Only Happy Lies

I told myself at the beginning of this year
That I would try to write only happy poems.
That is harder to do than it sounds.
But would it be a lie if I said I tried,
But then wrote something sad instead?
Would it be a lie if I said this prompt
Made me happy,
Didn’t take me down a rabbit hole
I didn’t want to go down?
Don’t get me wrong,
I love rabbits, especially the little cottontail ones,
The ones with the cute little noses.
No lies there.

But would it be a lie if I said I’ve never lied?
Ok, don’t answer that. I won’t if you won’t.
It’s not a lie that I don’t like lying,
Especially to myself,
But to stop lying, I have to examine the life I lead,
To reflect on who I think I am.
I must ask myself the tough questions 
and answer them, honestly.

Hello. My name is Paul, and I’m a liar.
It’s been 3 hours and fifteen minutes since my last lie.
But who is counting?


—Paul Causey

Idol

There lives a god within,
my own personal creation.
This is a god tranquil as a river trickle.
Cypress roots and limestone rocks 
along the river banks collect her.

This is a god as sinuous as wind
that glances along skin.
Bare arms, bare legs, bare skin,
wet with sweat,
welcome the parting curtains of heavy heat.

This is a god that burns alone in rage,
as sudden as the lightning’s strike
on dry prairie scalp,
overgrown, praying for a burn,
for the steam of scars,
the green survival that resurrects back.

There is a god inside, 
my history’s creation.
I wish I could atheist her away.
But she is there to stay.
I must restrain, I must care for her,
remind myself
that offerings to her are 
an offering to me and you.


—Emily Romano

Untitled



— Kim Mosley 

Tomorrow is a Yesterday

What fun to find 
that without my fear
or the lies that resistance insures survival,
tomorrow becomes a yesterday  in waiting.

Where time resembles 
 a canine expectation
on windowsill watch - 
a perfect strategy
to stay in puerile fascination.
To know the whole of everything 
with that childlike speculation
of what makes sense in this world.

A world that’s still, when my heart is full. 
A world not needing much in certainty.
Just being quiet enough to hear 
creation in conversation.

And in this world of mine
today is the only thing of value,
not needing trust or hope
but imaginations 
that have just enough wisdom 
to be confidants of the absurd,
to ask to place a window next to everything
as perhaps I'll need to go out and play.


— Ed Sancious

Lessons in Form and Emptiness

Every morning I write poetry, or try,
Not any great literary act,
But something to make sense of this world,
Well, that is not exactly it,
More for me just to be observant.

This small dog, who now lays next to me,
We don't really know where she came from,
But she so appreciates our kindness now,
Laying, resting quietly,
In her bed next to my chair.

A refugee seeking safety
And a place to call home,
Really, that is what we all want, isn't it?

I took refuge in the Buddha,
Had to leave my home to return home,
Now my "practice" is beyond form and emptiness,
 That is my home.

I think this little dog knows better than me,
about that!

I am humbled to be her student.


—Bruce Linton

Your Countenance

Today I changed
because you,
like some great
Zen teacher,
you showed no recognition
of me.

There was no
being seen
or taken in.

I found myself
a true refugee.

all that was left
 just the
mist on the mountain


—Bruce Linton

July Poem

Expressing oneself as an image or word
slips like a wet stone squeezed too tightly 

to depend on 1 over 0 cuts Growth with growth 
brewing within sprawling networks of concrete and narcissism

the boilerplate of Life is outside Infinity 
restricts Virginity as caused, conquered, and endured


—Hunter Priniski  

sifting through a bedridden orchestra


Clock in.
The day burst full of patients and reports, ripping bread and lunch meats, smashing bites between the teeth. The clouds 
outside distend, pregnant with a city’s sorrow
7,000 miles away.

We care for wounded soldiers 
They laugh about a sniper’s miss, 
the number of rumbles, a 50 caliber gun, 
such a heavy cross to bear.

