good one, as for literature

“It gives no man a sinecure.”

And no one knows, at sight a masterpiece.

And give up verse, my boy,

There’s nothing in it.”

* * * *

Likewise a friend of Bloughram’s once advised me:

Don’t kick against the pricks,

Accept opinion. The “Nineties” tried your game

And died, there’s nothing in it.

Beneath the sagging roof

The stylist has taken shelter,

Unpaid, uncelebrated,

At last from the world’s welter

Nature receives him,

With a placid and uneducated mistress

He exercises his talents

And the soil meets his distress.

The haven from sophistications and contentions

Leaks through its thatch;

He offers succulent cooking;

The door has a creaking latch.

“Conservatrix of Milésien”

Habits of mind and feeling,

Possibly. But in Ealing

With the most bank-clerkly of Englishmen?

No, “Milésian” is an exaggeration.

No instinct has survived in her

Older than those her grandmother

Told her would fit her station.

XII

“Daphne with her thighs in bark

Stretches toward me her leafy hands,”—

Subjectively. In the stuffed-satin drawing-room

I await The Lady Valentine’s commands,

Knowing my coat has never been

Of precisely the fashion

To stimulate, in her,

A durable passion;

Doubtful, somewhat, of the value

Of well-gowned approbation

Of literary effort,

But never of The Lady Valentine’s vocation:

Poetry, her border of ideas,

The edge, uncertain, but a means of blending

With other strata

Where the lower and higher have ending;

A hook to catch the Lady Jane’s attention,

A modulation toward the theatre,

Also, in the case of revolution,

A possible friend and comforter.

* * * *

Conduct, on the other hand, the soul

“Which the highest cultures have nourished”

To Fleet St. where

Dr. Johnson flourished;

Beside this thoroughfare

The sale of half-hose has

Long since superseded the cultivation

Of Pierian roses.

Poem of the Day – 04242026

2026/04/242026/04/22Posted in PoetryTagged June Jordan, Poem of the Day1 Comment

Poem about My Rights

By June Jordan

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear

my head about this poem about why I can’t

go out without changing my clothes my shoes

my body posture my gender identity my age

my status as a woman alone in the evening/

alone on the streets/alone not being the point/

the point being that I can’t do what I want

to do with my own body because I am the wrong

sex the wrong age the wrong skin and

suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/

or far into the woods and I wanted to go

there by myself thinking about God/or thinking

about children or thinking about the world/all of it

disclosed by the stars and the silence:

I could not go and I could not think and I could not

stay there

alone

as I need to be

alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own

body and

who in the hell set things up

like this

and in France they say if the guy penetrates

but does not ejaculate then he did not rape me

and if after stabbing him if after screams if

after begging the bastard and if even after smashing

a hammer to his head if even after that if he

and his buddies fuck me after that

then I consented and there was

no rape because finally you understand finally

they fucked me over because I was wrong I was

wrong again to be me being me where I was/wrong

to be who I am

which is exactly like South Africa

penetrating into Namibia penetrating into

Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if

Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the

proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland

and if

after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe

and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to

self-immolation of the villages and if after that

we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they

claim my consent:

Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of

the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what

in the hell is everybody being reasonable about

and according to the Times this week

back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem

and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they

killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba

and before that it was my father on the campus

of my Ivy League school and my father afraid

to walk into the cafeteria because he said he

was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong

gender identity and he was paying my tuition and

before that

it was my father saying I was wrong saying that

I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a

boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and

that I should have had straighter hair and that

I should not be so boy crazy but instead I should

just be one/a boy and before that

it was my mother pleading plastic surgery for

my nose and braces for my teeth and telling me

to let the books loose to let them loose in other

words

I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A.

and the problems of South Africa and the problems

of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white

America in general and the problems of the teachers

and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social

workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very

familiar with the problems because the problems

turn out to be

I am the history of rape

I am the history of the rejection of who I am

I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of

myself

I am the history of battery assault and limitless

armies against whatever I want to do with my mind

and my body and my soul and

whether it’s about walking out at night

or whether it’s about the love that I feel or

whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or

the sanctity of my national boundaries

or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity

of each and every desire

that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic

and indisputably single and singular heart

I have been raped

be-

cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age

the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the

wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic

the wrong sartorial I

I have been the meaning of rape

I have been the problem everyone seeks to

eliminate by forced

penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/

but let this be unmistakable this poem

is not consent I do not consent

to my mother to my father to the teachers to

the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy

to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon

idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in

cars

I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name

My name is my own my own my own

and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this

but I can tell you that from now on my resistance

my simple and daily and nightly self-determination

may very well cost you your life

Reflection

Some violations happen in private.

A room.
A street.
A body cornered by power.

But they are rarely born there.

That is one of the hardest truths June Jordan refuses to let us avoid.

What happens to a person is often connected to what a culture permits, excuses, minimizes, or trains itself not to see.

That’s why this poem still cuts.

It does not isolate pain into a single incident.
It follows the roots underground.

From the personal to the political.
From fear to policy.
From violence to the language used to justify it.
From one body harmed to entire systems arranged around whose bodies matter less.

Many people prefer suffering to remain individual.

It is cleaner that way.

One bad person.
One bad moment.
One tragedy unfortunate but disconnected.

Then no one else has to examine the architecture.

Jordan tears through that convenience.

She shows how domination repeats itself in different uniforms:

As sexism.
As racism.
As nationalism.
As conquest.
As the assumption that some people exist to be managed, used, silenced, or entered without consent.

Different masks.
Same appetite.

That recognition can be uncomfortable.

Because once you see the pattern, innocence gets harder to perform.

You begin to notice how often rights are celebrated in theory and negotiated in practice.

Who is believed.
Who is interrupted.
Who must calculate danger before leaving home.
Who is told to be polite in the face of violation.
Who is expected to carry trauma quietly so others remain comfortable.

That is why this poem matters beyond its moment.

It is not only about what was done.

It is about what is normalized.

And yet the poem is not surrender.

It is voice.

Naming what happened.
Naming what connects it.
Naming the lie that says private suffering has no public context.

There is power in that.

Because what is named becomes harder to dismiss.
What is spoken enters the room.
What enters the room can begin to change it.

Reflection Prompts

Where do you see private harm sustained by public systems?
What truths are people asked to soften so others can stay comfortable?
When have you mistaken legality for justice?

There’s a truth underneath this poem:

Some wounds are personal.

But the conditions that create them
rarely are.

Poem of the Day – 04232026

2026/04/232026/04/22Posted in PoetryTagged Audre Lorde, Poem of the Day1 Comment

A Litany for Survival

By Audre Lorde

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours;

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak we are afraid
our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive.

Reflection

Some people think survival looks triumphant.

A victory speech.
A clean comeback.
A smiling photograph taken after the storm has passed.

But most survival is quieter than that.

