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Free from urgency A poem runs Wherever It wants Through crumbled crayons And rusty spigots From the nostrils of cows on October mornings Breathes something fantastic And fashion-ignorant Like an apple An apple An apple ~ (c) TA Freeman~Sirtosky

Despond by Jim Harrison

At midnight in his living room a man is angry at a fly that is bothering him. How can this be? A man is angry at things that never happened and never will happen. He's angry at the woman he'll never meet because she refuses to meet him because, not existing herself, she has no idea that he exists. He's frying potatoes that don't exist at sunset. The frying pan is a black sun and out the window in the gathering dark the ocean looks so heavy that it might fall through the earth and join another ocean. At dawn he wakes. There's a fly in the room but perhaps it's a miniature bird. Magnified, the sound is the basso rumbling o f the universe the peculiar music galaxies make when they fray against each other. He sleeps again, his hand on his dog's heart which says don't be angry. She senses the steps of the last dance saved for us

The Climb

"Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it. Happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't." ~Dick Francis via Phyllis Sokol-Wood and the Velocity Seminar

The Art of Love - Giving

The art of love-giving Resides in a house Deep in forest of mind And in the white residue Of evaporated water on the kitchen table And in my grey cat And in the heartbreaking Bonds of parent nature A foolish heart is often broken Because it believes that the love it gives Will return - -Recognizable- When love is given By a foolish heart It is blind to the love it receives In return ~(c) TA Freeman~Sirtosky

Poetic Humor

Hamlet II: Gravedigger 1: "Where the hell is everybody? Question the Is that be to not, or be to." ~from the Complete Wrks of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged)

Emotion Could

I still wonder that the human emotions Suffering and Joy Are not powerful enough to pull the world apart - or at least Were we to fashion it with copper wire Have it fuel the world The chaos in its crossing The friction in its evolution The resistance and the flow Are as seismic as the sun Because I've seen molten tears sear through flesh And laughter pierce a warrior's skull And peace flood houses I know its power But where does it go? It does not stop there The tsunamis of love and hate I don't think it turns into gas or meteor dust I know it's in the quality of the moment But what is quality when there are supernovas you can see? What human emotion can outshine or out-destroy that? And now it comes to me: None. And All. As a poet I'm cursed to compare the astronomical With the personal Always looking for the forward Whether I vet solid starfury Against amalgamations of electro-chemical reactions in an animal Or while hearing a friend tell the story of their day. ~ (c) TA Freeman~Sirtosky

Cheery Beggar

by Gerard Manley Hopkins BEYOND Mágdalen and by the Bridge, on a place called there the Plain, In Summer, in a burst of summertime Following falls and falls of rain, When the air was sweet-and-sour of the flown fineflower of Those goldnails and their gaylinks that hang along a lime; . . . . . . . . The motion of that man’s heart is fine Whom want could not make píne, píne That struggling should not sear him, a gift should cheer him Like that poor pocket of pence, poor pence of mine. . . . . . . . . Recommended by Kevin M., a favorite of his. And mellifluous it is.