A Guest Poem

GIVE ME MY FLOWERS WHILE I LIVE
By Eccentriq

MAMA SAID THE BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER
SHE ALSO SAID ONCE GIVE ME MY FLOWERS WHILE I LIVE

IN THE FIRST I MUST DISAGREE BECAUSE I WAS HER WATER THAT RESCUED ME

HERS AND MY BLOOD ARE NOT THE SAME BUT SHE ALLOWED ME TO DRINK OF HER KINDNESS

MY MOTHER GAVE ME MORE THAN SHE COULD IMAGINE SHE HAVE ME A CHANCE

LIKE A ROSE BUSH THAT WAS SMOTHERED BY WEEDS SHE SET ME FREE

SHE TORE AWAY MY CHOKEHOLD; SHE WATERED AND NURTURED ME

SO EVERYTIME SINCE I COULD REMEMBER I GIVE HER FLOWERS IN REMEMBERANCE OF SAVING ME

SHE WILL TELL YOU SHE DID NOTHING SPECIAL
SHE WOULD EVEN SMILE AND SHAKE HER HEAD IN DISMISSAL

YOU SEE TO HER SHE JUST WANTED A CHILD
SOMEONE TO LOVE AND AFTER HER TO CARRY ON

AND SHE MAY HAVE GOTTEN MORE THAN SHE BARGINED FOR BUT NEVER THE LESS SHE GOT ME

SHE FOUGHT WITH BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS TO KEEP ME FROM HARMS WAY

MAMA ALWAYS SAYS GIVE ME MY FLOWERS WHILE I LIVE

SO ON THIS DAY AND UNTIL I CAN’T HEAR YOUR VOICE ANYMORE OR FEEL YOUR TOUCH ANY LONGER

I WILL GIVE YOU YOUR FLOWERS IN A VASE TO SHOW YOU MY LOVE

AND WHEN YOU’RE GONE IN YOUR PLACE A FLOWER WILL REMAIN

ME…

Follow the link to view EccentriqLove.com.

Christians Against Greensboro Minimum Wage Are Hypocrites

Modern Slavery
by J Gordon Boyett

One story dominates Israel’s scriptures. It is the story of the Jewish people and their attempt to escape from slavery. The Jewish people are slaves in Egypt. They labor under the lash and oppression of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh’s taskmasters were hard. They whipped and beat the people. They set impossible burdens for them to meet in their quota of bricks and for their daily tasks.

God called Moses to rescue the people from Pharaoh and lead the children of Israel out of Egypt to freedom and a land of their own; but Pharaoh had to be persuaded.

God turned a rod into a snake.

God turned water into blood.

God brought a plague of frogs on Egypt.

God infested the land with lice

God sent swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh and the land of Egypt.

God caused all the cattle of Egypt to die but spared the cattle of the Israelites.

God caused boils and sores to break out on the bodies of man and beast in all Egypt.

God caused a grievous hailstorm to strike the land of Egypt.

God sent a plague of locusts upon the land of Egypt.

Finally God sent a plague of death on Egypt’s firstborn: from the first born of Pharaoh down to the first born of the Egyptian servants and beasts---all died.

After the plague of death, Pharaoh relented and let the people go. God led them out by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Then Pharaoh changed his mind again, took his army and his chariots and overtook them as they were camped by the sea. The children of Israel were frightened and feared that they would die in the wilderness at the hand of the soldiers of Pharaoh. God ordered Moses to stretch out his rod upon the sea. Then God drove the waters back by a strong east wind that parted the waters. The Israelites walked across the sea on dry land. The army of Pharaoh came after them and the waters returned, drowning all the Egyptians. Thus, the Lord rescued the people of Israel from Egyptian slavery.

