Friday, April 26, 2013

A Poem for the Day


Cavort

She lets me leave
thick green tangles
into tickling grass
and shining sun.

Free I leap
and kick
and bounce
and buck
and run
then oops
she calls.

I duck beneath
sharp wires
to brush
and bramble
to warm milk
sweet breath
rough tongue.


Judith Stanton
   From The Deer Diaries

Friday, April 12, 2013

A Poem For the Day


STILL HUNGRY
============
There once was a man from Nantucket
who carried his pail and his bucket.
He dug up a yam
found a fat clam
unfortunately could not shuck it.

Rick Bylina

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

A Poem for the Day


DENTURES
========
There once was an old man from Nantucket.
He angrily kicked an old gray bucket.
Out fell his false teeth
He sighed in relief
Now he could chew lunch and not just suck it

Rick Bylina

Sunday, April 7, 2013

A haiku for the day





PLATYPUS PLAYING
============
Fun and delightful
Eating, swimming, and mating
A life never dull

Rick Bylina

Thursday, April 4, 2013

A Poem for the Day


Under heaven nothing is impossible.  All you need is a human being with a heart.
                                                            –Chinese proverb
What can one person do, I ask myself.
I see the dangers, the indifference
of those in power to how we will suffer
if those obsessed frack the ancient
rock under us to release the gas they
claim we need.  Scientists warn of air,
water, and earth pollution, of earthquakes
along our fault line.  What can I do?  I
planned to be a token activist, use my
books, my letters to the editor, my work
on Election Day as my part.  In two years
the drilling may begin.  I hear despair
in people’s voices.  They tell me the rich
and powerful have it all sewed up. 
Nothing can be done.  They speak of
leaving the state, of its being ten years
before we can shift these leaders
who have gerrymandered themselves
into office and now attack voting
rights.  It’s as if they aimed their
high-powered rifles at poor people:
 they cut unemployment benefits,
increase the sales tax, refuse to
extend health care.  One of them said,
“Let people get hungry; then they’ll
go back to work.”  How?  Where?
Good people, thoughtful people act
like terrified deer unable to move
out of the headlights of an oncoming
truck.  One human being with a heart
can change that, wake those who
despair, save us from this evil hurricane
set to blow us off course, away from
true democracy, away from civil and
human rights.  People say change
yourself first.  I will.  I’ll write more
letters, put up more signs, send more
emails, talk to more people.  People can
change things.  I have the heart, the will. 
I can’t do it alone, but I can start a
revolution, one person, one word at a time.

Judy Hogan

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Poem for the day


LINE BREAKS

 I met a poem once whose line breaks shocked me.
 I wondered about a cure for either the line or my shock.

 My mother was shocked and dismayed by my behavior.
 I can't remember what I did, only her voice, the mute

 lowering of her head, the side to side movement done
 in yoga; exhale to the side, inhale back to center.

 Years ago it was called a nervous breakdown -
 nerves like thin pipes of glass breaking into pieces

 during times when other things might be breaking
 apart like the plans we had made for our lives

or the trust we misplaced somewhere somewhere
like in another person's chest pocket next to a row of pens.

Why go there when I can sit at the feet of poets whose
line breaks are works of art within a work of art?

Eight miles high - how to come down from such a height
without breaking something even if it's just the fall?

I wonder now if some poets begin at the line break
and work back to the beginning of the line, maybe

begin at the end of the poem in its entirety, with that
broken down gas guzzler of an ending that comes

from the junkyard after test drives of the hybrid
and the crossover and the smart car.  Horse power,

a car whose power is the one thing that can pass
what's stalled on the road ahead.

Mary L. Barnard

Monday, April 1, 2013

Poem: Cinderella Demonstrates Crepes at the Mall


Cinderella Demonstrates Crepes at the Mall

It’s all  in the temperature
of the soul, the mind, the wrist
but most of all timing,
The tune you dance to.

Break the eggs,
one at a time
admire
their perfectness,
the gold yellow,
how it can spin into a life;
the pure white of a gift-spirit.
And milk.
Ah, the kindness
of cream.

Flour is what
 holds
 in the whole
goodness.
Slide onto the heated
heart
to twist
flip a little plate
of thin life
 sweet
or savory.
What such simplicity has wrought.

By: Ruth Moose                                                        
4/1/13