THE WALL
Walls are for wailing
and also for tumbling down
Unconscious fears rise in concrete form
conscious choices less visible rise with it
Inside and out of the builders and the wailers
there are a million voices
starting to hum that old Jericho tune
BARBARIANS 2003 AD
“We thought of ourselves as people of culture.
How long will it be till others see us that way again? “
Iraqi friend of poet Naomi Nye
The collected works of Hafiz
still outsell the Koran in Iran
Today in Baghdad bombs and fear
scattered lovers of Rumi and Kabir
Museum of modern man’s cradle
lost eighty centuries in a day
Book starved minds, educated thumbs
video game cowboys blew it all away
We thought ourselves people of culture
how long before we can look
at ourselves that way again
THANKSGIVING
The natives did share their food with the
first settlers
But
It is well documented
though not well known
that the first official Thanksgiving
(proclaimed by the governor of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637)
was in celebration of a massacre of 700 Pequot
men, women, and children gathered together
for their own dance of thanks
Ordered out of their home they were shot as
they came forth; those who stayed inside
were burned alive
We have a long history of freedom
We have freed the Americans from America
We are now freeing the Iraquis from Iraq
There will feasting when the boys come back
PATRIOT ACT
There are thousands now
coming back from Iraq
one legged and deaf and blind
dragging the dead they left behind
Yet they speak so well
of those who sent them to that hell
That they are true patriots may be a fact
and this is how true patriots act
Or could article one thirty four be the reason
where one critical word and your pension is
gone plus five years in the brig for treason
DINNER WITH ROBERT BLY
Bly orders oysters like Hafiz and Rumi
Richest food on the menu
Swallows them whole
Offers them to all who share his table
POETS OF AUSTIN
(for Thom and the gang)
Just keep writing, just keep writing
the results are not for us to know
Just keep sowing what you sow
Nobody holds it against Johnny
that all the apple seeds didn’t grow
CLIMBOUT SUNSETS
John Gillespie Magee
slipped the surly bonds of earth
reached out and touched the face of God
Planes are bigger and faster now
I in my Aero Commander
commander of the air
Climbing at dusk have set the sun
on the lip of the world
and held it there
Have rode the Concorde
faster than the speed of sound
and faster than the earth goes round
that can lift it up where it went down
And there are times I’d best the lark
to try to hold or yet turn back
baby’s smiles and love’s first spark
I think Magee, the reverence would see
as we all fight the dying of the light
and try to touch the Sistine finger
a little longer before night
HIGH FLIGHT
by John Gillespie Magee
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter silvered
wings; sunward I’ve climbed and joined
the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds – –
and done a hundred things you have not
dreamed of – wheeled and soared and
swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hov’ring there, I’ve chased the shouting
wind along, and flung my eager craft
through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept height with
easy grace where never lark, or even
eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space
put out my hand, and touched the face of
God
John Gillespie Magee Jr. , A young American, flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England early in WWII, and was killed shortly after he composed this poem.
KATHERINE
Like Caesar before her
she slipped sideways into life
and then full speed forward
Wonderful combination of
vini vidi vici and coochie coochie coo
Joining a legacy of courage and beauty
Saint Katherine and Hepburn too
They may be mentioned in threes
before she’s through
UNCLE ERNEST
If Uncle Ernie
had not gone off to war before I was four
If he had not loved movies, or sat
in that seat in that theatre when on leave
Where the bomb came through the roof
and through the floor
and killed a few
and then blew up
and killed some more
He’d have been here handsome and bright
helping my father with the ranchers load
and telling stories to my delight
Marrying and making me
cousins in the night