No One's Slave

no one's slave i am
no one's master
no one's slave i am
no one's master
on my grave they will
write this after i am gone
i will be gone
and my flesh will go to the earth it lived on
breath will go to the air it lived from
i am through with the pain of my lying
had my fill of the cruelty and crying
paid my dues
in the land where the dying desert grows
& now i know
i am looking out for a new perspective
listening out for a new directive
going back to the land of my mothers
i will walk with my sisters and brothers
we will share what is good for each other in our love
it is a love
it is a love that brings you the invitation
listen now to my invocation
mother earth i was nearly the end of you
please accept my desire to be friends with you
now i know just how much i depend on you for life
you are my life
you are that life that grows in the flesh i'm weaving
life that blows in the air i'm breathing
i'm as strong as a tree on a mountain
free and full as a fresh flowing fountain
bright and clear as the stars beyond
shining in the night
i am that light
i am the light that shines in a million people
in my sight every life is equal
no one's slave i am no ones master
no one's slave i am no one's master
on my grave
they will write this
after i am gone
i will be gone

lyrics by theo simon

Billy Collins

forgetfulness


now and then


the dead


some days


walking across the atlantic


budapest


the best cigarette


hunger


More:

man in space

sweet talk

shoveling snow with the buddha

a history of weather

Enlightenment is

by Jack Kerouac

Enlightenment is: do what
you want
eat what there is
Alright, I'm sick of this
enlightenment - now I'm
dumb again - the
delicate blue morning
sky thru the tree.

Inscription for a War

by A.D. Hope

“Stranger, go tell the Spartans we died here obedient to their commands.”
— Inscription at Thermopylae

Linger not, stranger. Shed no tear.
Go back to those who sent us here.
We are the young they drafted out
To wars their folly brought about.
Go tell those old men, safe in bed,
We took their orders and are dead.

Song of a German Mother

by Bertolt Brecht

I saw you wearing your brown shirt.
I should have protested aloud.
For I did not know what I now know:
It was your burial shroud.

We Will All Go Together When We Go

by Tom Lehrer
Slow and sad

When you attend a funeral,
It is sad to think that suneral...
Later those you love will do the same for you.
And you may have thought it tragic,
Not to mention other agic...
Tives, to think of all the weeping they will do.
But don’t you worry!

Faster, with gusto

No more ashes! No more sackcloth!
And an arm band made of black cloth
Will some day nevermore adorn a sleeve!
For if the bomb that drops on you
Gets your friends and neighbors too,
There’ll be nobody left behind to grieve!

Rapidly, with happy excitement

And we will all go together when we go!
What a comforting fact that is to know!
Universal bereavement:
An inspiring achievement!
Yes, we will all go together when we go!

We will all go together when we go!
All suffused with an incandescent glow!
No one will have the endurance
To collect on his insurance;
Lloyd’s of London will be loaded when they go!

Oh we will all fry together when we fry!
We’ll be french fried potatoes by and by!
There will be no more misery
When the world is our rotisserie!
Yes, we will all fry together when we fry!

And we will all bake together when we bake!
There’ll be nobody present at the wake!
With complete participation
In that grand incineration:
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak!

Oh we will all char together when we char!
And let there be no moaning of the bar!
Just sing out a Te Deum
When you see that I.C.B.M.
And the party will be come-as-you-are!

Oh, we will all burn together when we burn!
There’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn!
When it’s time for the fallout
And Saint Peter calls us all out,
We’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn!

You will all go directly to your respective Valhallas;
Go directly, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollahs!
And we will all go together when we go!
Every Hottentot and every Eskimo!
When the air becomes uranious,
We will all go simultaneous!
Yes, we all will go together
When we all go together,
Yes we all will go together when we go!

Some Further Words

by Wendell Berry

Let me be plain with you, dear reader.
I am an old-fashioned man. I like
the world of nature despite its mortal
dangers. I like the domestic world
of humans, so long as it pays its debts
to the natural world, and keeps its bounds.
I like the promise of Heaven. My purpose
is a language that can repay just thanks
and honor for those gifts, a tongue
set free from fashionable lies.

