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Best Poems Written by Lansing Day

Below are the all-time best Lansing Day poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Lansing Day Poem

Stone of St Croix Island

Carefree in leisure time, one blasé tourist, 
almost happy, I once had collected a complicated stone;
after the sunny hours had ended and last opportunity
for keepsakes began.

In my hand the stone had kept all of its mouths sewn shut,
holding its amalgamated story, and likewise in the car,
on the plane, through US Customs where it was not 
in the least suspected.

A thumbnail identity I now should guess at, marking an old date,
and fixing it to, with reasonable estimate, a map location:
Plot No. 243, East end of the island, slave sugar plantation,
the stone from the corner of a ruined windmill stair—
broken free by my criminal hand, having liberated a vine.

The stone looked like a bleached out mini-monolith, square-rectangular,
able to be stood on end, leaning back and swollen at its center
like a pulled cork.

What could have moved this sequestered world to opening?
That was not for me to discover, except what came on Christmas Day,
two days after my returning.

Slave watercourses, the sight of innumerable Dutch ships,
ballasted with human flesh and hewn rock for sugar works buildings.
The drop at arms swish of the Driver’s bullwhip.
Flecks of spirit splayed on vegetation.
A mongrel dog barked beyond the windless wall of sugarcane
in centipede and mosquito heat.


Seaside, beautiful seaside impressions;
distant coral light shadows, etched deep azure;
snowy colored breakers that pencil-marked the sea.
The staid, vibrant, mocking power
of visual symphony backdrop.

So little of aid for the slaves, but for those dangerous secrets, 
unhoused in the fallen coolness of the night:
demonstratively crystalline heaven of stars; 
a ragged moon, clouds scudding eastward toward Africa
before freshwater rainsqualls came.  And there 
Orion’s Belt, mid-sky, illustrious bright, with its three
centering star points in rational line, as if 
Hope could have flung such a rope anchor onto Life
engendering sanctified resistance.

Christmas morning, 5 a.m. 
I had awakened from a stuck place, shapeless and dark, 
half in dreaming and half in knowing I was in no dream.

I was sobbing, yet strangely, because there were no tears. 
I had only put the stone inside my pajama top onto my heart.

Details | Lansing Day Poem

Hands Awake

Hands awaken! Speak out! Answer to sacred shouts,
subterranean whispering, to stars above rooftops—
thread sunlit branches with the chattering of a thousand leaves.

If fluxes and urgencies of confusion or death
should drawn you into your self-box, I say,
remember when one constructed self-prison fell away.
However you helped this forward,
do more of the same.

Be rain-hands, weeping, steeped in earth fragrance.
Be fingers in blossom, faces turning upward,
loves innumerable, rough-cut bedazzled—
unafraid to be splayed open.

Be pocketed hands, released to the welcoming wind—
multiplying there in mid-air,
riding the four directions.

Be hands of smoke and fire, descending and ascending like ragged bird-song—
effulgent, double-charged with surprise
and now even with mock surprises.

Start at the beginning, where you are.
Don’t be satiate with loll-lolling
recede wave’s tide, retreat back and back
into yourselves, until grown utterly intellectual and lumpish!

Now, you Human Being—you come awake also!
Sweep the furnishings from table. Upend the table lawlessly.
Bring the muscular, fleshy, feminine against the masculine and muscular.
Bring the masculine to the feminine. Bring friend to enemy,
estranged neighbor to the confidant. In a dance of pressing hands,
let subtle conversation play.

Ring all the tiny bells.
Stir the King and Queen of Remembrance.

In over-arching restraint, holding back one iota, so pure notes sound—
bring sunburst, sphere and harmony.
Make your entire body a listening board
forming therein—tender shape around which love
seed unfolds infinite spaces and then…

Spring awake! All to better dreaming
where hope and faith are undashed, not this dying.

O, hear me now! Hands, every which one of you,
with every human—never again sleep,
never abandon!

Details | Lansing Day Poem

Orpheus My Valentine Not Dead

Last night I believed I saw three Witch Beings 
relent and cast down from their winter moon 
Orpheus, free riding.  

Happy all he was with his magical lyre.
Not trapped with bereavements of old, 
no lures set with any crying, 
he called to me.

His sun-gold limbs were elegant intact.
Feet swift where night wind took him.
Blood red were his cheeks and marked,
telling where he’d been.

By fate or by chance that night he came
into my darkened room, my bed.

His whispered song tenderly to hold me.
Orpheus, my valentine, not dead.

Details | Lansing Day Poem

Walls of Citadel

So what's the running hubbub--hot-toot's Shangri-la?
Our fear of death's gone wacko. It’s crowding up the bar.

Let's drink to obfuscation. Annihilation’s hip.
Roll out the tequila sunrise.
Go down with the black-sail ship.

But could it be, O, could it be
that we had just forgot,
or we'd missed that day of Bio
in high school's tommyrot?

At work and seeming happy,
our cells in superb supply-- 
exist but a day, others for a week
or more, then die.

Perpetual dying and birthing
is the body’s oldest art.

And so--which you is the 
You of you?

Conglomerations of cells a-croaking 
in requiem symphonies of death?
Or halleluiah songs of the lively new?
Neither or both?

Then there's considering the case of old Bob Kelly 
who, in his downward slide, one brilliant morning 
awoke to exclaim: I myself can never die!
I just change and I fly!

So when we're saddled up with terrors,
believing love is far behind, or the Blues
is all we're singing, and our watches 
won't tell time--we might recall 
that magical Kelly, busting the walls 
of citadel. And we could believe it true.

Is fear of death and dying
the most complete of any hell
we can make?

Now, enough with these concerns!
Shall we take the drink?

Details | Lansing Day Poem

Breathe Stars

Dare to live!
Stop insisting on chasing after death.
Stop trying to die!

Quit the grand delusion.
You shall never die!

Grow your wings and fly to the mountaintop
of your world. Breathe stars.

Bravely go alone. Only you can do this.

Regularly in your day–exercise conviction,
visualize. Take in
golden, fibrous threads
of starlight, of sunlight.

Take them in through the nostrils.
This is nothing less than soul’s power-fuel.

Inhale slowly and experience
the gentle music of love’s fire,
as flames would pull up
a chimney stack, up pipes of ovens. 

Faith builds with such breath practice. 
Greed cooked away.
Anger melting. 

Ignorance surrendering
to ways of knowing.

Transformations to flowers.
To gratitude.
To generosities. 

Prepare that your purpose
shall speak to you.

Breathe starlight.

Are you surprised
that you feel no heat?

Your unique timelessness
awaits your recognition.