Secret Garden - Hymn to Hope

Having been taught a lesson... here's a Hymn to Hope.

November

November

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will not build one anymore.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

José González - Killing For Love (Beatfanatic Remix)

"What's the point

if you hate, die and kill for love.

What's the point with a love that

makes you hate and kill for."

...............

And that's all and everything he says.

Look at Us

Look at Us
by John Trudell

At times they were kind, they were polite in their sophistication, smiling but never too loudly acting in a civilized manner an illusion of gentleness always fighting to get their way. while the people see, the people know, the people wait, the people say the closing of your doors will never shut use out, the closing of your doors can only shut you in.

We know the predator, we see them feed on us, we are aware to starve the beast is our destiny. At times they were kind, they were polite, but never honest.

We see your tech no logical society devour you before your very eyes we hear your anguished cries exalting greed through progress while you seek material advances the sound of flowers dying carry messages through the wind trying to tell you about balance and your safety

But your minds are chained to your machines and the strings dangling from your puppeteers hands turning you, twisting you into forms and confusions beyond your control

Your mind for a job your mind for a t.v. your mind for a hair dryer your mind for consumption.

With your atom bombs your material bombs your drug bombs your racial bombs your class bombs your sexist bombs your ageist bombs

Devastating your natural shelters making you homeless on earth chasing you into illusions fooling you, making you pretend you can run away from the ravishing of your spirit

While the sound of flowers dying carry messages through the wind trying to tell you about balance and your safety.

Trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness leading us into the trap believe in their power but not in ourselves piling us with guilt always taking the blame greed chasing out the balance trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness

economic deities seizing power through illusions created armies are justified class systems are democracy god listens to warmongers prayers tyranny is here, divide and conquer trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness

greed a parent insecurity the happiness companion genocide conceived in sophistication tech no logic material civilization a rationalization replacing a way to live trying to isolate us in a dimension called loneliness

To god we hope you don’t mind but we would like to talk to you; there are some things we need to straighten out, it’s about these christians they claim to be from your nation but man you should see the things they do all the time blaming it on you: manifest destiny, genocide, maximized profit, sterilization, raping the earth, lying taking more than they need in all the forms of the greed. we ask them why, they say it’s god’s will.

Damn god they make it so hard. Remember jesus? Would you send him back to them, tell them how to kill him, rather they should listen stop abusing his name and yours.

We do not mean to be disrespectful but you know how it is, our people have their own ways we never even heard of you until not long ago, your representatives spoke magnificent things of you which we were willing to believe, but from the way they acted we know we and you were being deceived.

We do not mean you and your christian children any bad, but you all came to take all we had we have not seen you but we have heard so much it is time for you to decide what life is worth we already remember but maybe you forgot.

Look at us, look at us, we are of Earth and Water
Look at them, it is the same
Look at us, we are suffering all these years
Look at them, they are connected.
Look at us, we are in pain
Look at them, surprised at our anger
Look at us, we are struggling to survive
Look at them, expecting sorrow be benign
Look at us, we were the ones called pagan
Look at them, on their arrival
Look at us, we are called subversive
Look at them, descending from name callers
Look at us, we wept sadly in the long dark
Look at them, hiding in tech no logic light
Look at us, we buried the generations
Look at them, inventing the body count
Look at us, we are older than America
Look at them, chasing a fountain of youth
Look at us, we are embracing Earth
Look at them, clutching today
Look at us, we are living in the generations
Look at them, existing in jobs and debts
Look at us, we have escaped many times
Look at them, they cannot remember
Look at us, we are healing
Look at them, their medicine is patented
Look at us, we are trying
Look at them, what are they doing
Look at us, we are children of Earth
Look at them, who are they?

Hope?

“No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again.” -Buddha

One of the greatest misconceptions in life is that we are somehow powerless to let go of what’s behind us. That we have to carry regret, shame, or disappointment, and that is has to dictate how today will unfold, at least on some level.

It doesn’t. At any moment, you can let go of who you’ve been and decide to be someone new–to do something differently. It won’t always be easy, but it is always a choice you can make.

You can either dwell and stay stuck, or let go and feel free. Give yourself space to fill with good feelings about the beautiful day in front of you–and the beautiful tomorrow you’re now creating.

Found on an Anonymous Blog re: 9/11

I wrote after the attacks and read it not long ago. It was pitiful. This is not. The poem is amazing but you need the preceding story to parse it.

~R
..................
It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that I am sitting here, 10 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, writing this. It's difficult to imagine that so much time has passed. So much has happened to me personally, but also to America as a nation.

Early this week I woke and went digging through my old files, looking for the person I was all those years ago. In my search, I found a poem I'd written after the attacks, thinking all the while about a girl in my dorm who had lost both of her parents. We had all just arrived a week or so before to school -- brand new freshmen -- and it was a scary time for all of us, embracing our freedom but fearful of it at the same time. To have lost so much at such a transitory time in one's life sent shivers down my spine. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like for that girl.

I didn't know her, but I knew this: her pain, her loss -- just like that of the nation -- was immeasurable. I struggled to understand all of it, as we all did. And so I strived to organize the mess of what happened with words, lining them up neatly in a poem. Reading it now, I am brought back to that day. The words make it fresh, real. After all of these years, America's wounds are healing, but there is still an ache that, for so many, will never go away. To all those who lost someone, who suffered through the fear of that day, I dedicate my decade-old poem to you.



September in Delaware

Morning of bagels, a man shouting out
cream cheese on plain, lox on sesame
louder today because it’s harder to hear
with the television turned up.
The picture is yelling, smoky and frantic,
at us, sitting at a plastic table
smearing yellow butter on circular bread.


Outside, the grass is still summer-soft
and the sky is bright blue quiet.
No planes grumbling as they soar home,
Heavy with the weight of packages or people.
For a while, we are silent too, shocked into
forgoing our own routine takeoffs and landings.
We are grounded, feet touching soil.


I can feel it better today, grass and dirt,
fading sunburn and harsh words,
but I cannot make a connection to tell you
when all the phones keep beeping busy.
I cannot get through, and all the faces,
blurred when they pass, are smeared with
the same disconcerting isolation.


Sunlight blinds us on the walk home,
filled with bagels and juice, tired.
You speak of war, of death, of drafts
but your voice is cracking, crumbling,
breaking, fading in and out of service.
Your words float before us, and as
we walk, we bump into them, bruising.


Tomorrow the calendar will change
Mostly without us noticing and we will
regain lost connections, and get used to
morbid media, the violet vertigo of what
we come to accept as photo and memory.
Down the arm of the road to the elbow,
we will drive: a sharp, quick turn into release.


But today, my building harbors a girl,
raven-haired, who shared the shower,
the sink, the hallway for twelve days.
We are not allowed to see her, with
her swollen eyes, mystified expression,
as she is lifted out, quietly. Driven back,
I imagine, to the city still bleeding.


All her hope breaking off on the interstate
as she realizes language has stolen
the safest word, her peaceful haven: home.
Her brave house still standing, its insides
burned and blacker than what she has left behind:
single strands in the drain of a shower.

~Someone named Sharry

Income? What income?

"I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart."

- e e cummings (1894-1962)