My mother told me,
“If you ever become a rock star
do not smash the guitar.
There are too many poor kids out there
who have nothin’
and they see that shit
when all they wanna do is play that thing.
Boy
you better let’m play.”
Okay, if she ever starts in on one of these
lectures,
your best bet is to pull up a chair, chief,
‘cause Momma don’t deal in the abridged
version.
She worries about me so much some days
it feels like I’m watching windshield wipers
on high speed
during a light sprinkle
and I gotta tell’er, “Ma,
yer makin’ me nervous.”
She was born to be laid back,
y’all, I swear,
but some of us were brought up in households
where Care Free
is a stick of gum,
and the only option for getting out
is to walk faster.
The woman
can run
in high heels
backwards
while bursting my bubble,
double checking my homework,
rolling enough pennies
to make sure I have lunch money,
and preparing for a meeting at school
on her only day off
so she can tell Miss Goss the music teacher,
“If you ever touch my boy again, big lady,
I’ll bounce a hammer off yer skull.”
I remember her doing these things swiftly
and with a smile
in her discounted thrift store business suits off
layaway.
She wore them bright and distinguished
enough
to cover up the 30 years of highway scars
truckin’ through her spine.
Some accidents
you don’t need to see, rubbernecker.
Keep movin’
’cause she made it.
She’s alive
and she’s famous.
We can stretch Van Gogh paintings
from Kilgore, TX to Binghamton, NY
and you still won’t find the brilliant brush
strokes
it takes to be a single mother
sacrificing the best part of her dreams
to raise a baby boy who-on most days-
she probably wants to strangle.
We disagree-a lot.
For instance, she still thinks it’s okay
to carry on a conversation
full throttle
at 7 a.m.
whereas I think…
Oh, wait, I’m sorry…
I don’t think at seven in the morning.
But we both agree that
Love
makes no mistakes.
So at night time,
when she’s winding down
and I’m still writing books about
how to get comfortable in this skin she gave me,
I see rock stars on stages
smashing guitars.
It’s then when I wanna find’m a comfortable chair
get’m a snack,
and introduce them to Daylight:
This is my mother,
Tresa B. Olsen.
Runner of the tight shift.
Taker of the temperature.
Leaver of the light on.
Lover of the underdog.
Mover of the mountain.
Winner of the good life.
Keeper of the
hope
chest.
Guitar
Repair
Woman.
And I am her son,
Buddy Wakefield.
I play a tricked-out electric pen,
thanks to the makers of music and metaphor,
but I do my best to keep the words in check,
and I use a padded microphone
so I don’t hurt you,
because sometimes I smash things,
and I don’t ever wanna let’er down.
For a New Beginning by John O’Donohue
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
Thank You for Saying Thank You by Charles Bernstein
This is a totally
accessible poem.
There is nothing
in this poem
that is in any
way difficult
to understand.
All the words
are simple &
to the point.
There are no new
concepts, no
theories, no
ideas to confuse
you. This poem
has no intellectual
pretensions. It is
purely emotional.
It fully expresses
the feelings of the
author: my feelings,
the person speaking
to you now.
It is all about
communication.
Heart to heart.
This poem appreciates
& values you as
a reader. It
celebrates the
triumph of the
human imagination
amidst pitfalls &
calamities. This poem
has 90 lines,
269 words, and
more syllables than
I have time to
count. Each line,
word, & syllable
have been chosen
to convey only the
intended meaning
& nothing more.
This poem abjures
obscurity & enigma.
There is nothing
hidden. A hundred
readers would each
read the poem
in an identical
manner & derive
the same message
from it. This
poem, like all
good poems, tells
a story in a direct
style that never
leaves the reader
guessing. While
at times expressing
bitterness, anger,
resentment, xenophobia,
& hints of racism, its
ultimate mood is
affirmative. It finds
joy even in
those spiteful moments
of life that
it shares with
you. This poem
represents the hope
for a poetry
that doesn’t turn
its back on
the audience, that
doesn’t think it’s
better than the reader,
that is committed
to poetry as a
popular form, like kite
flying and fly
fishing. This poem
belongs to no
school, has no
dogma. It follows
no fashion. It
says just what
it says. It’s
real.
Monologue for an Onion by Suji Kwock Kim
I don’t mean to make you cry.
I mean nothing, but this has not kept you
From peeling away my body, layer by layer,
The tears clouding your eyes as the table fills
With husks, cut flesh, all the debris of pursuit.
Poor deluded human: you seek my heart.