It looks like getting up tired.
Answering the call you didn’t want to take.
Holding yourself together in public.
Continuing while afraid.
Breathing through another day no one knows was hard.

That’s where Clifton and Lorde meet.

Clifton gives us celebration—not because life has been gentle, but because it has failed to erase her.

Lorde gives us the other half of that truth:

Many of us were never promised safety to begin with.

So we learn to live with uncertainty.
To speak while shaking.
To love while vulnerable.
To keep going without guarantees.

That’s what makes A Litany for Survival powerful.

It does not pretend fear disappears.

It says fear is already here.

The waves are already breaking.
The night is already dark.
The risks are already real.

So the real question becomes:

What will you do now?

Stay silent to avoid danger?
Shrink yourself to be acceptable?
Wait for a safer moment that may never come?

Or speak.
Create.
Love.
Become.

Even now.

Especially now.

That’s the mature version of resilience people don’t talk about.

Not bravery without fear.
Bravery with full knowledge of fear.

Not confidence.
Commitment.

Not immunity to harm.
Refusal to disappear.

And that is worth celebration.

Not because the world was kind.
Because it wasn’t.

And still—you remained.

Reflection Prompts

Where have you mistaken fear for a signal to stop?
What part of yourself has been waiting for “safer conditions” to emerge?
How would your life change if survival itself counted as success?

There’s a truth underneath both poets:

You do not need perfect conditions
to keep becoming.

Sometimes the bravest thing you do
is continue
while the storm is still in progress.

Poem of the Day – 04222026

2026/04/222026/04/21Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, Stanley Kunitz1 Comment

The Layers

By Stanley Kunitz

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

“Live in the layers,

not on the litter.”

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Reflection

There is a lie people tell about growth.

That it happens once.

A breakthrough.
A healing season.
A clean before-and-after moment where the old self falls away and the new self arrives polished, wiser, complete.

Real life rarely moves like that.

It comes in layers.

One version of you learns how to survive.
Another learns how to protect itself.
Another becomes hard where softness once lived.
Another finally gets tired of carrying what the others built.

That’s the world Kunitz walks through in The Layers.

Not a neat story of transformation—but a lifetime of selves stacked inside one body.

Some buried.
Some unfinished.
Some still speaking.

That’s why the quote matters.

“I am not done with my changes.”

It isn’t frustration.

It’s wisdom.

Because mature people understand that becoming does not end at a certain age, after a certain heartbreak, after a certain success, after a certain failure.

You do not graduate from growth.

You keep shedding what no longer fits.
Keep grieving identities that once protected you.
Keep meeting versions of yourself you didn’t know were waiting.

Some changes feel chosen.

Others arrive like weather.

Loss changes you.
Love changes you.
Humiliation changes you.
Work changes you.
Truth changes you once you stop running from it.

And perhaps the hardest change of all is this:

Learning to stop worshiping older versions of yourself.

The stronger you.
The younger you.
The one who had more time.
The one before the damage.
The one before the mistakes.

That person had their season.

So do you.

Now.

Even unfinished.
Even uncertain.
Even mid-reconstruction.

Because the self is not a monument.

It is a landscape.

And landscapes are shaped by erosion, fire, flood, roots, seasons, and return.

Reflection Prompts

Which older version of yourself are you still trying to live as?
What current change feels uncomfortable only because it is unfinished?
Are you resisting growth—or grieving what growth requires you to leave behind?

There’s a truth underneath Kunitz’s words:

You are not failing because you are still changing.

You are alive enough
for the work to continue.

Poem of the Day – 04212026

2026/04/212026/04/20Posted in PoetryTagged Mary Oliver, Poem of the Day2 Comments

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

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.

Reflection

Most suffering survives by staying unnamed.

It lives in blurred places.

The relationship that drains you but you keep defending.
The habit that is costing you but still feels familiar.
The grief you call “fine.”
The loneliness disguised as independence.
The life that fits on paper but not in the body.

As long as something remains half-seen, it keeps power.

That’s why clarity can feel violent.

When you finally see a thing as it is—not as you hoped it was, not as you explained it away, not as others told you to tolerate—it rearranges everything.

You can’t unknow it.

That’s the threshold The Journey stands on.

Mary Oliver’s speaker hears the voices calling her back. Expectations. Guilt. Obligation. The old machinery of who she was supposed to be.

But something has changed.

She sees the voices for what they are.

Noise.

And once seen clearly, they lose authority.

That’s the part people miss about transformation.

It rarely begins with courage.
It begins with recognition.

You notice the pattern.
You name the wound.
You admit the truth.
You stop romanticizing what is harming you.

Then movement becomes possible.

Not easy.
Not graceful.
Possible.

Because sight creates consequence.

Once you see the cage, staying inside becomes a decision.
Once you see the lie, repeating it becomes participation.
Once you see your own hunger, ignoring it becomes betrayal.

That’s why many people avoid clarity.

Confusion can be comfortable.
Awareness demands something.

And still—there is mercy in seeing.

Because what is seen can be grieved.
What is seen can be changed.
What is seen can be left behind.

Reflection Prompts

What in your life remains powerful mainly because you refuse to name it clearly?
Where are outside voices still louder than your own knowing?
What truth, once admitted, would require movement?

Poem of the Day – 04202026

2026/04/202026/04/20Posted in PoetryTagged Etheridge Knight, Poem of the DayLeave a comment

No Moon Floods the Memory of That Night

By Etheridge Knight

No moon floods the memory of that night

only the rain I remember the cold rain

against our faces and mixing with your tears

only the rain I remember the cold rain

and your mouth soft and warm

no moon no stars no jagged pain

of lightning only my impotent tongue

and the red rage within my brain

knowing that the chilling rain was our forever

even as I tried to explain:

“A revolutionary is a doomed man

with no certainties but love and history.”

“But our children must grow up with certainties

and they will make the revolution.”

“By example we must show the way so plain

that our children can go neither right

nor left but straight to freedom.”

“No,” you said. And you left.

No moon floods the memory of that night

only the rain I remember the cold rain

and praying that like the rain

returns to the sky you would return to me again.

Reflection

Some memories arrive dressed in beauty.

Soft light.
Nostalgia.
The kind of distance that rounds off sharp edges and lets the past look kinder than it was.

This poem offers none of that.

No moon.
No silver wash across the scene.
No gentle light to turn pain into something poetic and easier to hold.

Just memory.

Unlit.
Exact.
Still carrying the shape of what happened.

That absence matters.

Because we often rely on beauty to make memory bearable. We frame old wounds in language polished enough to survive looking at them. We call it reflection. We call it growth. Sometimes it’s just camouflage.

Knight refuses camouflage.

He understands that some nights do not become lyrical with time. They do not mellow into wisdom on schedule. They remain what they were: moments of rupture, fear, violence, consequence, or awakening.

And the mind keeps them that way.

Not out of cruelty.
Out of function.

