You Cannot Think the Book of Life Will Close

You cannot think the book of life will close.
Opportunity must seem a right.
Most days contain a trace of paradise,
Kindling the hope that God is nice
Instead of just or loving or pure light.
Prepare for what is not what you propose:
Perhaps you think your prayers will suffice,
Unburdening your heart with hunger slight.
Repentance takes much more than you suppose.

You Pray Not for Yourself Alone but All
You pray not for yourself alone but all.
One never chooses sin in isolation.
Most evil is not merely personal.
Kindness looks for common inspiration.
In every act there is community.
Perhaps one would prefer it were not so.
Placing each's guilt on all may be
Unfair, but then each righteous soul must see
Reflections of itself in every woe.
Mothers Day Poems
Valentines Day Poems
Friendship Poems
Inspirational Poems
Sweet Love Poems
Fathers Day Poems

Labels:

Revenge Is Often Taken in the Mind

Revenge is often taken in the mind.
Open wounds untreated tend to bleed.
Some who else would be both good and kind
Hate others in the thought, if not the deed.
Have mercy, then, upon yourself, and clear
Away the anger twisting you inside,
Sanctifying for the coming year
Heart and spirit, cleansed of pain and pride.
As you ask forgiveness, so forgive,
Nor need you lose your honor with your fury.
All find their just reward in how they live,
Held to account by a less partial jury.
Rosh Hashana Opens to the Page
Rosh Hashanah opens to the page
On which is writ, for good or ill, our fate.
Still wrestling with angels, we engage,
Harrowing our hearts, our destined state.
However, "we" encompasses us all,
As though we were but droplets in a wave
Suspended on its journey to the shore,
Hard put to any single droplet save.
And so we pray not only for ourselves,
Nor only for our family, friends, or tribe:
All must be our congregation, else,
Having thus lost hope, we won't survive.
Love Poems and Quotes
short love poems
free love poems
funny love poems
Friendship Poems
short love quotes
Mother's Day Poems and Quotes
Most Beautiful love poems
Valentines Day Poems

Labels:

Remember the Utility of Shame

Remember the utility of shame,
On which in part our decency depends.
Such sentiments evolve to serve our ends,
Harrowing the mask behind the name.
How apt that to ourselves we be revealed
As time pauses in between the years,
Season of incantatory tears,
Harrowed for the sins we have concealed.
Allow your shame full access to your heart,
Nor flinch from bearing witness to your part,
As only what is treated can be healed.
Return Each Year to Test the Ancient Waters
Return each year to test the ancient waters,
Opening the unaccustomed heart.
So may you retain a Jewish soul,
Having given it its yearly outing.
Here your parents meet your sons and daughters,
A junction wrought by well-established art,
Severing the spirit from the role,
Holding in its golden words your routing.
All you're left with is what really matters,
Needing, to be whole, to be a part,
At least this once a year a Jew of old,
Holy in this place despite your doubting.
Love Poems For Him
short love poems
valentines poems for kids
Love Poems For A Girl
romantic love poems
cute poems
funny poems
cute love quotes
funny love poems
funny love quotes
cute love poems
free poems
short poems
short love poems

Labels:

How Might I, in Faith, Do as You Ask

How might I, in faith, do as You ask?
Innocent, I hung upon Your Word,
Great with the intention to be good.
However, here life flows the other way.
How might I remove the inner mask,
Opening my heart to the absurd,
Letting go the righteousness I would
Yet have between the truth and what I say.
Deliver me, then, naked to this task,
And turn away, Whom I so long have served.
Yearning to repent, as well I should,
So let me see myself in my own gaze.
Reason Ought Not Be the Enemy
Reason ought not be the enemy
Of myth, but rather its interpreter,
Showing one what else one might not see,
Hindsight to which faith might well refer.
Holding on to myth does not require
A blindness to what science has to say.
Salvation is not merely a desire
Hoped for in some long-outmoded way.
A myth, like art, sustains itself through beauty,
Not only true, but doing double duty
As both the cast of conscience and the fire,
Habitude no argument need sway.
famous love quotes
famous life quotes
world poetry
world poems
world quotes
langston poems
beauty poems
christmas poems
nature poems
hope poems
life poems