Neither this world nor any of its places
is an "environment." And a house
for sale is not a "home." Economics
is not "science," nor "information" knowledge.
A knave with a degree is a knave. A fool
in a public office is not a "leader."
A rich thief is a thief. And the ghost
of Arthur Moore, who taught me Chaucer,
returns in the night to say again:
"Let me tell you something, boy.
An intellectual whore is a whore."

The world is babbled to pieces after
the divorce of things from their names.
Ceaseless preparation for war
is not peace. Health is not procured
by sale of medication, or purity
by the addition of poison. Science
at the bidding of the corporations
is knowledge reduced to merchandise;
it is a whoredom of the mind,
and so is the art that calls this "progress."
So is the cowardice that calls it "inevitable."

I think the issues of "identity" mostly
are poppycock. We are what we have done,
which includes our promises, includes
our hopes, but promises first. I know
a "fetus" is a human child.
I loved my children from the time
they were conceived, having loved
their mother, who loved them
from the time they were conceived
and before. Who are we to say
the world did not begin in love?

I would like to die in love as I was born,
and as myself of life impoverished go
into the love all flesh begins
and ends in. I don't like machines,
which are neither mortal nor immortal,
though I am constrained to use them.
(Thus the age perfects its clench.)
Some day they will be gone, and that
will be a glad and a holy day.
I mean the dire machines that run
by burning the world's body and
its breath. When I see an airplane
fuming through the once-pure sky
or a vehicle of the outer space
with its little inner space
imitating a star at night, I say,
"Get out of there!" as I would speak
to a fox or a thief in the henhouse.
When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, "Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!" I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, and ruin.

My purpose is a language that can make us whole,
though mortal, ignorant, and small.
The world is whole beyond human knowing.
The body's life is its own, untouched
by the little clockwork of explanation.
I approve of death, when it comes in time
to the old. I don't want to live
on mortal terms forever, or survive
an hour as a cooling stew of pieces
of other people. I don't believe that life
or knowledge can be given by machines.
The machine economy has set afire
the household of the human soul,
and all the creatures are burning within it.

"Intellectual property" names
the deed by which the mind is bought
and sold, the world enslaved. We
who do not own ourselves, being free,
own by theft what belongs to God,
to the living world, and equally
to us all. Or how can we own a part
of what we only can possess
entirely? Life is a gift we have
only by giving it back again.
Let us agree: "the laborer is worthy
of his hire," but he cannot own what he knows,
which must be freely told, or labor
dies with the laborer. The farmer
is worthy of the harvest made
in time, but he must leave the light
by which he planted, grew, and reaped,
the seed immortal in mortality,
freely to the time to come. The land
too he keeps by giving it up,
as the thinker receives and gives a thought,
as the singer sings in the common air.

I don't believe that "scientific genius"
in its naive assertions of power
is equal either to nature or
to human culture. Its thoughtless invasions
of the nuclei of atoms and cells
and this world's every habitation
have not brought us to the light
but sent us wandering farther through
the dark. Nor do I believe
"artistic genius" is the possession
of any artist. No one has made
the art by which one makes the works
of art. Each one who speaks speaks
as a convocation. We live as councils
of ghosts. It is not "human genius"
that makes us human, but an old love,
an old intelligence of the heart
we gather to us from the world,
from the creatures, from the angels
of inspiration, from the dead--
an intelligence merely nonexistent
to those who do not have it, but --
to those who have it more dear than life.

And just as tenderly to be known
are the affections that make a woman and a man
their household and their homeland one.
These too, though known, cannot be told
to those who do not know them, and fewer
of us learn them, year by year.
These affections are leaving the world
like the colors of extinct birds,
like the songs of a dead language.

Think of the genius of the animals,
every one truly what it is:
gnat, fox, minnow, swallow, each made
of light and luminous within itself.
They know (better than we do) how
to live in the places where they live.
And so I would like to be a true
human being, dear reader-a choice
not altogether possible now.
But this is what I'm for, the side
I'm on. And this is what you should
expect of me, as I expect it of
myself, though for realization we
may wait a thousand or a million years.

May-August, 2001
Berry, Wendell. "Some Further Words." American Poetry Review May/Jun 2002

The Blue-Flag In The Bog

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,
And 'twas God who walked ahead;
Yet I wept along the road,
Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,
"All you things my eyes have kissed,
Fare you well! We meet no more,
Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise and fall
All day long above the fire!"—
Red with heat was every wall,
Rough with heat was every wire—

"Fare you well, you little winds
That the flying embers chase!
Fare you well, you shuddering day,
With your hands before your face!