Soon after the people had been saved from slavery in Egypt, the people began the murmur against Moses and Aaron. They feared that they would die of hunger in the dessert. The people wanted to go back to Egypt where they had been slaves but had plenty to eat. God heard their pleas of fear and fed them manna from heaven. The children of Israel were fed daily so that each had enough and none had more than enough. If they tried to store up more than was needed, the manna became rotten with worms and stank. On the sixth day, each was permitted to gather enough to last through the seventh day, and it did not rot. In this way the Lord provided for the Sabbath, the seventh day, to be a day of rest. God directed that the Israelites fill an Omer with manna and keep it forever, so their generations might see the bread they were fed in the wildness. The people ate manna forty years until they left the wilderness.

This story became a paradigm of God’s will for the economy of the children of Israel. It was their most basic lesson in how to avoid being a slave society like the one in Egypt from which they had escaped. This lesson is applicable and important to us today. Its point for the people of Israel was that when you build your society, make sure that everyone has enough and that some don’t get more than they need. In God’s Economic Plan, it is wrong when people don’t have enough and it is also wrong when people have more than they need.

If one thinks about any society, you will discover that the economic problems in society come from extremes. If some people don’t have enough they will fight, steal and even kill to get enough. If some have more of God’s bounty than they need, the only way that they can maintain this unfairness, is by force. Concentrations of economic power among a few in the presence of great want among the many lead to a slave society. God’s people, who had been slaves in Egypt, were not to be a slave society.

This lesson was taught to the Jewish people every day of every year for forty years--probably more times than God taught any other lesson in the Bible. Israel’s daily experienced in the wilderness was telling them, “When you build your society in the promised land, make sure that everyone has enough. Make sure that some don’t have more than their share of God’s bounty. In God’s Plan, it is wrong if people don’t have enough and it is wrong if people have too much.”

God’s next direction to Israel about how to avoid a slave society was God’s definition of a moral loan. God spoke to Moses and said, “If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor; you shall not exact interest from them.”

What a strange statement to modern ears. We spend our lives paying interest. Using credit cards, paying mortgages and car payments, have become central to our way of life. We prize our credit reports and work to improve them.

Why did God direct the Israelites not to charge interest on a loan? Now I see, Lord! I understand! The lending of money at interest has regularly led to slavery. Poor debtors who couldn’t pay off debts continuously compounded by exorbitant interest became slaves to their creditors. So interest violates God’s direction against some having more then they need. In time interest concentrates more and more of God’s bounty in fewer and fewer hands. But God’s people were not to create a slave society like they had known in Egypt. God, please help us to learn this lesson.

God’s next direction on how to avoid the re-creation of a slave society is found in Leviticus. God directs the Israelites to celebrate the Jubilee every fifty years. Slaves are to be freed; debts are to be canceled and land is to be returned to its original owners. God is reminding the Israelites that every fiftieth year, they are to redistribute God’s bounty, as widely as possible, thus avoiding concentrations of economic power and a stratification that would occur without a Jubilee. The Jubilee is a redistribution of wealth.

"God speed the year of Jubilee,
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling claims set free,
Th’ oppressed shall vilely bend the knee
And wear the yoke of tyranny like brutes, no more…
That year will come, and Freedom’s reign
To all their plundered rights again restore."

-William Lloyd Garrison

The practical authors of Deuteronomy take the practice of debt release further and apply it to every seventh year. They call it the Lord’s release and declare that at the end of every seven years, “you shall grant a remission of debts . . .. every creditor shall remit the claim that is held against a neighbor, . . . so that there will be no one in need among you.” The point is that a loan is a transfer of labor value from one person to another. We use money to make the transfer easier. If a loan repayment goes on forever, it is no longer a loan, but a disguised form of slavery. God’s people are not to be a slave society.

The Israelites followed God’s economic plan until they reached the Promised Land and until God’s appointed leader, Samuel, grew old. Despite the many blessings that the people had received, the Elders of the nation came to Samuel and said, “Behold you are old and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations.” This was wrong in the eyes of Samuel, so he prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said unto Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people, for they have not rejected you, they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. The people are forsaking Me as their God. Protest to the people and show them the kind of King who will reign over them.” Samuel told the people how they would have to plow the king’s ground, reap his harvest and make his weapons of war. “He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and he will take your fields and your vineyards and your olive-yards, the best, and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your sheep and you shall be his servants.” Despite the words of Samuel, the people rejected his counsel. The people rejected God and God’s economic plan. They recreated a class-based society where some have more than their share of God’s bounty. They recreated a Slave Society like Pharaoh’s, with their own King in the Promised Land.

