Forgiving - Poem

Know this: forgetting is not forgiving.

Which: first or second, adds most to living? 

Don't dwell on memories: simply forget

But when you forget, it's an unpaid debt

That will be collected, sooner or later.

Subconscious memories are the traitor.

If you consciously choose not to recall,

You create an impenetrable wall

Made of memories you don't want to face!

Forgetting, you hope to not leave a trace.

Forgetting, badness is just held at bay,

With forgiveness, the badness goes away.

          Don't take all the responsibility,

          First ask yourself: was it only just me?

Favorite books, movies, authors, etc.

FAVORITE INFLUENCES
      Emanuel Swedenborg
      Edgar Cayce
      A Course in Miracles
      Unbiased spiritual studies

FAVORITE MOVIES
      Casablanca
      Lawrence of Arabia

      Bagdad Cafe

      The Snake Pit

FAVORITE BOOKS
      The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia)
      Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
      Series: A Course in Miracles
      Thinking: Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
      Aztec by Gary Jennings
      Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
      Series: Junior Classics, 10 volumes
      Series: Dune by Frank Herbert et al.
      Series: Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling
      My Antonia by Willa Cather
      Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud
      Maus I & Maus II by Art Spiegelman

FAVORITE AUTHORS
      Frank Herbert
      Philip K. Dick
      Ann Rule
      Steve Hamilton

FAVORITE POETS
      Wallace Stevens
      William Blake
      Rumi

FAVORITE POEMS
      Sunday Morning by Wallace Stevens
      Like This by Rumi
      Songs of Innocence: Introduction by William Blake
      Peter Quince at the Clavier by Wallace Stevens
      Things I Didn't Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet
      The Lamb by William Blake
      The Tyger by William Blake
      Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing... by Rumi
      Ode on the Intimations of Immortality by William Wordsworth
      Edward, Edward. Ancient Ballad, author unknown
      Love Dogs by Rumi
      The World Is Too Much With Us by William Wordsworth
      Auguries of Innocence by William Blake
      The Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens
      I have lived on the lip... by Rumi
      The Lake Isle of Innisfree by William Butler Yeats
      Sonnets 18, 29, 110, 129, 130, 138 by William Shakespeare
      The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes
      Spring and Fall (To a young child) by Gerard Manley Hopkins
      Come to the garden in spring by Rumi
      Attunity by Russ Bedord
      The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats
      The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
      Composed on Westminster Bridge by William Wordsworth
      My Last Duchess by Robert Browning
      Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
      Miniver Cheevy by Edward Arlington Robinson
      La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats
      London by William Blake
      Death, Be Not Proud by John Donne
      The Garden of Love by William Blake
      Sailing to Byzantium by William Butler Yeats
      Musee des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden

      Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins

      The Gift by Russ Bedord
      The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner by Randall Jarrell
      The Silken Tent by Robert Frost

      

Song of Division - Poem

(This is against self-justifying greed.)

Neither nor, either or—
I swear there is a difference
You slobs work for the good of all
I work for recompense.

Now that capitalism means
Fairness and truth don't matter,
My responsibility is to see
My wallet get fatter.

Individualism!
That is the word to live by—
Getting suitable benefit
Means I take, you give. Why?

Some of us are better,
Plain as the nose on your face.
If you don't see it, too bad—
Losing is no disgrace.

Money and property
Accumulate to those with taste:
Imagine losers with either—
It would be such a waste.

Not wasted in my hands—
Sensibility's a buffer
Ignorance insulates me from
Knowing things much tougher.

My justification?
I have taste— I said it before:
Desires that must be satisfied.
Wants you cannot ignore.

The fact is: I don't see
Or care about what I cause.
There are winners. There are losers,
Obeying nature's laws.

It's a law of nature,
A simple way of keeping score:
Your starvation and death mean nothing
As long as I have more.

I am a patriot
I am for the Land of the Free.
You wonder what we're fighting for?
It is for me, me, me.

Into the Refrigerator - Poem

Ev’ry time I open the refrigerator door,
it must be to see the light.
Why else do I stand in contemplation
wondering why I opened it again.
I delve within, find a morsel,
gulp it down—for a moment satisfied.
Ten minutes later, my hungry soul
is back again, bathing in the cool light,
the empty promise of food for the body,
but not the soul.

First Breath - Poem

The first breath

catches me unaware

the first touch stops—

then gets me started.

The first kiss

I remember,

then every kiss

remembers the first.

The first word said

in the heat of love

tells the first lie.

The last word

tells the truth.

The first love

lives fondly

in the heart,

clothed in the light

of young mornings

when breath was fresh—

or remembered so.

****

Down the Tube - Poem

The afternoons, we watch TV,

our eyes glued to Another World,

pretending it’s reality.

We spend The Days Of Our Lives

stuck in quiet desperation,

hoping for, in The Guiding Light,

glimpses of a real relation.

As the World Turns beneath us,

rolling heedlessly on and on,

and All My Children are neglected,

hypnotized, automatons.

So we sit and stare, letting

mind and blood congeal,

aptly forgetting:

if there is One Life To Live,

make it real.

*****

The Miniature Calligrapher - Poem

There was an artist named Homer
who could write on the head of a pin,
but—as small as it was—
wasn’t good enough for him.
How many times can you write, he asked
the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin,
and the Twenty-Third Psalm on the shaft,
without seeking new worlds to conquer,
without finding new standards to pass.
So smaller and smaller he printed,
and finer and finer his tools:
the hair of a bee his pen,
his tablet a mustard seed,
his work the sayings of men.
For who, you might wonder,
and where, and when?
But artists do what they must,
the purpose comes from within.
One day while eating a sandwich,
the ants were scavenging crumbs.
Ah, said Homer, a challenge.
To the open mind, it comes!
He gathered the crumbs and waited
until they were hard as a rock
and with the finest of pens,
wrote messages for the flock.
The ants collected his work
and took it away to their nest
parading this proud message
to whom it suited best—
God save the queen...
God save the queen...
God save the queen...
God save the queen...

*****

Robert Burns' Quotation

Ye hypocrites, are these your pranks?
To murder men, and gi'e God thanks.