Their lips part, they punch the air with sound, but all that’s flashing in our eyes are 
children sifting through the rubble for the place they once called home. 

Each breath births another child, 
A burned red tremble.
With bandaged stumps they climb upon our shoulders and press down. 
We look each dusted angel in the eye and hold out shaking hands for them to climb up high until it’s time.
Clock out

 We drive, hungry, numb, the weight of 8000 children on our backs. We drive to an orchestra and sit, bedridden in the pews. 

The Magic Flute clocks in.
 Our spirits rush the stage.
We tumble through musicians.
Honeyed fingers tickle strings.
We sit in trumpet’s lap. 
We sift through black tuxedos,
grab the sparkling gowns, 
gawk at each musician’s hands muscled by mistakes, by practice.
 Music from another time flows through us.

Mozart resurrects.

He speaks as a poppy’s petals flutter,
as the little legs of bumblebees struggle to the nectar.

 His sound
strikes loose the stones that dam a heart.
The symphony takes flight.
The clouds weep
The rain falls down.
Our cheeks get wet.
Brother Mozart speaks relief.


—Sol Frye

What Interests Me

what interests me in science is observation,
wistful watching,
languid and lethargic
like plumeria scented 
summer-warm evening air.

considering, with curiosity,
suns called stars
and their radiant offspring
teasing out identity in the dark
in a multitude of mythical 
concocted constellations.

I enjoy the confidential intimacy
of the delinquency of starlight.
knowing, in truth, the light’s a lie. 
that what I currently see
is light unveiled from eons ago 
marvelous spectral disciples 
that travel only outward
tiptoeing into infinity 
at three hundred million meters per second 
with such enviable tenacity 
in artful evasion of connection
to its luminous debut.

leaving me to see
this connect-the-dots celestial tapestry,
dust-embroidered myths 
of gods and goddesses,
objects and beliefs.

folly perhaps
or fairy tale wisdom
to align mythologies
to earthly agonies. 

my solace is to favor 
Joni’s notion from ’69 - 
to be golden, to be stardust
akin to billion-year-old carbon
crafting bargains
with angels or devils 
or whoever cares 
to listen to me grieve
that maybe we are 
just illusions of ecstasy
and what endures is
love, death, and other fantasies.


—Ed Sancious

How to shoo a bird out of a brewery

Find a finch, landed on the chair beside you
its panting signals its fear.
Resist the temptation to close your hands around its rumpled feathers.
You must allow it to fly to the light and bump against the glass.
Say a prayer that it will stay conscious through the hard knocks against the cold windows.
Wait for it to land, still panting on the ground.

Give it space. 

Then, slide forward.
Close off the path back into the darkness of the brewery.

Gently move the chairs, the pillows, out of the corner where the finch has flown to hide.
Reveal the little bird in all its perfect beauty,
still panting, still frantic to hide.

Open the doors to the outside.
Feel the gentle breeze on your skin.
Ask the bird to feel the rustle of air in its feathers.
Allow the bird to flutter against the glass again and again.
Be patient that the bird finds you frightening, when all you want to give it is love.
Place your hands by its side. 
When at last it’s too exhausted, it will let you guide it slowly to the door.

Feel the brush of its little feathers like the fingers of a toddler who grasps at your legs for balance.
Warn the others not to get too close, not to close their hands over the frightened creature.

Let the bird find its way outside,
To the light, to the air, to the wind that lifts it up into the sky,
To the sun that warms our hearts.
Let the bird find its own form of freedom.
That is where your freedom flies.


—Emily Romano

Tulip

A dark orb
opens its closed,
stilled fist of a heart
into a thrum and beat.

Blinded by pressing
darkness and relentlessly in solitude,
tender with translucence
of newborn skin,

it pushes through
coarse, dense earth,
which has held it both safe
and captive,

in ceaseless
pursuit of a sun it knows—
with no proof, and beyond all reason—
is.

