My Daily Bread
you do not believe when i tell you that i write everyday
it is routine to me
so my poems
are like
breathings
inhale
exhale
a poem
here a poem there
writing has become like a beating of my heart
so every beat
every pulse
is a poem made
like one kind of a factory
mass production
of breathing and beating
i have developed sort of too much familiarity with this kind of poetic activity and it has become so
so ordinary
and so much familiarity comes my contempt for my daily poetry
it is nothing extraordinary
it is like washing my face
brushing my teeth
cutting my nails
going to the office
teaching my class
reading books
walking the dog
taking a morning walk
lunch with my wife
listening to
lawyers argue
their cases
in court
all these are so ordinary
routinely clockwork
and they are nothing
they are
my poems
my daily bread.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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And What About Us Who Write Poems Every Minute Of The Day?
what words can we take pride in
these poems like our daily breaths
ordinary words we utter in ordinary
conversations we have
come breakfast come snack time
come lunch come dinner
the talks we have on the park
in the marketplaces of our ordinary days
unplanned, unscreened, unedited
ordinary words to ordinary occasions
an embarrassment, can these words be?
unscheming and devoid of meaning
the lines of the common places?
the dialogues of the fool and the unwise?
you do not have to mind
this is my journal, a record of nothing
but ramblings of my mind and there you are
carefully reading putting meaning where there was
really none
this poem of day to day, unwavering
trying to be but nothing, a mode of nothing but just
plain thinking
do you too have this kind of breathing?
tell me why you breathe, then?
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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This Poem
THIS POEM
This poem
This first poem
This last poem
This poem that invented Poetry
This one and only one poem
This fictional poem
This ideal poem
This perfect poem
This would – be holy poem
This unreal poem
This poem which is not a poem
This poem which is the essence of all poetry
This poem
And that poem
And my poem
And your poem
And all poems
Poem poem poem poem poem
This poem
Mine and yours
This one small poem of so so many
And not such a good poem at all.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is No Poem For Me Today
THERE IS NO POEM FOR ME TODAY
There is no poem for me today
There is no poem of yesterday
The poems have gone
And far away
There is no poem
For another day.
There never will be another poem
Poems are gone
Poems are stone.
All the words I will ever write
Are not enough
For a Poem of Life.
The Poems are not
They will never be
I am not a Poem
Nor Poetry.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Are Days No Poem Can Be Written
THERE ARE DAYS NO POEM CAN BE WRITTEN
There are days no poem can be written
Grief and worry frighten the poem away
Yet the poem lives hidden
For our darkest moments our loneliest fears
Too need their poetry.
Poetry is a way of saying all we need to say
It is our deepest feeling most deeply expressed
It is all we are
The whole of our being
In words.
When a poet dies
Words die
When I will die
All I am will no longer be able to write
One more poem.
How afraid I am in the night
And how dark in the early morning before I rise
But now that I am here
Writing this
A bit of hope begins in me
And I can dream that
When I walk out the door
a few minutes from now
A new day will begin.
How many days I have left
How many poems to write
I do not know.
It is not light yet
And the darkness is still here
But I will feel the morning again
This morning
Thank G-d
You have given me so many poems.
A few small words
help me believe
I truly am alive.
.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem I Did Not Write Today
THE POEM I DID NOT WRITE TODAY
The poem I did not write today
Will never be written.
No one knows what it is
Or where it is
'How it can be? ' is another question
No one can answer.
The poem I did not write today
Never went away
It is always here with me and with you
It is the same simple poem
Written over and over again
In our everyday minds.
It is the poem of love of life
The poem of happiness
The poem of belief in God
And in the goodness in the world to come
It is the poem which believes too that poetry will help save the world.
