Martin Luther King Jr. Day

In honor of one of the greatest men to ever live on this earth, I have a poem by Langston Hughes that I feel is a accurate representation of what Dr. King believed in. "I do not need freedom when I'm dead/I cannot live on tomorrow's bread." We must love each other now, not in the future or in the past - now. I find it fascinating and quite sad that a poem like this one can still ring true years after it was written. Enjoy and much love!!

Democracy

Democracy will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.

I have as much right
As the other fellow has
To stand
On my two feet
And own the land.

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I'm dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow's bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted
In a great need.

I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

Langston Hughes

Disaster relief in Haiti

As everyone probably already knows, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 ripped through Haiti and parts of the Dominican Republic Tuesday, leaving Port au Prince and Jacmel (two major cities in Haiti) in desperate states of need, along with many other people throughout the country. Early estimates guess more than 3 million people will be directly affected by this horrific tragedy and hundreds of thousands could lose their lives.

I doubt anybody will find this post, but I have to put this out there just in case anyone happens to stumble across it.

PLEASE donate money to a reliable relief effort in this disastrous time. Some of the better ones I have come across include:

- Doctors Without Borders

- UNICEF

- CARE

- Red Cross

- Yele Haiti Foundation

- Save the Children

- World Vision

Please, donate $5, $10, $20 - Whatever you have will help. We can do this. We can make a difference in these peoples' lives.

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks was an absolutely phenomenal poet with an equally phenomenal background. Unfortunately, she died in 2000, but in her 80+ years on this earth, she left us (in my humble opinion) some of the most important poetry and art in the 20th century. Brooks grew up in Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s - not exactly the easiest time for black women in America. In her work, Brooks broke barriers that many thought would never be broken. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for he book entitled Annie Allen. In 1968, she was named the Poet Laureate of Illinois. At a turbulent time in rapidly changing American social and political culture, Brooks was able to break down the illusion that minorities were not capable of high intellectual thought and groundbreaking creativity.

Aside from all of these accolades from critics and readers, Brooks is simply put an amazing poet, and one who every single person on this earth should have the pleasure of experiencing. Here is an short sample of her work form The Bean Eaters (1960). Also, you can check out Gwendolyn's page on poets.org. Enjoy! :)

The Bean Eaters
They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away. And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that is full of beads and receipts and dolls and cloths, tobacco crumbs, vases and fringes.

I'm back!

And in Turku, Finland! I took a break from blogging and other related activities to enjoy the holidays with my family and friends (who I already miss dearly!). I have not actually had a chance to get out into the city, as today has been a day of rest after a series of flights and long waits in airports. Tonight I will go to the city, and hopefully have some pictures available soon on my Facebook account. In the spirit of arriving in Finland, I thought I would provide a poem from a modern Finnish poet named Risto Rasa. Most of the Finnish poems I have looked at are simple and a lot shorter than poetry in the states. A lot of the modern poem I have looked are observatory and less than 5 lines. These translations were found alongside the Finnish originals at http://www.luminarium.org/. Much love!

My Best Friend

My best friend
At one time was a girl.
We tried to meet so nobody would see
And we walked someplace
Peaceful to play.
We made ranches:
From pebbles, fences and stalls,
From sticks and pinecones, cows
And lots of horses;
We were going to be horse ranchers in the West.
We returned home by different routes,
I casually rejoining the other boys
To play boys' games.
When she got glasses,
I was right there, jeering along with the others.

- Risto Rasa -

San Francisco poetry - Kim Addonizio

Finally, Maddie and I made it to San Francisco! I never thought it would actually happen, but here we are in this amazing city for a week. And what do I keep thinking about? Yup, you guessed it - poetry. We visited the famous City Lights Bookstore for a little while yesterday (we plan to go back), and it just blew my mind. The store is so small and tucked away in a small corner building near Chinatown, but the charm and intimacy I felt upon entering was unmistakable. Without a doubt, this will be one of my favorite places visited when I reflect on this trip. While I was there, on the second floor (the poetry floor!), I made it about halfway through the A's before we decided to head back to the hotel. I found a poet from the bay area named Kim Addonizio. She also had a fiction book on the shelves. She is on poets.org, so check her out. I thought her poetry was beautiful. Here is a selection from her book What is This Thing Called Love: Poems.