Because certain nights redraw the map of a life.

There is a self before them.
And another self after.

The memory remains sharp because it had to. Because forgetting would mean losing the evidence of what changed you.

That’s the harder truth underneath this poem:

Not every memory wants healing.
Some memories want accuracy.

They insist on being remembered without filters, without sentiment, without false light cast over them by time.

And maybe that honesty has its own kind of mercy.

Because when we stop trying to beautify what hurt us, we can finally understand it.

Not excuse it.
Not romanticize it.
Understand it.

That’s different.

And often, that difference is where freedom begins.

Reflection Prompts

What memory in your life have you softened to make it easier to carry?
Are there moments that changed you more than you admit?
What would it mean to remember something truthfully instead of beautifully?

Poem of the Day – 04192026

2026/04/192026/04/19Posted in PoetryTagged Fernando Pessoa, Fiction, literature, Poem of the Day, poetry, stories2 Comments

Odes

Fernando Pessoa

1.
Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love
Most of all those fugitive roses
That on the day they are born,
That very day, must also die.
Eternal, for them, the light of day:
They’re born when the sun is already high
And die before Apollo’s course

Across the visible sky is run.
We too, of our lives, must make one day:
We never know, my Lydia, nor want
To know of nights before or after
The little while that we may last.
2.
To be great, be whole: nothing that’s you
Should you exaggerate or exclude.
In each thing, be all. Give all you are
In the least you ever do.
The whole moon, because it rides so high,
Is reflected in each pool.

Reflection

There’s a stage in life where you think consistency is the goal.

Be the same person everywhere.
Hold one opinion forever.
Never change enough to make anyone uncomfortable.

It sounds noble.

It’s often fear.

Because neat identities are easier to explain. Easier to market. Easier to defend. They require less courage than growth.

Whitman understood that.

When he says he contradicts himself, he isn’t confessing failure. He’s rejecting the smallness of being reduced to one version of himself.

He’s saying:

I am alive enough to evolve.
Wide enough to hold tension.
Human enough to be unfinished.

Then Pessoa enters the room and deepens the challenge.

“To be great, be whole.”

Not perfect.
Not simple.
Whole.

That’s harder than it sounds.

Wholeness doesn’t mean ironing out your contradictions until you become smooth and socially acceptable. It means integrating them honestly.

The part of you that wants solitude
and the part that wants connection.

The version of you that failed badly
and the version still trying.

The tenderness you hide
and the steel you needed to survive.

The younger self who believed everything
and the older self who knows better.

Most people spend years amputating pieces of themselves to gain approval.

Be less intense.
Less emotional.
Less curious.
Less complicated.
Less real.

Then they wonder why they feel incomplete.

Because wholeness is not achieved through subtraction.

It comes from acknowledgment.

From saying:

Yes, I have changed.
Yes, I contain conflict.
Yes, some days I am wise and other days ridiculous.
Yes, I am still becoming.

That kind of honesty threatens people who built identities out of rigidity.

But it frees everyone else.

Reflection Prompts

Which parts of yourself have you hidden to appear more consistent?
Where are you mistaking rigidity for integrity?
What would wholeness look like if you stopped trying to seem simple?

Poem of the Day – 04182026

2026/04/182026/04/12Posted in PoetryTagged Henry Timrod, Poem of the Day2 Comments

Dreams

Henry Timrod

Who first said “false as dreams?” Not one who saw
   Into the wild and wondrous world they sway;
No thinker who hath read their mystic law;
   No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.

Else had he known that through the human breast
   Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams,
That, passed unnoticed in the day’s unrest,
   Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams;

That minds too busy or to dull to mark
   The dim suggestions of the noisier hours,
By dreams in the deep silence of the dark,
   Are roused at midnight with their folded powers.

Like that old fount beneath Dodona’s oaks,
   That, dry and voiceless in the garish noon,
When the calm night arose with modest looks,
   Caught with full wave the sparkle of the moon.

If, now and then, a ghastly shape glide in,
   And fright us with its horrid gloom or glee,
It is the ghost of some forgotten sin
   We failed to exorcise on bended knee.

And that sweet face which only yesternight
   Came to thy solace, dreamer (did’st thou read
The blessing in its eyes of tearful light?)
   Was but the spirit of some gentle deed.

Each has its lesson; for our dreams in sooth,
   Come they in shape of demons, gods, or elves,
Are allegories with deep hearts of truth
   That tell us solemn secrets of ourselves.

Dreams don’t arrive with permission.

They slip in quietly—between moments, between responsibilities, between the version of yourself you’ve learned to be and the one you haven’t fully faced yet.

That’s what makes them dangerous.

Not because they’re unrealistic.
But because they’re honest in a way waking life rarely allows.

Dreams doesn’t treat them as fantasies to chase blindly.
It treats them as something more complicated—something that both reveals and unsettles.

Because a dream doesn’t just show you what you want.

It shows you what you’re missing.

And that realization doesn’t always feel inspiring.

Sometimes it feels like distance.

Like standing in two places at once—one foot in the life you’ve built, the other reaching toward something that doesn’t quite exist yet, or maybe never will.

That tension is where the poem lives.

We like to believe dreams are meant to guide us.
That they point toward something attainable, something waiting for us if we just move in the right direction.

But Timrod suggests something quieter—and harder to sit with:

That dreams don’t always exist to be fulfilled.

Sometimes they exist to remind you of the gap.

Between who you are
and who you imagined you might become.

That gap can do one of two things.

It can push you forward—force you to question, to move, to refuse to settle for something that no longer feels aligned.

Or it can become something you learn to live around.

A quiet ache.
A persistent awareness that there’s more… even if you never quite reach it.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

That not every dream is meant to resolve.

Some stay with you—not as a destination, but as a kind of internal compass.

Not telling you where to go…
but reminding you that where you are isn’t the whole story.

Reflection Prompts

What dreams have stayed with you—not because you chased them, but because you didn’t?
Do your dreams push you forward, or remind you of what’s missing?
Is there a difference between letting a dream go… and quietly carrying it with you?

Poem of the Day – 04172026

2026/04/172026/04/12Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, Richard Hovey2 Comments

The Sea Gypsy

Richard Hovey

I am fevered with the sunset,
I am fretful with the bay,
For the wander-thirst is on me
And my soul is in Cathay.

There’s a schooner in the offing,
With her topsails shot with fire,
And my heart has gone aboard her
For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow!
With the sunset I must be
Hull down on the trail of rapture
In the wonder of the sea.

There’s a certain kind of leaving that feels like freedom.

Wind at your back.
Nothing tying you down.
The open promise of somewhere else—anywhere else—waiting just beyond the horizon.

The Sea Gypsy leans into that feeling.

But not in the way people like to pretend.

Because this isn’t clean freedom.
It’s not the kind that comes from clarity or purpose.

It’s driven by something else.

Restlessness.

