I can't do it
My heart tries
But the bee
Is where my rose lies
The River flows
Giving life to all
But the snake
Is where my eyes fall
The snow offers joy
So many sledding on slopes
But the pending danger
Is where my hope ropes
...and I hang on for dear life
Life...that's a laugh
Where is living in dying
Try as I might, my system
Forbids access to what desire is buying
I press my pen against paper
Demanding it write out my joy
But it sighs and retracts
Sighting all effort as a ploy
My pen is right, there's no point
In writing about what I haven't known
I'm told a great harvest is coming
For the many good seeds I have sown
...and I wait in the patience my tent now holds
Written by Trudy Schrader on 08-30-2026
The weight of indecision
Is a force so many in the world can bear,
Yet one that crushes me,
Gnawing away at my fractured sanity.
There's two paths, which one shall we trek?
There's a third choice but the Bible forbids it
My brittle spine can only endure so much.
Make haste with your decision, author,
Before the pillars of love collapse,
Before your lover finds a suitor with a steadfast spine
Known through every heart's
Wild urge and fun side;
Forbids nothing, including
Desire to escape
What Summer, especially
Along its sea coasts
Reveals, laying us half stripped
About its nature
If coarse, is one glad to cure.
Laughing at our shape!
627.
Novena Prayer to St. Benedict
Oh St. Benedict who is glorious
Grand Model of All Virtues
Bringer of Grace from the Almighty
I humbly kneel before thee
Protect me from all dangers & foes
Let me have the blessings God endows
And avoid whatever God forbids
Grant me the favors & graces I need from God
For the troubles in life that I had
As your kind heart directs to those being inflicted
You do not abandon those whom to you devoted
That is why I ask you to intercede for me
This petition (name of petition) I present to the Almighty
If it is for His glory & my spiritual relief
Oh St. Benedict who is great
Help me to maintain my faith
Live as a faithful child of God
Die as a faithful child of God
Let His will that is holy
Be done unto & through me
That I will be forever happy in his heavenly kingdom.
Amen.
-12/27/2018
(Dumarao)
*My Poetic Prayers to Saints Trilogy 2018
(written this day when I bought the “Jubilee Medal of St. Benedict”)
A facsimile of the earth stands proudly
On the savannahs of the ancient and modern.
Edifice of rustic finesse, rugged and pointed
With the glory of a pinnacle of a paradise on earth.
In your crawling presence, Termite, stand I,
Barefoot, on elevated earth for the first time —
A platform erected by the hands of gifted time,
All red-brown and royal, and under the tutelage of
Sun and Rain —two keen-eyed foremen descended from heaven.
You have reached the skies before man.
I hail you!
I have removed my open-toe footwear,
Like Moses did his in the burning bush.
Babel forbids the union of this construction,
Aiming Nimrodly upwards and towards arrowed clouds
Dispersed in blubbering tongue-lashes.
But you do not seek God’s wrath upon these grasslands
With these anthills,
Wild castles —testaments to the will of fecund grounds.
Termite, break the jinx of your muteness.
Testify, crawling soul, testify harmoniously,
Borrowing the singing heritage of the Common Cuckoo.
Testify now.
Attest
To the ruggedness and puissance of this imposing structure,
And blame it on the staccato rhythm of peevish languages.
He who chased bright wings
On through what forbids
Time's own fenced off bounds, nightly
As unseen leaps o'er.
No less the itchy
That child's venturing
To kiss down what, now dream- formed
Floats for a dream-face.
Yond this present, as Fate's place.
Swirls with soul's rapport.
I met her
on the boardwalk ramp
and said ...
“You Have Nice Eyes”
The Gypsy Lady
fixed her gaze
my hand in hers
replied ...
