The New Rules
- At May 06, 2020
- By Bob Howe
- In News, Poetry
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Fear makes you stupid,
and it doesn’t matter
what you’re afraid of.
Camouflage goes with everything
which is another way of saying
value substance over style.
You shouldn’t seek positions of responsibility
unless you’re willing to make difficult decisions.
Books are not medicine;
read what you love.
Rust never sleeps:
that does not absolve you of your responsibility
to sand it away and apply fresh paint as necessary.
There is no finish line.
We are creatures of loss and creatures of joy.
Let yourself have both, or you’ll have neither.
You can’t attend to the fall of every sparrow: that’s god’s job, and even he doesn’t appear to be up to it. And if you run around telling all the people, “the sparrows, the poor sparrows!” You’ll just exhaust yourself and everyone else. Catch the sparrows you can. The ones within reach. The ones that flutter in your eaves. The ones that land on your table and beg for crumbs. That is your portion. Think of it as god delegating.
I get it: you’re waging a war on ignorance and suffering. Good. Worthy cause. Start with yourself. You can’t sit with someone else’s pain unless you can sit with your own. And I don’t mean to make it sound easy: it is hard.
Books about doing fly off the shelves; books about being languish on the remaindered table. Work that little koan around in your head when a freight train full of shoulds pulls into the station. All the things you should be doing are a wall between you and yourself.
Animals with big brains play. Nothing is built into the OS without a reason: be suspicious of anyone who tells you that play is a side effect. You eat to play. If Calvin and your employer say otherwise, it’s not because they have your best interests at heart.
I’m telling myself this—you, you who are reading this, are just witnesses. I’m the one who needs to wrestle with these questions. I know they sound like statements, but if I’m going to know anything worth knowing, and write anything worth reading, I should start with the admission that I don’t have the keys to the kingdom, either.
It’s Not the Common Cold | Poems for the Plague
- At April 24, 2020
- By Bob Howe
- In News, Poetry
- 2
The Verse of a Pandemic read by Kenneth Keppeler on the Roots and Branches show on Gila/Mimbres Community Radio | Saturday, April 25, 2020 | GMCR.ORG
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The Verse of a Pandemic
This is poetry’s moment
and so is a winter subway ride, coats pressed against coats,
loose ends of scarves like wooly palm fronds,
on the way to a job you love, hate;
and that day in an Adirondack lean-to
(how infrequently we feel the rough skin of wood),
sheltered from primeval rains,
alone in the green light and cushioned
by the sound of water running free;
and the quiet kitchen, alive with the smell of 4 a.m. coffee,
the soft tread of bare feet,
domestic life mirrored in the window panes,
the day not yet tapping.
We are prisoners of circumstance no more
no less than
before the plague.
Poetry was never a luxury
it remains in the air,
we breathe in and out in hexameters;
the rhyme of traffic lights strung
along deserted, windy avenues;
found on the awnings of shuttered shops,
and lettered on the dusty sides of trucks,
delivering nothing to no one;
in the street shadows cast like runes,
leaning away from the setting sun;
and in the new liturgy you append
to every workaday message:
stay well, stay well, oh god stay well.
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my condolences
to the seniors, the shut-ins, the lonelyhearts
the working moms who can’t stop
the dads on the F-Train at 5 a.m.
hoping
to go another day without infection
seems like a miracle
to the bored, the terrified, the heartsick
the ones grieving alone
the sick, the dying
i pray
for the nurses, the doctors, the technicians
who swallow their fears and carry on
and the people who cook and carry out
and the cashiers whose masks are five days old
touching other people’s money can make you ill
in more ways than one
there are front lines everywhere
I’m so sorry this happened
to you, and you, and you
who clean and mend and watch
in uniform or out
and thank you all
including the priests and the poets
the singers and the social workers
to everyone, “guides, redeemers and benefactors”
who brings comfort know
there will be a spring without sadness
and you will have the last
word
© 2020 Robert J. Howe