Avoidance

 

Maria-Theodora Andrikopoulou

Avoidance is my game.

It is not a result of shame or blame

Only my name,

That keeps me away

From you.

Avoidance is my dance.

So we can change our stance, twirl, and prance

And from the side sneak a breathtaking

Glance.

Avoidance is my treat.

Succulent and delicious and sweet

Perfection of perfection,

That is what makes me

Elite.

Avoidance is my pride.

My joy, my happiness, oh how many times have I lied?

There are rules, I must not tell,

Only abide.

Avoidance is my downfall.

I twist and turn and crawl

To your feet, I only stall

What is in store for me after all.

Avoidance.

And when it comes to an end,

The game, the dance, the hatred,

All feigned to hide truth,

I bet life on death and all sacred above,

That we two children,

Are undeniably,

In love.

Francesca Redlich

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me

 

Anna Kollor

 Shadows on the wall

Noises down the hall

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Bad dogs barking loud

Big ghosts in a cloud

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Mean old Mother Goose

Lions on the loose

They don't frighten me at all

Dragons breathing flame

On my counterpane

That doesn't frighten me at all.

I go boo

Make them shoo

I make fun

Way they run

I won't cry

So they fly

I just smile

They go wild

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Tough guys fight

All alone at night

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Panthers in the park

Strangers in the dark

No, they don't frighten me at all.

That new classroom where

Boys all pull my hair

(Kissy little girls

With their hair in curls)

They don't frighten me at all.

Don't show me frogs and snakes

And listen for my scream,

If I'm afraid at all

It's only in my dreams.

I've got a magic charm

That I keep up my sleeve

I can walk the ocean floor

And never have to breathe.

Life doesn't frighten me at all

Not at all

 Not at all.

Life doesn't frighten me at all.

Maya Angelou

Busy

  

Sara Kazemi

I am busy, so busy

I don’t have time to think

I am busy, so busy

So close to the brink 

I am busy, so busy

I can’t face the demons inside

I am busy, so busy

So I can allow them to hide

I am busy, so busy

Just keeping up with life

I am busy, so busy

Trying to keep out of strife

I am busy, so busy

That’s why I don’t call

I am busy, so busy

So close to a fall

I am busy, so busy

There is no time for sleep

I am busy, so busy

That’s why I say bleep

I am busy, so busy

Please be kind whilst I am away

I am busy, so busy

It’s me, not you, who cannot stay

I can’t be controlled

But I am in a rut

You can’t make suggestions

I will just say ‘but’

So please be kind

Let me speak my mind

And one day I will reveal

What I can no longer conceal

The loss, the pain, 

the grief from the past

The sadness, the despair, 

the disappointments that last

I need your love

Your listening ear

Your kindest words

Some jolly good cheer

I just need somewhere safe

To deal with this stuff

I don’t want to fear

An unfortunate rebuff

When I find it within

Or through people who tune in

I will start to heal

And begin to be real

I might slow down

Or completely stop

For a moment

A month or even longer

I hope it doesn’t take a major disaster

To get off this train that keeps going faster

For my heart truly knows that it is just an excuse

To avoid slowing down and making a truce

To once and for all

Forgive and grieve

Everything unresolved

That is hidden in me

Little by little

I can change my pace

And find new ways

To enjoy my own space

Then I won’t be so busy

And I will have time to think

To plan what to do

Without turning pink

Harmony will return

As I find a new rhythm

With stops and starts

On my very own mission

Then one day I will look back

On my busy phase

And wonder why

I wasted so many days

Chasing, pushing, fighting, sighing

Tired, lonely and nearly crying

It’s time to stop being so busy

And live a life that’s much more cruisy!

There is no need to be perfect

Or wait until when

Live life right now

The door is open…

Accept those tears

And face those fears

Take a quick look around

To find what you have already found

 Sue Ellson

The Busyness of Life

  

Sergey Kichigin

We are too busy in the moving bus that we forget our bus stop

We are too busy in the moving train that we forget our train station

We are too busy to find happiness that we leave it behind our shadows

We are too busy to find freedom that we find the freedom in boxes

We are too busy to fly that we leave our compass

We are too busy on the journey that we forget our destiny

This busyness has left us all in the ocean of complexities

All on a journey of no return

It only takes greater will to find the anchors of hope.

Athan Oparaji 

Leisure

 

 Laura Martinez

WHAT is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare?—

No time to stand beneath the boughs,

And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

W. H. Davies

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

 

Pranab Basak

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

Rainer Maria Rilke

in, Book of Hours: Love Poems to God  

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning

 

Maria Dorota

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

   And whisper to their souls to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say

   The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,

   No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

'Twere profanation of our joys

   To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,

   Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

   Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

   (Whose soul is sense) cannot admit

Absence, because it doth remove

   Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,

   That our selves know not what it is,

Inter-assured of the mind,

   Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end where I begun.

 John Donne

Sonnet 29

 

Magnific

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare

Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower

 

Pranab Basak

Quiet friend who has come so far,

feel how your breathing makes more space around you.

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Move back and forth into the change.

