damn all naysayers

Damn all naysayers and speak the truth.

You need not hide any longer.

Roll the stone away and exit the tomb --

Just like Jesus. Remove that mask

and toss it over your shoulder as you go.

Now you may use the name

that you have chosen for yourself.

Now you may live

how your heart tells you to live.

Damn all naysayers and speak the truth.

be bold in thought and deed,

and trust your instincts, always,

even when your instincts might be wrong.

-- especially when your instincts might be wrong.

Failure is beautiful, failure is freedom.

Hide no longer. Walk into the light.

Damn them all, you're free.

-

May there be enough light to see your footsteps in the darkness. May be there be enough sound for music and speech -- and laughter. May hunger and sickness become strangers to you. This I pray.

-

Can this be done in seven days?

Build a life-sized model of this planet

that we stand upon.

Use soil and water and fur.

Use claws and hooves and roots.

Add oceans and mountains that reach

as far as the eye can see and then some.

Add a desert that glows like a diamond

under the sad loveliness of the moonlight.

Add a god or two, or don't. That doesn't matter.

I’ll wait here in the empty fields and pray

and watch the soft rain fall while you work.

I’ll focus on my breath and hold you

in my heart, for you glow like a diamond, too.

-

james lee jobe 

Only that which does not teach, which does not cry out, which does not persuade, which does not condescend, which does not explain, is irresistible. 

William Butler Yeats 

Against the ruin of the world, there is only one defense; the creative act. 

Kenneth Rexroth

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking.

Adyashanti

LINK: My First Black Nature Poem, by Latasha N. Nevada Diggs

LINK: A Brief But Spectacular take on the power of poetry (PBS)

A poem by KENNETH REXROTH (1905-1982)

-The Bad Old Days-

The summer of nineteen eighteen   

I read The Jungle and The

Research Magnificent. That fall   

My father died and my aunt   

Took me to Chicago to live.   

The first thing I did was to take   

A streetcar to the stockyards.   

In the winter afternoon,   

Gritty and fetid, I walked

Through the filthy snow, through the   

Squalid streets, looking shyly   

Into the people’s faces,

Those who were home in the daytime.   

Debauched and exhausted faces,   

Starved and looted brains, faces   

Like the faces in the senile   

And insane wards of charity   

Hospitals. Predatory

Faces of little children.

Then as the soiled twilight darkened,   

Under the green gas lamps, and the   

Sputtering purple arc lamps,   

The faces of the men coming

Home from work, some still alive with   

The last pulse of hope or courage,   

Some sly and bitter, some smart and   

Silly, most of them already   

Broken and empty, no life,   

Only blinding tiredness, worse   

Than any tired animal.   

The sour smells of a thousand   

Suppers of fried potatoes and   

Fried cabbage bled into the street.   

I was giddy and sick, and out   

Of my misery I felt rising   

A terrible anger and out

Of the anger, an absolute vow.   

Today the evil is clean

And prosperous, but it is   

Everywhere, you don’t have to   

Take a streetcar to find it,

And it is the same evil.

And the misery, and the

Anger, and the vow are the same.

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jlj