Best Arbiters Poems

We celebrate the optimist
Extolling his cheery ways
As the light shines upon him 
We think he's worthy of our praise

He seems to have the answers
With him the future's always bright
Convincing us that darkness
Is a form of blackened light

Not a thing seems to phase him
He surveys life...

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I have found that throughout life
You can be a needle or a knife.

Either you heal, repair, and bind
Or sever, injure, and divide.

With words and deeds we so ordain
To be arbiters of peace or pain,

To fasten tight or slash apart,
To cherish or to break a heart.

Each...

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Nothing important happened today,
according to an omission 
in the local newspaper Metro page
The death of my best friend ... my husband,
this sad story of injustice was missing
Such a horrible ghetto tragedy
wasn’t worth one drop of black ink
A bucket of widow tears,
and a heavy casket of...

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Unquotable quotes: Leftists – XVIII

(Note: What goes for the Left can go for the Right, too. All you need to do is to interpose the words wherever possible. Don’t read ideological warfare where there is none intended.)

If the Left is right, the Right cannot be...

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He shocks me.  Only a day or so ago
I'm sure I didn't look like that.
I try to part the few thin strands
of hair up top, the patriarchs before me
saw on their own sluggish heads 
not long ago--I was not so sure that I
would always...

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(huff fin Bach seat driver)...

Aye kin recall when both offspring
     (yay high) as a small child
and now ma deux daughters
     (fledgling young chicks
     though they be),
     flew the coop,...

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Sometimes for fun men worship a gun
To shoot a recruit, to vanquish a victim
Whose only fault lies in a bun
The poor nibble in a starving team
 
Barrels and muzzles dominate
In thoughts, actions, deeds and priorities
Held  high in fake media to disseminate
Philosophies and heresies propagated...

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The wheel upon which the carriage of life rides;
A discipline for the unnoticed arbiters among mortals
A specialty for Nature's brides;
A third eye for them that love to see!...

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I do not deny that the heat of life’s bubbly buzz is cheery
But I would instead be the keen silent observer of all,
The keen eye that critiques the chaotic hubbub around –
The solitary judge who arbiters from the windows of a lonely soul. 

For a...

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IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY - LXXXII

    for Carlos Bousoño, the eminent Spanish critic, poet and professor
           who maintained that if you don't like the "humorist",
     ...

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Mirrors and Scales



Approached with trepidation
they assault our self esteem,
when we waddle up for judgment
and they destroy our dream.

Cold unflinching arbiters
reflecting just the truth,
of what was long suspected;
aging has borne its fruit.

Saggy baggy bodies
so long past being young,
when skin and muscles fit us
where now they are...

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When in my youth I knew the truth,
To all of life's stark questions,
With flippant ease, to please or tease,
I had the answer, could seize the day,
Was sure of myself, in every way.

When in the middle years of life,
I matured a bit, could take advice.
The world,...

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When in my youth I knew the truth,
To all of life's stark questions,
With flippant ease, to please or tease,
I had the answer, could seize the day,
Was sure of myself, in every way,

When in the middle years of life,
I matured a bit, could take advice.
The world,...

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Do not the ones who preach diversity create the same conundrum as the ones who preach segregation?

To whom must I defer to define what or how society should look like or be organized as?

What are the standards by which diversity is to be judged and...

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A glass stands upon a table, 
Watched by arbiters of existential
State.
They observe the glass, to give opinion
As to its contents.

The Pessimist speaks: “There is wine
In the glass, and it is half empty”.
The Optimist, with shake of head
And wave of hand, denies this:
“The glass is half...

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