And, ah, blackened by strange blight,
Or to a false sun unfurled,
Now forevermore goodbye,
All the gardens in the world!

On the windless hills of Heaven,
That I have no wish to see,
White, eternal lilies stand,
By a lake of ebony.

But the Earth forevermore
Is a place where nothing grows,—
Dawn will come, and no bud break;
Evening, and no blossom close.

Spring will come, and wander slow
Over an indifferent land,
Stand beside an empty creek,
Hold a dead seed in her hand."

God had called us, and we came,
But the blessed road I trod
Was a bitter road to me,
And at heart I questioned God.

"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the heart would most desire,
Held Earth naught save souls of sinners
Worth the saving from a fire?

Withered grass,—the wasted growing!
Aimless ache of laden boughs!"
Little things God had forgotten
Called me, from my burning house.

"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the eye could ask to see,
All the things I ever knew
Are this blaze in back of me."

"Though in Heaven," I said, "be all
That the ear could think to lack,
All the things I ever knew
Are this roaring at my back."

It was God who walked ahead,
Like a shepherd to the fold;
In his footsteps fared the weak,
And the weary and the old,

Glad enough of gladness over,
Ready for the peace to be,—
But a thing God had forgotten
Was the growing bones of me.

And I drew a bit apart,
And I lagged a bit behind,
And I thought on Peace Eternal,
Lest He look into my mind:

And I gazed upon the sky,
And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—
And I slipped away like water
Through the fingers of the blest!

All their eyes were fixed on Glory,
Not a glance brushed over me;
"Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Up the road,—and I was free.

And my heart rose like a freshet,
And it swept me on before,
Giddy as a whirling stick,
Till I felt the earth once more.

All the earth was charred and black,
Fire had swept from pole to pole;
And the bottom of the sea
Was as brittle as a bowl;

And the timbered mountain-top
Was as naked as a skull,—
Nothing left, nothing left,
Of the Earth so beautiful!

"Earth," I said, "how can I leave you?"
"You are all I have," I said;
"What is left to take my mind up,
Living always, and you dead?"

"Speak!" I said, "Oh, tell me something!
Make a sign that I can see!
For a keepsake! To keep always!
Quick!—before God misses me!"

And I listened for a voice;—
But my heart was all I heard;
Not a screech-owl, not a loon,
Not a tree-toad said a word.

And I waited for a sign;—
Coals and cinders, nothing more;
And a little cloud of smoke
Floating on a valley floor.

And I peered into the smoke
Till it rotted, like a fog:—
There, encompassed round by fire,
Stood a blue-flag in a bog!

Little flames came wading out,
Straining, straining towards its stem,
But it was so blue and tall
That it scorned to think of them!

Red and thirsty were their tongues,
As the tongues of wolves must be,
But it was so blue and tall—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!

All my heart became a tear,
All my soul became a tower,
Never loved I anything
As I loved that tall blue flower!

It was all the little boats
That had ever sailed the sea,
It was all the little books
That had gone to school with me;

On its roots like iron claws
Rearing up so blue and tall,—
It was all the gallant Earth
With its back against a wall!

In a breath, ere I had breathed,—
Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—
I was kneeling at its side,
And it leaned its head on me!

Crumbling stones and sliding sand
Is the road to Heaven now;
Icy at my straining knees
Drags the awful under-tow;

Soon but stepping-stones of dust
Will the road to Heaven be,—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!

"There—there, my blue-flag flower;
Hush—hush—go to sleep;
That is only God you hear,
Counting up His folded sheep!

Lullabye—lullabye—
That is only God that calls,
Missing me, seeking me,
Ere the road to nothing falls!

He will set His mighty feet
Firmly on the sliding sand;
Like a little frightened bird
I will creep into His hand;

I will tell Him all my grief,
I will tell Him all my sin;
He will give me half His robe
For a cloak to wrap you in.

Lullabye—lullabye—"
Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
Reach a hand and rescue me!

Ah, the voice of love at last!
Lo, at last the face of light!
And the whole of His white robe
For a cloak against the night!

