From time to time a poem

WILD GEESE, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Read carefully before you send angry internal mail please...
____

REFUGEES, by Brian Bilston

They have no need of our help
So do not tell me
These haggard faces could belong to you or me
Should life have dealt a different hand
We need to see them for who they really are
Chancers and scroungers
Layabouts and loungers
With bombs up their sleeves
Cut-throats and thieves
They are not
Welcome here
We should make them
Go back to where they came from
They cannot
Share our food
Share our homes
Share our countries
Instead let us
Build a wall to keep them out
It is not okay to say
These are people just like us
A place should only belong to those who are born there
Do not be so stupid to think that
The world can be looked at another way

(now read from bottom to top)

Haiku by Patricia Davis (from today's Haikuniverse):

low buzz
the bee's universe
hums through thyme

Art is pointless, Jasmine Kay Uy

Compare reading the left side, then the left and right together. Have a creative day, temple

Fatally Incompatible

He could not hold me
if it was all
he ever wanted

we never met
we never will

Worlds apart
and ever drifting
further and further

While i cling to the threads
of what i wanted us to be

~Serenity

The Simple Things
by Edgar A. Guest

I would not be too wise--so very wise
That I must sneer at simple songs and creeds,
And let the glare of wisdom blind my eyes
To humble people and their humble needs.

I would not care to climb so high that I
Could never hear the children at their play,
Could only see the people passing by,
And never hear the cheering words they say.

I would not know too much--too much to smile
At trivial errors of the heart and hand,
Nor be too proud to play the friend the while,
Nor cease to help and know and understand.

I would not care to sit upon a throne,
Or build my house upon a mountain-top,
Where I must dwell in glory all alone
And never friend come in or poor man stop.

God grant that I may live upon this earth
And face the tasks which every morning brings
And never lose the glory and the worth
Of humble service and the simple things.

Finished today from the draft of my novel: A Character Talks About Rationality at a Bar

People promote reasoning à la carte; for rationality is not the start.
From the non-rational we have feeling; emotions are facts, and they're revealing,
these we rationalise and justify; our feelings with reasoning do ally.
The want to rationalise is desire; they both, the non-and-rational, require,
one another, they arise mutually; they're distinct, two sides of the same coin, see?
Rationalising what's not rational; is the best way to be irrational.
Why do you want to drink?, because it's fun; that's feeling, we also get to know one,
another, this is a reason we use. The quickest way the rational will lose,
is when it grapples the non-rational; why some feeling?, this ideational,
decoding of our experience can't; with rational comprehension supplant,
our qualitative existence, in this; rational thinking falls in an abyss.
It's like taking and breaking a squiggle; with a net of squares, thus on this wiggle,
order is imposed onto chaos and; likewise the rational, though thinking grand, thinks it answers itself, but a model; always subtracts from the world we noddle

Prayer is like watching for the
Kingfisher. All you can do is
Be there where he is like to appear, and
Wait.
Often nothing much happens;
There is space, silence and
Expectancy.
No visible signs, only the
Knowledge that he’s been there
And may come again.
Seeing or not seeing cease to matter,
You have been prepared
But when you’ve almost stopped
Expecting it, a flash of brightness
Gives encouragement.

Ann Lewin - Waiting for the Kingfisher, Disclosure

Sinking beneath falling inside
A warm embrace, a familiar path,
Well travelled
Pain, its hot and bright
Striking bursts of light
Darkness seeps out
To splatter
It engulfs the moment
Shields your eyes
Colours the world.
And your heart stops.
A clock run down
A stalled train
A puff of smoke
A line
Chasing that dragon into the emptiness that is your mind, your heart, your soul
Craving
Emptiness
Craving
Nothingness
Craving
Eternal sleep
Just a little pain
Then no more...
No more

The Illustrated Girl
Fox1

The illustrated girl sat on the step,
as I was walking by my eyes fixed kept
staring wide open on two dice drawn
on her back, almost posing for me, gone
was my sense of time, dice began ticking
under the hand of a voluptuous blonde sitting
in glass, smiling at me, then winking,
avoiding a flirt with an artist rendition
of fantasy, I try to turn, but fixed intuition,
I must look further into the illustration.

Now all I see is this etching on the back,
of a beautiful girl, her back muscles track
with my steadfast eyes never twitching
away, moving the scenes as stories bewitching
unfold before me, pulling me in to her
tempting me, to the blonde in the glass stir
the dice, I fall into the story, casino sounds
and laughter seep into my mind, bounds
to Vegas fantasy drunken gamblers on
hot showgirls flaunting over money gone.

The blonde in the glass tells me to enter
into her world and let go of my center,
to embrace her body drenched in drinking,
as the dice rolls on the long table clicking.
She holds me tight, my breath strains
under her strong embrace, try to maintain
composure, try to escape, jolted tear
back to the steps at the park where I stare
at the girl's toned back, drawings of dice
now silent and still in the curious entice.
I walk to see the illustrated girl's face
warm smile greeting, my reluctant embrace.

Fox1