Labels:

Holiness and Faith Are the Rewards

We'll go on, after you,
Without you we'll go on,
Though something beautiful inside
Us all has turned to stone.
We'll go on, after you,
Without you through the years
Of pain and raw bewilderment
And brutal, angry tears.
We'll go on, after you,
Without you we will heal,
Though love may labor in the heart
And joy the loss conceal.
We'll go on, after you,
Without you we will grow
Together as a family
That you will never know.
We'll go on, after you,
Without you life goes on,
But neither hope nor happiness
Undoes what you have done.
Holiness and Faith Are the Rewards
Holiness and faith are the rewards:
In doing lies the seed of one's becoming.
Given what the faithless life affords,
How could one not revel in the running?
Holy days are opportunities,
Open doors to being who one would.
Longing to be touched by grace, one sees
Yet one more chance to choose the unchanged good.
Do not think that faith is ever certain:
All one's life, like love, it comes and goes.
Yet one can always stand before the curtain,
Singing for one's soul the prayers one knows.
valentines poems
valentines quotes
world poem
Valentine's Day Poems
valentines day messages
wedding poems
famous poems
famous love poems
wedding quotes
famous quotes

Labels:

Thirty-Five Years Later He Was Gone

Thirty-five years later he was gone,
Leaving her with just an empty hole
Where once her life had been. Bereft of meaning,
She rode the ancient fury of her grief.
So many years of loving him, a garden
Dissolved into a wild, wasted sea!
So much of life now waiting to be buried,
Poisoned, lying putrid in her heart!
And yet she could do nothing for awhile
But lie upon her bed of writhing pain,
Knowing that in time she would be healed,
But never, never quite completely whole.
Always there would be this frozen anger
Waiting to be placed upon the table.
No matter her attempts to be forgiving,
She would again consume that bitter meal!
And even in the sunshine of her laughter,
Her life returned to her by time and love,
Even in the meadows of her joy,
There still would be the place he left behind.
Twenty-Two Years Later They Were Dead
Twenty-two years later they were dead
And nothing was resolved, nor would it be.
Life, as is its wont, had gone ahead,
But both of them, though freed, were never free.
Both remarried, loved, fell ill, and died,
Buried separately, with space reserved
For those who mourned them most, the two outside
What once was home but could not be preserved.
What bitterness and blame, forgiveness, rage,
Guilt, shame, fury, impotence, and sorrow
Sloshed against the walls of each's cage,
A storm that never yielded to tomorrow.
How beautiful and sad, the love of youth
That, though it could not last, outlasts the truth.
motivational inspirational quotes
sad poems
sad love poems
sweet poems
sweet love poems
sad quotes
sad love quotes
sweet quotes
sweet love quotes
valentines day quotes

Labels:

Love Was Not Enough for Us

Love was not enough for us,
Though we were much in love.
We started down the well-worn path,
But it was not to be.
Delight was not enough for us,
Nor tenderness that moved
Through years of angry dissonance
Towards some dark, bitter sea.
Our differences were far too great,
Our lives too far apart.
We didn't like each other much,
But put that truth aside
Until one day it was too late
To reignite the heart.
One told the other, who agreed
At last that it had died.
But then, ah, then! we felt our loss
As unremitting pain,
As deep and inconsolable,
Unbearable regret.
And all alone we had to cross
That desert once again
That we might know that we had loved
Too much to soon forget.
There Is No Mountain Higher than the Wall
There is no mountain higher than the wall
That comes between two people once in love.
But time can tear a mountain down with tears
As former lovers slowly move towards touch.
There is no happiness in hard, cold anger
Twisted like a girder in one's way.
The sun and rain can manage to grow flowers
Across the bleakest crust of lava plain.
So we, too, I hope, can manage friendship
Upon the battlefield of past defeat.
I would not want to lose our years of loving
To moments caught for good in bitter light.
short poems for kids
friendship poems
friendship quotes
funny friendship quotes
good friendship quotes
real friendship quotes
true friendship quotes
inspirational quotes
inspirational bible quotes
inspirational life quotes

