Is the question from the back of the room; I cannot
Quite see the student asking it, but it’s deep-voiced
And challenging and I assume it’s a guy. Because I
Want to rub music and language together and gawk
At the flames, I say. Because poetry, if it takes fire,
Cracks people’s masks, and assaults arrogance, and
Sucks you beneath the surface of words towards why
We use them. Because we have been singing before
There ‘were’ words and it’s healthy to remember that.
Because the great poems are about you and me both
And there is damned little we will be able to discuss
In the normal flow of the river and it’s good for both
Of us to stand together quietly for a while in a poem.
Because why the hell not ? What is it exactly that we
Should count as time better spent ? You cannot spare
Two minutes for a poem ? Sure, it might be pompous
Arty muck, and you demand your two minutes back,
But what if it isn’t ? What if it shivers you, or startles
You awake, or makes you weep remembering a time
When you sang all day too, and everything was made
Of music and light and colors and slabs of shimmer ?
‘What if’, brother – that’s my answer to your question.

    - Brian Doyle

​When they say Don’t I know you?
say no.

When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone is telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.

If they say We should get together
say why?

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore.
You’re trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees. The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished.

When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven’t seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don’t start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.

Walk around feeling like a leaf.
Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.

    - Naomi Shihab Nye

​Gratitude means showing up on life's doorstep,
love's threshold, dressed in a clown suit,
rubber-nosed, gunboat shoes flapping.
Gratitude shows up with arms full of wildflowers,
reciting McKuen or the worst of Neruda.

To talk of gratitude is to be
the fool in a cynic's world.
Gratitude is pride's nightmare,
the admission of humility before something
given without expectation or attachment.

Gratitude tears open the shirt
of self importance, scatters buttons
across the polished floors of feigned indifference,
ignores the obvious and laughs out loud.

Even more, gratitude bears her breasts, rips open
her ribs to show the naked heart, the holy heart.
What if that sacred heart is not, after all, about sacrifice?
Imagine it is about joy, barefoot and foolhardy,
something unasked for, something unearned.

What if the beat we hear, when we are finally quiet is simply this:
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

​    - Rebecca del Rio

i heard a woman becomes herself
the first time she speaks
without permission

then, every word out of her mouth
a riot

say, beautiful
and point to the map of your body

say, brave
and wear your skin like a gown or a suit

say, hero
and cast yourself in the lead role

when a girl pronounces her own name
there is glory

when a woman tells her own story
she lives forever

all the women i know are perennials:
marigolds, daffodils-
soft things that refuse to die

if this poem is the only thing that survives me

tell them i grew a new tongue
tell them i built me a throne

tell them when we discovered life on another planet
it was a woman
and she built a bridge, not a border

i heard this is how you make history,
this is how you create a new world

    - Denice Frohman

 
One regret, dear world, that I am determined not to have
when I am lying on my deathbed is that
I did not kiss you enough.

There is a disease I know, it is called: being too serious.

Don't worry, you won't catch it from my poems.

I let eloquence have its say, and wisdom too and
mirth, for they can be needed companions as you
navigate this dimension and others.

Wherever you have dreamed of going, I have camped
there, and left firewood for when you arrive.

Try this someday: When you are packing or moving
any simple object around--imagine your Beloved's

hand--as yours.  And it then might become thus, if just
for a second.

But a wondrous, true moment like that would be
enough for the integration to begin,

the meld of you and light . . . and then the smooching,
the wild smooching all the time.  Why not?

    - Hafiz, trans. by Daniel Ladinsky

Anthropocene

Even the word feels claustrophobic
Like endless lines and crowds
Of one color only.  A species

Alone without context.
How lonely we have made
Ourselves, how poor.

It is not survival,
But greed that guides, drives
Us, leaves us lonely

On a denuded plain,
Without the container, the completion
Of other life to embrace us.

What will we do when only people
Populate our planet, our poems?
Who will we be

When we've forgotten our companions,
The oak, the fox, the prairie grass and
The hen hidden within.

Who will we be when
All around us
Are mirrors and madness?

​    - Rebecca del Rio

This is how an angel comes
out of the earth, upwards
from the underworld
when everybody thought
they came from the light wings
of the sky - no
they are massive -
on nights of rain and sleet, split
the soil, splash and muddy the grass
wingspans wide as lakes
wearing mud armour, they crawl
full length up rivers and streams
dam ditches, seep through drains
penetrate walls, barns, chicken coops
unsettle bats with wing-beats
that shake down trees - 
remind us, cradled in our prayers
how we like to remain dry, sheltered.
This is how angels come
mouths full of earth
spitting verses
of poetry.

​ - Miriam Darlington