Breaking embraces
of constraint and dormancy,
it unfurls itself—

an audacious, wild-green spear
of declaration!—

into the creamy blue,
and, kissed by breezes,
begins to dance.


—Genève Gil

everything I see or want to say

everything I see or want to say is not,
per se, 
a lie.
though vision
is the best for me
to act as language 
on which I rely
to be generous 
in sharing what I witness
as peculiar feats of nature.
like gravity staunchly excluding trees from spinning into sky 
and adamantly, repeatedly 
assigning fog to hug the earth.
and giving answers 
as to what am I to do 
with the slimness of my earthly days 
indulging my curiosities on being,
as this grace of physics is what 
remains for me, 
unquestionably,
a meaning of love.


—Ed Sancious


Untitled

 


 — Kim Mosley 

Portrait of A Self

Here, inside myself,
though never quite alone,
I’m waiting to be met,
to be ordinary,
to be other
than imaginary.
To be a story of becoming
where there’s context 
within faith
and all things make sense
with no chronicles of unbecoming.
Here the act of survival 
is dreaming of walking into, 
then under, 
water.

How is surviving better?


—Ed Sancious

Tide

I was with the tide this eve:  
crash on crash on cliff and shoal
thundered up as foam and drop,  
violence and vibrance one.  

Ocean broken into  
pearls, weightless,
for a moment’s grace,  
incandescent from within…

then cascading back to source,  
low into the undertow,  
down into the deep, deep, deep—

always dancing with the moon,  
whose luminance shimmers
between dark and dark.  

—Genève Gil

Pictures of Life and Everything


I know the feeling of desperately wanting to take a picture. Pictures to tell a story, pictures to save a moment in time, pictures to show how I see the world.

My dad, when I was young, loved to take pictures of me, of my mom, of my siblings. He even put me in one of his commercials, for a playpen. Then when I was about ten, he stopped. Was film too expensive? Did it annoy my mom? Did his muse leave? I don’t know. Maybe his muse came to me. I love taking pictures.

I have a memory of watching film being developed. This memory might actually be of a television show or documentary. Dipping paper in chemicals, moving it to another chemical tray, and one more, each time more of the picture would emerge. Then wait and the page was filled, the memory there for all to see. Magic.

Saving holidays, birthdays, vacations, daily life. One snapshot in time brings back so many memories. For instance, the picture of my birthday party, where I am blowing out candles on a cake. We are having so much fun, laughing, anticipating eating cake. But what isn’t shown is that this is the fourth take, we are laughing because my dad made us set this scene up over and over until he got just the right shot. There is a picture of me standing on a bridge across the San Antonio River (many years later I would take a picture of my kids on that bridge), I don’t know if because the sun was so bright or if I moved or my dad did, but I look like a ghost standing there surrounded by sunlight. I liked to make up stories about that little girl ghost. Maybe my dad did too because he is the one who kept that photo.

My dad loved to set up takes so they would be just so. He rarely just took a picture. I am the exact opposite. I wait for a moment to happen and then snap. I love action shots, especially of my kids playing. Soccer or Monopoly; climbing trees or reading a book. I always kept my camera at the ready. A good bit of the time they didn’t even know I had taken a picture until we picked up the prints at the store. Now with my grandchildren and a cell phone it is even easier to capture them.

Pictures are memories, moments in time, moments that may never come again except in our minds. The memories demand sharing to complete the process of the moment. I love seeing my family sitting snuggled on the couch looking at an album. They are saying remember this. And then that happened. Yes, I often take a picture.


—Melissa Tolliver

In the Trees at Evening



“and you too have come / into the world to do this, / to go easy, 
to be filled with light / and to shine.” 
from “When I Am Among the Trees” by Mary Oliver

In the Trees at Evening

You too have come
into this world to touch
the hands of someone you love,
to look into the leaves
and be glad.

And, yes, there is pain,
pain so bright it is almost fire.
It burns into light.