Labels:

Jim Has Blue Eyes Flecked with Gold

Jim has blue eyes flecked with gold;
Dark-haired handsome, rock-like good.
Marriage hid him, as it should,
Until his love ran cold.
He lived only down the street.
I was married, so was he.
But when divorces left us free,
We found the chance to meet.
Now we're both far happier
Than either ever was before.
Through suffering we found the door
That opened to each other.
We'll always feel, of course, the pain.
Divorce cannot but make one bleed.
But in that pain there lay a seed
That soon would bloom again.
Love Undoes Its Heritage Quite Slowly
Love undoes its heritage quite slowly,
Spinning like a planet through its dust.
Sometimes it feels like hatred, sometimes mourning,
Sometimes pain long paralyzed by rust.
Sometimes shame of past humiliation
Wrings the heart with hands inured to toil,
And once again some drops of unspent fury
Spill upon the dry and barren soil.
Ay, me! When will it end? The seasoned sorrow
Of unforgiven trespasses of old?
No matter new love blossoming! There's somewhere
A place within untenanted and cold.
short life quotes
cute love poem
funny children poems
free poems
short poems
short love poem
short quotes
free love poem
short love quotes
inspirational love quotes

Labels:

All I Ever Wanted Is to Love You

All I ever wanted was to love you
As when I saw you first from far away.
But then it was my sweet mistake to have you
Too young to hold the demons long at bay.
For years I hated you, for only hate
Could cauterize the wounds that would not heal,
And gorged myself on fantasies to sate
A hunger I could neither suage nor feel.
Eventually, we both found other loves
And settled into other lives. And yet
The past like some unquiet ghost still moves
Within, too fraught with longing to forget.
We have moved on, as is mature and wise.
But love, though long abandoned, never dies.
Hardly a Day Goes By that I Don't Think of You
Hardly a day goes by that I don't think of you,
Mostly in anger, sometimes with hatred.
I loved you nearly half my life, and now
The bad has swallowed up the good, has eaten my heart.
How sad that I must bury so much of me!
I wish I could bury you.
The real, living you I don't want to hear about.
You were once what I lived for, and now
I don't even want to know when you are dead.
Greatest Love Poems
mothers day poems
fathers day poems
teachers day poems
anniversary poems
death poems
cute poems
funny poems
cute love quotes
funny love quotes

Labels:

God Knows the Price of Tuning Forks

God knows the price of tuning forks,
And alphabets, and astral signs.
Beside the passion of the flame
Reclines a squat and jealous name;
Inside the tyranny of lines
Endures a sweet, soft-scented shame,
Loosing stays, and words, and corks.
Hanumas Is Something Strange Indeed
Hanumas is something strange indeed:
A Hanukkah and Christmas in one night!
Now mixed families must combine the two,
Uniting loved ones just as God would do,
Making separate flames a single light.
All who love by love are thenceforth freed
Simply in all love to find delight.
Happy Hanukkah, Dear Child
Happy Hanukkah, dear child,
A time for fun and play!
Now you get a lot of gifts,
Unwrapping one each day!
Kids love gifts, of course, but then
Kids also ought to know
About the eight-day miracle that
Happened long ago.
Love Quotes For Him
short love poems for him
short love poems for her
funny love poems for him
valentines love poems
love quotes for him
love quotes for her

Labels:

Behind the Act Is Always the Perception

Behind the act is always the perception.
Often we are led astray by light.
No chaos is more damaging than order
Neatly taped across a mystery.
In love and awe we worship only darkness,
Embracing what we know we cannot know.
Silence is a sea, while what we know
Etches the green hills of our perception.
Truth, unspeakable, resides in darkness,
However much we need the gift of light.
God is just a word. Each mystery
Awakens to the first pale gray of order.
Bright glory bathes the sculpted hills in order,
Rolling towards the edge of what we know.
Inside its veil of blue, the mystery
Eludes the clarity of our perception.
Longing is a quality of light
As in each word we sense an inner darkness.
No word but is a stairway down to darkness,
Down to chaos seething within order.
Live, then, within the pale of what you know,
In touch with terrors gilded by the light.
So may you part the curtain of perception,
Alive to all the grace of mystery.

