Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.
James Mercer Langston Hughes (February 1, 1901 - May 22, 1967) was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. One of the earliest innovators of the literary art form called jazz poetry, Hughes is best known as a leader of the Harlem Renaissance. He famously wrote about the period that "the Negro was in vogue", which was later paraphrased as "when Harlem was in vogue."
Photograph by Carl Van Vechten - Library of Congress
Information above is from Wikipedia the writer's friend. I send them a very small sum monthly to keep them free.
FUCK (with) synonyms: lay screw shag bang bonk score schtup #$%@ and some I surely missed. Pick your favorite.
Writing Poetry is hard to do. Hard even when it is only Doggerel. I have been struggling for weeks now with an idea. Want to help? It still needs to be right. Think of this as a Living Poem. I am going to change it until...
Old and lovely Protestant Hymn for rhyme scheme and meter. Sung by a famous singer of another era, Jimmie Davis.
Jimmie was a mean segregationist Governor of Louisiana. Twice. Rest in Peace and Music. Jimmie Davis sang a sweet hymn.
In a column for the Arkansas Times, longtime editor Max Brantley trashed a speech given by Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Florida on Saturday before fans of Donald Trump who spoke later in the day.
Hello Sarah,......well, hello, Sarah. It's so nice to have you back to get things wrong. You're lookin' swell, Sarah.......We can tell, Sarah. You're still throwin'...you're still blowin'...you're still goin' strong. I feel my head swayin'......while the tape's playin' One of your old favorite rants from way back when. So..... here's her rap fellas.......find her an empty fact, fellas. Sarah'll never go away again. - Nick Vanocur
I miss Nick Vanocur. I wish I could read his jokes and doggerel about the current situation. I had to repeat this given Sarah Hucksterbee Slanders' latest lies. Rest in Ink and Rhymes.
The Latin in this poem means: "Sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country."
(From Horace, Odes, III. ii. 13)
2nd Lt, Wilfred Edward Salter Owen, 5th Bn. Manch. R., T.F., attd. 2nd Bn.
Awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the attack on the Fonsomme Line on October 1st/2nd, 1918. On the company commander becoming a casualty, he assumed command and showed fine leadership and resisted a heavy counter-attack. He personally manipulated a captured enemy machine gun from an isolated position and inflicted considerable losses on the enemy. Throughout he behaved most gallantly.
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!
--An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin,
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs
Bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder where I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?
Burlington Snow written for Bernie Sanders by Allen Ginsberg
Socialist snow on the streets
Socialist talk in the Maverick bookstore
Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops
Socialist poetry in socialist mouths
—aren’t the birds frozen socialists?
Aren’t the snowclouds blocking the airfield
Social Democratic Appeasement?
Isn’t the socialist sky owned by
the socialist sun?
Earth itself socialist, forests, rivers, lakes
furry mountains, socialist salt
in oceans?
Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t
belong to me anymore.
Socialist snow on the streets
Socialist talk in the Maverick bookstore
Socialist kids sucking socialist lollipops
Socialist poetry in socialist mouths
—aren’t the birds frozen socialists?
Aren’t the snowclouds blocking the airfield
Social Democratic Appeasement?
Isn’t the socialist sky owned by
the socialist sun?
Earth itself socialist, forests, rivers, lakes
furry mountains, socialist salt
in oceans?
Isn’t this poem socialist? It doesn’t
belong to me anymore.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I Think I Could Turn And Live With Animals...
By Walt Whitman
from Song of Myself
I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Fall is my favorite season. Time to make Pumpkin Pie and enjoy good Soup. Halloween will soon be here. The colors of Fall are so rich - eggplant purple, bright blue sky, bright orange squashes. Time for children to dive into piles of golden leaves with abandon. Life is good. Poet is Helen Hunt Jackson.
October’s Bright Blue Weather
O SUNS and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October’s bright blue weather;
When loud the bumble-bee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;
When Gentians roll their fringes tight
To save them for the morning,
And chestnuts fall from satin burrs
Without a sound of warning;
When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When all the lovely wayside things
Their white-winged seeds are sowing,
And in the fields, still green and fair,
Late aftermaths are growing;
When springs run low, and on the brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
When comrades seek sweet country haunts,
By twos and twos together,
And count like misers, hour by hour,
October’s bright blue weather.