Sometimes when all around us
is shards of glass,
broken walls, 
it is hard to remember
that this world is our home,
that hands still touch.

The sky at evening 
fills with a rose
that comes from burning,
a tender flush
that comes through sorrow
to reach us.

Someone says, isn’t it your duty
to be sad, to lament
all that is lost,
to rise up in anger?

Perhaps that is the work of the day
but now evening has come
to find its way through the branches,
and I look up
and am glad of the light.


—Sarah Webb

OH! TO BE THAT GRANDPARENT HEARING THAT UNIQUE LOVED ONE’S EQUIVALENT TO LAUGHTER!

Prompt: “Today my blind and deaf granddaughter put her hand on the top of my head as I was eating an apple, and she laughed.”

OH! TO BE THAT GRANDPARENT HEARING THAT UNIQUE LOVED ONE’S EQUIVALENT TO LAUGHTER!

So happy to hear this prompt because I find I tend to waddle in the dour, sour, and sad. Yesterday after my doctor’s visit, I went to Central Perk Café and happened to sit next to two women signing in American Sign Language. One was an earnest Black woman, head in turban, and her facial expressions where the same as you would expect in any animated 20- or 30-something person – very intense gesticulations, the pointing-finger wagging the rest of the upper body for extra effect. In fact, I think the queer community has appropriated this animated style of gesticulation under the rubric of “extra.” There was an occasional sound uttered, but just watching these women talk to each other was so mesmerizing, I found myself rudely staring. They stared back at me; I then caught myself and I had to slowly spell out in my limited ASL “Oh, I’m sorry.” 

Anyway, I had been to my doctor’s, was fasting, had my blood drawn, and made my way to the cafe un-caffeinated, hungry, maybe even hangry, when I sat down at the table next to these two women. The cafe is near the Texas School for the Deaf and there’s a large active vocal deaf community here in Austin.  Also a large blind/visually-impaired community – TX School for the Blind. And also nearby, a scaled down state hospital for the mentally ill. 

The disabled community separated itself from the mentally ill a long time ago for a variety of reasons: political, societal, stigma, funding streams, etc. But people overcoming whatever their disability is the single most continuous inspiring wonder to me in the world ever since I can remember remembering. I tear-up; my voice catches with emotion; I find I can go on.

My last boss at the hospital is a well-respected psychologist, wheelchair-bound, born with only mere stubs for legs, married, and bore a healthy child. And I understand that it took a village, meaning she needed and received a ton of help. Working with her has been one of the high points of my career. She has since moved on and I miss her. The occupational nurse at work who gives us our flu and COVID shots is deaf, can read lips pretty good – but imagine this when we were masked for three years.  She couldn’t read our lips. I always booked my time with her when she wasn’t busy so I could slowly letter-by-letter sign her my questions and answers. Sometimes we would default to old-school paper and pen. But at least I tried.  I think the last time with this last shot I signed “Love you” instead of “Thank you.” I left, awkwardly.

My daughter was severely speech delayed. We had to learn simple sign language for a 4-year-old in three-times-per-week speech therapy so that she could catch up for preschool. She was the happiest kid in the group, always giggling and taking the lead in their group activities that also served to coax them to speak. I can still hear her laughter when it matured from giggles to a child’s belly-laugh for the first time for her at age five.

Recently there was a short film nominated for an Oscar about a troubled teen meeting a deaf, mute, and blind man at a bus stop, played by an actor who really was deaf and blind, and in the scene was writing out he was lost. The story was based on fact and was transformative for the teen. He learned that empathy softens, just a bit, a 17-year-old’s antipathy for the world. There’s a funny Netflix comedy about the trials and tribulations of a cute gay guy with cerebral palsy. And remember the son on “Breaking Bad”?  So much visibility for the disabled as actors nowadays - surely for the good.  

But I do not romanticize their pain and suffering. I stopped saying long ago, “There but by the grace of God go I.” That’s still ‘othering,’ simply put. NO! Pain in this life is unavoidable. We all share in its suffering. And just like people overcoming their disabilities, the manner in which we suffer is a matter of choice. 


