Month: May 2020

poetry

What Sadness Anywhere is Sadness-Shane McCrae

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-for Melissa

What sadness anywhere is sadness where

I could just stand and walk to you      from sadness 

Go      home to you though I bring home my sadness 

What sadness there though I have felt sad there


Before      when I come home from far away

What sadness then      or from three blocks uptown 

My office      where I write this poem down

In a room full of the dimness that fills spac-


es anywhere where you are not      a film 

Obscuring every surface but it is a light 

Not shining      ever from surfaces


You are not near what sadness      where you might 

By being near reveal each thing for what it is

What sadness where each thing is whole

poetry

Rips and Tears

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These losses are
Like small tears
That threaten
To tear apart the fabric
Of families

You can’t repair them
The threads have been frayed
With 400 years of discrimination
These tears expand with each
Senseless murder in and out
Of the camera’s lens
Leaving us shaken and exhausted

Until those people who mock,
belittle, and remain silent
Lift every voice…there can
Be no patching over these
Gaping holes

poetry

Self- James Oppenheim

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This poem by James Oppenheim hit my inbox recently and it begged to be shared. In these crazy times, I hope that you are all staying safe, practicing self-care and enjoying life.

Once I freed myself of my duties to tasks and people and went down to the cleansing sea…
The air was like wine to my spirit,
The sky bathed my eyes with infinity,
The sun followed me, casting golden snares on the tide,
And the ocean—masses of molten surfaces, faintly
      gray-blue—sang to my heart…

Then I found myself, all here in the body and brain, and all there on the shore:
Content to be myself: free, and strong, and enlarged:
Then I knew the depths of myself were the depths of space.
And all living beings were of those depths (my brothers and sisters)
And that by going inward and away from duties, cities, street-cars and greetings,
I was dipping behind all surfaces, piercing cities and people,
And entering in and possessing them, more than a brother,
The surge of all life in them and in me…

So I swore I would be myself (there by the ocean)
And I swore I would cease to neglect myself, but would take myself as my mate,
Solemn marriage and deep: midnights of thought to be:
Long mornings of sacred communion, and twilights of talk,
Myself and I, long parted, clasping and married till death.