Being and Becoming Are Creations
Being and becoming are creations
Of indispensable imaginations.
No being is, but as it is perceived,
Needing to be seen to be retrieved,
Infinite as nothing, fixed as numbers,
Eternal insofar as one remembers.
Mind is both what is and what remembers,
A creator that is one of its creations,
Reducible, as all must be, to numbers,
Knowable but to imaginations,
Unformed until by its own act retrieved,
Sustained so long as by itself perceived.
So must we all be by ourselves perceived:
Eternal insofar as one remembers.
To be is by some mind to be retrieved,
Held among the host of its creations.
famous life quotes
famous love quotes
famous quotes
wedding quotes
famous love poems
famous poems
wedding poems
valentines day messages
Valentine's Day Poems
valentines day quotes

Labels:

Have a Look in the Mirror of Your Dreams

Have a look in the mirror of your dreams:
All the horrors that you see are real.
Lest you think the world is as it seems,
Let your skin crawl, your frozen blood congeal.
Of fear and fantasy now take your fill.
Wells of sorrow lie beneath your feet.
Each sun-drenched field you mercilessly till
Endures to see your ultimate defeat.
Now let yourself let go your last conceit.
Have Witches Gone the Way of Wonders
Have witches gone the way of wonders,
Asterisks of yesterday?
Life restores what reason sunders,
Lest we lose our mind for play.
Once we knew that what we knew
Was like a ship upon a sea.
Evil spirits wandered through
Eternity, and what was true
Never tainted what might be.

Hell Has Little Hope of Happiness

Hell has little hope of happiness.
A devil is eternally on fire,
Locked within unquenchable desire,
Longing with hatred for lost holiness.
On Halloween the devils and the dead
Wander through the world as though to warn
Each soul of an eternity forlorn,
Evangelists condemned to speak through dread,
Nightmares that must preach through pain till dawn.

Hobgoblins Know the Proper Way to Dance
Hobgoblins know the proper way to dance:
Arms akimbo, loopy legs askew,
Leaping into darkness with delight,
Lusting for the ecstasy of fright,
Open to the charm of horrors new.
Well may you start your screaming in advance,
Even as you give a ghoul a chance,
Each creepy creature craving to say, "Boo!",
Near heaven in its netherworld of night.
funny love poem
funny poems
cute poems
cute love quote
death poems
anniversary poems
teachers day poems
fathers day poems
mothers day poems
Greatest Love Poems

Labels:

Halloween Wraps Fear in Innocence

Halloween wraps fear in innocence,
As though it were a slightly sour sweet.
Let terror, then, be turned into a treat,
Lest it undermine our common sense.
Our nightmares are the founts of fancy whence
We wander through the fields of our conceit,
Eluding the true horror we must meet
Embodied in the play of our pretense,
Now ranged across the night in our defense.
Halloween's a Sudden BOO!
Halloween's a sudden BOO!!
And just as quick a scream:
Laughing in the scary dark,
Loving friendly fright.
On Halloween, witches come true;
Wild ghosts escape from dreams.
Each monster dances in the park,
Eating candy like a shark--
Now kiss and say goodnight!
Happiness, All Snug, Lies Fast Asleep
Happiness, all snug, lies fast asleep
As spirits roam the neighborhoods at night,
Let loose upon the Earth till it be light,
Laughing revelers, whom death doth keep.
O spirits lost, who wail but cannot weep,
Wanton worshippers of rage and spite,
Each the unknown author of its plight,
Equal in the pain you sow and reap,
Now come to us from out your vasty deep!
Harbingers of Unimagined Horrors
Harbingers of unimagined horrors,
Avatars of those who rule the night,
Lurking in the shallows of our shadows
Like fish that lack the lungs to breathe the light;
Omens from an almanac of sorrows
Written on a midnight long ago,
Etched into the mirrors of our marrows,
Ever masks for what we dare not know:
Now revel with us till the cocks thrice crow!
short life quotes
short love quotes
free love poem
short quotes
short love poem
short poems
free poems
funny children poems
cute love poem
cute love poem
funny love quotes

Labels: