♥♥♥
Listen to the mustn’ts, child.
Listen to the don’ts.
Listen to the shouldn’ts,
the impossibles,
the won’ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me…
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.
Draw a crazy picture,
Write a nutty poem,
Sing a mumble-gumble song,
Whistle through your comb.
Do a loony-goony dance
‘Cross the kitchen floor,
Put something silly in the world
That ain’t been there before.
There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
“I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.”
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you—just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.
I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes…again.
How many slams in an old screen door?
Depends how loud you shut it.
How many slices in a bread?
Depends how thin you cut it.
How much good inside a day?
Depends how good you live ‘em.
How much love inside a friend?
Depends how much you give ‘em.
~ Shel Silverstein ~
Posts tagged poem
The Summer Day
Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me,
what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
James Kavanaugh
To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one’s self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one’s self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another—and to one’s inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon’s own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child’s scars
Or an adult’s deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are—and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide.
Teilhard de Chardin
Love
is the free and imaginative outflowing
of the Spirit over all unexplored paths.
It links those
who love in bonds that unite,
but do not destroy, causing them to discover in their mutual contact
an exultation capable of stirring in the very core
of their being all that they possess
of ‘uniqueness’ and ‘creative’ power.
Love alone
can unite living beings
so as to complete and fulfill them,
for it alone joins them by what is deepest
in themselves. All we need
is to imagine our ability to love
developing until it embraces the totality
of the people of the Earth.
Theoretically,
this transformation of love is quite possible.
What paralyzes life is failure to believe
And failure to dare.
The day will come when,
after harnessing space,
the winds,
the tides,
and gravitation,
We shall harness for God the energies of love.
And, on that day, for the second time
in the history of the world,
we shall have discovered fire.
Via heartconnection
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
― Robert Frost
Maya Angelou
When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after safety.
When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When great souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.
Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.
And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
Shane Koyczan, “The Crickets Have Arthritis,” Words Aloud 2007, Canada (by WordsAloud2)
It doesn’t matter why I was there, where the air is sterile and the sheets sting. It doesn’t matter that I was hooked up to this thing that buzzed and beeped every time my heart leaped like a man who’s faith tells him God’s hands are big enough to catch an airplane, or a world. It doesn’t matter that I was curled up like a fist protesting death, or that every breath was either hard labour or hard time, or that I’m either always too hot or too cold. Doesn’t matter because my hospital roommate wears star wars pajamas, and he’s 9 years old. His name is Louis, and I don’t have to ask what he’s got. The bald head with the skin and bones frame speaks volumes. The Game Boy and the feather pillow booms like they’re trying to make him feel at home because he’s going to be here awhile. I manage a smile the first time I see him and it feels like the biggest lie I have ever told, so I hold my breath cos I’m thinking any minute now he’s going to call me on it. I hold my breath because I’m scared of a 57 pound boy hooked up to a machine because he’s been watching me and maybe I’ve got him pegged all wrong, like maybe he’s bionic or some shit. So I look away like I just made eye contact with a gang member who’s got a rap sheet the length of a lecture on dumb mistakes politicians have made. I look away like he’s going to give me my life back the moment I’ve got something to trade. I damn near pull out my pack and say, “Cigarette?” But my fear subsides in the moment I realize Louis is all show and tell. He’s got everything from a shotgun shell to a crow’s foot and he can put them all in context. Like, “See, this is from a shooting range”, and “See, this is from a weird girl”. I watch his hands curl around a cuff-link and a tie-tack and realize that every nick-nack is a treasure and every treasure has a story, and every time I think I can’t handle more he hits me with another story. He says, “See, this is from my father” “See, this is from my brother” “See, this is from that weird girl” “See, this is from my mother”. Took me about two days to figure out that weird girl is his sister, it took him about two hours today after she left for him to figure out he missed her. And they visit every day, and stay well past visiting hours because for them that term doesn’t apply. But when they do leave, Louis and I are left alone. And he says, “The worst part about being sick is that you get all the free ice cream you ask for.” And he says, “The worst part about that is realizing there is nothing more they can do for you.” He says, “Ice cream can’t make everything okay.” And there is no easy way of asking, and I know what he’s going to say but maybe he just needs to say it, so I ask him anyway. “Are you scared?” Louis doesn’t even lower his voice when he says, “Fuck yeah.” I listen to a 9 year old boy say the word fuck like he was a 30 year old man with a nose-bleed being lowered into a shark tank, he’s got a right to it. And if it takes this kid a curse word to help him get through it, then I want to teach him to swear like the devil’s sitting there taking notes with a pen and a pad. But before I can forget that Louis is 9 years old he says, “Please don’t tell my dad.” He asks me if I believe in angels. And before I realize I don’t have the heart to tell him, I tell him, “Not lately.” and I just lay there waiting for him to hate me. But he doesn’t know how to, so he never does. Louis loves like a man who lived in a time before God gave religion to men and left it to them to figure out what hate was. He never greets me with silence, only smiles and a patience I’ve never seen in someone who knows they’re dying. And I’m trying so hard not to remind him I’ll be out of here in a couple days, smoking cigarettes and taking my life for granted. And he’ll still be planted in this bed like a flower that refuses to grow. I’ve been with him for 5 days and all I really know is that Louis loves to pull feathers out of his pillow, and watch them float to the ground. Almost as if he’s the philosopher inside of the scientist ready to say, “It’s gravity that’s been getting us down.” But the truth is: there’s not enough miracles to go around, kid. And there’s too many people petitioning God for the winning lotto ticket. And for every answered prayer, there’s a cricket with arthritis. And the only reason we can’t find answers is because the search party didn’t invite us, and Louis, right now the crickets have arthritis. So there is no music, no symphony of nature swelling to crescendos, as if ripping halos into melodies that can keep a rhythm with the way our hearts beat. So we must meet silence with the same level of noise that the parents of dying 9 year old boys make when they take liberties in talking with heaven. We must shout until we shatter in our own vibrations, then let our lives echo and grow, echo and grow, grow distant. Grow distant enough to know that as far as our efforts go, we don’t always get a reply. But I swear to whatever God I can find in the time I have left, I’m going to remember you kid. I’m going to tell your story as often as every story you told me. And every time I tell it I’ll say, “See, there’s bravery in this world. There’s 6.5 billion people curled up like fists protesting death, but every breath we breathe has to be given back. A 9 year old boy taught me that.” So hold your breath, the same way you’d hold a pen when writing Thank You letters on your skin to every tree that gave you that breath to hold. And then let it go, as if you understand something about getting old and having to give back. Let it go like a laugh attack in the middle of really good sex, the black eye will be worth it. Because what is your night worth without a story to tell? And why wield a word like worth if you’ve got nothing to sell? People drop pennies down a wishing well, so the cost of a desire is equal to that of a thought. But if you’ve got expectations, expect others have bought your exact same dream for the price of a ‘hard work, hang in, hold on’ mentality. Like, I accept any challenge so challenge me. Like, I brought a knife to this gun fight, but the other night I mugged a mountain so bring that shit, I’ve had practice. Louis and I cracked this world wide open and found that the prize inside is we never lied to ourselves. Never told ourselves that we’d be easy or undemanding. Never dreamt of anyone handing us anything. So we sing in our own vibrations, and dare angels to eavesdrop and stop mid-flight to pluck feathers from their wings and write demands that God’s hands take the time to catch you. So that, even if God doesn’t, it wasn’t because we didn’t try. I don’t often believe in angels, but on the day I left Louis pulled a feather from his pillow and said, “This is for you.” I half expected him to say, “See, this is the first one I grew.”
Instructions for a bad day - Shane Koyczan
There will be bad days.
Be calm.
Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly now.
Let go.
Be confident.
Know that now is only a moment, and that if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended.
Be gracious.
Accept each extended hand offered, to pull you back from the somewhere you cannot escape.
Be diligent.
Scrape the gray sky clean.
Realize every dark cloud is a smoke screen meant to blind us from the truth, and the truth is whether we see them or not - the sun and moon are still there and always there is light.
Be forthright.
Despite your instinct to say “it’s alright, I’m okay” - be honest.
Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity.
Be lucid in your explanation, be sterling in your oppose.
If you think for one second no one knows what you’ve been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone - that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion.
We hungry underdogs, we risers with dawn, we dissmisser’s of odds, we blesser’s of on – we will station ourselves to the calm.
We will hold ourselves to the steady, be ready player one.
Life is going to come at you armed with hard times and tough choices, your voice is your weapon, your thoughts ammunition – there are no free extra men, be aware that as the instant now passes, it exists now as then.
So be a mirror reflecting yourself back, and remembering the times when you thought all of this was too hard and you’d never make it through.
Remember the times you could have pressed quit – but you hit continue.
Be forgiving.
Living with the burden of anger, is not living.
Giving your focus to wrath will leave your entire self absent of what you need.
Love and hate are beasts and the one that grows is the one you feed.
Be persistent.
Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement, beautiful - because it doesn’t know it’s not supposed to grow there.
Be resolute.
Declare what you accept as true in a way that envisions the resolve with which you accept it.
If you are having a good day, be considerate.
A simple smile could be the first-aid kit that someone has been looking for.
If you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can - do more.
There will be bad days, times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out.
There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending, instances spent pretending that everything is alright when it clearly is not; check your blind spot.
See that love is still there, be patient.
Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end.
Ignore what others have called you; I am calling you friend.
Make us comprehend the urgency of your crisis.
Silence left to its own devices, breed’s silence so speak and be heard.
One word after the next, express yourself and put your life in the context – if you find that no one is listening, be loud.
Make noise.
Stand in poise and be open.
Hope in these situations is not enough and you will need someone to lean on.
In the unlikely event that you have no one, look again.
Everyone is blessed with the ability to listen: the deaf will hear you with their eyes; the blind will see you with their hands.
Let your heart fill their news-stands; let them read all about it.
Admit to the bad days, the impossible nights.
Listen to the insights of those who have been there, but come back.
They will tell you; you can stack misery, you can pack despair you can even wear your sorrow – but come tomorrow you must change your clothes.
Everyone knows pain.
We are not meant to carry it forever.
We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then.
That when someone asks you how was your day, realize that for some of us – it’s the only way we know how to say, be calm.
Loosen your grip, opening each palm, slowly now – let go.
Inspiration
is always a surprising visitor.
Beauty
is the illumination of your soul.
The ego
is the false self-born
out of fear and defensiveness.
We do not need to go out and find love;
rather,
we need to be still and let love discover us.
When love awakens in your life,
in the night of your heart,
it is like the dawn breaking within you.
Where before there was anonymity,
now there is intimacy;
where before there was fear,
now there is courage;
where before in your life there was awkwardness,
now there is a rhythm of grace and gracefulness;
where before you used to be jagged,
now you are elegant and in rhythm with your self.
When love awakens in your life,
it is like a rebirth, a new beginning.
If you send out goodness from yourself,
or if you share that which is happy or good within you,
it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.
In the kingdom of love there is no competition;
there is no possessiveness or control.
The more love you give away,
the more love you will have.
