I was born for Nebraska
I was born for the Massif Central
I was born for the mountain top shrine
with nothing but the music of nature
to distract me
I was born for the weekly news
on some sleepy island in the Pacific
I was born for Covent Garden
The Pangea of Culture
New Orleans trumpets;
the flamenco player
twisting lime into his drink
I was born for the cotton fields
I was born for the salt marsh
for the tug-boat all out of fresh water
I was born for the Ganges
I was born in the shadow of the Hajj
I was born for the G-dless land
of Death Valley
the streets of Harlem
I was born into the spirit
of old Afghanistan
I was born on the false strings
of liberated women-

I was born on a stage of puppets
a backdrop of Glaswegian tenements
or of fjords unvisited
beside Scandinavian seas
I was born for Rugby Cement
I was born to be fixed in place
This wandering mind
These restless legs
I was born with a travelling soul
in a town where I can barely walk

montana yellow dress, the highway looked bitter sunday fit.
she knew the land given,
land taken,
thunder walking west.
met a friend. stopped to talk.
he was a holy kid or dog, both songs of kindness.
trickster cool mountain calf
waiting for the water promenade.
deep creek good old boy swimming smiles,
rose up
and shot like bang with the buzzard sioux feathers.
truth is low clouds flashing, dreams burst
in the earth room.
doused sheets of chaparral and canyon grass
a pretty laughing bird.
wet things watch the water-log, and a frog spits whiskey.
charter bus barefoot leather and a father says kids, smell the hammer,
see the hammer touch its words into the world.
work-tale living, fools bled.
river gal cut, oh
fishing.

To my fellow Artist tonight , a final word on the rhapsody of beautiful sentiments expressed regarding love , the human condition and hope written by skilled , emotionally charged men and women today ! With dignity , grace , and passion throughout today you have once again charged and reminded a humble colleague on the power of poetry forged by fierce imagination and forethought ! Thank you and good night !

We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
                                                                                               lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
                                                                          from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town

The hill tops creep away like children playing games

our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
                                                                                   washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games

after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
                                                                                          overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill

later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
                                                                                                for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
                                                                                 of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.

Pennyanne Windsor, from *Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales

so-in-time-so-inside or
as inside so in time
the plasma of thoughts far away
there in the spaces without meaning
the sprouts of faceless darkness
and systoles without time
I step from one silence into the other
and unshaped my body sings
I am babysitting my heart while the light loses its weight
on my shoulder
time is a pocket and I can hear only my blood

the luxury of mending this piece with that one
I am so complete when I am my feet
sometimes I don’t need a name
no need for one way roads
when quietly the dark sprouts me
and the days pass
without complaining

Will the bard once told us:
"Music hath charms
to soothe the savage breast".

But who will sing the verse and chorus
to spell a world in disarray?

In this twisted season of idiot's tales,
our aching oversoul cries out
for sane and cooling anthems
to still the throb of molten *******
fevered with fratricidal pride.

Author of the cosmos, soothe us now!
Whisper dulcet songs of peace in our ears
that none can deny or misconstrue.

*July, 2015

A rain shatters the silent peace of the dark blue Yamuna... flowing
guilelessly on its own accord by the eroded banks of time...
with waters that rise and fall, and move along in silent obedience.
In the melancholuous rain, drown the voices of those that have
sinned
voices of wet Lovers that echoed through time...
greener pastures and parched blues....
men who left their footprints in the soft sands of an immense depth ..& emerged with a part of the river,
that today carries their sins...
what kind of affection is this O'Yamuna..
abathed in the sins of our time, yet you flow so guilelessly..

Royalty spoilt me
I expected it would,
those crowns,
jewel encrusted
entrusted to be
by the grace of the crowds
who were cheering for me
have been sold to pay dues for the
******* that I use.

I put the blame on the throne which
became the home from my home and
I, the lone ranger
became my own worst king of danger,
the kind of a stranger I'd not
like to be.

Now I'm a peasant, no pheasant, though
a pleasanter type of fellow, a *** in my hand
and the fields are my land,
cabbages to **** and cattle to feed, what
more can a man who was King really need?

I’m sitting on the porch,
and I’m listening.
To the crickets, the air conditioner, the cars.
I feel, at once, very at home.
Summers of Governor’s Place past, eating Otter Pops outside until our tongues turned a weird brown-gray color from the combination of different dyes.

I remind myself to look up, to look at the stars.
Yes, they’re still there—the same ones Katie and I used to “moonbathe” under, lying on the warm concrete of her driveway.

How have I forgotten to look at the stars?
“Look at the way the light is hitting the building!” was my constant refrain in Paris. I was always looking up, soaking it in.
But of course, in Paris, everything is beautiful.

Certainly, my life now has a lot of light to be seen: In the morning, when the sun pours into the stairwell through Isaac’s stained glass.
In the evening, as red bricks seemingly absorb the sunset’s oranges and reds and then reply with a cooling lavender just as the light begins to fade.

I want to see, I want to know every chirp, every dribble.
I want to inspect each speck of dust, greet every ant circling the sink in the kitchen.
I need to know every part of my life and the life happening within and around me.

The details may not always be the shine of a moonbeam cast upon a dreamy French rooftop —but in fact, was the color of our Popsicle tongues not also the exact same hue?

Look up
Look around
Take in where you’re sitting, where you’re living. Stop counting weeks—you cannot make a science out of spontaneity.

A train sounds in the distance and I pause because I want to invite that, too, to be a part of this moment.

I keep coming back to Cheryl Strayed’s “I’m going to put myself in the way of beauty.” . . .  I just think I’m going to look closer around me.