No Problem, Kevin McCaffrey

No Problem

by Kevin McCaffrey

The problem is there is no problem and
the problem solvers have nothing to do
so they start creating problems out
of thin air, out of nothing. Then the problem
is not to see that there are big problems
everywhere and it is woe unto
him or her who cannot see or who will
not acknowledge the problems—they become
part of the problem, a big part of it,
their apathy or obstinacy holding
progress back until they are educated
to the fact that, one, there are big problems,
and, two, if you are not part of solving
them then you represent the problem
the problem solvers have been talking about
all along. So you see now how it is:
there is no problem worse than no problem.

"No Problem" by Kevin McCaffrey from Laughing Cult. © Four Winds Press, 2014

Nelly Sachs

But perhaps God needs the longing, wherever else shall it dwell,

Which with kisses and tears and sighs fills mysterious spaces of air -

And perhaps is invisible soil from which roots of stars grow and swell -

And the radiant voice across fields of parting which calls to reunion there?

O my beloved, perhaps in the sky of longing worlds have been born of our love -

Just as our breathing, in and out, builds a cradle for life and death?

We are grains of sand, dark with farewell, lost in births' secret treasure trove,

Around us already perhaps future moons, suns, and stars blaze in a fiery wreath.

 

~ Nelly Sachs ~

 

(Translated by Ruth and Matthew Mead, in

A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now,

 ed. by Aliki and Willis Barnstone)

That Lives In Us, Rumi

THAT LIVES IN US

 

If you put your hands on this oar with me,

they will never harm another, and they will come to find

they hold everything you want.

 

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they would no longer

lift anything to your

mouth that might wound your precious land –

that sacred earth that is your body.

 

If you put your soul against this oar with me,

the power that made the universe will enter your sinew

from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm

that lives in us.

 

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.

When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;

love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

 

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and the future?

The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacities

will find no rest.

 

Be kind to yourself, dear – to our innocent follies.

Forget any sounds or touch you knew that did not help you dance.

You will come to see that all evolves us.

 

~ Rumi ~

 

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)

Kosmos, Walt Whitman

Kosmos

BY WALT WHITMAN

Who includes diversity and is Nature,

Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also,

Who has not look'd forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing,

Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover,

Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the æsthetic or intellectual,

Who having consider'd the body finds all its organs and parts good,

Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories,

The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States;

Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons,

Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations,

The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.

From The Telephone, Florence Rley Mastin

From the Telephone   Florence Ripley Mastin

Out of the dark cup Your voice broke like a flower. It trembled, swaying on its taut stem. The caress in its touch Made my eyes close.