Poetry Links

2010-03-14T17:43:00.001-07:00

Dodge Poetry Festival Readings on YouTube

Dodge Poetry Festival 2010

Some great poets read at this Festival, including U.S Poet Laureates.

Enjoy!

Who Is The Dreamer, Dreaming?

2010-03-13T01:10:00.000-08:00

As the larger sky above

is part, air, part cloud,

life transitions into death.

Darkness is dispelled by light.

In a dream you gave me your hand,

I saw your fingers reach out for mine.

I felt your distant presence

through the pressure in my heart.

When we rise each day in life,

the idea of dying is but a dream.

When we are dead life is

but a dream upon a dream.

Light to dark, we wake, we sleep

we move by stillness into eternity.

Death is more than dying,

Living is more than life.

Who is the dreamer, dreaming?

***

Dedicated to My Twin Brother Greg
R.I.P. - January 23, 2005

Editor's Choice Award 2005
International Journal of Poetry

Death Is...

2010-03-13T00:30:00.001-08:00

Death is not extinguishing the light;
it is putting out the lamp
because the dawn has come.

***

Rabindranath Tagore -
Poet, Philosopher, Nobel Laureate

Last Song of Fortune, To A Hero's Hero

2010-03-13T00:10:00.000-08:00

Last Song of Fortune
To A Hero's Hero

Out of some remote region deep within me
I salute each sunrise,
and bow down worshipping the water-lily
for each wave that has cleansed me
through its caressing.

This gesture would seem simple to give up,
but the daily sacrifice of exposure to the elements
has made the stars seem that much closer.
I could not go on if I did not believe beyond faith
in the Golden Gate between Central Earth and Lost Paradise.

Life is no longer the end, but the means whereby
we'll pull through this exploration of madness.

Glory has its own reward,
quenching each parched throat
with shared praise and salutation.
Whether it be our own brother
that we are nailing to some cross,
to announce another uncertain victory -
Or the thunderous applause
of our own cries inflamed and resurrected,
echoing over and over the bells toll
a long and cracked liberty.

For the sake of Love only,
I have remained on the hillside
overlooking the seared chimneys
of our clustered migration.

The Willow Tree hangs and sways,
and one root remains to feed the families
and the histories of our ancestors.
I am startled looking in the mirror
and see that I am still human,
and not the lost or found.
Our vague salvation haunts us,
candle smoke burning from both ends.

As the poet or priestess
I must give up all other allusions to Love,
Except that we may win this war yet
if we go on fighting for this bare and simple truth.
I am not concerned with what excuse
humanity must give itself, be it holiday, or horror -
We must give ourselves permission to love and to be free.

The romantic princess in me decrees,
that I share this pouring of resolve
that I have yet to fully comprehend.
As an artist must cut through stone,
we recreate the source of this gift, within us.
Fragility's stronghold
in a world of despondent space.

The crimes you have committed
don't bother me,
because behind every man who lives
there walks a shadow
of those who fell behind him,
rested in the tenable dream come true.

I know your dreams,
of a happiness or peace that can go on forever...
Green fields bathed in crystalline dew;
Lands where no man hath mapped or conquered;
The Goldenrod that grows between cracks of cement;
The Checkered Flag for speed defying time;
The Medal of Significance, hung on the azure ribbon
of Heaven and of Hell.

I know that you've never been broken completely.
Though you've often crawled into the abyss of suicide,
begging that your life be bought or sold,
as long as it is taken whole into the arms of Aphrodite.
A love that reaches into every reason you've ever given yourself.

The fate of the Hero who has learned obscurity
through his resemblance to everyone, knows
along with his ascertained salvation,
that once he has given his life -
he is going to have to go right on giving it up!
If he ever truly wants to live and die a free man.

They etched your name in sterling and gave you a number,
but failed to recognize the honors they had bestowed upon you.
The alchemical transmutation of solitude and stone,
to the vulnerable mysteries behind blood and bone.

