Long Merton Poems

After a short illness keeping me off Soup, and a 50-year refrain from Prose Poetry, I was inspired by a Thomas Merton talk about Rilke to find the courage for this form again.

Shoe Dreams

Is there...

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I'm reading this book about germs and guns and steel
and pre-history
and human history,
predators and prey,
and people praying they won't be predatored.

You know,
light bedtime reading.

So, this guy who wrote the book...

No, not the Daniel Quinn thing.
Quinn...

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Spiritual Communion is about Agape,
about Sacred CoEmpathy
about Yin’s Love,
which is Erotic Yang fertility Love of deeply dense nutrition,
but disembodied,
implicate (David Bohm)
concave rather than convex (Buckminster Fuller).

So YangLove is to Bodies
as YinLove is to BiCameral Left/Right...

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Could it be that two city streets meet at a portal
of awakening that leads to enlightenment?
May your next frontier be "Inter-Be" discovery.

Nearly forty years ago on July twenty-fifth,
working in the center city of Philadelphia
I was...

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***  Devoted, Choosing  to Hold ***

Engaged
By your spirit; 
My heart to yours; my heart’s hoping ~
Choosing,
Not that long after we met.  
Completely to embrace you.
And you,
Losing your heart to me,  choosing
To...

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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us–and He has given us everything. –Thomas Merton, writer and poet



In a still, small voice
The Father called to me
Awakening my...

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Life's greatest heated human tragedy
the one we are likely taught not to see.
Our wide-ranging worlds are well connected,
as atoms wiggle we're all effected.
Separation is optic illusion
a fitting end to one's soul seclusion.

Gurus say I am...

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Where's Your Poetic Voice? 

How to render it contemporary, unique, one in the whole wide world? 

Be elusive, a multi-headed, myriad-brained grandchild of Loch Ness? 

Or be happy?  The flow of dreamy happiness

when painting...

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Oh, What Is Life?
(Written for  Kay Collier McLaughlin-With gratitude to Thomas Merton)———
What?  What is life?
No concise, assuaging answer comes.
For there are no stepping stones outside
For a clear, examining view...
Except, perhaps, to wander through
Our...

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*** Words Vanish ***

Words vanish!
Disperse — as prayer begun  
Moves to clear the mind 
    And bare the heart,
Swelling the soul to meet Thee
    With love…

Sending on high...

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“Cannot be named
Cannot be found,”
For in this effort--this person
Into non-Tao becomes wound.
The Tao was before time’s beginning.
The Tao is not found in complex systems,
But is revealed by listening to the heart,
To the oneness of all...

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I love Paul Merton
I just wish he'd keep his shirt on....
Stop flexing his pecs
In front of Ant n Dec,
Even Vladimir Putin shows more respect
To the long suffering viewer; 
Paul:- climb out of the sewer,
Resist the...

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In order to know and love God as He is, we must have God dwelling in us in a new way, not only in His creative power but in His mercy.  Thomas Merton, New...

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“In an age where there is much talk about ‘being yourself,’ I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself.” Thomas Merton

When I look into the mirror
I see the perfect mime,
moving left or...

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Just As Big A Crook
Are all the Republicans;
Not release tax returns.

Obviously, they are afraid
of what tax returns will
reveal as well as checking
out his relationship with
Russia and release of all
medical records. He has
cancer and is going...

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