That quiet, persistent sense that staying where you are is no longer an option—not because something is chasing you… but because something inside you won’t sit still.

And that’s harder to explain.

There’s no single moment that forces the decision.
No clear reason that justifies it.

Just a growing awareness:

You don’t belong here anymore.
Or maybe you never did.

So you go.

Not with a plan.
Not with certainty.

Just movement.

And for a while, that movement feels like relief.

Distance creates space.
Space creates the illusion of control.

You tell yourself that whatever you left behind—whatever didn’t fit, didn’t work, didn’t make sense—will sort itself out once there’s enough ocean between you and it.

But the sea has a way of stripping things down.

Out there, there’s nothing to hide behind.

No noise to distract you.
No structure to lean on.

Just you… and the same questions you thought you could outrun.

That’s where the poem turns.

Because the horizon never gets closer.

It keeps its distance.
Always just out of reach.

And the longer you chase it, the more you start to realize:

Maybe the point was never to arrive.

Maybe it was to keep moving.

Not because movement solves anything—
but because stillness forces you to face what you’ve been avoiding.

Reflection Prompts

What are you moving toward—and what are you trying to leave behind?
Does distance actually change anything, or just delay the moment you have to confront it?
What would it mean to stay, instead of go?

Poem of the Day – 04162026

2026/04/162026/04/12Posted in PoetryTagged James Whitcomb Riley, Poem of the Day2 Comments

Little Orphant Annie (formerly The Elf Child)

by James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphant Annie's come to our house to stay,
An' wash the cups an' saucers up, an' brush the crumbs away,
An' shoo the chickens off the porch, an' dust the hearth, an' sweep,
An' make the fire, an' bake the bread, an' earn her board-an'-keep;
An' all us other children, when the supper-things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire an' has the mostest fun
A-list'nin' to the witch-tales 'at Annie tells about,
An' the Gobble-uns 'at gits you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!

Wunst they wuz a little boy wouldn't say his prayers,--
An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs,
His Mammy heerd him holler, an' his Daddy heerd him bawl,
An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wuzn't there at all!
An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press,
An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess;
But all they ever found wuz thist his pants an' roundabout:--
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!
An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,
An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;
An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,
She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!
An' thist as she kicked her heels, an' turn't to run an' hide,
They wuz two great big Black Things a-standin' by her side,
An' they snatched her through the ceilin' 'fore she knowed what she's about!
An' the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!
An' little Orphant Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
An' the lamp-wick sputters, an' the wind goes woo-oo!
An' you hear the crickets quit, an' the moon is gray,
An' the lightnin'-bugs in dew is all squenched away,--
You better mind yer parunts, an' yer teachurs fond an' dear,
An' churish them 'at loves you, an' dry the orphant's tear,
An' he'p the pore an' needy ones 'at clusters all about,
Er the Gobble-uns 'll git you
    Ef you
        Don't
            Watch
                Out!

It begins softly.

Almost too softly to question.

A child. A presence. Something delicate, half-seen, hovering just beyond the edge of certainty. The kind of moment you might dismiss as imagination—until you realize how much weight it carries.

Because this poem isn’t really about a child.

It’s about distance.

The slow, quiet kind that doesn’t announce itself. The kind that looks like stillness from the outside, but feels like drifting from within.

That’s what makes it unsettling.

Nothing violent happens.
Nothing breaks.

And yet… something is slipping.

The “elf child” exists in that in-between space—part of the world, but not fully anchored to it. Present, but unreachable. Seen, but not understood.

And if you sit with it long enough, the question starts to turn inward:

How far can someone drift before they’re no longer fully here?

We tend to romanticize imagination. Call it wonder. Escape. A refuge from the weight of things we don’t want to face.

And sometimes it is.

Sometimes it’s the only thing that makes the world bearable.

But there’s another side to it.

A quieter one.

The part where retreat becomes habit.
Where silence replaces connection.
Where being “elsewhere” starts to feel safer than being present.

That’s where the poem lingers.

Not in fantasy—but in the cost of it.

Because the further you drift, the harder it becomes to return.

Not because the way back is gone…
but because something in you has grown used to the distance.

Reflection Prompts

Where in your life do you retreat instead of remain present?
When does imagination become escape—and when does escape become absence?
What would it take to fully return to where you are, instead of where you go to avoid it?

Poem of the Day – 04152026

2026/04/152026/04/14Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, Sidney Lanier2 Comments

A Ballad Of The Trees And The Master

Sidney Lanier

Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.

Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
‘Twas on a tree they slew Him — last
When out of the woods He came.

There’s something unsettling about the way the trees speak.

Not loudly.
Not with urgency.

But with a kind of quiet awareness—as if they’ve seen this before, or worse… as if they understand what’s happening in a way the people involved do not.

That’s where the poem begins to shift.

Because it removes us from the center of the moment.

The focus isn’t on the act itself, or even the figure at its center.
It’s on the witnesses—the silent, rooted things that cannot move, cannot intervene, cannot look away.

And that changes the weight of everything.

We’re used to thinking of suffering as something personal. Something contained within the individual experiencing it.

But this poem suggests something else:

That suffering has an audience.
That it leaves an imprint on everything around it.
That even silence can carry memory.

The trees don’t act.
They don’t resist.
They don’t offer comfort.

They simply remain.

And in that stillness, there’s a different kind of presence.

Not passive.
Not indifferent.

But enduring.

That’s where the poem quietly asks its question:

If suffering is inevitable… what gives it meaning?

Not in the sense of justification.
Not in a way that makes it easier to accept.

But in how it’s held.

How it’s witnessed.
How it’s remembered.

Because meaning doesn’t always come from changing the outcome.

Sometimes it comes from refusing to let the moment disappear.

From standing, even in silence, and acknowledging what has happened—without turning away, without reducing it, without pretending it didn’t matter.

That’s the tension here.

The world doesn’t stop.
The act completes itself.
The moment passes.

But the trees remain.

And so does what they’ve seen.

Reflection Prompts

What does it mean to witness something fully, without the ability to change it?
Where in your life have you chosen to look away instead of remain present?
Can meaning exist in suffering that cannot be undone—or only in how it is remembered?

Poem of the Day – 04142026

2026/04/142026/04/12Posted in PoetryTagged Edgar Allan Poe, Poem of the Day2 Comments

The Conqueror Worm

By Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! ’t is a gala night

Within the lonesome latter years!

An angel throng, bewinged, bedight

In veils, and drowned in tears,

Sit in a theatre, to see

A play of hopes and fears,

While the orchestra breathes fitfully

The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,

Mutter and mumble low,

And hither and thither fly—

Mere puppets they, who come and go

At bidding of vast formless things

That shift the scenery to and fro,

Flapping from out their Condor wings

Invisible Wo!

That motley drama—oh, be sure

It shall not be forgot!

