KO: Poems

Maya's Words

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:58:24 GMT

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

Still I Rise

The big moth and the little spider

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 23:24:14 GMT

The keyboard clicked away, as I gazed off into the distant sunshine, looking far, yet realizing there was some activity on the window side of my blind. There, in the little two inch space, a flesh colored moth buzzed, trapped near the light, yet unable to truly find it. He buzzed from side to side in reckless abandon, brail on either end, as he bumped and tried to relearn how to find a way out of this accidental cavern.

He flew like a 747 in a spiral down to the far right hand corner of the blind where he made a quick jig jag in an attempt to pull a quarterback sneak out of the backfield. He was out. Whew. He breathed a sigh of relief, but now, his wing was stuck. A tiny spider had seen that opening and built a very thin web over it. The blind moth, searching, had found the hole, and the spider had found it's prey.

The moth was so much bigger. In fact, it must have been close to 3 times the size of the spider. It was strong, and could fly fast, but it could not shake the sticky lineage of the spider. He shook and shook and buzzed and buzzed and I sat and watched, wanting to intervene, yet realizing this was nature. Hearty animals sometimes are overtaken by nothing more than a little piece of hair. I marveled at how this could happen. The moth had fought and fought, until his body simply hung by the web, defeated.

The spider slid down his line, like a fire fighter must use the pole when called to a fire. As he arrived to the moth, he lay there, beside it, admiring it perhaps, or just resting after a long and hard battle.

It was quite an act of nature and surreal to the human eye. It does not always play out so clear, to be sure.

Diverging

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:00:48 GMT

I came across a poem this morning that I first gave to my friend more than 20 years ago as she embarked by herself to Australia. She was so full of anticipation of what lay ahead, yet also fearful of the unknown. It struck me how true this rang for most of life's lessons.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

~ Robert Frost

IF

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 16:30:41 GMT

My grandma's house was a special retreat for me, filled with the smells of ginger, and cinnammon and warm chocolate chips cookies fresh from the oven. Her towels were crunchy when stepping out of the shower because she had hung each one to dry in the cool autumn air on the clothes line outside - they didn't have a dryer. Her garden was full of all the fruit that you could ask for as an eight year old, and she used it all in her cakes, cookies, and puddings. One of the most memorable things about her house, was the framed verse she had hanging on the wall....I think of it often when I lose perspective on things. As I think of it, all of the other warm and fuzzy thoughts drift into my mind temporarily replacing what they need to.

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling

The Sparrows Nest

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:43:16 GMT

As the sun shines down for a spring tease, William Wordsworth's words shine on:

The Sparrow's Nest

Behold, within the leafy shade,
Those bright blue eggs together laid!
On me the chance-discovered sight
Gleamed like a vision of delight.
I started---seeming to espy
The home and sheltered bed,
The Sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by
My Father' house, in wet or dry
My sister Emmeline and I
Together visited.

She looked at it and seemed to fear it;
Dreading, tho' wishing, to be near it:
Such heart was in her, being then
A little Prattler among men.
The Blessing of my later year
Was with me when a boy:
She gave me eyes, she gave me ears;
And humble care, and delicate fears;
A heart, the fountain of sweet tears;
And love, and thought, and joy.

Twas the night....

Mon, 25 Dec 2006 01:48:35 GMT

Twas the night before Christmas...and I can't help but think 'FINAALLY this year is coming to an end!!!!' I remember last new year's day and it was NOT a good day, and I think that maybe we cursed it then.

Wow, the Christians, the Muslims, the Jews...how can anyone find ANY peace in the holiday. Not only did 'their' footing not start off the new year...like two thousand years ago, but how can people continue to worship things with such vehemence as to their own demise. I simply am not capable of understanding.

The Winter Solstice was a couple of days ago and I am filled with optimism from that event...it means that from now on, until six months from now, the days will only get longer. Full of more sunshine. Full of more laughter. Full of more waking hours. The supposed day of Christ's birth is JUST an opportunity to appreciate MORE. More of all that life can offer one in the confines of a day. I find peace in that.

I choose to find peace in that. If only that was rolled out amongst the world. What a joyous life we could have.

Peace out.

Changing Tides

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 16:04:23 GMT

For years or maybe even decades people can be together, THEN, see a new side emerge. A side that may surprise them. A side that is unfamiliar, yet quite familiar, all at the same time. This happened recently when Tim decided that he was going to give me a poem that he wrote. Here it is:

Presence

I become aware.
You know, that place between sleep and wakefulness.
I can feel you there. You’re not touching me, but I sense your presence.
I can feel your soft breath on the back of my neck.
I know how this hurts you, you wish it could be different, but it’s beyond both of us.
You’ll lay with me through it all, to comfort and watch over.
It’s time now.
Your cold hand reaches over to cradle my broken pump.
You squeeze.
I come to full wakefulness.
Perspiration attempts to wash away the confusion, the fear and the pain.
Fuck you buddy,
You’re way too early.

~Tim

Its Pretty but its getting old

Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:13:53 GMT

The snow is still hanging around...unusual for this part of the world. It's warmer today, but still not warm enough to melt away the foot or so of compacted powder. It is amusing how the Inuit have 250 words for snow and we only have one or two. Even 'powder' is not a real substitution!

I wrote a little diddy in Newport Beach staring at the Surf a couple of years ago. The image is still fresh and warms me as I stare at that SNOW....

Surfs Up

The young family
clad in pants and longsleeves run along the shoreline in search of sun, warmth and future aspirations
high on the hopes of ebbing and flowing
laughing and surging so free in the sand
Building castles, living dreams today.
And the old timer in the free crashing surf itself
struggles to balance, teeters, catching the wave under his bending board
rippling toward the shore,
dropping him far from the line where the wetness stains the stone
as time stains a soul
He picks up his temporary transportation and thinks about those rising fuel prices and his environment that has lost.
The high school lovers on the boardwalk
balancing on the log seat that for most serves as a barrier
between the beach and the outside world.
Between the here and now, and the other reality that bends itself around the inner lives of those living on terra firma 24 / 7
He sits on the log
His legs enwrap her thighs, her waist
And together they gaze at that outside world
looking for that balance
those stains
that warmth
all so apparent on the sand.

~~KO

Focus and Drive

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 15:20:00 GMT

The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it. ~ Thomas Edison

Deep April

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 21:02:52 GMT

I have always liked this poem, mainly because it talks of Shakespeare's Birthday - April 23, which is our wedding anniversary <gush>.

It was deep April, and the morn
   Shakespere was born;
The world was on us, pressing sore;
My love and I took hands and swore,
   Against the world, to be
Poets and lovers evermore,
To laugh and dream on Lethe's shore,
To sing to Charon in his boat,
Heartening the timid souls afloat;
Of judgement never to take heed,
But to those fast-locked souls to speed,
Whoe never from Apollo fled,
Who spent no hour among the dead;
   Continually
   With them to dwell,
Indifferent to heaven and hell.

- "Michael Field" (aka Katherine Bradley, 1848-1914 & Edith Cooper) 1862-1913