31 Mar 2019: "Avenging and Bright" by Thomas Moore

          AVENGING and bright fall the swift sword of Erin

                On him who the brave sons of Usna betray’d! —

          For every fond eye he hath waken’d a tear in

                A drop from his heart-wounds shall weep o’er her blade.

          By the red cloud that hung over Conor’s dark dwelling,

                When Ulad’s three champions lay sleeping in gore —

          By the billows of war, which so often, high swelling„

                Have wafted these heroes to victory’s shore —

          We swear to avenge them! — no joy shall be tasted,

                The harp shall be silent, the maiden unwed,

          Our halls shall be mute, and our fields shall lie wasted,

                Till vengeance is wreak’d on the murderer’s head.

          Yes, monarch! though sweet are our home recollections,

                Though sweet are the tears that from tenderness fall;

          Though sweet are our friendships, our hopes, our affections,

                Revenge on a tyrant is sweetest of all!

 

 

 

Some may recognize part of this poem from The Punisher netflix series.

30 Mar 2019: "Praise the Rain" by Joy Harjo

Praise the rain; the seagull dive

The curl of plant, the raven talk—

Praise the hurt, the house slack

The stand of trees, the dignity—

Praise the dark, the moon cradle

The sky fall, the bear sleep—

Praise the mist, the warrior name

The earth eclipse, the fired leap—

Praise the backwards, upward sky

The baby cry, the spirit food—

Praise canoe, the fish rush

The hole for frog, the upside-down—

Praise the day, the cloud cup

The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.

Praise the path on which we're led.

Praise the roads on earth and water.

Praise the eater and the eaten.

Praise beginnings; praise the end.

Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

25 Mar 2019: "The River at Wolf" By Jean Valentine

Coming east we left the animals

pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake   

their hair and skin and feathers

their eyes in the dark: red and green.   

Your finger drawing my mouth.

Blessed are they who remember

that what they now have they once longed for.

A day a year ago last summer

God filled me with himself, like gold, inside,   

deeper inside than marrow.

This close to God this close to you:

walking into the river at Wolf with

the animals. The snake’s

green skin, lit from inside. Our second life.

24 Mar 2019: "In Prison" By Jean Valentine

In prison

without being accused

or reach your family

or have a family            You have

conscience

heart trouble

asthma

manic-depressive

(we lost the baby)

no meds

no one

no window

black water

nail-scratched walls

your pure face turned away

embarrassed

you

who the earth was for.

23 Mar 2019: "Crowning" by Kevin Young

Now that knowing means nothing,
now that you are more born
than being, more awake
than awaited, since I’ve seen
your hair deep inside mother,
a glimpse, grass in late
winter, early spring, watching
your mother’s pursed, throbbing,
purpled power, her pushing
you for one whole hour, two,
almost three, almost out,
maybe never, animal smell
and peat, breath and sweat
and mulch-matter, and at once
you descend, or drive, are driven
by mother’s body, by her will
and brilliance, by bowel,
by wanting and your hair
peering as if it could see, and I saw
you storming forth,
taproot, your cap of hair half
in, half out, and wait, hold
it there, the doctors say, and
she squeezing my hand, her face
full of fire, then groaning your face
out like a flower, blood-bloom,
crocussed into air, shoulders
and the long cord still rooting
you to each other, to the other
world, into this afterlife
among us living, the cord
I cut like an iris, pulsing,
then you wet against mother’s chest
still purple, not blue, not yet
red, no cry,
warming now, now opening
your eyes midnight
blue in the blue-black dawn.

15 Mar 2019: "The Robots are Coming" by Kyle Dargan

with clear-cased woofers for heads,

no eyes. They see us as a bat sees

a mosquito—a fleshy echo,

a morsel of sound. You've heard

their intergalactic tour busses

purring at our stratosphere's curb.

They await counterintelligence

transmissions from our laptops

and our blue teeth, await word

of humanity's critical mass,

our ripening. How many times

have we dreamed it this way:

the Age of the Machines,

postindustrial terrors whose

tempered paws—five welded fingers

—wrench back our roofs,

siderophilic tongues seeking blood,

licking the crumbs of us from our beds.

O, great nation, it won't be pretty.

What land will we now barter

for our lives ? A treaty inked

in advance of the metal ones' footfall.

Give them Gary. Give them Detroit,

Pittsburgh, Braddock—those forgotten

nurseries of girders and axels.

Tell the machines we honor their dead,

distant cousins. Tell them

we tendered those cities to repose

out of respect for welded steel's

bygone era. Tell them Ford

and Carnegie were giant men, that war

glazed their palms with gold.

Tell them we soft beings mourn

manufacture's death as our own.

 

6 Mar 2019: "Invictus" By William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

      For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

      Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

      I am the captain of my soul.

2 Mar 2019: “Heroics” by Julia Alvarez

We keep coming to this part
of the story where we’re sad:
I’ve broken up with my true love
man after man.
You’ve found it.
Once, It was god.
Once, revolution
in the third world.
Now, It’s love.

You’ll survive, our mothers said
when romance was once.
Now they keep tight faces
for our visits home
and tell their friends
all that education
has confused us,
all those poems.

They have, we laugh,
and buy the dreams—
Redbook, House Beautiful,
Mademoiselle & Vogue—
to read our stories in them
and send the clippings home.
Sometimes the bright chase
of ad lovers in a meadow set
sells us to belief again
in that worn plot of love …

Sadly, we turn the page
to right our hearts,
knowing our lives too well
to be the heroines
of our mothers’ stories.
We’re careful with the words
we pick, the loves with no returns
like the ones we wanted.
Aunts to our sisters’ boys,
we bring them squawking rubber monsters,
birthday poems pasted in the growing albums.

1 Mar 2019: ‘Out, Out—’ by Robert Frost

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard

And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,

Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.

And from there those that lifted eyes could count

Five mountain ranges one behind the other

Under the sunset far into Vermont.

And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,

As it ran light, or had to bear a load.

And nothing happened: day was all but done.

Call it a day, I wish they might have said

To please the boy by giving him the half hour

That a boy counts so much when saved from work.

His sister stood beside him in her apron

To tell them ‘Supper.’ At the word, the saw,

As if to prove saws knew what supper meant,

Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—

He must have given the hand. However it was,

Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!

The boy’s first outcry was a rueful laugh,

As he swung toward them holding up the hand

Half in appeal, but half as if to keep

The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all—

Since he was old enough to know, big boy

Doing a man’s work, though a child at heart—

He saw all spoiled. ‘Don’t let him cut my hand off—

The doctor, when he comes. Don’t let him, sister!’

So. But the hand was gone already.

The doctor put him in the dark of ether.

He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.

And then—the watcher at his pulse took fright.

No one believed. They listened at his heart.

Little—less—nothing!—and that ended it.

No more to build on there. And they, since they

Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.