With its Phantom chased for evermore

By a crowd that seize it not,

Through a circle that ever returneth in

To the self-same spot,

And much of Madness, and more of Sin,

And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout,

A crawling shape intrude!

A blood-red thing that writhes from out

The scenic solitude!

It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs

The mimes become its food,

And seraphs sob at vermin fangs

In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!

And, over each quivering form,

The curtain, a funeral pall,

Comes down with the rush of a storm,

While the angels, all pallid and wan,

Uprising, unveiling, affirm

That the play is the tragedy, “Man,”

And its hero, the Conqueror Worm.

At first, it feels like a performance.

A stage.
Actors moving through their roles.
An audience watching from a distance, as if everything unfolding has structure—purpose—meaning.

It looks familiar.

Because that’s how we tend to see our own lives.

We assign roles.
We build narratives.
We convince ourselves that what we’re doing fits into something larger, something that justifies the effort, the struggle, the choices we make along the way.

And for a while, that illusion holds.

Until it doesn’t.

Because Poe doesn’t let the performance stand on its own.

He interrupts it.

Not with revelation.
Not with clarity.

But with something far more unsettling:

Inevitability.

The worm doesn’t enter as a twist.
It doesn’t arrive to shock.

It simply appears—like it was always part of the story, waiting for the right moment to be seen.

And once it is, everything changes.

The stage doesn’t matter.
The roles don’t matter.
The performance itself begins to feel fragile—temporary—almost insignificant in the face of what’s coming.

That’s where the discomfort sets in.

Because the poem forces a question most people spend their lives avoiding:

If the ending is the same… what gives any of this meaning?

It’s an easy question to push away.

Easier to stay focused on the performance.
On the day-to-day movement of things.
On the idea that what we’re building will somehow outlast the reality we don’t want to face.

But Poe doesn’t offer that comfort.

He strips it down.

Not to say that nothing matters—
but to expose how often we rely on permanence to justify what we do.

And maybe that’s where the shift happens.

Because if nothing lasts…
then meaning isn’t something waiting at the end.

It’s something created in the middle.

In the choices.
In the way you show up.
In what you hold onto—even knowing you can’t keep it forever.

That doesn’t erase the inevitability.

It just changes your relationship to it.

Reflection Prompts

If you knew the ending couldn’t be changed, what would you do differently in the middle?
Do you assign meaning to your life based on outcomes—or on how you move through it?
What parts of your “performance” feel real… and which feel like something you’ve learned to play?

Poem of the Day – 041222026

2026/04/122026/04/10Posted in PoetryTagged National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, William Cullen BryantLeave a comment

The Death of Lincoln

By William Cullen Bryant

Oh, slow to smite and swift to spare,

Gentle and merciful and just!

Who, in the fear of God, didst bear

The sword of power, a nation’s trust!

In sorrow by thy bier we stand,

Amid the awe that hushes all,

And speak the anguish of a land

That shook with horror at thy fall.

Thy task is done; the bond are free:

We bear thee to an honored grave,

Whose proudest monument shall be

The broken fetters of the slave.

Pure was thy life; its bloody close

Hath placed thee with the sons of light,

Among the noble host of those

Who perished in the cause of Right.

Poem of the Day – 04112026

2026/04/112026/04/10Posted in PoetryTagged Dalia Taha, Poem of the Day2 Comments

Enter Book

By Dalia Taha

Translated By Sara ElkamelEnter Book (2 versions)

Translated from the Arabic

The book you held in your hands

now lies on the nightstand by your bed, in its heart

the lines you sketched

under the sentences you read more than once, bewildered,

before you put the book down

and started pacing aimlessly between the rooms.

You let it drown you for a full week,

took it everywhere you went;

you read it alone in bed,

and stretched out on the sofa while the family’s voices

drifted toward you from the other room.

Whenever you’d lift your head,

you found yourself

face-to-face with the world,

glancing at the sky outside your window;

ready, at last, to converse with the hills.

Every book grants you the language

you need to make contact

with something you had no idea even existed:

a tree’s pores, a fox’s nose,

sadness on a face, a nation’s suffering.

Look how beautiful you look as you read.

Look how peaceful you look

as you let an entire continent colonize you;

as you lay the book down on the nightstand,

as if returning to the world

something that belongs to it—

as you stand, dazzled by the hills

as though the book, too,

has returned to the world

something that belongs to it.

Poem of the Day – 04102026

2026/04/102026/04/10Posted in PoetryTagged National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, Reginald ShepardLeave a comment

You Also, Nightingale

By Reginald Shepherd

Petrarch dreams of pebbles

on the tongue, he loves me

at a distance, black polished stone

skipping the lake that swallows

worn-down words, a kind of drown

and drench and quench and very kind

to what I would’ve said. Light marries

water and what else (unfit

for drinking purposes), light lavishes

my skin on intermittent sun. (I am weather

and unreasonable, out of all

season. Petrarch loves my lies

of laurel leaves, ripped sprigs of

deciduous evergreen.) A creek is lying

in my cement-walled bed, slurring

through the center of small

town; the current’s brown and

turbid (muddy, turbulent

with recent torrents), silt rushing

toward the reservoir. A Sonata

passes by too close (I have to jump)

and yes I do hear music here. It’s blue, or

turquoise, aquamarine, some synonym

on wheels, note down that note. It’s Petrarch

singing with his back to me (delivering

himself to voice), his fingers

filled with jonquil, daffodils, mistaken

narcissus. (I surprised him

between the pages of a book,

looked up the flowers I misnamed.)

Forsythia and magnolia bring me

spring, when he walks into the house

he has wings. Song is a temporary thing

(attempt), he wants to own his music.

Poem of the Day – 04082026

2026/04/082026/04/06Posted in PoetryTagged Langston Hughes, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetry analysisLeave a comment

Let America Be America Again

By Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?

And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,

I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.

I am the red man driven from the land,

I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—

And finding only the same old stupid plan

Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,

Tangled in that ancient endless chain

Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!

Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!

Of work the men! Of take the pay!

Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.

I am the worker sold to the machine.

I am the Negro, servant to you all.

I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—

Hungry yet today despite the dream.

Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!

I am the man who never got ahead,

The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream

In the Old World while still a serf of kings,

Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,

That even yet its mighty daring sings

In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned

That’s made America the land it has become.

O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas

In search of what I meant to be my home—

For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,

And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,

And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came

To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?

Surely not me? The millions on relief today?

The millions shot down when we strike?

The millions who have nothing for our pay?

For all the dreams we’ve dreamed

And all the songs we’ve sung

And all the hopes we’ve held

And all the flags we’ve hung,

The millions who have nothing for our pay—

Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—

The land that never has been yet—

And yet must be—the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath—

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

Poem of the Day – 04072026

2026/04/072026/04/06Posted in PoetryTagged National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetry, poetry analysis, T.S. Eliot2 Comments

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

1888 – 1965

^{A penny for the Old Guy}

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour.
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Reflection

This is what it looks like when something inside a person… goes quiet.

