Clifford Browder
June 14th, 2016 by admin
Use This Day Use this day For love, for friendship, for rage, For justice, for hope, For worship, if your gods are worthy of it. Use it To build, to create, To bring meaning, To fight the void and navigate the flux. Don’t shirk, don’t slouch. Use it. It will never come again. Earth I love the smell of it The black oozy thick of it Wormy and rich Harboring seeds and roots and bones Graveyards and spores In my next existence I will grow things Coax them out of her hot muggy thighs Into joy and exuberance Into sustenance and life. Of the other elements I can’t relate to air Too flimsy, too vague And I’m scared of fire That leaps and darts and scorches Having seen whole buildings Flame up in a blaze And know that water wants to drown me Learning to swim I splashed and sputtered, hated it And once saw the body of a woman Washed up on the shore of a lake So lost, so cold, so still. Yes, I’ll stick with earth Don’t think You can wiggle out of the Old Girl’s embrace You cannot She’s in your blood and bone We came out of her We’ll go back into her The vast, messy, loving Ruthless and inescapable Big Mama of us all. My Wild, My Calm There’s something wild in me That wants to shake things up A demonic spring that wants to pump The green fire of his seed Into multitudes of rapturous virgins Who wants to break windows of snug little homes To shout, to run, to fly To leap over gaping chasms And scale vertiginous cliffs Who wants to slay dragons or better still become one Who wants to eat rare earths, speak in tongues And annex the secrets of the universe. There’s something calm in me That smiles at my demon Like a loving mother At the antics of her raucous little boy, A seeker who needs no Rare earths, strange tongues, gaping chasms Who walks gently, looks and listens Finds wisdom in silence Strength in grasses Truth in trees Who relaxes into the rhythms The mysteries And daily ecstasies of life. Love Better, Love Deeper Love better, love deeper. Cut the frills, The gaudy promises, the tinsel. The best love is simple, quiet, undemanding Like a mountain or a seed. Its beauty lies under the surface Like a submarine reef of red coral Jutting spires and candelabras While blue fish drift and dart. The best love grows silently Like mushrooms in the woods, Like ferns, like roots And blooms mysteriously Like white flowers opening in the night. The best love thrives Where least expected Like green sprouts In the rotten wood of piers Or molds on ancient stumps. Though it toughens with time, in the beginning It is soft, not hard and jagged, Easily hurt. When you love, Love with caution and quiet, With wisdom, no razzmatazz. Love with calm and care. Sadness Sadness Is the adagios and mellow gray of twilight A loving touch. I have seen it In smiles of resignation In muted yearnings for the unattainable In shattered loves, futile hopes, quiet defeats Final good-byes. It is the landscape of our living Time’s music The price of our awareness of transience. Don’t fight it, accept it Ease into it, I’d almost say Enjoy it. It is our essence, our aura The mark of our humanity The measure of our loss. Clifford Browder Bio: I am a writer living in New York City. I have published two biographies, a novel, and a selection of posts from my blog (see link below) that has won two awards. My poetry has appeared in numerous small reviews. cliffbrowder@verizon.netPosted in: Uncategorized, Forever Journal