Hunt all you want. Beneath each skin of mine
Lies another skin: I am pure onion–pure union
Of outside and in, surface and secret core.
Look at you, chopping and weeping. Idiot.
Is this the way you go through life, your mind
A stopless knife, driven by your fantasy of truth,
Of lasting union–slashing away skin after skin
From things, ruin and tears your only signs
Of progress? Enough is enough.
You must not grieve that the world is glimpsed
Through veils. How else can it be seen?
How will you rip away the veil of the eye, the veil
That you are, you who want to grasp the heart
Of things, hungry to know where meaning
Lies. Taste what you hold in your hands: onion-juice,
Yellow peels, my stinging shreds. You are the one
In pieces. Whatever you meant to love, in meaning to
You changed yourself: you are not who you are,
Your soul cut moment to moment by a blade
Of fresh desire, the ground sown with abandoned skins.
And at your inmost circle, what? A core that is
Not one. Poor fool, you are divided at the heart,
Lost in its maze of chambers, blood, and love,
A heart that will one day beat you to death.
The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes
Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
“Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
“I got the Weary Blues
And I can’t be satisfied.
Got the Weary Blues
And can’t be satisfied—
I ain’t happy no mo’
And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.
Courageous Vulnerability by Jamie K. Reaser
I want for you
courageous vulnerability.
Please sit for awhile and listen
to the ferocious whisperings
of my heart, and yours.
How can it be so frightening
to tenderly touch below this skin
which cloaks us so temporarily?
I once came face to face with a mystic
who taught me to cascade love
through our eyes
on the wavelength of intent.
It was simultaneously
terrifying
and rapturous.
Nothing has appeared dull since.
I want this for you…
this endless intimate gaze and glint.
I want for you the conviction
of a firm and open stance –
to be a heart warrior
who welcomes the piercing
of Life’s blade
at the hands of the Beloved.
May you be met in your bloodletting
by those who
know what it is to
surrender victoriously.
I want this for you.
This, and nothing else,
is the full celebration of
our humanity.
Morningside Heights, July By William Matthews
Haze. Three student violists boarding
a bus. A clatter of jackhammers.
Granular light. A film of sweat for primer
and the heat for a coat of paint.
A man and a woman on a bench:
she tells him he must be psychic,
for how else could he sense, even before she knew,
that she’d need to call it off? A bicyclist
fumes by with a coach’s whistle clamped
hard between his teeth, shrilling like a teakettle
on the boil. I never meant, she says.
But I thought, he replies. Two cabs almost
collide; someone yells fuck in Farsi.
I’m sorry, she says. The comforts
of loneliness fall in like a bad platoon.
The sky blurs—there’s a storm coming
up or down. A lank cat slinks liquidly
around a corner. How familiar
it feels to feel strange, hollower
than a bassoon. A rill of chill air
in the leaves. A car alarm. Hail.
My Father Teaches Me to Dream By Jan Beatty
You want to know what work is?
I’ll tell you what work is:
Work is work.
You get up. You get on the bus.
You don’t look from side to side.
You keep your eyes straight ahead.
That way nobody bothers you—see?
You get off the bus. You work all day.
You get back on the bus at night. Same thing.
You go to sleep. You get up.
You do the same thing again.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
There’s no handouts in this life.
All this other stuff you’re looking for—
it ain’t there.
Work is work.
For Trayvon Martin by Reuben Jackson
Instead of sleeping—
I walk with him from the store.
No Skittles, thank you.
We do not talk much—
Sneakers crossing the courtyard.
Humid Southern night.
We shake hands and hug—
Ancient, stoic tenderness.
I nod to the moon.
I’m so old school—
I hang till the latch clicks like.
An unloaded gun.
Domestic by Deborah Landau
At night, down the hall into the bedroom we go.
In the morning we enter the kitchen.
Places, please. On like this,
without alarm. I am the talker and taker
he is the giver and the bedroom man.
We are out of order but not broken.
He says, let’s make this one short.
She says, what do you mean?
We set out and got nearer.
Along the way some loved ones died.
Whole summers ruined that way.
Take me to the door, take me in your arms.
Mother’s been dead a decade
but her voice comes back to me now and often.
Life accumulates, a series of commas,
first this, then that, then him, then here.
A clump of matter (paragraph)
and here we are: minutes, years.
Wait, I am trying to establish
something with these people.
Him, her, him. We make a little pantomime.
Family, I say, wake up. The sentences
one then another one, in a line. And then
we go on like that, for a long time.
Compassion Camp 