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Archive for poetry

Happy Gutenberg Day

Happy Happy Gutenberg Day!  My friend and colleague (and one of my original collaborators in the whole Beauty Dialogues idea) Beth Alexander and I are testing the great and soon to be ubiquitous (pervasive all across WordPress.org sites) Gutenberg – just going right in and activating the plug-in bravely, without any filters or safety nets. Into the fray! What will be, will be!

This is a beautiful flower –
I photographed it with my iPhone on a walk around my very photogenic neighborhood.

Ok. So far, so good. Nothing has broken, it’s all working fine.

Things are going so well that we (me and Beth) have decided to write a poem for Gutenberg:

Gutenberg, Oh Gutenberg
You make me giggle, Gutenberg.
Thank you for not blowing up the site
We appreciate that you certainly might.

Its a stretch for sure.
Things no longer what they were.
But what the heck, let’s ride the wave
Into the wild unknown we brave.

(Please excuse the silliness of this post – it was created as an experiment – a test to see how Gutenberg works in the current beta phase – somehow I forgot I actually have subscribers and that as soon as I pushed the “publish” button y’all were going to get this!)

A Blessing

Looking for “inspiration” – a juicy tidbit to post this morning – I came across this blessing from someone who has inspired me deeply for many years, someone I (like so many others) hold dear to my heart; the late great John O’Donohue.

Here’s John’s blessing, taken from Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong:

May you listen to your longing to be free.

May the frames of your belonging be large enough for the dreams of your soul.

May you arise each day with a voice of blessing

whispering in your heart that something good is going to happen to you.

May you find a harmony between your soul and your life.

May the mansion of your soul never become a haunted place.

May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.

May you never place walls between the light and yourself.

May your angel free you from the prisons of guilt, fear, disappointment, and despair.

May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.

May it be so, and to John’s beautiful blessing I add the collective prayer that we all “arise each day with a voice of blessing”, and recognize each other and all that lives as part of our sacred circle of belonging.

from my home to yours…

 

Christmas-window
May the Light and Love of this season grow in our hearts and expand out to embrace all that exists. May we walk in Beauty, all of us, as we celebrate the holidays and step into this new year.

Hip Hop Poem About the Election

written by Aaron Jafferis

My father was African, my mother American.
I have brothers blue-black, and cousins with fairer skin
who pale in comparison to Sarah Palin.
Like blues, my family trees roots shoot
deep through the earth, but only in America
could my parents have given birth to me.
Conceived when cultures
collided and made love, previously divided states
(of mind) united and gave blood and life.
Husband and wife split the difference between
hope and change, between cope and pain,
and even though they split, all of it their hope and pain
still fit in their sons open brain
and over time became his/my over-arching aim:
give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,
give me liberty from war, lift, lift the underclasses,
and if this economy looks fundamentally strong,
your fundamentals are wrong
or youre looking through muddy glasses,
or your fundamental heads are stuck up your metaphorical…

Ask me who I am, and I will tell you true:
my name is not Barack, though this is his story too.
My name is hip hop. Its my history Im telling you:

My father was African, my mother American.
I have brothers blue-black, and cousins with fairer skin
who pale in comparison to Sarah Palin, who isnt
the only illustration of true-blooded Americanism.
Like blues, I am he whose family trees
roots shoot deep through the earth,
but only America could have given birth to me.
I was given the gift of speech, and I use it
to outreach and uplift the youth, and if you
wanna use me as a servant to you in order to form
a more perfect union, then do…organize

and do mobilize and open eyes to truth and show that lies
misled the poor and led to war and broken lives.
Do give the tools to cope and rise,
and as the movement grows in size
and breaks the ropes that hope defies,
and as the youth vote multiplies,
well break the race right open wide,
wide open eyes will vote
and take this nation by surprise. Surprise!

I am the native son, the bought and traded one,
the sometimes hated drum talking of change to come,
I am the underrated, the wonder-if-hell-make-it one,
the character-assassinated but still not jaded son,
even though over time I become the front-page-aided one,
the allegedly overrated, celebrity-associated one,
some people thought I blew up and went pop-
ular, grew up and then dropped the urban
working class who, from first to last, I have worked
to bring from last to first, and if you think my values
are in trouble…your (thought) bubble is burst.
I still cast my lot with the tired, the poor,
the huddled masses. Give me liberty from war,
lift, lift the underclasses, and if this economy
looks fundamentally strong, your fundamentals are wrong
or youre lookin through muddy glasses,
or your fundamental heads are stuck up your metaphorical…

As for us:
if hip hop is the entrance to what is in store
lit hot from the embers of what came before,
if Barack is the belief that God demands more
than a war in Iraq and abandoning the poor,
if America can stare itself in the face and be sure
we want to end poverty, and end endless war,
then we are the ones we have been waiting for.
You are the ones you have been waiting for.

Your name is…My name is…
Our name is…
Our name is America, our very existence, a miracle.
We survived insistent attempts to make our lives unbearable.
Dehumanize us, brutalize and downsize divide us,
still we rise through the work of the multitudes inside us.
Though generations have lived and died,
we pride ourselves on our youth
and keep our eyes on the prize of that self-evident truth
that we know is not a lie even though Americas broke:
Our birthright is equality. Our inheritance is hope.
Our name is America, and you better be ready,
cause on the 4th of November, we are going to vote.