Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

it is so full here in myself

5/29/2022

Maiden, Mother, Crone by Rima Staines

have your eyes ever fallen upon a beast like me
i have the spine of a mulberry tree
the neck of a sunflower
sometimes i am the desert
at times the rain forest
but always the wild
my belly brims over the waistband of my pants
each strand of hair frizzing out like a lifeline
it took a long time to become
such a sweet rebellion
back then i refused to water my roots
till i realized
if i am the only one
who can be the wilderness
then let me be the wilderness
the tree trunk cannot become the branch
the jungle cannot become the garden
so why should i

- Rupi Kaur

Love Song

4/17/2022

Paintings by Jessica Watts

I hear other names for You – The Inviolable One,
God, Allah, Wakantanka, Higher Power,
The Ineffable. But why bother,
when You call to me by no name at all and I come.

Neither of us have a word for each other
save Us.
And even that is nobody’s business
but Ours.

So let’s forget such partitions as names
and discuss this April day within,
which captures birds in flight
and all their eggs and songs
in one straight deed of liberation.

The mighty have fallen around this peace.
But let’s not get into that, when every moment
is roses, and the scent You give off tastes
in my nose like Now.
Like Forever. Like Now.

All I want from You is nothing.
Peace is a dance, after all.
Peace moves. Peace laughs.
And Peace’s discussion is boughs of trees,
light, carriages, actors at their bent,
bravery in and out of action,
for after all, what, what, what
in this world is possibly not roses?

- Bruce Moody

Glimpse

2/13/2022

Glimpse by Cindy Wood
www.cindywoodart.com

It was as if a window suddenly blew open
and the sky outside the mind came flooding in.
My childhood shriveled to a close,
just like that, thread of smoke
that rose and touched a cloud - or the cloud’s
replica adrift on the slow river of thinking -
and disappeared inside it. In that dark water,
a new lily was opening, sky-white out of the muck.
It was only a glimpse, quick,
like a bird ruffling,
but I saw the flower’s
beautiful stark shape, an artichoke
brightened from within by the moon.
A path lay shadowy under my feet,
and I followed it.

- Chase Twichell

It is I Who Must Begin

1/9/2022

"Not in her wildest dreams.
She was a turtle gal
--slow, timid, awkward...and then."
Painting by Gretchen Butler

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try --
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
— to live in harmony
with the “voice of Being,” as I
understand it within myself
— as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.

~ Václav Havel ~

somewhere i have never traveled

5/16/2021

Painting by Maria de LosAngeles

somewhere i have never traveled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- e e cummings

Senseless Perfection

5/9/2021

Chalk by Kirsten DeBoer. Used with permission.

Things don't happen for a reason
Sweet child
No
Life doesn't need a reason
For happening
It simply blooms forth
With breathtaking chaos
Rains down on you
With senseless beauty
And immeasurable heartache
You can make up stories
If you like
About why things happen
The way that they happened
You can close one eye and squint
To make up patterns
You can tell stories of
Tragedy
Or perfection
Curses
Or blessings
Or you can simply stand naked in
The rain
You can realize nothing
Will ever really make sense
Not if you're really honest
Not if you're truly listening
Nothing happens for a reason
Yes, this is the truth
This is it
There is nothing else
But your own heart
Plunging
Into reality
Your own heart
Drinking down
The eruption of stars
That is this radical emergence
Of soul in body
Of breath meeting sky
Maybe
There is nothing else to look for
Maybe it didn't work out for the best
Maybe it isn't an unfortunate mess
Maybe no great spirit is helping
Anything go your way
Maybe
Just maybe
Life unfolds
Relentlessly
With no holy plan
Maybe
It is sacred
Just as it is
Its power and innocence
Require no justification
Its perfection requires no meaning
Maybe nothing
Means anything
Other than what the Rose
Means
When it blooms
It means
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am

- Maya Luna

A Color of the Sky, for Spring Equinox

3/21/2021

Photo by Kasper Rasmussen. Used with permission.

Windy today and I feel less than brilliant,
driving over the hills from work.
There are the dark parts on the road
when you pass through clumps of wood
and the bright spots where you have a view of the ocean,
but that doesn’t make the road an allegory.

I should call Marie and apologize
for being so boring at dinner last night,
but can I really promise not to be that way again?
And anyway, I’d rather watch the trees, tossing
in what certainly looks like sexual arousal.

Otherwise it’s spring, and everything looks frail;
the sky is baby blue, and the just-unfurling leaves
are full of infant chlorophyll,
the very tint of inexperience.

Last summer’s song is making a comeback on the radio,
and on the highway overpass,
the only metaphysical vandal in America has written
MEMORY LOVES TIME
in big black spraypaint letters,

which makes us wonder if Time loves Memory back.

Last night I dreamed of X again.
She’s like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I’m glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky.

Outside the youth center, between the liquor store
and the police station,
a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;

overflowing with blossomfoam,
like a sudsy mug of beer;
like a bride ripping off her clothes,

dropping snow white petals to the ground in clouds,

so Nature’s wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It’s been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

- Tony Hoagland

Your anger is holy

7/5/2020

Collage by Rashani Rea

Your anger is holy.
Your grief is pure.
Step quietly out of your shadow
like a panther
who leaves no tracks.
Let your fierceness fertilize the void.
Fling generous curses
into musky voluptuous furrows
so that fiery petals
of inexpressible bliss
spring up for no reason
in the forest of your nerves.
Be what happens in tombs
and bridal chambers,
among lovers and mushrooms.
Let your bruises ripen into juice.
Keep rooting down
until you touch your vacuous core.
Precious the dung.
Sacred the manure flower.
This is the only way up
to the Rose.

-Alfred LaMotte

There is a girl inside

6/28/2020

Black Wolf and Pomo Girl by Sandy Eastoak, www.sandyeastoak.com.
Used by permission.

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.
She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

- Lucille Clifton