What is it like, such intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

 

Rainer Maria Rilke

Ahead of all parting

 

Victor Hugo Casillas Romo

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened.

like winter, which even now is passing.

For beneath the winter is a winter so endless

that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice, and climb back singing.

Climb praying as you return to connection.

Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,

be a ringing glass that shatters as it rings.

Be. And, at the same time, know what it is not to be.

The non-being inside you allows you to vibrate

in full resonance with your world. Use it for once.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable

numbers of beings abounding in Nature,

add yourself gladly, and cancel the cost.

Rainer Maria Rilke 

In, Praise of Mortality: Rilke's Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus

On Quitting

glam

How much grit do you think you’ve got?

Can you quit a thing that you like a lot?

You may talk of pluck; it’s an easy word,

And where’er you go it is often heard;

But can you tell to a jot or guess

Just how much courage you now possess?

You may stand to trouble and keep your grin,

But have you tackled self-discipline?

Have you ever issued commands to you

To quit the things that you like to do,

And then, when tempted and sorely swayed,

Those rigid orders have you obeyed?

Don’t boast of your grit till you’ve tried it out,

Nor prate to men of your courage stout,

For it’s easy enough to retain a grin

In the face of a fight there’s a chance to win,

But the sort of grit that is good to own

Is the stuff you need when you’re all alone.

How much grit do you think you’ve got?

Can you turn from joys that you like a lot?

Have you ever tested yourself to know

How far with yourself your will can go?

If you want to know if you have grit,

Just pick out a joy that you like, and quit.

It’s bully sport and it’s open fight;

It will keep you busy both day and night;

For the toughest kind of a game you’ll find

Is to make your body obey your mind.

And you never will know what is meant by grit

Unless there’s something you’ve tried to quit.

 Edgar Albert Guest

What Life Should Be

 

Sarah Treanor

To learn while still a child

What this life is meant to be.

To know it goes beyond myself,

It’s so much more than me.

To overcome the tragedies,

To survive the hardest times.

To face those moments filled with pain,

And still, manage to be kind.

To fight for those who can’t themselves,

To always share my light.

With those who wander in the dark,

To love with all my might.

To still stand up with courage,

Though standing on my own.

To still get up and face each day,

Even when I feel alone.

To try to understand the ones

That no one cares to know.

And make them feel some value

When the world has let them go.

To be an anchor, strong and true,

That person loyal to the end.

To be a constant source of hope

To my family and my friends.

To live a life of decency,

To share my heart and soul.

To always say I’m sorry

When I’ve harmed both friend and foe.

To be proud of whom I’ve tried to be,

And this life I chose to live.

To make the most of every day

By giving all I have to give.

To me, that’s what this life should be,

To me, that’s what it’s for.

To take what God has given me

And make it so much more

To live a life that matters,

To be someone of great worth.

To love and be loved in return

And make my mark on Earth.

Pat A. Fleming

Inner Peace

 

StockCake

I ask the moth how to live and it tells me of the perfect moon

I ask the worm how to live and it tells me of the perfect root

I ask the bird how to live and it tells me of the worm

I ask the trees and they say: child, remain deep

rooted, I ask the bees and they say: kid, never settle. Dance.

Where should I be then, and how should I go? I ask.

I ask the snail that has made a home in my shoe

I ask the skyscraper that houses people like snails

I ask the black eye of the storm, chase my tail,

talk back to the wind, I walk the length of the pier

until I am worn and the pier unchanged, as the sea dances

and remains in place.

One day you will stumble upon the stillness

of the woods after rain, upon that vast and gentle

conversation, sky to earth, and you will forget to ask.

One day you will hold the curve of your own face

with the same reverence you hold for stars, close your eyes,

say spontaneously, silently:        Here.

                                                    A dancing light.

                                                    A locked room.

Amy Wolstenholme

Freedom

 

Dunca Daniel

Freedom from fear is the freedom

I claim for you my motherland!

Freedom from the burden of the ages, bending your head,

breaking your back, blinding your eyes to the beckoning

call of the future;

Freedom from the shackles of slumber wherewith

you fasten yourself in night's stillness,

mistrusting the star that speaks of truth's adventurous paths;

freedom from the anarchy of destiny

whole sails are weakly yielded to the blind uncertain winds,

and the helm to a hand ever rigid and cold as death.

Freedom from the insult of dwelling in a puppet's world,

where movements are started through brainless wires,

repeated through mindless habits,

where figures wait with patience and obedience for the

master of show,

to be stirred into a mimicry of life.

Rabindranath Tagore

No One Told Me

 

shutterstock

 

No one told me

it would lead to this.

No one said

there would be secrets

I would not want to know.

No one told me about seeing,

seeing brought me

loss and a darkness I could not hold.

No one told me about writing

or speaking.

Speaking and writing poetry

I unsheathed the sharp edge

of experience that led me here.

No one told me

it could not be put away.

I was told once, only,

in a whisper,

“The blade is so sharp—

It cuts things together

—not apart.”

This is no comfort.

My future is full of blood,

from being blindfold,

hands outstretched,

feeling a way along its firm edge.

David Whyte