For centuries the Israelites experienced heartbreak, slavery, oppression, and shed millions of tears. Jesus came among them to show us all the way out of slavery and explain to us how to build His Kingdom on Earth. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus declares himself a Jubilee Practitioner. He goes to the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. The synagogue was the center of government and church activity as the government and church were inseparable. Jesus went to the synagogue and asked those present for the Book. He then read from the Book these words of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” He said to those assembled that today, “this scripture is fulfilled in your presence.” All bore witness to him and wondered at the gracious words that came from his mouth. And they said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” Jesus responded that, “No prophet is accepted in his own country.” He then told them two more stories:

The first was how God had blessed a widow in the city of Sidon.

The second was how God had cleansed and blessed a leper who was a Syrian.

When the Nazarenes heard these things they were filled with wrath. They rose up and took Jesus up a hill so they could cast him down to this death. Jesus passed through them and went on his way. They were unable to stop him for he had to preach this good news elsewhere as well. The “Good News” of Jesus is to be found in the three stories.

In order that we understand, the good news of Jesus in the first story it is necessary that we understand its context. When Jesus declared he was to preach the “acceptable year of the Lord”, he was preaching the year of the Jubilee. This is the time when the debts were to be canceled, slaves set free and land stolen through interest charges, returned to the rightful owners. This is God’s old message of economic justice in the Jewish Scriptures. It is the message of economic justice rejected by the Israelites when they rejected God and asked Samuel for a king. So Jesus places the concept of economic justice for the poor at the center of his ministry. The people in the synagogue don’t want to hear this message! The wealthy among them had much too much to lose! This message of economic justice to the poor is a threat to the establishment of Jesus’ time and is a threat to the establishment of today. Those, who hold the wealth, want to keep the wealth. They did then; they do now. Jesus, however, is very clear. If you are to be a part of the Kingdom of God, you must practice economic justice!

The second story of Jesus to those assembled in the temple is that God blessed a woman, a widow in the city of Sidon. This message is that Jesus is against sexism and racism. In this male dominated society, women were of no importance. Sidon was a gentile city. Jesus had just stated that God blessed a gentile woman. The racism of Jesus time was the Jew versus the gentile. The religious leaders were the teachers of this racism.

If we were to put this story in the context of today, Jesus would have walked into the headquarters of the KKK and declared that God blesses this black women just as much as you white men!

The final story is that God blessed and cleansed a leper named Naaman, who was a Syrian. The important point was that Naaman is a foreigner who practices a different religion. Thus Jesus is making the point that his ministry is inclusive and it covers everyone. We are all God’s children even foreigners and those with different religions. God has created man in his own image! If we put this story in the context to today, Jesus would say, “God loves the Muslims, who live in Iraq, just as much as the Christians who live in the United States”. Jesus declared his ministry to be against religious intolerance.

The “ Good News” of Jesus according to Jesus is that he stands with the poor and Economic Justice is at the center of his Ministry. Jesus stands against racism and sexism. His ministry is inclusive. We are all God’s Children. Jesus stands against religious intolerance. What powerful messages!

According to the gospels, Jesus travels through the land that was once Israel. He preaches love as the guiding principal of a new Kingdom: God’s kingdom. “ We should love our neighbor as ourselves.” He eats with tax collectors and beggars He explains his kingdom to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. He feeds the hungry and cures the sick. He chastises the wealthy for defrauding the poor. He feeds the multitudes, just as God fed the people in the wilderness, and all had enough. Jesus teaches us to pray in his spirit. Listen to words that he taught us to pray:

“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day, our daily bread;
And forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever.
Amen.

The Kingdom is to come on earth! The Kingdom is to come on earth as in Heaven! Say it again, brothers and sisters, where is the kingdom to be? On earth, on earth, on earth, as it is in heaven!