And upon my heart asleep
All the things I ever knew!—
"Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,
For a flower so tall and blue?"

All's well and all's well!
Gay the lights of Heaven show!
In some moist and Heavenly place
We will set it out to grow.

Earth

by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn’t explode of itself," said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air.
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

The Path By The Creek

by Madison Julius Cawein, 1865-1914

THERE is a path that leads
Through purple iron-weeds,
By button-bush and mallow
Along a creek;
A path that wildflowers hallow,
That wild birds seek;
Roofed thick with eglantine
And grape and trumpet-vine.
This side, blackberries sweet
Glow cobalt in the heat;
That side, a creamy yellow,
In summertime
The pawpaws slowly mellow;
And autumn's prime
Strews red the Chickasaw,
Persimmon brown and haw.

The glittering dragon-fly,
A wingéd flash, goes by;
And tawny wasp and hornet
Seem gleams that drone;
The beetle, like a garnet,
Slips from the stone;
And butterflies float there,
Spangling with gold the air.
Here the brown thrashers hide,
The chat and cat-bird chide;
The blue kingfisher houses
Above the stream,
And here the heron drowses
Lost in his dream;
The vireo's flitting note
Haunts all the wild remote.

And now a cow's slow bell
Tinkles along the dell;
Where breeze-dropped petals winnow
From blossomy limbs
On waters, where the minnow,
Faint-twinkling, swims;
Where, in the root-arched shade,
Slim prisms of light are laid.
When in the tangled thorn
The new-moon hangs a horn,
Or, 'mid the sunset's islands,
Guides a canoe,
The brown owl in the silence
Calls, and the dew
Beads here its orbs of damp,
Each one a firefly lamp.
Then when the night is still
Here sings the whippoorwill;
And stealthy sounds of crickets,
And winds that pass,
Whispering, through bramble thickets
Along the grass,
Faint with far scents of hay,
Seem feet of dreams astray.
And where the water shines
Dark through tree-twisted vines,
Some water-spirit, dreaming,
Braids in her hair
A star's reflection; seeming
A jewel there;
While all the sweet night long
Ripples her quiet song.

Would I could imitate,
O path, thy happy state!
Making my life all beauty,
All bloom and beam;
Knowing no other duty
Than just to dream,
And far from pain and woe
Lead feet that come and go.
Leading to calm content,
O'er ways the Master went,
Through lowly things and humble,
To peace and love;
Teaching the lives that stumble
To look above,
Forget the world of toil
And all its sad turmoil.

quality

"All that is gold does not glitter.
Not all those who wander are lost.
The old that is strong does not wither.
Deep roots are not reached by the frost."
-- J.R.R. Tolkien

You scored as White Lighter. You are a White Lighter! You seek the dawning of the New Age and the raising of the consciousness of mankind (which of course happens in 2012, and all in one day). You seek only to do good, and are determined to cut out that pesky dark side once and for all. You know your own role in the coming Earth Changes is important, and you must let all know so they know whom to turn to at that crucial moment! White Lighter 80% Otherkin 75% Mystic 70% True Alternative 65% Aimless Eclectic 60% Magician 40% Discordian 40% Spiritualist 25% What Subversive Alternative Paradigm Are You? created with QuizFarm.com

If Nothing Breaks

by Catherine Wiley, 45 years old

It is not torture if nothing breaks
if the dog's teeth click without meeting skin
if the bruise is blue but does not turn yellow
if the bile is yellow but does not turn green
if the bone leaves the socket without piercing skin
if eyeballs roll to white but stay inside the sockets
if eyelids close but the tears number less than 20
if electrodes dangle but are not connected
if the noose is never tightened
if pain turns to fear but fear does not turn to pain
if screams do not sound like songs
if we understand they'd do the same or worse to us
if imagination offers something else
if no one takes a picture
if no one writes it down
if no one puts it up online
if no one says no

some snippets from Vachel Lindsay, dreamer

St. Francis of Assisi

Would I might wake St. Francis in you all,
Brother of birds and trees, God’s Troubadour,
Blinded with weeping for the sad and poor;
Our wealth undone, all strict Franciscan men,
Come, let us chant the canticle again
Of mother earth and the enduring sun.
God make each soul the lonely leper’s slave;
God make us saints, and brave.

