Barefootwriter.com

“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.”

– Jacob Bronowski

“Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others.”

– The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times by Pema Chodron

“No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Our dependency makes slaves out of us, especially if this dependency is a dependency of our self-esteem. If you need encouragement, praise, pats on the back from everybody, then you make everybody your judge.”

– Fritz Perls

My God
doesn’t like you.
He says
suicide bombs
are for sissies,
and even if He were
one of those virgins
you guys are
always talking about,
He wouldn’t screw you,
no sir.

You should get
a nicer God,
one who loves
Jews and Christians
and Muslims alike
even though
(I agree)
some of the Christians
don’t deserve it.

You know the ones –
they put bumper stickers
on their rusty cars
that say
“My boss is a Jewish carpenter.”
You’d think
Jesus would give them a raise,
that Shylock,
just to see
His bumper stickers
on better cars.

But anyway,
why not get a God
who doesn’t like to see
His kids blown up,

a God
who would talk you out of it.

I’m sorry, God,
but things just aren’t
working out between us.

In the beginning
it was all light
and flowers
and stargazing
and hanging out together
on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

And it was good.
But you’ve changed.
Do this, don’t do that,
worship Me.

“You shall have
no other gods before me.”
Ok, I said, we can be exclusive.

And, sure, I’ve coveted my neighbor,
but I’ve been faithful to you.
Still, you’re always watching me,
asking if there’s anything
I’d like to confess.

So I’m breaking up with you.
I’d like to date other gods.

Let’s just be friends.

To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others, and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves.

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes

(nominated from Poets.org to go to the September 2007 IBPC)

It is my job
to distill the news
and e-mail it to my dad
who gets half an hour
twice a day
on the Internet
at the Alexandria library
to see if his house
has taken on water

there is a lot I read
but don’t send

a woman floating
her dead husband to the hospital
on an unhinged door

the dogs
the rescue workers describe
frying in the power lines

people trying
to break into Children’s Hospital
as if there weren’t enough
sadness there
for just one place

but between us
there is that one house
on Ridgeway Drive
that hasn’t taken water

and Great-Aunt Nialta
who expects a phone call

to make sure
you got home safe.

“In the beginning was the Word. . .”
– John 1:1

I used to lie on my bed
and browse the great
catalog of creation,

the dictionary.

Who could have known
that a is for apple
could cause so much trouble –
a lexicographer’s nightmare –
that b is for bite
would beget
e is for exile
m is for murder
all the way down to
z is for zoo
(the animals in the garden
having no need
for c is for cage).

One wonders
what was before the word?

I used to stare
at the spaces between letters
until the words became
without meaning
without form
and void

repeated them
until the sounds came
like speaking in tongues

and then let them
drift back into being,
understanding

watched
as the word again
became flesh.

Sometimes
you’re all day
alone
trying to rearrange
a half-finished house
and you sit
by the dryer
and cry

because it isn’t
the life you wanted

and you wait for him
so you can say you’re
pissed

then he does something
sweet
or funny

and you can’t.