saturday poem

-- Key Ballah From Preparing My Daughter For Rain

saturday poem

saturday poem

saturday poem

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold 

--William Carlos Williams

saturday poem

Reflections

she saw the world from inside out, he saw it upsidedown:

she was a geophysicist.
he was a white faced clown.

They had much in common;
for example, both enjoyed the moon,

she from an interest in its rocks,
craters, and other messages;

he from an interest in its tides,
and its reflection of his own white face.

Of their children , according
to the laws of heredity,

one played a clarinet, one danced a minuet
and two were fortune tellers.

Other children came up in the garden,
dressed as lilac, broom, or apple trees.

All were unable to pass examinations,
but some wrote songs, some played,

and were able to amuse their parents,
as, aging, unable to speak to one another,

they watched the moon together,

he from an interest in its geophysics,
she for its reflection of her own white face.

-- Janet Dube  

(image from  Trio Film (1968) - Yvonne Rainer)

saturday poem

poem from nejma by nayyirah waheed

saturday poem

Just resolve to shine, constantly and steadily, like a warm lamp in the corner, and people will want to move towards you in order to feel happy, and to read things more clearly. You will be bright and constant in a world of dark and flux ...

Caitlin Moran, 'My posthumous advice for my daughter.' The Times, 7/13/2013.

saturday poem

My single star is gone, the one
I like to call mine. Instead, a thick haze
     of moonlight. Just as my mother did
when she was growing old, I sit in the darkness,
     getting used to how little I can see.

Jim Moore, from 'Disappearing in America' in Invisible Strings.

saturday poem

FAMILY

The Family, the cosmic, transcends our realms of humanity.
Your mother
         father
         sister
         brother
         stranger
         lover
         friend
         and enemy
The birds
The bees
The flowers
The trees
All interstellar entities
Everything that lives and breathes
We are all family.

--Zoe Bedeaux from i-D Soul

saturday poem

In the morning when the moon is at its rest,
you will find me, at the time I love the best
watching rainbows play on sunlight;
pools of water ice cream cold light, in the morning.
yeah yeah yeah
its the morning of my life.

In the daytime I will meet you as before.
You will find me waiting by the ocean floor,
building castles in the shifting sands
in a world that nobody understands,
In a morning.
it's the morning of my life
'Tis the morning of my life

In the morning of my life
the minutes take so long to drift away
Please be patient with your life
It's only morning and you're still to live your day

In the ev'ning I will fly you to the moon
To the top right hand corner of
the ceiling in my room
Where we'll* stay till the sun shines
Another day lay on clothes lines
I'll be yawning
It is the morning of my life
This is the morning of my life

In The Morning - Nina Simone

saturday poem

poem. from salt. by nayyirah waheed.

saturday poem

I am as heavy
with foreboding
impervious to the light
as the sound
of one palm frond scraping

“Oh, that’s just another pelican”

Thoreau said
“If I could,
I would worship
the parings of my nails.”

--Yvonne Rainer
December 28, 1999 Flamingo Lodge, FL

saturday poem

His eyes were the same colour as the sea in a postcard someone sends you when they love you, but not enough to stay.

― Warsan Shire

(photograph by me)

saturday poem

I did find the entire world
in looking
for something 

– Mary Oliver, interviewed for On Being

saturday poem

A cold night crosses

our path

                  The world appears

very large, very

round now       extending

far as the moon does

                                        It is from

the moon this cold travels

                                        It is

the light of the moon that causes

this night reflecting distance in its own

light so coldly

                                          (from one side of

the earth to the other)

                                        It is the length of this coldness

It is the long distance

between two points which are

not in a line        now

                                       not a

straightness       (however

straight) but a curve only,

silver that is a rock reflecting

                                                      not metal

but a rock accepting

distance

                     (a scream in silence

where between the two

points what touches

is a curve around the world

                                                      (the dance unmoving).

'Winter Solstice' by Hilda Morley

new york, 1969

saturday poem

When they leave,
Do you think they hesitate,
Turn and make a farewell sign,

Some gesture of regret?

When they leave,
the music is loudest,
the sun high,

and you, dizzy with wine
befuddled with well-being,
sink into your body
as though it were real,
as if yours to keep.

You neither see their going,
nor hear their silence

-- Cy Twombly's 'interpretation' of Patricia Waters poem 'Now is the Drinking'

works by Cy Twombly 'Coronation of Sesostris 2000'
various panels
Acrylic, crayon, and pencil on canvas

saturday poem

saturday poem

Revolutionary Petunias

The Nature of this flower is to bloom.
Rebellious. Living.
Against the Elemental Crush.
A Song of Color.
Blooming
For Deserving Eyes. 
Blooming Gloriously
For its Self.

Alice Walker

saturday poem

Home

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

-- Warsan Shire

saturday poem

Outwitted

He drew a circle that shut me out--

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

 

 

--Edwin Markham