—Todd Cornett

Hand on Head (in gratitude to veda smith)

“I spent the afternoon with my Granddaughter, I was chewing an apple and she put her
hand on my head and she laughed. She is blind and deaf.”

the daughter of my daughter lives complete
with presence akin to gravity
that holds her gently attuned
without shadow or light
without boisterous or whispered vocabulary
and is perhaps content
with what I hope is love
as hand on head
with not a single doubt
she knows me by my chewing
and she laughs
and certifies
that where there’s touch
we are
a certain beautiful thing


—Ed Sancious

She’s Dead and Is

Tragedy rarely gives a heads-up
which is why it’s not so scary to run with scissors, 
it’s getting too near the edge that equals dread.
and she, like a lemming magnetized to cliffs,
loving that tenuous moment 
encouraged stillness to encounter chance.

She confessed
“it brings me closer to the sublime
and resolves most mysteries”. 
As proof she shared that
“elephants speak below the hearing of humans”
and swears
they told her that the universe pivots 
on dual confessions - 
  • one confirms that love is blind,
  • another always says yes to letting your light go out.

She mutters and repeats and mutters
these invocations like a monk intent on sainthood 
with a whispered benediction 
“to just feel it.” 
“To be like purloined moonlight giving texture to the dark.”

She offers thanks and gives instruction
saying an ending must have the strategy
to nod like you’re in the know
with what the voices of angels intone
as they, like elephants, vocalize low.

She waits 
for memories and 
feelings and
questions to come,
staying chaste
like acolytes on Sunday morning cruising the aisles, 
spreading incense to mask the stink of death,
an aromatic diversion inviting faith,
the kind that comes without
guarantee of reward.

Hers was a life that struggled 
to live the lessons learned
that love has no human face
and hers is that of a stranger.

So now no more attempts to flee
that tenuous moment 
when stillness embraces chance 
and romance accommodates apocalypse.

She’s dead and is still remembered
like a thousand Roman years 
of empire in decline
love can imitate Byzantium.


—Ed Sanctious

two hearts might make a hero

in this paragon’s fortress of solitude
all my thoughts are heroic.

as more and more
it takes less and less
to hold this imaginable, 
almost alien, hope that love
might breed us into heroes
with powers to fool and pardon
with an x-ray vision to see, 
and be, 
that tender infinity 
between those moments of making a self.

in truth, I wonder if love can have a hero

although there are those times without doubts 
about the clarity of supposition,
where there’s touch
that certifies
that we can be 
a certain beautiful thing.

two hearts that craft a hero’s code.
that spooned, attuned,
in semi-sacred consolation
for 20 and 10 remembrances
which lessened the room for doubt.

yet still …
even with heated flesh on flesh 
I find sometimes 
it’s lust 
that gets defined 
as love.

but hoping heroes are human too 
with all the villains of imagination subdued 
we are just hearts 
enticed to hold each other’s 
every fragile awkward gesture,
affirmed to be enough.

two heroes, two hearts 
without the need to be persuaded.
to simply be an imprint 
on impermanence, 
heading home

remembering, embracing 
the rhythm, 
the patience 
of ordinary things,

which is all that love may very well be.


—Ed Sancious

Untitled


The photo was taken by my classmate Yaacov in Israel of the Mediterranean at sunset.  
My dad might have seen the same sunset in 1920 at the age of 6 in Beirut.  
Buddha was the work of AI. All I did was to bring these two voices together.


—Kim Mosley

About Dismantling Grief

“Dismantling Grief is never a straightforward thing. Start
with a handful of earth, scattered over the wrapped
body lowered into the ground.” 
from Dismantling Grief  by Zeina Hashem Beck

a handful of dirt
not enough to bury you
nor enough for grief


—Paul Causey

Considering

is there anything?

there is life

there is life
that comes with audacity
making the smallest part
a thing to submerge the mind and heart 
with unreasonable wonder and joy
and too, there are acts within this life
that burn through souls and flesh 
and bone and blood with horror 
determined and justified
that out-screams any dialogue of peace and justice

and yes 
there is darkness 
that lighting of lamps
can shape to just be shadows
and there is light that’s best known 
by the nuance of gloom

each moment accepted 
has an option 
to ease attachment
that makes chaos almost sweet
with less attention 
to grooming memories 
to live as changeless certainties

and here’s the thing

not each moment will be a nourishment
but each can advocate for wonder
for a life like a river
that’s moved by its own way of being.


—ed sancious

May We Exist

How often do we see?
How often do we see ourselves?
How often are selves inclined to be seen? 

Is certainty only face to face?

The body tries to say all, 
yet it barely offers what it can.
Wholeness, by design, 
hinges on the lyrics of the heart.

Syncing breath with being.
Embracing ancestors in the blood.

We are birthed inert, yet bonded,
by ordinary miracles 
and manageable necessities.
Being human – being perfectly imperfect.
Being mindful,
learning there is that watershed moment
which is a drop, 
which is a stream, 
which is the wave
that washes away illusion
that without the mud
there will be a lotus.


—ed sancious

Christmas Cactus

I left you alone.
Two weeks without water.
When I came back I thought your limbs drooped heavy 
because: flowers.
Some already sticky, rotted fruit, 
others waiting to burst forth into the sun.
I considered giving you away, as easily as you’d been given to me.
You are a cactus, you don’t need water.
If your withered greens fall off in places it’s because you are a cactus.
You don’t need water.
You don’t need love.
You don’t need attention.

Alone at home, I doused you in a bath of tap,
set you outside 
to listen to the insects hum
to feel the warmth of the day’s last rays of sun. 
When chill descended, I brought you in, 
considered dinner:
lion’s mane mushroom rips, garlic smashed, asparagus singed.

When it was done, I turned to find your limbs raised up.
It was probably just a little bit.
But you looked a ballerina, revived and ready to dance

Forgive me, little teacher.
I didn’t love you, I didn’t tend to you.
But you still did the work of bursting forth with flowers.
Forgive how quick I dismiss. 
Forgive how little I look around 
to catch your beauty, most profound.


—Emily Romano

Blue Sky

a blue sky
stretching out before us
wisps of clouds
along the distant horizon

Mt. Tam in the background
my Mt Fuji
the Golden gate bridge
magnificently across the Bay 

my little dog Noodle
sits close and shivers 
together we look from
our mountain bench 
inspired by the panorama 
Noodle frightened
by the vastness    


—Bruce Linton

while the world was on fire

while the world was on fire   
I watched carefully 
as the low sugar 
strawberry jam 
spread across the 
thinly sliced  
sourdough batard bread, 
the smell of the
the Arabian coffee 
was intoxicating,  
our small dog "Noodle" 
chewed on her bone relentlessly,  
Carolyn did her concert in C Minor 
as she unloaded the dishwasher,
our bird clock chimed 10am with the Owl hooting, 
the rain had stopped
outside our open door to the garden 
Japanese maples rested for winter


—Bruce Linton

Waiting

Salvation requires so little says Carol Hamilton, praising an old Inuit woman who sat out a blizzard under the snow. The storm raged but the woman didn’t rage. She would live or she would die. She waited to see. When the storm eased, she broke out into sunlight. Neither lost nor found, she made her way home.

I admire such calm, the giving way—to the elements, to what is needed. Sometimes that quiet comes to me—to any of us—the car sliding across black ice, the crash, and that silence in which we wait to hear
is this life, or is it death? And they seem strangely the same.

Other times I try not to thrash about. I clutch, drowning, hour after hour, not for life or safety but for something firm beneath my feet. A teacher of sorts, a man with problems of his own—like all of us— once sang a scrap of song to me. The words are mostly lost, but I hear the line that mattered. Cause I’m already standing on the ground.