Jesus teaches us that economics and money are ultimately theological issues. He declares that, “None can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other.” You cannot serve God and money. Jesus confronts those who would manipulate others and control others with lies about money. Towards the end of his ministry, Jesus goes to the temple in Jerusalem. He declares to the people in the temple, “You have made my Father’s House a den of thieves.” Jesus overturns the moneychangers tables and drives them from the temple. The people are amazed at his teachings and listen to every word. The chief priest begin to plot how they might destroy Jesus. This is the only time that Jesus is reported to have used force. There is something very wrong in the Temple.

If one reads the history of the times, you will find that the scribes and chief priests had taught the people a lie about money. This lie about money was the reason for Jesus’ actions against the moneychangers. The lie about money was the source of power and control that the priests exercised over the people. Political and the religious power were inseparable during Jesus’ time. The priests taught the people that it was a sin to use Roman money in the temple. The Roman money had a picture of Caesar on its face. The people were taught that if they used this coin with an image of a pagan emperor, that would be the same as worshiping an idol, which was in violation of The Ten Commandments. They would be committing a sin.

Therefore, when the people came to worship at the temple, the first thing they had to do was exchange their Roman money for Jewish money. The Jewish money was the only money acceptable for the payment of the temple tithe. When the people gave a dollar’s worth of Roman money to the money-changers, they got back Jewish money worth less the Roman money, thus they were being cheated by the moneychangers. It was this larceny that Jesus exposed. The people were amazed at his teaching because they had not understood how they were being defrauded. The priests and the leaders of the temple were in a rage at Jesus because he had exposed their scheme. The priests worshiped money, not God!

Is this lesson taught by Jesus two thousand years ago important for us modern people who live in the twenty-first century?

Let’s consider some of the history of our own country. Abraham Lincoln fought a continuous battle with the moneychangers over the use of currency during the civil war. When the war began, Lincoln went to the bankers and asked for a loan. The money in use was gold. The Bankers (moneychangers) agreed to a loan but wanted to be paid interest of from 24% to 36%. Lincoln declined the loan. He directed that the Treasury Department print money on pieces of paper. On these pieces of paper money, he had printed “In God we trust” and “Legal Tender for all debts, public and private”. Lincoln created the paper money that we now call “The Greenback”. Lincoln fought the civil war with the Greenback currency that was not backed by gold or silver. The power of the government made it acceptable as payment in full for any debt. The people believed in the currency. They were willing to exchange their labor for the currency. The Greenback currency was successful. Remember, my brothers and sisters, money is religious issue. It is an issue of faith. On the other side, the Confederate States did the same thing. They just printed their own money. It worked for them also for about three-fourths of the war. However, when the people began to see that the south would lose the war, the value of the Confederate currency fell to nothing. This illustrates perfectly Jesus’ point that money is a theological issue. In order for money to work you must believe in it. Ultimately money is based upon faith. Is your faith in God or is your faith in money? Whom will you serve, God or Money?

Towards the end of the civil war, Lincoln was asked about his relationship to the bankers. He said, “ I have but two enemies to contend with, the southern army to my front and the bankers to my rear. The bankers are by far the more dangerous.” He also said of his new money, “The government should create, issue and circulate all currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers. By adoption of these principals, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.” After Lincoln’s death, no more Greenbacks were ever issued. The banks consolidated their power and established the debt based money system that we have today. The fight between Abraham Lincoln and the bankers was about control and power. Lincoln had put the very existence of the bankers at risk. He had proven that you don’t need bankers to run your society. All we need is a medium of exchange in which people believe. Greenbacks issued by the government will work just as well as a note upon which you pay interest. The Bankers want the money system based upon debt as over time it concentrates more and more of God’s bounty under their control.

It is ironic that just as the civil war ended physical slavery, the moneychangers moved the country towards a mental form of slavery. It is slavery based upon debt and a lie about the nature of money.

