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.

A Brave and Startling Truth, Maya Angelou

A Brave And Startling Truth 

 

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet 

Traveling through casual space 

Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns 

To a destination where all signs tell us 

It is possible and imperative that we learn 

A brave and startling truth 

And when we come to it 

To the day of peacemaking 

When we release our fingers 

From fists of hostility 

And allow the pure air to cool our palms 

 

***

 We, this people, on this small and drifting planet 

Whose hands can strike with such abandon 

That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living 

Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness 

That the haughty neck is happy to bow 

And the proud back is glad to bend 

Out of such chaos, of such contradiction 

We learn that we are neither devils nor divines 

 

When we come to it 

We, this people, on this wayward, floating body 

Created on this earth, of this earth 

Have the power to fashion for this earth 

A climate where every man and every woman 

Can live freely without sanctimonious piety 

Without crippling fear 

 

When we come to it 

We must confess that we are the possible 

We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world 

That is when, and only when 

We come to it.

 

~ Maya Angelou ~

 

 

 

(A Brave and Startling Truth)

 

We're They Hands Would They Flower, Rob Schlegel

Were They Hands Would They Flower   Rob Schlegel

Why are you grieving? Because the others are grieving. You are not compelled to grieve independently? The grass needs raking. The grass? The leaves. I will build a fence to keep them from the sea. Then will you help the others? Tollers ring bells even the dead can hear, a ringing such that I am bound to. And the leaves? When they are taken by the waves I give them names, desiring in this act a homecoming to which I am constantly denied on account of other people’s prayers.

Still I Rise, Maya Angelou

Still I Rise   Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise

Dirty Face, Shel Silverstein

Dirty Face

BY SHEL SILVERSTEIN

Where did you get such a dirty face,

My darling dirty-faced child?

 

I got it from crawling along in the dirt

And biting two buttons off Jeremy's shirt.

I got it from chewing the roots of a rose

And digging for clams in the yard with my nose.

I got it from peeking into a dark cave

And painting myself like a Navajo brave.

I got it from playing with coal in the bin

And signing my name in cement with my chin.

I got if from rolling around on the rug

And giving the horrible dog a big hug.

I got it from finding a lost silver mine

And eating sweet blackberries right off the vine.

I got it from ice cream and wrestling and tears

And from having more fun than you've had in years.