They failed to tell you that once you've climbed
the summit a la Grande,
you can cry out in any tongue you want to,
or fly any colour flag you wish.
But you can't come back down and bare the stripes and sores
of a victory they will never understand.

You flapped your wings once too often,
and your beauty took a beating it didn't deserve,
when they asked you how you dared to remain a man.
You should have been born a god or a dog,
but your resembled them as no man can
to another man's hand on himself.

The Poet asks, "Why it is that the last vision
that sets fire to the stars,
is the most painful in its consecration?

Anyone who has hung a multitude of times
for reanimate reward and the penitence of punishment,
could see the holes in your eyes and heart.
Those hands can go right through the skin
if there is anything to hold on to, or to hope for.

It's the moments' pleasure that has awarded our senses the most.
Those arrested moments of clarity
in the midst of destruction,
have been the fine lines of our wisdom.
That have caused us to age, while we are yet young,
and to germinate as children again
when we can no longer grow any older.

Who could after all, stare into eternity
without blinking an eye?

Hero, you are the sustenance each country must claim.
The bread every man will have to learn to break of himself.
The longing each woman hopes to satisfy by womb and thigh.
The dream that children weave, as the soul saviors
of our world of fantasy and faith.

Small wonder then, that we will continue to raise heroes
as we continue to kill them off.

I will hope, Hero,
that when you've last raised your glittering wings to Fly...
That we will, as a result of your efforts to save us...
be made worth your noble and untiring grace.

With our pattern for progression through stress,
we must, by will or accident
save us from ourselves!

For there is pain and suffering,
and Infinite Grace.

We are a spectacular race
persecuted with promise,
born with a hero's burning face.

***

Last Song of Fortune To a Hero's Hero
by Mountain Poet
Original Copyright 1976

All rights reserved. Copyright revised January 2000 .

The poem Last Song of Fortune To A Hero's Hero was written about one of the first recipients of the Medal of Honor from the Reagan Administration, a Special Forces Hero of the Viet Nam War; brought back to the states as a trainer of the L.A. Swat Team, and who ended up with bone cancer serving as a cook in a small mountain restaurant. R.I.P. Gordon Smith. This new dedication in 2000 is to a dear and timeless friend who wrote volumes himself and added much to all the lives he shared. He was a former Marine, a true Southern Gentleman and a Scholar, and one to whom I am forever grateful to have known and loved. So this one is for you Doyne McElvain, God Bless You and Thank You for being my friend, and hero.

For publication or personal circulation only by written permission of the author. For more information contact the forum host below, or send an email in reply to this e-note poem for a day.

Moutain Poet's Quotations

2010-03-12T23:54:00.000-08:00

"Beware of those who always see the glass as half empty
for they will always be thirsty."

- Mountain Poet
April 21, 2003

The Writers Well
5973.1

Poetry of Loss and Longing

2010-03-12T18:05:00.000-08:00

When I die if you need to weep

Cry for your brother or sister
Walking the street beside you

And when you need me put your arms around anyone
And give them what you need to give me.

I want to leave you something
Something better than words or sounds.

Look for me in the people I've known or loved
And if you cannot give me away
At least let me live in your eyes and not on your mind.

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands
By letting bodies touch bodies
And by letting go of children that need to be free.

Love doesn't die, people do
So when all that's left of me is love
Give me away.

***

- Merritt Malloy -

Quotes On Death & Dying

2010-03-12T17:49:00.000-08:00

Perhaps they are not the stars,
but rather openings in Heaven
where the love of our lost ones
pours through and shines down upon us
to let us know they are happy.

- Eskimo Legend

Mountain Poet's Journal

2010-03-12T16:12:00.000-08:00

Don't Walk Ahead

One does not walk ahead of yesterdays,
but behind tomorrow.

Having come from some place,
is not the same as going somewhere.

It takes wisdom to see where we've been.

But it will take even more,
to find our way in the dark.

***
- Mountain Poet, Copyright March 2001

Portals Into Forever -Anthology
International Library of Poetry, 2001
ISBN - 0-7951-5036-9
Under A Quicksilver Moon Series

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