"Poetry is to be slurped up"

Credit for pic

The Examiner
by F.R. Scott, A poem written in the 1940's in Canada concerning
the American schooling system

The routine trickery of the examination baffles these hot and discouraged youths

Driven by they know not what external pressure, they pour their hated self-analysis, through the nib of confession, onto the accusatory page

I, who have plotted their immediate downfall, I am entrusted with the divine categories: A, B, C, D, and the hell of F

The parade of prize and the back door of past, in the tight silence, standing by green grass window, watching the fertile earth graduate its sons with more compassion

Not commanding the shape of stem and stamen, bringing the trees to pass by shift of sunlight and increase of rain

For each seed, the whole soil; for the inner life, the environment receptive and contributory

I shudder at the narrow frames of our textbook schools in which we plant our so various seedlings

Each brick-walled barracks, cut into numbered rooms, black boarded, ties the venturing chute to the master's stick

The screw-desk rows of lads and girls, subdued in the shade of an adult, their acid sub-soil, shape the new to the old in the ashen garden

Shall we, shall we open the whole skylight of thought to these tip-toe minds, bring them our frontier worlds and the boundless uplands of art for their field of growth?

Or shall we pass them the chosen poems with the footnotes, ring the bell on their thoughts, period their play, make laws for averages and plans for means, print one history book for a whole province and let 90,000 read page 10 by Tuesday?

As I gather the inadequate paper evidence, I hear across the neat campus lawn the professional mower's drone clipping the inch-high grass.

On finding something that starts endorphins popping madly

That light of understanding in your eyes makes the stars shiver at your beauty

The secret of infinity

Explanation of pic

We need to watch the nafs, the ego, like a cat watching a mousehole. We need to grind it down, so that we become like light.

Abdul Hakim Murad

*whisper in the trees*

Credit for pic

Seconds before the rain
with the sweetest smell ever to alight
the fragile sense of scent

The earth shattered

Roots and mortar, hearts and joints,
we fled. we had to. into, those crevices
of mihrab and ostracism,
and decayed. and hid. and cried

Centuries of tears lie within your soul dear human,
forget us not, repress us not, regret us not,
for through us you may taste abundance

All I wish for Us

"The point is, I'd much rather have my time consumed making my own bread outdoors than kill it watching some reality TV show in a so-called "living" room. Where money once provided me with my primary sense of security, I now find it in friends and the local community. Some of my closest mates are people I only met because I had to build real relationships with others based on trust and kindness, not money"
Read it all here

Post Mortem

It is only in hindsight that you see how innocent and beautiful
some of the things that scare you in life are.

Veteran

I am acutely aware of the creeping in of agedness,
In my exasperation at their excitement based on ignorance,
In how I can predict the blooming of flowers, from memory,
In my marvelling respect for those who filled in the clouds,
In my letting go to give their ideas space,
And in my deep sense of responsibility,
To be remembered by Right, and to leave them with Good