Banks used their influence with Congress to establish a monopoly on the issuance of money. Only private bankers issue Federal Reserve Notes, our present form of money. Through the magic of a system called fractional reserve banking, the moneychangers are the only creators of money. They may, by law, loan out 90% of all the funds trusted to them by their depositors. When the banker makes a loan, he is creating new money. This money costs him nothing. This is the reason that banking is so profitable. The Bankers learned how to construct this system of lies from the Goldsmiths. During the Middle Ages when gold was a currency it was physically kept in the vaults of the Goldsmith for safety. When a payment was made on a debt the actual Gold was physically transferred from one Goldsmith to another Goldsmith. The Gold was heavy and risky to move so the Goldsmiths started transferring paper Gold receipts. The Goldsmiths found that the paper receipts worked just as well as the actual gold. The next step was to issue more gold receipts than the value of the gold behind them. They found that the fraudulent receipts worked just as well for the payment of debt as real gold receipts. Today modern banking follows the same theory as the Goldsmiths. They make more loans then they have money.

What actually happens when you want to buy a house is that you must go and worship at the temple of the moneychangers. You walk into the bank, bow and scrape before the master, and if you are blessed, the banker writes a check for $100,000.00 and puts it on the table. The check has cost the bank nothing. The banker with a computer and a pen has created $100,000.00. Then the moneychangers have you engage in a religious ceremony. You sign your name six, seven, maybe eight times promising to pay him back, not the $100,000.00 that he has loaned you, but $250,000.00--the $100,000.00 plus interest. In our churches we teach it is a sin not to pay the bank. Have the churches forgotten that God’s definition of a moral loan is a loan without interest? Just as at the time of Jesus, a lie about money and the Bible has been used to deceive the people and steal from the people.

The purpose of slavery is not to abuse one group of people. The real purpose of slavery is to take someone’s labor as cheaply as possible. The mental form of slavery that exists today is called debt. The bankers (moneychangers) issue little plastic cards in the millions and billions. The people use the cards until they can only afford the minimum payments. When that happens the real situation, stripped of deception, is as follows:

1. The moneychangers gave the people plastic cards that cost them nothing.

2. The people promised the bankers their labor for next 30 years through payment made on these cards.

3. The church teaches the people that it’s wrong not to pay the bankers excessive interest on their credit card purchases.

This is the same theory that Jesus was contesting 2000 years ago. A lie about money (money means the same thing to everyone) is combined with (a fear of committing a sin) and is used to defraud the people. This is the best form of slavery from the perspective of the bankers. They don’t have to pay anyone with a gun or chain to enforce this slavery. The people voluntarily submit because they believe that money means the same thing to the bankers as it does to them.

Thomas Jefferson once said, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until the children of the men who conquered this continent wake up homeless.”

Two years after President Woodrow Wilson approved the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 he reflected, “I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worse ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world, no longer a government of free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.”

Jesus has exposed the deception of the moneychangers. President Jefferson has warned us of the nature of this evil. President Wilson has identified the small group that holds us captive. Lincoln has illuminated the great benefits to be gained if we have faith in a currency controlled by the people. Economic Justice is possible if we stand together in faith and act together in love.

Jesus has shown us the way. If we are to realize Jesus’ Kingdom of Economic Justice on Earth as it is in Heaven, we must confront the moneychangers in their great temples of concrete and steel and explain this fraud to the people. We must love the moneychangers as we ask them to join us in this Kingdom of God where all have enough. The moneychangers are God’s children to, and are just as controlled by this system of fear and greed as you and I.

We need to start now to build this Kingdom of Love on Earth as it is in Heaven. We began with education. We began with a new way of looking at the world. The old method of human organization is based upon fear, greed and domination. The new method of human organization is based upon love, sharing and cooperation.

About the author: J Gordon Boyett is a 20 year retired USMC veteran and a member of the Committee To Raise Greensboro's Minimum Wage.

A Winter Verse

Say hello to Linda. Linda is a member of Greensboro Poets And Poetry Lovers and tonight I'm proud to feature Linda as a guest poet with a poem she penned just today. Hopefully I'll soon talk Linda into starting a blog of her own so we can see more of her work.

