Poetry Reaches Into Places In Us That

We Have Lived With Violence Far Too Long.

In The Nineteenth Year And The Eleventh Month Speak Your Tattered Kaddish For All Suicides: Praise To Life Though It Crumbled In Like A Tunnel On Ones We Knew And Loved Praise To Life Though Its Windows Blew Shut On The Breathing-room Of Ones We Knew And Loved Praise To Life Though Ones We Knew And Loved Loved It Badly, Too Well, And Not Enough Praise To Life Though It Tightened Like A Knot On The Hearts Of Ones We Thought We Knew Loved Us Praise To Life Giving Room And Reason To Ones We Knew And Loved Who Felt Unpraisable. Praise To Them, How They Loved It, When They Could.

These Scars Bear Witness But Whether To Repair Or To Destruction I No Longer Know.

A President Cannot Meaningfully Honor Certain Token Artists While The People At Large Are So Dishonored.'”

It's As If, In The Mother's Eyes, Her Smile, Her Stroking Touch, The Child First Reads The Message:'you Are There!'