Poem in Your Pocket Day - 2020

Given the Covid-19 Crisis that's overtaken everything in April this year, wasn't sure I'd find a poem to post this month - much less have a pocket to carry it around in :O

This one has been inspired by the short bio on Houdini that I'm currently reading.  How great was it to stumble across this - and with the great fortune to have a link to the poet actually reading it!

Enjoy :D


Houdini                                                                                                      

                           

By Kay Ryan

 

Each escape

involved some art,

some hokum, and

at least a brief

incomprehensible

exchange between

the man and metal

during which the

chains were not

so much broken

as he and they

blended. At the

end of each such

mix he had to

extract himself. It

Was the hardest

part to get right

routinely: breaking

back into the

same Houdini.

Poem in Your Pocket Day - 2018

It's that time of year again - pick a poem to carry in your pocket for the day!  This year I've gone back to Kerouac (who is not primarily known for his works of poetry)!

Here is the 10th Chorus of "Brooklyn Bridge Blues" -

Chorus # 10

And that's all I can
recall of Brooklyn Bridge,
tonight, John A Roebling
and Washington Roebling
built it, and it hath cables
and it does one good to cross it everyday----
See my eerie wiseness?
Good night, innocent children
of this mortal Sangsara
world, you have to keep
your mind empty & tranquil
and pure or the whole
Eternal Light escapes you
-----Without the Eternal Light
you're only a yakking fool
of rooms, beds, graves
and monuments----with it,
you are like the Silent
Mountains of Snow
and more than
I know------

Check out this link for the entire Poem!