Walking In Winter
by Linda McDermott

Walking through the brown woods of winter
the leaves shift and crackle beneath my feet
each one a different shape and shade,
more browns than I ever knew existed.
It has been ages since I tread a forest trail
walking among stark tree trunks that reach up to the sky.
This footpath weaves confidently through the forest,
well defined from years of use.
Many feet have tread this path before me,
slowly grinding the dry leaves into pieces
that with time become soil.
I follow the same worn path, stumbling over hidden roots
and detouring around fallen trunks,
while trusting the way by its very existence.

(Copyright 2007, Linda McDermott)

Tonight's guest poet was made possible with support from BloggingPoet-Shoppes.com and Agloco-- a member owned company.

Tonight's Guest Poetry Blogger

Dustin Neal became so excited after learning about Leave A Link, Get A Link, that rather than simply leaving a link he decided to send me a guest post as a means of highlighting his many poet friends.

Haiku: A New Song!
By Dustin Neal

September 15th, 2006

Excuse me while I clear my throat.

“A bird does not sing because he has an answer.
He sings because he has a song.”
- Joan Walsh Anglund

As I sit here on a Saturday afternoon, with a song in my heart and voice, I think back on my poetic attempts to make myself known as a “New Age Beat Poet.” Day and night I tried to write free verse that would make me an established “Beat Icon” throughout the Web—I found myself “beat” from dissatisfaction.

When my free verse started to obtain fewer and fewer words, becoming more imagistic like Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” I began to read Jack Kerouac’s “haikus,” or what he considered to call “pops” later on in his experimentation with modern American haiku.

I quickly started writing “haiku,” and Denis Garrison, haijin and editor of various haiku-related journals, was the first to really look at what I had been writing for about a year. Some of my haiku worked out due to pure luck. However, a lot of what I considered haiku turned out to be only three lines of poetic thought.

Denis Garrison continued to take me under his wing to help me understand what haiku is and isn’t, something that has often been questioned in the American, English-speaking haiku community. It didn’t take long before I started to understand haiku and the voice I had within my world, that world being East Texas.

I’m now published in various haiku-related journals on the Web and in printed journals from all over the world in various haiku-related forms. I’m also the creator and editor of Clouds Peak, an online haiku and senryu journal. My poetic mind and voice, as one, is so simple these days that so many don’t consider my haiku to be “good” poetry, and that my new poetic attempts are meaningless.

We all have our opinions, and it is my opinion that even though haiku may be meaningless to some, to me, haiku is a true gem of not only poetry, but a gem to the world as a whole. In our busy lifestyles it isn’t often we calm our senses and take time to see, feel, taste, smell, and hear what Nature is offering us right now. Even if Nature to you is tall buildings, honking taxis, and pacing pigeons, your senses can still have a field day with the images your world offers.

I challenge not only poets, but anyone to see what Nature has to say to you. Learning about haiku is easy with the vast information on the Web. Haiku has passed what was once taught in elementary classrooms, and is now growing in popularity with not only poets but simple human beings who need a fresh breath of air from time to time. However, finding a voice within haiku and sharing this voice with others as you truly sense it, so that others may sense what you have encountered, comes with time.

If you are interested in haiku, I challenge you to check out the links below. I once thought writing “simple haiku” was an easy way to claim myself as a poet without really trying to make meaningful poems. Now I’ve found a new lifestyle. I found meaning. I found my voice, and I have a song to sing.

"the bird is singing
but it isn’t blooming...
plum tree"
- Kobayashi Issa

Your song is ready to be sung, you’re soul is ready to bloom!

Haiku Information

The Timothy Russell Exercise
Becoming a Haiku Poet
Ten Tips for Writing Haiku
Haiku Hut Forums
AHA! Poetry
Urban Haiku Yahoo! Group
Simply Haiku Yahoo! Group
Clouds Peak
du5tin.net
Wakakusa

Thanks go out to Dustin for his efforts as poet and promoter of other poets. If you'd like to contribute to the Leave A Link, Get A Link poetry promotion please send an e-mail to idleblogs (AT) yahoo.com and I'll do my best to fit you in.

