Tag Archives: news

Fit to Print: englyn unodle crwca

What’s fit to print is not news.
Our bitter, contrary views
are merely stuff we seek to use as new fuel;
like fools, we think we choose

to fight false with what is true,
wielding light that will burn through
the lies and mad bugaboo everywhere.
Now there’s a hopeful coup.

Hopeful, but not meant to be.
The real world seeks symmetry
and balance, but will not be rushed ahead
or led like a pony.

No, to make news in these days,
one must seek out different ways.
To prove a thing, you must amaze the wild mob;
a big job with no praise.

15 MAR 2017

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Untitled

Freedom of speech doesn’t do any good
If no one has time to stop and listen;
Not that anyone actually could
Listen, with their mouths also open.

So I will stop talking, at least for a while,
and let everyone else have their say;
I will listen to the same things repeated
by countless others, who each think
they are repeating something for the first time
or that no one else has ever heard it.

And the quotations from third sources
(like reading the Bible and believing its happening to you)
will continue; with interpretations regurgitated
verbatim again and again.

But there is no point in me talking.
All I can describe is my own path;
I cannot begin to talk about yours.

And that’s what you want, isn’t it?
An atlas that shows where you could be going,
but doesn’t make you describe where you are.
Where YOU are.
Not where your philosophy is at present,
or your political agenda,
or the lack or abundance of your education,
or the number of newsfeeds you can consume each day.

You can keep that frame of reference
for someone who wants to be hung on a wall.

It ain’t me babe.

28 JUN 2004

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Thoughts for Today

It is difficult to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack of what is found there.

— William Carlos Williams

Let us remember … that in the end we go to Poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both. — Christian Wiman, Editor, Poetry magazine

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