‘My life is my message.’ – Gandhi

Gandhi’s message was his life, and yours is your life. What message are you giving the world, through your actions, how you live, how you treat others, what you accomplish, how you choose to be, every moment of every day?

Are you an angry rant? A ballad? An epic poem?

Perhaps a sonnet, a limerick, a haiku?

I actually stopped to think about what my life would be. Epic poem sounds very close. Do modern consciousness-free epic poems exist?

Eve Argues Against Perfection by Diane Lockward

And the woman said, The serpent

beguiled me, and I did eat.

– Genesis 3:13

Beguiled, my ass. I said no such thing.

You say I lost the gift of Paradise.

I couldn’t lose what I never had.

You say the serpent tempted me to eat.

You omit that he entered the Garden

on two legs and walked like a man.

And here’s what your story always ignores:

I had pure gold, rare perfume, precious stones,

but Adam hadn’t touched me all those years.

Perfection in the Garden didn’t mean that way.

Not having it and not wanting it

was God’s idea of perfection, not mine.

So when that serpent strolled up to the tree,

all upright and fine, he threw off the balance,

and I began to pray, Oh, let him be mine.

When he held out the apple, so round and lush,

when he stroked it to a keen red glow,

I didn’t fall to temptation — I rose to it.

I ate that apple because I was hungry.

I wanted what lay outside of Paradise,

a world without the burden of perfection.

Now you call all sinful women my sisters.

I say, let them claim their own damn sins.

The apple may not be perfect, but it’s mine.

J.B., by Archibald MacLeish

We can never know

He answered me like the stillness of a star

That silences us asking

We are and that is all our answer

We are and what we are can suffer

But…

what suffers loves.

And love

Will live its suffering again,

Risk its own defeat again,

Endure the loss of everything again

And yet again and yet again

In doubt, in dread, in ignorance, unanswered,

Over and over, with the dark before,

The dark behind it… and still live… still love

Langston Hughes, “April Rain Song”

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

The Beautiful Poem | Richard Brautigan

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking

about you.

Pissing a few moments ago

I looked down at my penis

affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside

you twice today makes me

feel beautiful.

3 A.M.

January 15, 1967

There’s A Hole in My Sidewalk: Autobiography in Five Short Chapters by Portia Nelson

Chapter One
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost …. I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter Two
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in this same place.
But, it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter Three
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter Four
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter Five
I walk down another street.

I read this poem long ago in school. I forgot all about it and I recently ran across it again. I think it does a lot for a variety of situations.

The Only Place, Linda Hasselstrom

The only place a woman can go to be alone

is the bathroom.

A woman would like to be wrapped in strong arms

when she cries, without having to explain,

or huddle on the couch wrapped in a blanket and a cat.

But all over America, women crouch instead

on a white, cold monument to wasting water.

We lean against a chilled tile wall,

stare at ourselves in an icy mirror,

flush the toilet to cover howls and curses,

brush our teeth twice to cover the taste of anger.

We lock the door, fill the tub with hot bubbles,

take a long time shaving our legs and armpits,

study the way waves break over bulging stomachs.

We scour the sink and rearrange the bottles under it,

refold towels, throw away old prescriptions,

count bandaids and bottles of suntan lotion.

We turn out the lights, stare into candle flames,

light incense, try to pretend we’ve taken our troubles

to a glowing temple, placed them in the lap

of a smiling golden Goddess.

Outside, men who wouldn’t know what to do

if a woman curled up in bed and cried

can relax before bloodless images on TV

and think, “She’s only in the bathroom

doing some woman’s thing.”

Behind a locked door, a woman

spins the empty toilet paper roll

like a Tibetan prayer wheel,

chanting “Help me, help me, help me.”