It is the good poem
The happy poem
The poem I did not write today
Is the poem my life is writing now and always
And with you it says
‘What a miracle it is that we are here
reading and writing
and loving life as we do’.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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All I Can Do Now Is Write Another Poem
All I can do now is write another poem-
The poems are small,
And do not require the long hours and long years
Of the books-
Like the world as a whole
I seem to have a shorter attention span
And less patience-
A poem can be written and given a name
In minutes not years-
Though some would say a great poem
Takes the travail of years of waiting
And years of work-
But I did not say
‘All I can do now is write another great poem'
Perhaps I have in all the years of the nights never written one-
I can write the poems I write
My kinds of poems
In a fairly short time-
All I can do now
Is write another of my kind of poems-
Whether they be worth anything,
Or not.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Sometimes You Wish Someone Will Know The Greatness Of A Poem
sometimes as you write a hundred or more poems
you wish someone with taste
the one without which nothing will be called 'poetic'
shall read you and understand the greatness of your
words and style,
someone with a long black hair
smooth skin and possessing that intellectual flare
reads one of your poems and says
' i like this and i shall keep this
did you really write this? '
and you are so flattered that you forget that all the while
on the 5,000th poem
you have been writing all about yourself
on some pain of rejection
that love interest that never responded
that one so beautiful and yet had never laid her eyes on you.
and then, you smile, after all on that poem
inside those images, you appear to be lovable
and she, is never one ordinary fan.
poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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The Poem Of All The Places I Have Never Been
THE POEM OF ALL THE PLACES I HAVE NEVER BEEN
The poem of all the places I have never been
The poem of all the dreams I have not seen
The poem of others poems written in lines I have never imagined
The poem of the infinite – what-is- not and ‘what- will- never- be
The poem of seas and suns and sounds and Shakespeare’s sonnets,
The poem of words and only words whose sounds do not mean what we feel
The poem of all I would not and cannot write
The poem that is not and never will be in me
The poem I do not write
The poem I am not
The poem lost
The poem which itself is not a poem
The poem of the last contradiction and the first
The poem beyond the poem hidden within the poem
The poem which will never be a poem
The poem which is not
The poem I cannot dream.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Few Poems Are Remembered
FEW POEMS ARE REMEMBERED
Few poems are remembered -
Few poems are ever really known-
Few poems are chosen -
Few poems make us want to return to them again and again-
Out of thousands written every day
Perhaps one poem in a decade
Perhaps less.
This is not the poem.
One can write a lifetime
Without ever writing one such poem.
Most of us never write the poem
And most of us are not remembered either.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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An Evening Poem
AN EVENING POEM
An evening poem
Waits for deeper darkness
A night poem knows blackness
As home.
A morning poem is light
An afternoon poem is thick with heat.
All times have a poem
And all seasons poems also
All lives are poems
And all stories also.
We all are and all know poems
Poems pervade us
And the universe.
It is night now
But when the morning comes
Its poem will overshadow now.
What a brave new world it is
With so many poems in it
And what a life-
With such deep sadness
Waiting forever to be unexpressed.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is A Poem For Me Somewhere This Morning
THERE IS A POEM FOR ME SOMEWHERE THIS MORNING
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
I will find it somehow
Perhaps it is in the memory of my father
Whose Yahrtzeit is today
Twenty- two years.
Perhaps it is as it is often
In the morning light
When I first walk outside to Shul
Perhaps it is in the deep need for a poem
For my own justification
Perhaps it is in my daughter’s search
For poems of inspiration
Perhaps it is in many things mixed together
Most of which I have not yet
And may never bring to mind
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
I am writing it now
It is not beautiful
And not the best
And maybe even not much of a poem
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
And I am not alone.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Not a Poem Poem
A Not a Poem Poem
I will not write a poem
For I am not a poet
I cannot makes things rhyme
I’ve tried for quite some time
So will I write a poem?
NO!
I can’t write poetry
I’ve tried to all my life
Once, I tried to write a poem
About a husband and his wife
It sounded really silly
So I crumbled it up into a ball
That’s why I decided
That I couldn’t write poetry at all
Am I gonna write a poem?
NO!
Well, I’ll try to write a poem
But it will be really bad
It will be absolutely lousy
It will be completely horrible
It won’t be up to snuff
People will say, “Who wrote this stuff? ”
Will my poem be good?
NO!
Can I write a poem?
NO!
Will I write a poem?
NO!
Well, what do you know! ? !
I wrote a poem!
And it’s a pretty good poem, too!
I guess I can write poetry if I try
The next time I’m asked to write a poem,
Will I say no?
NO!