Not peaceful quiet.
Not rest.

But absence.

The Hollow Men doesn’t scream. It doesn’t rage. It doesn’t even try to convince you of anything. It just exists in a kind of spiritual low tide, where everything that once had weight—belief, purpose, conviction—has been drained out, leaving something that still moves, still speaks… but doesn’t fully live.

That’s what makes it unsettling.

Because it doesn’t describe monsters.

It describes people.

People who’ve learned how to function without feeling too deeply.
People who speak in fragments, act without conviction, drift instead of decide.
People who’ve made peace with emptiness because filling it would require something they no longer trust themselves to carry.

And if you sit with it long enough, the discomfort shifts.

It stops being about them.

It starts being about how easy it is to become one of them.

Not all at once.

But gradually.

A compromise here.
A silence there.
A moment where you choose not to speak because it’s easier. Safer. Less complicated.

And over time, those small choices add up.

Until you look up one day and realize you’re moving through your life without friction. Without resistance.

Without presence.

That’s the real weight of this poem.

Not emptiness as tragedy—
but emptiness as something that can quietly become normal.

And once it does, it’s hard to recognize what’s missing.

Reflection Prompts

Where in your life have you chosen silence over truth?
What parts of yourself have you dulled just to make things easier?
When did survival start to look like disconnection instead of strength?

Poem of the Day – 04062026

2026/04/062026/04/05Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, poetry, Ross Gay1 Comment

A Small Needful Fact

Ross Gay

Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.

Personal Reflection

It doesn’t look like much at first.

Just a few lines. A quiet observation.
Something almost too simple to carry weight.

And then it lands.

Not with force—but with clarity.

That’s what makes this poem dangerous.

Because it doesn’t argue.
It doesn’t raise its voice.
It doesn’t try to convince you of anything.

It just gives you a fact—small, human, undeniable—and lets you sit with what that fact means in a world that too often forgets how to see people as people.

That’s the tension at the center of this piece.

Not loud injustice.
Not spectacle.

But absence.

The absence of recognition.
The absence of care.
The absence of something as basic as being seen.

And here’s where it cuts deeper than it should:

We move through the world every day surrounded by people we don’t notice.

Not because we’re cruel.
But because we’ve learned not to look too closely.

It’s easier that way.

Easier to reduce people to roles, labels, headlines.
Easier to move past them without asking what they loved, what they carried, what made them human beyond the surface we’re given.

This poem refuses that distance.

It offers one small detail—something intimate, ordinary—and suddenly the abstraction collapses.

You can’t unsee it.

You can’t push it back into the category of “someone else’s story.”

Because now it’s not distant anymore.
Now it’s specific.

And specificity is what makes empathy unavoidable.

That’s the quiet power here.

Not in what the poem says—but in what it forces you to realize:

That humanity doesn’t disappear in systems that ignore it.
It just goes unacknowledged.

Until someone names it.

Reflection Prompts

What small, human details do you overlook in the people around you?
How often do you reduce someone to a role instead of recognizing their full story?
What changes when you allow yourself to see someone—not as a category—but as a person?

Poem of the Day – 04052026

2026/04/052026/04/04Posted in PoetryTagged creative writing, daily exercise, Poem of the Day, poetry, writingLeave a comment

The Weighing

Jane Hirshfield

1953 –

The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.

Reflection

There’s a quiet violence in the idea of being weighed.

Not judged loudly. Not condemned.
Just… measured.

As if everything you’ve carried—every grief, every memory, every version of yourself—is placed on a scale and asked a single, unforgiving question:

What is this worth?

And for most of us, the instinct is immediate.

We hold on tighter.

To the pain.
To the history.
To the stories we’ve told ourselves about who we are and why we are this way.

Because letting go feels like loss.
Like betrayal.
Like erasing something that mattered.

But Hirshfield doesn’t frame it that way.

She suggests something quieter. More unsettling.

What if the weight you carry isn’t proof of your depth—
but the thing keeping you from moving freely?

What if not everything you’ve held onto deserves to stay?

That’s where the poem shifts.

Because the scale isn’t just measuring what you’ve endured.
It’s asking what you’re willing to release.

And that’s a different kind of reckoning.

We like to think growth is about adding—more knowledge, more strength, more understanding.
But sometimes it’s subtraction.

Letting go of old versions of yourself that no longer fit.
Releasing anger that’s outlived its purpose.
Setting down grief—not because it didn’t matter, but because carrying it forever will break you.

That doesn’t mean forgetting.

It means choosing what continues with you.

There’s a kind of freedom in that—but it’s not easy.
Because identity gets tangled up in what we carry.

We tell ourselves: If I let this go, who am I without it?

And maybe that’s the real weight.

Not the memory.
Not the pain.

But the fear of what remains when it’s gone.

Reflection Prompts

What are you still carrying that no longer serves who you’re becoming?
Do you equate weight with meaning—believing that what hurts more must matter more?
What would it look like to set something down without diminishing its importance?

Poem of the Day – 04042026

2026/04/042026/04/03Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, Warsan Shire1 Comment

Home

by Warson Shire

no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilets
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

Personal Reflection

There are poems that sit quietly on the page.
Home doesn’t.

It presses in. It crowds the air. It makes you aware of things you’d rather keep at a distance—because once you understand what it’s saying, you don’t get to return to comfort without a little guilt tagging along.

At its core, this poem dismantles a lie we’ve grown comfortable believing: that leaving is a choice.

We dress it up as ambition. Reinvention. Opportunity.
Something clean. Something admirable.

But Shire cuts through that narrative with surgical precision.

No one leaves home unless staying becomes unbearable.

Not inconvenient. Not disappointing.
Unbearable.

That word carries weight. It implies a breaking point—a moment when the body, the mind, or the soul recognizes something the rest of us don’t want to see. A line crossed. A threshold passed. A quiet understanding that what once held you now threatens to erase you.

And suddenly, leaving isn’t brave.
It’s necessary.

That shift matters.

Because it forces us to confront how easily we judge movement without understanding its cause. We see departure and assume desire. We assume agency. We assume people are chasing something.

This poem reminds us that sometimes they’re running.

And not toward anything.

Just away.

Away from violence. From silence. From systems that make it clear—without ever saying it outright—that you do not belong here anymore.

But here’s where the poem deepens.

Home isn’t just about geography. It’s about identity—what happens when the place that shaped you can no longer contain you. When your history becomes something you have to carry instead of something you can return to.

That kind of leaving doesn’t end when the journey does.

It follows.

In the way you speak.
In what you remember.
In what you choose not to talk about.

It lives in the space between who you were and who you’re forced to become.

And maybe that’s the quiet truth this poem leaves behind:

Not everyone gets to leave cleanly.

Some people leave in pieces.
Some carry entire worlds inside them—fractured, incomplete, but still alive.