Something beneath my feet—the calm itself, resting in it. No matter what, it will be well.


—Sarah Webb

The Wild Red Cry

“…when you hear out of the same twilight the wildest red outcry.” from You are Standing at the Edge of the Woods by Mary Oliver 

While the darkness is a friend,
there are times when it harbors things I do not trust.
The wild red cry is not a stranger
to the ears but it is the harbinger of death 
and of whom we do not know.

In the darkness,
we are blind to the habits of the wild,
yet they are always there.
We are blind to the story
that unfolds without the light of day.
So, we extrapolate from what we know
into what we do not and believe that it is the truth.

There is a finality in that scream.
Is it yours? Or is it ours?
Humanity is estranged from the woods
and has been for millennia.
We do not know where the wild red cry originated,
but we have come to know it,
to savor the taste of the blood that it embodies.
It appears that we cannot get enough
and like the predator in the dark of night,
we hunt for it in the differences between us.

Once, there were animals to be feared
Whether by day or night,
but now humans top that list.
No wonder the other animals shun us, fear us.
No wonder the world is slowly dying.
We are standing at the edge of the woods
wondering when the wild red cry 
will be heard again, not if, but when,
and whose cry will it be?


—Paul Causey

At the Edge of the Woods, Unable to Say It

1.
Indifferent, cold
the working of law.

Or, filled with light
mild, blinding.

Here in the trees
we leave a little of who we are.
In them I don’t stand as tall.
The pines stretch above
and the cliffs.

Water widens. 
Wind slants it with gray,
with lines that trail.

Life is in it
and death.
Cold pierces, teeth tear,
all in that vivid light.

2.
A wind crosses the trees
and all are murmuring.
A fire comes 
and all are burning.

Not this tree’s branches, that tree’s branches,
but a raising and lowering.

One moment a single trunk,
a fistful of needles
alone in its grieving, in its dying.
The next, a green
that spreads along the mountains.

Morning 
and then night.

3.
alternation:

caught in edges
mourning, loving, fighting

a trembling of water


—Sarah Webb

In Response to Saigyo: A Prayer

 “let me not spend my life 
                lamenting the world’s sorrows
for above
in the wide sky
the moon shines pure.” Saigyo

Flying is such a joyful thing,
I can’t do it when I’m sad, or angry,
or even when I’m asleep
and don’t feel anything at all.
Which is most of the time really.
You need joy in order to fly.

So please “let me not spend my life
lamenting the world’s sorrows
because being able to fly is such a rare
and beautiful thing.

I’m afraid by lamenting, 
I wouldn’t be able to recognize joy 
when it found me,
and I would miss that terribly.

So please, let me be joyful
let me fly to that beautiful, pure moon
Shining in that vast, wide sky.

Please, let me fly.


—Paul Causey

Ghazal for Gaza

Since all the walls shattered, since they bombed this land,
where will you sleep now, where will you wash, what is your home?

Will you sit in the rubble that once was a street, will you wrap your shawls tighter,
bubble chickpeas in sauce, use bed frames for firewood, is this now your home?

The palm trees still standing, that sway in the rain, the sound of the ocean,
the water that rains in buckets for drinking, is this now your home?

The songs children sing, the clapping adults, the purring of cats,
the siren, the bullet, the beating from soldiers, is all this your home?

I have a house with four walls, that I wish was more infinite,
so I could invite you to rest, to drink water and bathe, and say this is your home.

These words I write may be left on a page, or a screen, in love and in rage.
If you read them and cry, if you read them and smile, say this is your home.

Prayers to Allah, prayers to Jesus, prayers to people, deaf to your calling,
in silence, in speaking, outside in snow, inside in your heart, is this all your home?

I ask of the universe, please, cleave compassion, in dark hearts of men.
Tell them the air that we breathe, the light that we share, this is our home.


—Sol Frye