A Poem Is Not The Answer To Everything
A POEM IS NOT THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING
A poem is not the answer to everything-
Perhaps it is not the answer to anything
Though I wouldn't take it that far-
There have been times
When a poem was the answer-
Many times
A poem written by someone else
A poem I tried to write by myself-
Poems can be an answer
Perhaps not for most things
Perhaps not for all the major things
But for moods and pains and feeling
And desire for Beauty
Poems can be answers at time-
A poem is not really the answer to my problem of the moment now
But it is an answer of a kind anyway
Thank God for poems and for this poem also.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Would Like To Write A Billy Collins Poem
I WOULD LIKE TO WRITE A BILLY COLLINS’ POEM
I would like to write a Billy Collins poem-
Not for Billy Collins
But to show that I could be as imaginative in story
As humorous and humane as he is-
But I can’t write that poem.
I don’t have his gift for the everyday experience
And for surprising metaphor
For those qualities good poets ordinarily have-
I would like to write a Billy Collins poem
To show that I can be a good poet too.
But probably I am just a different kind of thing entirely.
Still reading Billy Collins poems has added a bit
To my sense of what Poetry is-
It is remarkable all the wonderful gifts others have
One can appreciate
Without having oneself.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Waiting And Wanting To Write Something Else
WAITING AND WANTING TO WRITE SOMETHING ELSE
Waiting and wanting to write something else
The spirit of poetry comes to me
It does not say a specific subject or theme
It has no meaning in mind for itself
But it sings in me
It calls to me
It says ‘now you have the music- let it flow’
And I write it down now
Not as if it is my poem or your poem or anyone’s poem
But only words which God is kind enough to give me
As God has given me so much else which I can be grateful for
A poem to You then
Who have so many poems
And need not my poem
Thank You God My Father.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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A Poem Mood
A POEM MOOD
The thin clear ordinary mind
Is not for Poetry-
One needs a Deep Doubleness within-
A certain kind of Ironic Longing-
A calling out for Meaning
That knows it cannot ever Define itself completely-
A Poem Mood
Is a different kind of Being.
One can sometimes make it come-
One can sometimes respond to it,
And make the Poem with it.
But is not so simple
And not so easy.
I have the Mind and Mood of a Poem now-
But how many would – be poetic lines have I written
Including these perhaps
Without it?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Walk Without A Poem
WALK WITHOUT A POEM
I walk without a poem-
It is a time without poems-
I am tired -
The world is beating me down-
The older I ache
The more I grow cold-
I write these lines in the deep heat of summer
They are incidental and small
A poem perhaps-
But they cannot lift my soul
I do not know how now -
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Morning Poem Did Not Come
THE MORNING POEM DID NOT COME
The morning poem did not come-
So this is the effort of an afternoon poem,
Warm and sun- filled and relaxing and deep and waiting.
This is a poem between times more interesting than itself.
The light is so great now.
But this too is a poem of little or nothing to say
Of afternoon emptiness after morning emptiness
On a tired tired day.
Once I thought I would write poems which would make immortal
Those I love.
Now I write poems to keep myself going.
This afternoon I am extremely tired
But if this is poem
Or even if I only think it is
I can have a rest
Before I face the evening.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Kaleidoscope and Harpsichord
As I've told my wife too many times,
the meaning of any poem hides
in the marriage of cadence and sound.
Vowels on a carousel,
consonants on a calliope,
whistles and bells,
we need them all
tickling our ears.
Otherwise, the lines
are gristle and fat, no meat.
Is it any wonder, then,
my wife has a problem
with any poem I give her to read
for a second opinion, especially
when the poem has no message
and I'm simply trying to hear
what I'm saying and don't care
if I understand it.
The other night in bed
I gave her another poem to read
and afterward she said this poem
was no different than the others.
She had hoped I'd improve.
'After all, ' she said,
'you've been writing for years
but reading a poem like this is
like looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord.'
Point well taken,
point well said.
But then I asked her
what should a man do
if he has careened for years
through the caves of his mind
spelunking for the right
line for a poem
only to hear his wife say
after reading one of his poems
that it was like
'looking through a kaleidoscope
while listening to a harpsichord.'
What should he do-quit?
'Not a chance, '
she said this morning,
enthroned at the kitchen table,
as regal as ever in her fluttery gown
and buttering her English muffin
with long, languorous strokes
Van Gogh would envy.
'He should write even more,
all day and all night, if need be.
After all, ' she said, 'my line
about the kaleidoscope and harpsichord
still needs a poem of its own.
It's all meat, no gristle, no fat.'
poem by Donal Mahoney
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