“White hates black
and black hates white
their fear right now
forbids
“Division preys
to rule the land
fate drifting
on the skids
“But just remember
this one thing
if we are
to survive
“Coffee colored kids
will reign
to save our souls
— demise”
(Haverford College: February, 2026)
the nations out, working hard
and getting no reward
weekly shoppings on the list
of things we can’t afford
young mums having to choose
to feed their babies or themselves
opening their cupboards
to see nothing on the shelves
each child gets one piece of toast
while parents do without
because in dark times
love is sacrifice
and with that love there is no doubt
families going cold
with no money for central heating
because if they were warm
then for a week they wouldnt be eating
people asleep on concrete floors
with just a backpack to their name
nowhere to stay
nowhere to go
no idea who to blame
people are losing their homes
while others are swimming in money
it may sound like a joke
but i assure you
it’s not funny
it’s easy to say you sympathise
when it’s not effecting you
your not a child
going to school
with holes in each shoe
people shouldn’t be worrying
about how to feed their kids
they just want to give them a good life
but society forbids
there’s nothing you can do
when your just one amongst the crowd
but as long as your trying your best
then for that, you should be proud.
Free from cooking dinner and bathing kids
we've exchanged lipstick, off to jazzy jigs tried different costumes, with plaited wigs
let's wear false lashes attached to blue lids
we'll go for raw oysters, no-one forbids
then hurry to club where cool drummer skids
girls will sing in deep voices startling digs
nonchalant will we be, dismantling grids
Black Magic Women, nobody's spare ribs !
No one is ever as happy as kids:
In such loving ways that make easy bids
Fall in places without hate;
An insight forceful wrongs bait,
Leading astray true love Satan forbids.
Orange pumpkins glow so cute
Making children smile in spacesuits
Halloween pumpkins filled with candy
A cosmic stash, so handy-dandy
Each planetary pumpkin has a special face
That beams like stars in aerospace
Each one has a candle inside
Its galactic shimmer is big and wide-eyed
The nose is shaped like a triangle
Without airlocks to be entangled
The mouth may curve in spooky shapes
From every smile, light escapes
A dreamscape shines for starry-eyed kids
Enchanted by secrets the Cosmos forbids.
Existence is like waiting for something to happen
But what if I wait and wait and wait and boom!
Nothing happens?
Do I have the right to say I exist?
Is there even the concept of rights,
In an ocean where there seemingly is no end?
Where there is not up nor down
And if the ocean is all around me and within
Am I drowning in the so-called existence?
To exist is to participate in reality
But if I’m drowning in a void that forbids any breath
If my presence is as invisible as air
And my screams are met with a silence like death
Am I existing or am I just…there?
To exist is to take up time
But what if its seemingly endless?
Does time ever have an end?
And if it ever ends, and I along with it,
does that mean I ever existed?
If I’ve led a life of happiness or sorrow,
Does it truly matter if there is no morrow?
Inevitable like the visit of Thanatos
If it all comes crashing down like waves at sea
Was there ever an existence of me?
I postponed being amazed by time, a traveler without aim,
Until, before my soul could die, I learned,
That all that aches has dissipated like smoke under the silver moon,
A flock and a shepherd, shadows of a long-forgotten tale.
Whoever places my bare and fragile bones in an envelope,
Will write a letter of my cowardly and humble feelings,
The black angel, ruling over all that love touches,
Forbids your bleeding heart the wellspring that cries.
Bandaged with a death buried in the stretching future,
The eternity of the moment hides in the despair that surprises us,
The tears of my life, wilted fortune floods you,
The universe in my inspired soul seeks to hide away.
To our earthly life, I give an imponderable and gentle meaning,
Your perfection, my love, only you make it seem without pain,
You are the one who will birth my steps into eternity, forever,
Because your love, like a god, spreads within my soul.
Your love carries a dull dissatisfaction, ever-present,
Our contemporaries feel it and echo it along the way,
Announcing to the present-past, until the last breath,
That your Christ, my beauty, long ago ceased to exist, but turns into our dream.
The Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution
prohibits cruel AND unusual punishment.
It does not prohibit cruel punishment.
It does not prohibit unusual punishment.
It only forbids cruel AND unusual punishment.
Therefore, cruel punishment is totally constitutional.
So, too, is unusual punishment.
When I say this, some of my liberals friends are in total astonishment.
Crossing over
into the realm
of non-description
reference and paradigm
sleep alone
Borders falling inward
upon themselves
leaving only what
the mind forgoes
—and the soul forbids
(The New Room: 1-15-2025)
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