Brought to you by Poets101.com and by BillysToyStore.com.

Today's Guest Poet: Dr. Charles Frederickson

Stunned Senseless
By Doctor Charles Frederickson

Nature neither kind nor cruel
Mostly indifferent instinctive spiritual animism
Attuned to subtle dissonant rhythms
Shaman foreshadowing ominous soulful alerts

Sunburst flurry of sea swallows
Menacingly thrashing wings overhead shrieks
Ruffled throat feathers throbbing pulsations
Rip tide current eerie calm

Knowing elephants smashing steel chains
In unison oversized ears flip-flop
Herd charging upslope jungle stampede
Stopping pointblank beyond wavelength outreach

Grazing water buffalo unlocking horns
Muddy hooves seeking hilltop refuge
Followed by bewildered villagers fearful
Of losing livestock safety network

Tentacular creatures surfacing from depths
Burrowed mantis shrimp migrating elsewhere
Stranded ghost pipefish leaping ashore
Implosive tide pools lapping froth

Whenever overflowing bathtub pulls its
Plug head for higher ground
Receding tides followed by flooding
Mean only one thing – Tsunami

Today's guest poet is Dr. Charles Frederickson, a Swedish-American-Thai physician, poet, and photographer who has traveled throughout 206 countries and is published in many journals. To view more of his poetry plus photos, make your way to ImagesOf8K.com.

Randall Carter Gray, Guest Poet

Carnival Fare

People (the stuffy ones) say poetry's dead
Irrelevant nonsense, ego-fed
But where else than a poem is one to find
Transcendent rhythm for the mind
That speaks of secrets, odd and dark
And frees the soul's creative spark
And leads me clicking down a hall,
So I feel as if I've been to a carnival?

Randall Carter Gray sent me this poem. Randall writes the blog, TANATA: lives in Tennessee, was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is today's guest poet here at BloggingPoet.com. Go give Randall a read, okay?

And speaking of carnivals, Bob from Average Poet is hosting this week's Ringing Of The Bards-- the poetry carnival arisen. Get your submissions in ASAP so Bob will have plenty of time to get it together. Deadline is 2 PM EST Saturday.

Shirley Whiting Allard, Guest Poet

Kidsongs

If little ants wore underpants
and hats were worn by bunnies
If hummingbirds could sing and dance
now wouldn't that be funny?

If fish could really go to school
and set with goats named Billy
If centipedes wore purple shoes
now wouldn't that be silly?

If all these things could just be true
the ants, the birds, the mice
Could do what fairytales have them do
now wouldn't that be nice?

Shirley tells me she wrote this poem for her own children. Now she shares it with grandchildren. Though not quite as well know for her children's poetry as for her other works, Shirley Whiting Allard is a graphics professional with years of experience in the newspaper business, runs her desktop publishing business, and writes the poetry blog, House Mouse. Go give Shirley a read, okay?

Be Nice To My Quest

an ode to frank o'hara
by katy acheson

she's the woman you want, Frank O’Hara,
between the beige sheets of your bed in the morning.
she'll tell you how she thinks Hesiod
was just a scared Benjamin Franklin.
then she'll listen when you tell her
that the poet she should be concerned with
is not Hesiod at all, but another Greek.

she'll offer you Echinacea to go with you ciggy and beer
as she stands there naked and smiling.
you'll want to touch her as she moves,
she's soft and young.
she's soft but fueled.
she's dedicated to you.

she's the kind of lady you'll want
to dance with when you're drunk and stuttering.
she'll laugh and lead you in any steps.

trust me, she's the right girl to take home to your mother.
she'll help cook and clean
without intruding on family traditions.
you should be willing to sleep on your own sofa
so that she gets a handsome night sleep in your old bedroom.

she might get upset when you tell her
you slept with another man
but she's still in love with you after all.
she'll sleep in your bed, in your house,
whether you're there or not,
and she won't stop until you tell her to go home.