Reflection Prompts

When does leaving stop being a choice and start becoming survival?
What does home mean when it no longer feels like a place you can return to?
What parts of your story would you fight to carry with you, no matter where you go?

Poem of the Day – 04032026

2026/04/032026/04/01Posted in PoetryTagged Joy Harjo, Poem of the Day1 Comment

Remember

Joy Harjo

1951 –

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

Poem of the Day – 04022026

2026/04/022026/03/31Posted in PoetryTagged Lucille Clifton, Poem of the Day1 Comment

won’t you celebrate with me

By Lucille Clifton

won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Poem of the Day – 04012026

2026/04/012026/03/31Posted in PoetryTagged Poem of the Day, Richard Hugo1 Comment

Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

By Richard Hugo

You might come here Sunday on a whim.

Say your life broke down. The last good kiss

you had was years ago. You walk these streets

laid out by the insane, past hotels

that didn’t last, bars that did, the tortured try

of local drivers to accelerate their lives.

Only churches are kept up. The jail

turned 70 this year. The only prisoner

is always in, not knowing what he’s done.

The principal supporting business now

is rage. Hatred of the various grays

the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,

The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls

who leave each year for Butte. One good

restaurant and bars can’t wipe the boredom out.

The 1907 boom, eight going silver mines,

a dance floor built on springs—

all memory resolves itself in gaze,

in panoramic green you know the cattle eat

or two stacks high above the town,

two dead kilns, the huge mill in collapse

for fifty years that won’t fall finally down.

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss

still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat

so accurate, the church bell simply seems

a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?

Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium

and scorn sufficient to support a town,

not just Philipsburg, but towns

of towering blondes, good jazz and booze

the world will never let you have

until the town you came from dies inside?

Say no to yourself. The old man, twenty

when the jail was built, still laughs

although his lips collapse. Someday soon,

he says, I’ll go to sleep and not wake up.

You tell him no. You’re talking to yourself.

The car that brought you here still runs.

The money you buy lunch with,

no matter where it’s mined, is silver

and the girl who serves your food

is slender and her red hair lights the wall.

Poem of the Day – 04182025

2025/04/182025/04/18Posted in ProseTagged Good Bones, Maggie Smith, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetry2 Comments

Poem of the Day – 04302024

2024/04/30Posted in ProseTagged Art, books, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetry, William Wordsworth, writing2 Comments

She Was a Phantom of Delight
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

She was a Phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight;
A lovely Apparition, sent
To be a moment’s ornament;
Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight’s, too, her dusky hair;
But all things else about her drawn
From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay,
To haunt, to startle, and way-lay.
I saw her upon nearer view,
A Spirit, yet a Woman too!
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin-liberty;
A countenance in which did meet
Sweet records, promises as sweet;
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature’s daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles.
And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine;
A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,
Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill;
A perfect Woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a Spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.

Poem of the Day – 04292024

2024/04/29Posted in ProseTagged haiku, Matsuo Basho, National Poetry Month, Poem of the DayLeave a comment

A cicada shell by Matsuo Basho

a cicada shell
it sang itself
utterly away

Poem of the Day – 04282024

2024/04/28Posted in ProseTagged Art, books, National Poetry Month, poem, Poem of the Day, poetry, Thomas Gray, writing2 Comments

Ode on the Spring BY THOMAS GRAY

Lo! where the rosy-bosom’d Hours,
Fair Venus’ train appear,
Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
And wake the purple year!
The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo’s note,
The untaught harmony of spring:
While whisp’ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool zephyrs thro’ the clear blue sky
Their gather’d fragrance fling.

Where’er the oak’s thick branches stretch
A broader, browner shade;
Where’er the rude and moss-grown beech
O’er-canopies the glade,
Beside some water’s rushy brink
With me the Muse shall sit, and think
(At ease reclin’d in rustic state)
How vain the ardour of the crowd,
How low, how little are the proud,
How indigent the great!

Still is the toiling hand of Care:
The panting herds repose:
Yet hark, how thro’ the peopled air
The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o’er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
Quick-glancing to the sun.

To Contemplation’s sober eye
Such is the race of man:
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
Alike the busy and the gay
But flutter thro’ life’s little day,
In fortune’s varying colours drest:
Brush’d by the hand of rough Mischance,
Or chill’d by age, their airy dance
They leave, in dust to rest.

Methinks I hear in accents low
The sportive kind reply:
Poor moralist! and what art thou?
A solitary fly!
Thy joys no glitt’ring female meets,
No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
No painted plumage to display:
On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
We frolic, while ’tis May.

Poem of the Day – 04272024

2024/04/272024/04/27Posted in ProseTagged Lucille Clifton, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetryLeave a comment

homage to my hips BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

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!

Personal Reflection:

When I first heard this poem, it was on audio. It was so different from What I thought poetry was supposed to be. While in school, we had Frost, Whitman, and others shoved down our throats. Though I had grown to appreciate the classics, I definitely had a bad taste in my mouth when it came to poetry. I discovered the beauty and complexity of poetry. Thank you, Lucille Clifton and the many other poets in my library.

Poem of the Day – 04252024

2024/04/25Posted in ProseTagged Khalil Gibran, National Poetry Month, nature, poem, Poem of the Day, poetry, writing1 Comment

A Tear And A Smile by Khalil Gibran

I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter.

I would that my life remain a tear and a smile.

A tear to purify my heart and give me understanding
Of life’s secrets and hidden things.
A smile to draw me nigh to the sons of my kind and
To be a symbol of my glorification of the gods.

A tear to unite me with those of broken heart;
A smile to be a sign of my joy in existence.

I would rather that I died in yearning and longing than that I live weary and despairing.

I want the hunger for love and beauty to be in the
Depths of my spirit,for I have seen those who are
Satisfied the most wretched of people.
I have heard the sigh of those in yearning and longing, and it is sweeter than the sweetest melody.

With evening’s coming the flower folds her petals
And sleeps, embracing her longing.
At morning’s approach she opens her lips to meet
The sun’s kiss.

The life of a flower is longing and fulfilment.
A tear and a smile.

The waters of the sea become vapor and rise and come
Together and are a cloud.

And the cloud floats above the hills and valleys
Until it meets the gentle breeze, then falls weeping
To the fields and joins with brooks and rivers to return to the sea, its home.

The life of clouds is a parting and a meeting.
A tear and a smile.

And so does the spirit become separated from
The greater spirit to move in the world of matter
And pass as a cloud over the mountain of sorrow
And the plains of joy to meet the breeze of death
And return whence it came.

To the ocean of Love and Beauty—-to God.

