Crown and Crow

Excerpt from "Compassion IV" by Noelle Kocot

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 11:19:43 -0700

A blanket of verbs crosses the
Threshold. Poetry, you are mine, and I will
Go anywhere with you.

It’s true!

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:02:23 -0700

It’s true!

Photo

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 16:00:56 -0700

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Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:54:21 -0700

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Not only do poems inspire me, but quotes do as...

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:53:10 -0700

Not only do poems inspire me, but quotes do as well—snippets of poetry.

If you know the graphic designer or illustrator responsible for any of the images I post, please let me know!

The Future is an Animal, Tina Chang

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:50:33 -0700

In every kind of dream I am a black wolf
careening through a web. I am the spider
who eats the wolf and inhabits the wolf’s body.
In another dream I marry the wolf and then
am very lonely. I seek my name and they name me
Lucky Dragon. I would love to tell you that all
of this has a certain ending but the most frightening
stories are the ones with no ending at all.
The path goes on and on. The road keeps forking,
splitting like an endless atom, splitting
like a lip, and the globe is on fire. As many
times as the book is read, the pages continue
to grow, multiply. They said, In the beginning,
and that was the moral of the original and most
important story. The story of man. One story.
I laid my head down and my head was heavy.
Hair sprouted through the skin, hair black
and bending toward night grass. I was becoming
the wolf again, my own teeth breaking
into my mouth for the first time, a kind of beauty
to be swallowed in interior bite and fever.
My mind a miraculous ember until I am the beast.
I run from the story that is faster than me,
the words shatter and pant to outchase me.
The story catches my heels when I turn
to love its hungry face, when I am willing
to be eaten to understand my fate.

For what is prophecy but the first inkling of what we ourselves must call into being? The call need...

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:05:41 -0700

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.

Excerpt from Prophecy by Dana Gioia

What Things Want

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:49:26 -0800

You have to let things
Occupy their own space.
This room is small,
But the green settee

Likes to be here.
The big marsh reeds,
Crowding out the slough,
Find the world good.

You have to let things
Be as they are.
Who knows which of us
Deserves the world more?

- Robert Bly

Love After Love, Derek Walcott

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:28:59 -0800

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

A Young Poet by Jane Miller

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:49:00 -0700

For begging beauty
one can hardly blame the artist

sleeping like butter in the sun
taking no action for action

some prefer being a yellow rose petal
I learned when I traveled

the young poet saying a prayer
is a form of panic

jasper texas 1998 by Lucille Clifton

Wed, 19 Oct 2011 10:53:25 -0700

for j.byrd

i am a man’s head hunched in the road.

i was chosen to speak by the members

of my body. the arm as it pulled away

pointed toward me, the hand opened once

and was gone.

why and why and why

should i call a white man brother?

who is the human in this place,

the thing that is dragged or the dragger?

what does my daughter say?

the sun is a blister overhead.

if i were alive i could not bear it.

the townsfolk sing we shall overcome.

while hope bleeds slowly from my mouth

into the dirt that covers us all.

i am done with this dust. i am done.

Here are the illuminated cities at the center of me, and here is the center of me, which is a lake,...

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 09:43:31 -0700

Here are the illuminated
cities at the center of me, and here is the center
of me, which is a lake, which is a well that we
can drink from.

Richard Siken

And here, in full sunlight, we are gifts hoisted to the vanishing point. Excerpt from [Untitled] ...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 10:57:39 -0700

And here, in full sunlight, we are gifts hoisted to the vanishing point.

Excerpt from [Untitled] by J. Michael Martinez

You’re human, you knowLike the rest of us, you’re stuck with that. Own up to it. Excerpt...

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 16:56:03 -0700

You’re human, you know

Like the rest of us, you’re stuck with that. Own up to it.

Excerpt from Night Drafts by Tony Sanders

It takes so long for the human to become a human! Excerpt from The Descent of Man by Vijay Seshadri

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 10:21:00 -0700

It takes so long for the human to become a human!

Excerpt from The Descent of Man by Vijay Seshadri

What does it even mean to write a poem? It means today I’m correcting my mistakes. It means I...

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 11:30:33 -0700

What does it even mean to write a poem?
It means today
I’m correcting my mistakes.

It means I don’t want to be lonely.

Excerpt from Again a Solstice by Jennifer Chang

Summer Morning

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 19:10:07 -0700

Heart,
I implore you,
it’s time to come back
from the dark,

it’s morning,
the hills are pink
and the roses
whatever they felt

in the valley of the night
are opening now
their soft dresses,
their leaves

are shining.
Why are you laggard?
Sure you have seen this
a thousand times,

which isn’t half enough.
Let the world
have it’s way with you,
luminous as it is

with mystery
and pain—
graced as it is
with the ordinary.

Mary Oliver