Buddha

Would that by Hindu magic we became
Dark monks of jeweled India long ago,
Sitting at Prince Siddartha’s feet to know
The foolishness of gold and love and station,
The gospel of the Great Renunciation,
The ragged cloak, the staff, the rain and sun,
The beggar’s life, with far Nirvana gleaming:
Lord, make us Buddhas, dreaming.

Lincoln

Would I might rouse the Lincoln in you all,
That which is gendered in the wilderness
From lonely prairies and God’s tenderness.
Imperial soul, star of a weedy stream,
Born where the ghosts of buffaloes still dream,
Whose spirit hoof-beats storm above his grave,
Above that breast of earth and prairie-fire —­
Fire that freed the slave.

Man in Clown Outfit

by Gretchen Mattox

He's waving a plastic pointer, stiff flag enter lot here, parking
at the edge of Lincoln--bright-yellow clown suit with bold ruffles
and floppy shoes
(the kind with stuffed toes) and from even a short distance he could be
anyone degraded selling what?, he could be, but he is a man,
clearly Mexican,
underneath the nose that honks, a black mustache, illegal alien? probably.
Like the girls in bikini tops and grass skirts outside casinos in
Las Vegas,
who say Come get your free lei (colored plastic wrap á la Hawaii), he does
what he's been told to do: on automatic, flag arm ticking like a metronome.

Underneath the painted smile is another expression--harder to place.
The urgency of traffic, who has time to care?
He takes his job seriously. On the way home, reverse route back,
he's still there waving, a swimmer treading water.

From Buddha Box, 2004, New Issues Poetry & Prose

The Key to Life

by Alexandra Haman
The Haque
01-08-2004

Life is strange
Life is bitter
Living with the knowledge that others suffer
While you are happy
Should make you think
About the way
Life is divided

Living in luxury and wealth
Should make you feel guilty
And wonder
How it comes
That all the good things
Are yours
While others have nothing
To live for

While others should pray
To die
Instead of living the life
That was imposed on them
By people who wanted
The best in life for themselves

Life should be easy
Life should be honest
Towards all the living on this planet
If honesty was the keyword
To guarantee life
Life would be different
For us all

the window, at the moment of flame

by alicia ostriker

and all this while I have been playing with toys
a toy superhighway a toy automobile a house of blocks

and all this while far off in other lands
thousands and thousands, millions and millions

you know — you see the pictures
women carrying bony infants

men sobbing over graves
buildings sculpted by explosion —

earth wasted bare and rotten
and all this while I have been shopping, I have

been let us say free
and do they hate me for it

do they hate me

Henry Lichenwalner: Living in the Middle

by Dave Etter

Here in Alliance, Illinois,
I'm living in the middle,
standing on the Courthouse lawn
in the middle of town,
in the middle of my life,
a self-confessed middlebrow,
a member of the middle class,
and of course Middle Western,
the middle, you see, the middle,
believing in the middle way,
standing here at midday
in the middle of the year,
breathing the farm-fragrant air
of Sunflower County,
in the true-blue middle
of middle America,
in the middle of my dreams.

From Alliance, Illinois, 1983, Spoon River Press

Thanatopsis

by William Cullen Bryant

To him who in the love of nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice. Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mold.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world -- with kings,
The powerful of the earth -- the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun, -- the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods -- rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. -- Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound,
Save his own dashings -- yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep -- the dead reign there alone.

So shalt thou rest -- and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men--
The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side,
By those, who in their turn, shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

Rivers of Blood Flow thru the Corporate-Spine Spin

By Diana Gwinn
8/2004

On a conveyor belt of carnage and death
Flag draped coffins glide silently by,
Hidden from view.

Sacrificial lambs fed to the false god of insatiable greed and endless war.
Endless war for endless peace.

Corporate spin zone kicked the “Vietnam Syndrome”.
No body bags this time around.

Trapped in 1984, conditioned, unthinking drones
Rest in peace in living tombs.

Wolves wrapped in red, white and blue
Battle dark skinned phantoms.
Emboldened by our silence and indifference to life
Rivers of blood flow

Rivers of blood flow thru the corporate spine
Rest in peace till the end of time.

WAKE UP!