O suns and skies and flowers of June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October’s bright blue weather.
Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. - Martin Luther King Jr.
Last night, an owl
in the blue dark
tossed
an indeterminate number
of carefully shaped sounds into
the world, in which,
a quarter of a mile away, I happened
to be standing.
I couldn’t tell
which one it was –
the barred or the great-horned
ship of the air –
it was that distant. But, anyway,
aren’t there moments
that are better than knowing something,
and sweeter? Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness. I suppose
if this were someone else’s story
they would have insisted on knowing
whatever is knowable – would have hurried
over the fields
to name it – the owl, I mean.
But it’s mine, this poem of the night,
and I just stood there, listening and holding out
my hands to the soft glitter
falling through the air. I love this world,
but not for its answers.
And I wish good luck to the owl,
whatever its name –
and I wish great welcome to the snow,
whatever its severe and comfortless
and beautiful meaning.
It was silent until about twenty minutes ago. Then the girls discovered they could swim in the snow drifts. The cats are bored. I ate lamb chops for breakfast. Happy New Year? So far, so good.
I went there hunting poems about Love. This poem was listed under Funny Love Poems. The poem comes from the book Bar Napkin Sonnets.
I have lived this and I ain't laughing. Poem so good it hurts. I am remembering, lusting after and loving all and everyone who was there. I love them now. Even those who do not talk to me anymore.
Bar Napkin Sonnet #11
Things happen when you drink too much mescal.
One night, with not enough food in my belly,
he kept on buying. I'm a girl who'll fall
damn near in love with gratitude and, well, he
was hot and generous and so the least
that I could do was let him kiss me, hard
and soft and any way you want it, beast
and beauty, lime and salt—sweet Bacchus' pards—
and when his friend showed up I felt so warm
and generous I let him kiss me too.
His buddy asked me if it was the worm
inside that makes me do the things I do.
I wasn't sure which worm he meant, the one
I ate? The one that eats at me alone?
"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism." - Martin Luther King
Countee Cullen is a giant of an American poet. I dream America free of bigotry of the killing kind - so exquisitely expressed in Cullen's poem.
Countee Cullen
INCIDENT
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue, and called me, 'Nigger.'
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December;
Of all the things that happened there
That's all that I remember.
Rest in Peace Martin Luther King Jr. The struggle continues.
Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.
You never feed me. Perhaps I'll sleep on your face. That will sure show you. You must scratch me there! Yes, above my tail! Behold, elevator butt. The rule for today: Touch my tail, I shred your hand. New rule tomorrow. In deep sleep hear sound cat vomit hairball somewhere will find in morning. Grace personified. I leap into the window. I meant to do that. Blur of motion, then -- silence, me, a paper bag. What is so funny? The mighty hunter Returns with gifts of plump birds -- your foot just squashed one. You're always typing. Well, let's see you ignore my sitting on your hands. My small cardboard box. You cannot see me if I can just hide my head. Terrible battle. I fought for hours. Come and see! What's a 'term paper?' Small brave carnivores Kill pine cones and mosquitoes, Fear vacuum cleaner I want to be close to you. Can I fit my head inside your armpit? Wanna go outside. Oh, poop! Help! I got outside! Let me back inside! Oh no! Big One has been trapped by newspaper! Cat to the rescue! Humans are so strange. Mine lies still in bed, then screams; My claws are not that sharp.
Graphic by Buddy McCue. If you go to the subject panel on the left panel and click on
his name, you can see more of his work.
My Sister Margie is a righteous all hymning no sinning Bible believing Black Woman. Margie calls me her "Italian Sister." We canvased for Obama together.
I wanted a
house. Margie and I prayed about it. I got a house. I needed money for a new
roof. We prayed about it. New roof. I do not invoke our little prayer circle
lightly. Be sure you want whatever it is you trying to get from Universe. Hang with Margie and you might get it.
About 6 years ago, Margie and I started praying for a Revolution. We were of the opinion that we needed one bigtime. Ta
da! Shazam! One appeared.
I am a terrible Christian. Terrible. Lapsed Catholic. Angry Quaker.
Margie is one of the best people I know. So, our current upheaval must all be Margie's fault. I know God loves me absolutely. I think God does not take me seriously.
I know I am not the only one who takes Gil Scott Heron seriously.