Stolen Moments


What happened, happened once. So now it’s best
in memory—an orange he sliced: the skin
unbroken, then the knife, the chilled wedge
lifted to my mouth, his mouth, the thin
membrane between us, the exquisite orange,
tongue, orange, my nakedness and his,
the way he pushed me up against the fridge—
Now I get to feel his hands again, the kiss
that didn’t last, but sent some neural twin
flashing wildly through the cortex. Love’s
merciless, the way it travels in
and keeps emitting light. Beside the stove
we ate an orange. And there were purple flowers
on the table. And we still had hours.

An Old Mini-Essay I Wrote...

I found this essay the other day, and some of the things I wrote are coming back to me, almost cyclically, in the way I'm trying to live my life. It's called Life As Seen Through the Eyes of Poetry. Very lame, but I'm always terrible with titles. Enjoy! Much love :)

A poem can come from any thing, any place and any person; maybe that's what I love so much about poetry. A verse can be confined to an aesthetic scene in nature as much as consciousness can be confined to a series of black and white snapshots indicating one's identity. Poetry is ingrained into our senses. It doesn't matter if you know how to put it on paper or understand the difference between a cinquain and a haiku. We all see, hear, smell, taste and touch poems every day. In fact, our consciousness itself sometimes seems to be one mesmerizing, intricate series of poetry.

Think about the way you look at a loved one, whether this person is a sibling, parent, lover or friend (or even a random person you happen to pass on the street, if you see such a person as a loved one). Does something about this person strike a chord within you each time you cross his or her path? Although I am presenting only one example, it is an example of poetry. Love, happiness, anger, art, peace, hatred, sex, money, hunger, drugs, religion, politics, sports, pain, music, freedom, oppression, history, earth, the unknown: ALL of it is poetry being written in one form or another. We walk, talk and breathe through intertwined landscapes of it every moment.

There are no rules concerning the autonomy of one's consciousness. That being said, my developing understanding of the boundless horizons of poetry (which could simply be referred to as art, as well) continues to lead me back to recurring ideas about the nature and evolution of humanity. These repeated notions can be explained by starting on a local and even personal level.

I love my family. There is simply no doubt about it. I almost selfishly want them all to defy the cycle of life and live to see progress and the changes that will eventually be made to make the world a more healthy and peaceful one. I have recently come to understand what this love means to me, as well as to the rest of my family. It means kindness, support, happiness, compassion, intellectual stimulation, etc. My family is the primary source of all these wonderful things in my life.

Simply put, I want ALL people to sense (in the most broad interpretation of the word) the beautiful poetry of this symbiotic relationship. I want ALL people to experience the love and peace that I feel when I'm with my own family. Some people would like our relations with other people, groups, nations, etc. to be more complicated than this simple notion of complete compassion. I don't believe we have to make our inherently positive social relationships into complex webs leading to deceitful self-interest that detracts from our true connections with one another.

Conversely, I have experienced limited amounts of hate. I have used hateful words toward people whom I believed to be wrong, and I have experienced the same from others. What I am beginning to realize is how much such hatred hurts on a personal level and breeds separation on a communal level. I want nobody to experience hate. I would much rather see and hear about all people feeling love and acceptance instead of hate and intolerance. I want people to feel the power of this type of poetry for the stinging indictment it brings upon such negative parts of humanity that we must overcome.

I, like any other person, struggle with emotions. But one thing I do understand about emotions is how powerful and meaningful they are to me. Consequently, I also understand that EACH individual's emotions add powerful and substantial meaning to that person's life. I have no desire to ever diminish a person's feeling of emotional, physical, psychological or spiritual self-worth. We do this so often as a species by claiming superiority and professing absolute righteousness (among other things).

I feel like many of my notes are redundant. I have exhausted my repertoire of unpolished writing skills, trying desperately to connect on some level with even one person who happens to stumble upon my unofficial collection of work. Simply put, compassion and open-mindedness are the two keys to a revolution of the mind, heart and soul. If we could remove our unquenchable desire for something better and just BE those two things, then human beings are still capable of some pretty amazing accomplishments in the future.

“Let us enjoy breathing together.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Mary Oliver...Again

I know, I know...not fair to the vast numbers of other poets out there. But Mary Oliver is speaking to me lately. It might be that humble Zen thing she has going on in her poetry, or it might be that she is just that good. So one more Mary Oliver Poem, and then I'll find something else! Much love :)

Hum

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them-haven't you?—
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered-so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.