BEATITUDE
by Claire J. Baker
Believing that love
silently expressed
will be heard
and silently answered,
we need not celebrate
by trumpet blast,
tambourines, a dance
around the block,
need not kneel to pray
in the garden of moonlight.
Love
in its own quiet way
feels like enough.
Season’s Greetings,
Peace and Love 2015
Tangled Up in Wounds
(Poem found under leaves in Golden Gate Park)
by George Wynn
“Oh God give me a warm
home far away from the
kick-ass cowards who
beat me up and set
fire to my tent
“I got a right to be alive
Do I deserve this: No, No, No!
Yes, I do like to beg
I’m good at panhandling
I have to be to survive
“Right now I’m tangled
up in blue like the song says
and tangled up in my wounds
and my nerves are burning
with the more ready to go
then ever before blues.”
Ark of Loneliness
by Peter Marin
Filing in, one by one,
as if into an ark
of loneliness, out of the rain
the shelter, its gray
emptiness anchored
at the bottom by green cots
arranged in rows, boots
tucked under, men asleep,
rocked on the surface
of watery dreams by a
great storm never to end.
Gimme Some Truth
Quotations Compiled by Daniel McMullan
I’ve had enough of reading things by neurotic psychotic pigheaded politicians. All I want is the truth, just gimme some truth. — John Lennon
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world. — William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. — A.A. Milne (Christopher Robin to Pooh)
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” — Luke 14:12-14
You were ordered to obey to Allah, and you were created to perform good deeds. — Hazrat Ali Ibn Abu-Talib A.S
And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” — Haruki Murakami