be kind to her Frank O’Hara,
there are so few of these true lovers left in the world today,
especially in your city of art.

she'll want to move to a beach house but won't,
not without you, she says, and you'll believe her,
and make her stay for the night.
you can lie together, just you O’Hara
and this little minx of knowledge and eye power,
and she'll know just where to touch you—
to make you shiver.

this should be your favorite part,
she'll talk in her sleep,
more so after sex than usual,
and she'll share her secrets with you then.
she'll tell you she trusts you.
that's when you can tell her you know she loves you.
she's the kind of girl you want to love.
tell her that. tell her you want to love her.
that you know all her secrets
and that it's okay to love you for now.

give her a kiss like you've never given before
but don't touch her.
later you'll hug her, hold her,
feel her melt in your dirty arms
covered in the city's charcoal dust
and smeared with pastel.

she's the only girl you want to know,
but you still wish she was a man
so she could be your best friend,
then you wouldn't need to know anyone else.

you'll fall in love with her body
because of the way she touches you with it.
she loves you with it.

don't tell your mother anything about her before,
just bring her there.
she's the kind of lady your mother will love
(she'll wish she was her daughter)
then your mother will ask you while you're alone
if you plan to marry her.
you have your mother's blessings.

don't sleep with her that night
no matter how much her smile turns you on,
wait until your back at your flat,
back between your well-worn sheets.
she'll ask you to leave the big window shades open
so she can see the city stars while you make love to her.

she might cry now and again, but only when she's happy.
if she tells you she's pregnant don't ask her who the father is.
you know she'd only ever sleep with poets.
the baby would be yours, if you had her Frank O’Hara.

she is your Byzantium;
the kind of woman you should have had.

Today's guest poet is Katy Acheson who lives in a place called Sandwich, writes poetry on her blog, Something Katy and is hoping many of you will look at the rest of her work. Katy is very active in promoting poetry and poets, and is currently involved in several colaborations with other poets. I highly reccomend you give her a visit.

Tonight's Guest Poet

Arrgh!
By Robert Cameron Hazelton

Nocturnal hunger begs the belt to cinch,
but lust will always conquer pride’s thin stand.
Impatient taste buds waive an extra inch
so, guilt to bed, my sly foray is planned.
A quick descent - avoiding creaks, I slink
as juices start to coat my anxious throat.
I’m almost there then – CRUNCH – oh no! I think
this escapade has waylaid one remote.
My toes alight on ice and curl a bit,
so near the treasure chest with humming cord.
I swing the door with glee, prepare to fit
these twitching lips around a filling hoard.
I stand aghast in barren, chilling glow—
a swifter cutthroat pillaged my to-go!

This tale of hungry pirates on a late night raid is the work of Robert Hazelton of Average Poet. Bob says, "Poetry is everywhere, just look." I say he's right.

From One Of My Favorite Writers

Light of Night, Light of Death, Light of Haunting Baby’s Breath
(Copyright 2006, Bob Church)

How is it known that a fading light dies,
but that the searching rays at last
find no entry through the gates of sight,
no harbor from the endless darkness,
no expressed need from the once-enlightened.

Wasted light wanders where it will,
never far evoked from its eternal source,
content to bounce while impetus gives it life,
even if not as its original will intended,
even if it bears no witness to its erstwhile power or glory.

Was it ever light for light’s sake,
Sure of its mission and needless of praise,
Or fraudulent half-light,
Split by need and rent by desire,
Less than it could have been… should have been?

Or is fading light merely less wasteful of dear resource,
A conserved evolution in chrysalis form,
Even now transforming its power to burst forth in future-speak,
Once again emanating its redundancies,
Illuminating surfaces whether absorbed or denied?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter…

Bob Church is a contributing writer to BloggingPoet.com whose works may be viewed in Letters From Bob. If you’d like to get on Bob’s mailing list and read the many wonderful poems, stories, and comments I don’t have time to post then send an e-mail to broncobob4755 (AT) sbcglobal.net with the words, “Bob, it does matter” in the subject line.