Earth Day poem

Well! The weekend is almost over but Earth Day was two days ago on Thursday, April 22, so here is a poem on that theme. I stumbled upon it because of a link posted by a friend in a comment on a previous 'poem for the weeekend' post. This one is called "Earth Song" and is actually a part of a larger poem called "Hamatreya" by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Earth Song
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

...Hear what the Earth says:--

'Mine and yours;
Mine, not yours, Earth endures;
Stars abide--
Shine down in the old sea;
Old are the shores;
But where are old men?
I who have seen much,
Such have I never seen.

'The lawyer's deed
Ran sure,
In tail,
To them, and to their heirs
Who shall succeed,
Without fail,
Forevermore.

'Here is the land,
Shaggy with wood,
With its old valley,
Mound and flood.
"But the heritors?--
Fled like the flood's foam.
The lawyer, and the laws,
And the kingdom,
Clean swept herefrom.

'They called me theirs,
Who so controlled me;
Yet every one
Wished to stay, and is gone,
How am I theirs,
If they cannot hold me,
But I hold them?'

When I heard the Earth-song,
I was no longer brave;
My avarice cooled
Like lust in the chill of the grave.

This is why I love poems - they have a whole lot of meaning packed into them. Here are four short verses which simultaneously remind us of our mortality and in comparison to the scale of a human life, the near perpetuity of Earth. It reminds us of the real nature of our relationship to our planet (How am I theirs, if they cannot hold me?). It ends on a note which I think is the right message for Earth Day - "Cool thy avarice". I won't harp on. Read it and meditate on it. The full poem "Hamatreya" is here.

[Image: Photograph of the Earth taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi). Popularly known as "The Blue Marble"]

A poem for the weekend

I stumbled upon Taylor Mali's poetry because of a link to one of his poems posted by a friend on Facebook. For this weekend, I am posting one of his poems that I liked a lot.

This one appealed to me because it's about a topic that I have strong feelings about. Are you irked by people who frequently use "like" and "you know?" and "ya'know what I mean?" while speaking? R u mad @ ppl who wrt lke dis? (Especially when there is no 140 character limit?). Well, then you will like this poem:

Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali

In case you hadn't noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you're talking about?

Or believe strongly in what you're saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)'s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren't, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences - so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not -
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don't think I'm uncool just because I've noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It's like what I've heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I'm just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we've just gotten to the point where it's just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we've become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

Taylor Mali is a poet who emerged from the Poetry Slam movement. The Wikipedia article on Poetry Slam introduces the concept as:

A poetry slam is a competition at which poets read or recite original work (or, more rarely, that of others). These performances are then judged on a numeric scale by previously selected members of the audience.
Typically, poetry slam is highly politicized, speaking on many issues including current social and economic issues, gendered injustices, and racial issues. Poets are judged not only on the content of their slam but the manner of delivery and passion behind their words.

It seems to me that because of this background Mali's poems are more akin to "performing arts" than literature. To truly enjoy one of his poems, you have to see it being performed. So here is a video of Taylor Mali performing his poem "Totally like whatever, you know?".



Another hilarious one by Mali - "The impotence of proofreading":



More videos of Taylor reading his own poems can be found here. Some of his poems here

A poem for the weekend

This one is an excerpt from Philip Appleman's poem titled "Five Easy Prayers for Pagans".

1:
O Karma, Dharma, pudding & pie,
gimme a break before I die:

grant me wisdom, will and wit,
purity, probity, pluck and grit.
Trustworthy, helpful, friendly, kind,
gimme great abs and a steel-trap mind.
And forgive, Ye Gods, some humble advice -
these little blessings would suffice
to beget an earthly paradise:
make the bad people good
and the good people nice,
and before our world goes over the brink,
teach the believers how to think.

I like all the five prayers from the poem, especially the one to Shiva:

3:
O Shiva, relentless Spirit of Outrage:
in this vale of tearful True Believers,
teach us to repeat again and again:
No, your Reverences, we will not serve
your Gross National Voodoo, your Church
Militant – we will not flatter the double faces
of those who pray in the Temple of
Incendiary Salvation.
Gentle Preserver, preserve the pure irreverence
of our stubborn minds.
Target the priests, Implacable Destroyer –
and hire a lawyer.