The Writer's Almanac: "Lessons" by Pat Schneider

I have learned
that life goes on,
or doesn't.
That days are measured out
in tiny increments
as a woman in a kitchen
measures teaspoons
of cinnamon, vanilla,
or half a cup of sugar
into a bowl.

I have learned
that moments are as precious as nutmeg,
and it has occurred to me
that busy interruptions
are like tiny grain moths,
or mice.
They nibble, pee, and poop,
or make their little worms and webs
until you have to throw out the good stuff
with the bad.

It took two deaths
and coming close myself
for me to learn
that there is not an infinite supply
of good things in the pantry.

"Lessons" by Pat Schneider from Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: May Day

May Day

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

"May Day" by Phillis Levin from May Day. © Penguin Books, 2008. 

Read more »

Alone by Maya Angelou

Alone

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Maya Angelou

Read more »

The Writer’s Almanac: “Someone I Cared For” by Cid Corman

Someone I cared for
Someone I cared for
put it to me: Who
do you think you are?

I went down the list
of all the manypossibilities
carefully — did it
twice — but couldn't find
a plausible one.

That was when I knew for the first time who
in fact I wasn't.

"Someone I cared for" by Cid Corman, from And The Word. © Coffee House Press, 1987.

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: "The Rider" by Naomi Shihab Nye

The Rider

by Naomi Shihab Nye

A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn't catch up to him,
the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.
What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.
A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.


"The Rider" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from Fuel. © BOA Editions, 1998.

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: "Self-Knowledge" by C.K. Williams

Self-knowledge
by C. K. Williams

Because he was always the good-hearted one, the ingenuous one, the one

who knew no cunning,

who, if "innocent" didn't quite apply, still merited some similar connota-

tion of naïveté, simplicity,

the sense that an essential awareness of the coarseness of other people's

motives was lacking

so that he was constantly blundering upon situations in which he would

take on good faith

what the other rapaciously, ruthlessly, duplicitously and nearly always

successfully offered as truth. . .

All of that he understood about himself but he was also aware that he

couldn't alter at all

his basic affable faith in the benevolence of everyone's intentions and that

because of this the world

would not as in romance annihilate him but would toy unmercifully with

him until he was mad.

"Self-knowledge" by C.K. Williams, from Flesh and Blood. © Farrar/Straus/Giroux, New York, 1998.

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: Religious Consolation

Religious Consolation
by John Updike

One size fits all. The shape or coloration
of the god or high heaven matters less
than that there is one, somehow, somewhere, hearing
the hasty prayer and chalking up the mite
the widow brings to the temple. A child
alone with horrid verities cries out
for there to be a limit, a warm wall
whose stones give back an answer, however faint.

Strange, the extravagance of it—who needs
those eighteen-armed black Kalis, those musty saints
whose bones and bleeding wounds appall good taste,
those joss sticks, houris, gilded Buddhas, books
Moroni etched in tedious detail?
We do; we need more worlds. This one will fail.

"Religious Consolation" by John Updike
from Americana and Other Poems.
© Alfred A. Knopf, 2001.

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: "The Waitresses"

from The Writer's Almanac:

The Waitresses

The waitresses
At the restaurant
Have to keep reminding
The schizophrenic man
That if he keeps acting
Like a schizophrenic man
They'll have to ask him to leave the restaurant.
But he keeps forgetting that he's a schizophrenic man,
So they have to keep reminding him.

"The Waitresses." by Matt Cook from Evesdrop Soup

Read more »

750 years apart ... they wrote this ...

Nothing is born, nothing is destroyed.
Away with your dualism, your likes and dislikes.
Every single thing is just the One Mind.
When you have perceived this,
you will have mounted the Chariot of the Buddhas.
-Huang Po, "Zen Teaching of Huang Po"

(born ? - died 850)

… what though the sea with waves continual
do eat the earth, it is no more at all:
nor is the earth the less, or loseth ought.
for whatsoever from one place doth fall,
is with the tide unto an other brought:
for there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought.

Edmund Spenser, "The Faerie Queene"
(c. 1552 – 13 January 1599)

Read more »

The Writer's Almanac: "Self-Employed" by David Ignatow

I stand and listen, head bowed,
to my inner complaint.
Persons passing by think
I am searching for a lost coin.
You're fired, I yell inside
after an especially bad episode.
I'm letting you go without notice
or terminal pay. You just lost
another chance to make good.
But then I watch myself standing at the exit,
depressed and about to leave,
and wave myself back in wearily,
for who else could I get in my place
to do the job in dark, airless conditions?

Poem: "Self-Employed" by David Ignatow from Against the Evidence: Selected Poems 1934-1994. © Wesleyan University Press, 1994. Reprinted with permission.

Read more »

Stop Being So Religious

What

Do sad people have in
Common?
It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.
What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
So religious
Like That.

("The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

Read more »

This Being Human Is A Guest House

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of it's furniture,still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought

the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
--Rumi

Read more »

A Golden Compass

Forget every idea of right and wrong
Any classroom ever taught you

Because
An empty heart, a tormented mind,
Unkindness, jealousy and fear

Are always the testimony
You have been completely fooled!

Turn your back on those
Who would imprison your wondrous spirit
With deceit and lies.

Come, join the honest company
Of the King's beggars -
Those gamblers, scoundrels and divine clowns
And those astonishing fair courtesans
Who need Divine Love every night.

Come, join the courageous
Who have no choice
But to bet their entire world
That indeed,
Indeed, God is Real.

I will lead you into the Circle
Of the Beloved's cunning thieves,
Those playful royal rogues -
The ones you can trust for true guidance -
Who can aid you
In this Blessed Calamity of life.

Hafiz,
Look at the Perfect One
At the Circle's Center:

He Spins and Whirls like a Golden Compass,
Beyond all that is Rational,

To show this dear world

That Everything,
Everything in Existence
Does point to God.


~ Hafiz

Read more »