~ John O’Donohue ~
To This Day Project - Shane Koyczan (by Shane Koyczan)
To This Day by Shane Koyczan
When I was a kid
I used to think that pork chops and karate chops
were the same thing
I thought they were both pork chops
and because my grandmother thought it was cute
and because they were my favourite
she let me keep doing it
not really a big deal
one day
before I realized fat kids are not designed to climb trees
I fell out of a tree
and bruised the right side of my body
I didn’t want to tell my grandmother about it
because I was afraid I’d get in trouble
for playing somewhere that I shouldn’t have been
a few days later the gym teacher noticed the bruise
and I got sent to the principal’s office
from there I was sent to another small room
with a really nice lady
who asked me all kinds of questions
about my life at home
I saw no reason to lie
as far as I was concerned
life was pretty good
I told her “whenever I’m sad
my grandmother gives me karate chops”
this led to a full scale investigation
and I was removed from the house for three days
until they finally decided to ask how I got the bruises
news of this silly little story quickly spread through the school
and I earned my first nickname
pork chop
to this day
I hate pork chops
I’m not the only kid
who grew up this way
surrounded by people who used to say
that rhyme about sticks and stones
as if broken bones
hurt more than the names we got called
and we got called them all
so we grew up believing no one
would ever fall in love with us
that we’d be lonely forever
that we’d never meet someone
to make us feel like the sun
was something they built for us
in their tool shed
so broken heart strings bled the blues
as we tried to empty ourselves
so we would feel nothing
don’t tell me that hurts less than a broken bone
that an ingrown life
is something surgeons can cut away
that there’s no way for it to metastasize
it does
she was eight years old
our first day of grade three
when she got called ugly
we both got moved to the back of the class
so we would stop get bombarded by spit balls
but the school halls were a battleground
where we found ourselves outnumbered day after wretched day
we used to stay inside for recess
because outside was worse
outside we’d have to rehearse running away
or learn to stay still like statues giving no clues that we were there
in grade five they taped a sign to her desk
that read beware of dog
to this day
despite a loving husband
she doesn’t think she’s beautiful
because of a birthmark
that takes up a little less than half of her face
kids used to say she looks like a wrong answer
that someone tried to erase
but couldn’t quite get the job done
and they’ll never understand
that she’s raising two kids
whose definition of beauty
begins with the word mom
because they see her heart
before they see her skin
that she’s only ever always been amazing
he
was a broken branch
grafted onto a different family tree
adopted
but not because his parents opted for a different destiny
he was three when he became a mixed drink
of one part left alone
and two parts tragedy
started therapy in 8th grade
had a personality made up of tests and pills
lived like the uphills were mountains
and the downhills were cliffs
four fifths suicidal
a tidal wave of anti depressants
and an adolescence of being called popper
one part because of the pills
and ninety nine parts because of the cruelty
he tried to kill himself in grade ten
when a kid who still had his mom and dad
had the audacity to tell him “get over it” as if depression
is something that can be remedied
by any of the contents found in a first aid kit
to this day
he is a stick of TNT lit from both ends
could describe to you in detail the way the sky bends
in the moments before it’s about to fall
and despite an army of friends
who all call him an inspiration
he remains a conversation piece between people
who can’t understand
sometimes becoming drug free
has less to do with addiction
and more to do with sanity
we weren’t the only kids who grew up this way
to this day
kids are still being called names
the classics were
hey stupid
hey spaz
seems like each school has an arsenal of names
getting updated every year
and if a kid breaks in a school
and no one around chooses to hear
do they make a sound?
are they just the background noise
of a soundtrack stuck on repeat
when people say things like
kids can be cruel?
every school was a big top circus tent
and the pecking order went
from acrobats to lion tamers
from clowns to carnies
all of these were miles ahead of who we were
we were freaks
lobster claw boys and bearded ladies
oddities
juggling depression and loneliness playing solitaire spin the bottle
trying to kiss the wounded parts of ourselves and heal
but at night
while the others slept
we kept walking the tightrope
it was practice
and yeah
some of us fell
but I want to tell them
that all of this shit
is just debris
leftover when we finally decide to smash all the things we thought
we used to be
and if you can’t see anything beautiful about yourself
get a better mirror
look a little closer
stare a little longer
because there’s something inside you
that made you keep trying
despite everyone who told you to quit
you built a cast around your broken heart
and signed it yourself
you signed it
“they were wrong”
because maybe you didn’t belong to a group or a click
maybe they decided to pick you last for basketball or everything
maybe you used to bring bruises and broken teeth
to show and tell but never told
because how can you hold your ground
if everyone around you wants to bury you beneath it
you have to believe that they were wrong
they have to be wrong
why else would we still be here?
we grew up learning to cheer on the underdog
because we see ourselves in them
we stem from a root planted in the belief
that we are not what we were called we are not abandoned cars stalled out and sitting empty on a highway
and if in some way we are
don’t worry
we only got out to walk and get gas
we are graduating members from the class of
fuck off we made it
not the faded echoes of voices crying out
names will never hurt me
of course
they did
but our lives will only ever always
continue to be
a balancing act
that has less to do with pain
and more to do with beauty.
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