What is there in the end but forgiveness
And forgiving one’s self.
What is regret when we cannot go back
To change anything done?
We only move forward
To more change, the slow breakdown
Of the body, aging and death,
There is that, of course, but
The quicker one can do it the better:
Live so the need to forgive is less and less.
It is a gift we give, and when we can, is priceless.
Rayn Roberts 2017
When I cut my hair
it always
grows back again–
Goodbyes
Aren’t for friends
For for Mary Leary
The cracked world strangely abstract
Flowers panic in the window box
Crows eat the petals of mourning
Unpeaceful Xanax morning,
I should meditate, but this is fine
Poetry calms the storms of afternoon until
A gathering of friends
SOMA Heads looking for a fix in my room
Invisible bandito on the balcony
Nicking my hash
He came to prop me up
Then took my stash, the bastard!
Later, a Las Vegas Cocktail Open Mic
Colorless as a dry heave
Jimmy Jazz is shouting in my head,
“Fuck you and you and you
if you call this is a poetry reading!
This is not a poetry reading!”
This bleeding stuck pig poetry
Banging on a toy-piano poetry
Just throw some glitter on
And slap it to your frig like a cute magnet.
Wait… from of the heat of hell, genius often rises
And hey, it’s all about self-expression, isn’t it, well, isn’t it?
Some One Asked
What I Meant
When I Said
The Oneness
of Being
I was shocked they didn’t know
This may be nothing new nothing at all
or nothing now you need to take to heart,
whatever it is to you it will mean nothing
until realized: with billions of minds, hearts
savage wills pulling at the seams of reality
it’s a wonder the whole doesn’t tear open
spill out into riots, revolutions, war, chaos
far more often than it does which doesn’t mean
we stop tying to make life somewhat better
but rather it will never be what you want
That’s right, it will never be just as we want–
Say it often to yourself if you think it helps.
Poem first appeared in Of One & Many Worlds
He holds me so close we dream the same dream
But I cannot sleep while I remember
A dream of driving down a back road in the dark
Hoping for collision, a head-on in his arms.
That could be my freedom, no one really knows
Exactly when we go and I am recalling the look
Of wonder on his face when he knew I knew
The love of beauty, the beauty of love is stronger
Than his embrace– time wears me down to dust.
Love, keep me close, keep me here a little longer.
He wraps big cold arms around me with the blanket
And the sheets, we lie down to sleep again
Death and I, turning a blind corner on a back road.
The celebrants of Friday scotch, men of lesser deeds
Spent time like pocket change in endless café-bars
Made noise enough to wake the quick and dead:
There was light drizzle on a cherry blossom way,
The six of us, smashed, but more high on ourselves
As most young men will be when booze is abused,
When Dwight, a good natured poet, began shouting,
“So what’s art from no-Nukes if your Ego-jerking girl
Leaves you for easy game, empty-handed in the café
Street fights in the rain!” (You had to be there.)
Then continued as thunder slammed the sky…
“It’s the leaven of the mind to know for every stance
A different man while pissing on the earth; how best
In these times, to get between the legs of truth and
Have a fucking field day, my friends, especially when
Language, words, speak mostly to nothing new now
And the dull edge of the age digs us all a deeper grave!
But look, the moon falls to fullness, suns round the sky
For no purpose but to burn, wisdom in my mind recalls
A semi-conscious boyhood, and above the mountains
As if to mock my fury, that belt of morning thunder
Makes us all wiser fools…”
We had to carry him two blocks to his place after that.
There seemed some weight in what he said, so I kept it.
Poem by Rayn Roberts– Kyoto, Japan 1982
