Personal development
I make my death grow
into a room for others
in a narrow pit
there is no play
I must claim liberty
like a dancer
Inspired poems
Inspired poems — a collection of the best works on Poemship.
Low-information voter
I have put on my hope
and voted against sand
hindered from sleep
hardly able to open eyes
I look at any road
and see no road
nothing is now
out of the way
but I am resolved
to drive
Citizen
town is a hole I stepped in
with my voice full of hard use
jostled and crowded
fallen I get up again
I will live sparingly
Retirement
A sun for myself—
pie of a life I never tasted.
I am captain. I set sail
for the farewell chance.
El Donado Marcos de la Sierra
Day after day
the lizards dance on the sand.
When the sun climbs high
the mountains won’t
sit still. Even the tortoise
toiling as little as he can
moves in time with the maguey’s
sharp-tongued shadow.
Sun. Tree. Stone. Sky.
The will to circle in the wind.
To walk like Lucifer up
& down in the earth
or lope like Coyote, always
one meal from the end.
Let the fullness without
break the drought within–
How to Live
A quaint command:
think of kindness, thank for kindness.
After supper, good music and bed.
Strew the streets with herbs for joy of going.
Never pray for happiness as long as the sun
and moon endure.
Skylark
in the customs of larks
joy is all the rage
they pierce the heart
afire with a news in which
I hardly believe
Singing bottles
bottles of raw wine
the old soldiers
sit on the street singing
through wind and cold
Finished
A hat to
the office here,
I end my contract,
making an abstract home of the night.
Rimbaud, 1880
I have borrowed some quiet—
the first in my life—and am
resolved to go. I settle
my accounts with myself
and fear in hand,
furnish my mind with a tent.
Buckles to my shoes
I sat with duty and guilt and shame,
a brother to the poor.
This day I began to put on buckles to my shoes.
Grace
buzzing on the autumn mountain
an amber alert
a child gone missing
in the middle of my daydream
railroad workers 400 feet below
pause and look at their phones
every morning now
it’s a different landscape
i go home and cut my hair
the missing girl is found
two notes from a wren
get lodged in my inner ear
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