Poem of the Day – 04232024

2024/04/232024/04/23Posted in ProseTagged Langston Hughes, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetryLeave a comment

Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Poem of the Day – 04142024

2024/04/14Posted in ProseTagged Billy Collins, National Poetry Month, Poem of the Day, poetry4 Comments

Introduction to Poetry BY BILLY COLLINS

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poem of the Day – 03092024

2024/03/09Posted in ProseTagged Alice Walker, Poem of the Day, Women's History MonthLeave a comment

Expect Nothing by Alice Walker

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.

Alice Walker

Poem of the Day – 03012024

2024/03/01Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the DayLeave a comment

CLASSIC POETRY

Blues

In the night
in my half hour
negro dreams
i hear voices knocking at the door
i see walls dripping screams up
and down the halls
won’t someone open
the door for me? won’t some
one schedule my sleep
and don’t ask no questions?
noise.
like when he took me to his
home away from home place
and i died the long sought after
death he’d planned for me.
Yeah, bessie he put in the bacon
and it overflowed the pot.
and two days later
when i was talking
i started to grin.
as everyone knows
i am still grinning.

Sonia Sanchez

Poem of the Day – 01272024

2024/01/27Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day2 Comments

The Song of the Idiot by Rainer Marie Rilke

Poem of the Day – 01192024

2024/01/19Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetry6 Comments

Imitation

Poet: Edgar Allan Poe

A dark unfathomed tide
Of interminable pride –
A mystery, and a dream,
Should my early life seem;
I say that dream was fraught
With a wild and waking thought
Of beings that have been,
Which my spirit hath not seen,
Had I let them pass me by,
With a dreaming eye!
Let none of earth inherit
That vision of my spirit;
Those thoughts I would control,
As a spell upon his soul:
For that bright hope at last
And that light time have past,
And my worldly rest hath gone
With a sigh as it passed on:
I care not though it perish
With a thought I then did cherish.

Poem of the Day – 01182024

2024/01/182024/01/17Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the DayLeave a comment

Heroes Weep Before Leaving by CS Crockett

We love stories that speak of adventure,
Ones that tell us “You too could be a hero!
You must set out from your home
And see all the wonder that lies before.”
We hear the call, but many may weep
Upon the news of our leaving.

This makes it hard for us to be leaving.
Even if we know that the adventure
Is our glorious fate, those who weep
Remind us that a lasting hero
Is not made when he leaves but before.
This is why we hold on hard to home.

For surely it will be a different home
After there has been this leaving.
No one can deny that what came before
Is greater than any gold-rumor adventure.
He who would leave this for gold is no hero,
But will gnash his teeth and weep.

But also among those who will gnash and weep
Are those who hold on too hard to home.
We feel disgust for that which clings to a hero
And would not have him be leaving.
There is certainly a time for adventure.
Home just will not be what it was before.

So let us not idolize what came before,
But let us keep for what we weep
To the end of this old adventure
That took place in our changing home.
It may be hard for us to be leaving,
But when has hard stopped a hero?

It is not easy being a hero.
We remember what we learned before
This moment, but now we are really leaving.
And with this realization we too may weep.
We too must set out from our home
In search of a hard adventure.

I understand why heroes weep.
Before, it was right to be home,
But we have to leave for adventure.

Poem of the Day – 01052024

2024/01/052024/01/02Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetry2 Comments

Hope Is The Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

Poem of the Day – 01042024

2024/01/042024/01/02Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetryLeave a comment

Changing The Past by Donna

The past is the past for a reason.
That is where it is supposed to stay,
But some cannot let it go.
In their heads it eats away

Until all their focus becomes
The person they used to be,
The mistakes they made in their life.
Oh, if only they could see

That you cannot change what happened,
No matter how hard you try,
No matter how much you think about it,
No matter how much you cry.

What happens in your lifetime
Happens for reasons unknown,
So you have to let the cards unfold.
Let your story be shown.

Don’t get wrapped up in the negative.
Be happy with what you have been given.
Live for today not tomorrow.
Get up, get out, and start living,

Because the past is the past for a reason.
It’s been, and now it is gone,
So stop trying to think of ways to fix it.
It’s done, it’s unchangeable; move on.

Donna. “Changing The Past.” Family Friend Poems, July 6, 2011. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/changing-the-past

Poem of the Day – 01032024

2024/01/032024/01/02Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetry4 Comments

Renewed By The Morning Light by Patricia A Fleming

I sit upon my front porch stoop
Beneath the morning sun.
Grateful for the moment spent
Away from everyone.

The air is fresh and slightly chilled,
The sky is blue and clear.
The silence that surrounds me now
Is music to my ears.

I love the morning best of all,
It’s my most tranquil time,
When the promise of a brand new day
Can ease my troubled mind.

When second chances seem more possible
And the world less cold and dark,
And hope can somehow pierce the walls
Of my sad and aching heart.

When left alone with nature
All the world seems far away
And the woes of life so trivial
When wrapped in her embrace.

But alas the birds awaken
And begin to sing their songs,
And people slowly wander by
And nod as they go on.

The sun has now grown brighter
As it rises in the sky
And in the distance there’s a whistle
As a train goes lumbering by.

The world is calling out to me
To jump back in the fray.
To have faith things can get better
And let go of yesterday.

So today I get to start again
By the morning light renewed.
Feeling brave and energized,
There is nothing I can’t do.

Poem of the Day – 01022024

2024/01/022024/01/02Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetryLeave a comment

Faith And Courage In Life by Angie M Flores

In life there are people that will hurt us and cause us pain,
but we must learn to forgive and forget and not hold grudges.

In life there are mistakes we will make,
but we must learn from our wrongs and grow from them.

In life there are regrets we will have to live with,
but we must learn to leave the past behind and realize it is something we can’t change.

In life there are people we will lose forever and can’t have back,
but we must learn to let go and move on.

In life there are going to be obstacles that will cause interference,
but we must learn to overcome these challenges and grow stronger.

In life there are fears that will hold us back from what we want,
but we must learn to fight them with the courage from within.

God holds our lives in his hands. He holds the key to our future.
Only he knows our fate.

He sees everything and knows everything.
Everything in life really does happen for a reason: “God’s Reason”

Poem of the Day – 01012024

2024/01/01Posted in ProseTagged Poem of the Day, poetry2 Comments

This Is A Daily Reminder by Nicolette

This is a daily reminder
To relax,
To not get angry over small things,
To stay calm.

This is a daily reminder
To be yourself,
To not care what people think,
To know you can be anything.

This is a daily reminder
To love yourself,
To not hurt yourself,
To not work yourself up.

This is a daily reminder
That you are beautiful,
That you are amazing,
That you will succeed.

This is a daily reminder
To always have hope,
To have faith,
To know everything will be okay.

This is a daily reminder
That you have made it so far already,
That you haven’t given up,
That whatever you’re doing is right,
And that you are going to be amazing.

Don’t give up.
Keep holding on and believing.

Nicolette. “This Is A Daily Reminder.” Family Friend Poems, March 7, 2015. https://www.familyfriendpoems.com/poem/this-is-a-daily-reminder

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