Poem In Your Pocket Day 2026: "Fear" by Kahlil Gibran

Today, the last day of National Poetry Month, is also Poem In Your Pocket Day, and I am carrying around a thoughtful piece by the legendary Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist Kahlil Gibran. It speaks to a cycle and a greater order that we might not see from our possibly limited vantage point. I will be sharing it with others and synchronicity will make certain it finds its way to someone who needs to hear it.

Fear
by Kahlil Gibran

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.

She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.

And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.

Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

"Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God" by Ashley M. Jones

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. For our last poem of this 2026 National Poetry Month (but stay tuned for one more poem tomorrow on Poem In Your Pocket Day!), I present a truly gorgeous poem from Ashley M. Jones about pride of identity.

Friendly Skies, or, Black Woman Speaks Herself into God
by Ashley M. Jones

—we’re taxiing at an airport named after american president ronald reagan. people tell me he was an american hero. sometimes, labels are jumbled in the big dark bag we call manifest destiny. sometimes, things get lost in its velvet mouth.

—as we move across the land in a machine built for sky, we wait for the flight attendant to tell us how to be safe, how to will ourselves alive thirty thousand feet in the air if we find ourselves falling to an inevitable end. how to build a raft from breath alone to face a gulping sea.

—our attendant, Valerie, is Black. her braids hang, a holy rope, in a high ponytail. her eyes, divinely familiar. when the disembodied voice booms over the plane speakers, we see her mouth moving in time with its words. to ensure your safety, she says. secure your mask before helping others. her lips make the shape of our salvation.

—reader, this might be how you felt sitting in the movie theater’s strobelit box when you saw Black Panther, when you realized a Black person could feel as big as God, could save the world and make it home in time for dinner, run a whole country against no white background, could know all the land and its secrets and roam the afterworld, leisurely resting after a life of nothing colonized, after all the sweat of work done just for self, of work unstolen and unenslaved.

—and i know Valerie isn’t God but i also know that she is, standing here, commanding this voice we thought was faceless, using her earthly body to show us the way. here, with her hands which will pour us fizzy drinks in our little plastic cups, usher trash from our laps into an unknown abyss—i know if  this thing goes down in a fiery cocoon, she will part every sea to cradle us, she will speak to us through the fire—you are that you are.

https://ashleymjonespoetry.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Soft Season" by Gem Club

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I have featured lyrics of rock n' roll or pop or contemporary songs that also double as exquisite poetry. And I am closing the month with a beautiful piece by Gem Club (the nom de musique of Chris Barnes).

The sound of Gem Club is chamber pop ... gentle, tender music arranged around Barnes' often agonizingly beautiful piano skills. "Soft Season" is an elegiac song inspired by the life and death of early-90s gay adult film actor Joey Stefano.

One of the things that makes a song or poem powerful is its universality. And I admit that this particular piece might not have universal appeal, but I am quite partial to it since it seems to be an uncanny, near word-for-word portrayal of a very specific time--a few actual incidents--in my own life. But I hope that there is a sort of universal idea here, one of fleeting youth full of the peculiar paradox of youth: confidence and fear, a mix of bold exploration and apprehension of the unknown. Maybe we have all been there, stepping out into the big world but not quite sure of ourselves ... and if you haven't, please let the narrative open a door for you to another perspective. The words in their musical form never fail to move me to tears.

Soft Season
by Gem Club (Chris Barnes)

Muscle shakes up against the wall
White waves in his mouth
He twists into a snake
He has all the time that he needs
And the eyes in the place
For as long as it lasts
I’m a boy on my back
And I’m more of a man

Might try to hurt me
Might try to love me too much

All the men dance like diamonds
In the back room beauties
Will compare their flowers
And he pulls on the mattress
I am soft for the season
I look up and you’re leaving
And I’m out in the hallway
Where I work on my bloodline

https://www.instagram.com/gemclub
https://www.iamgemclub.com/

"Coelacanth"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This poem is an ode to a preserved ancient fish, thought to be extinct until its rediscovery in 1938, which was on display, hovering, fixed in a large tank of formaldehyde in a darkened room at the original Beaux-Arts-style Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Coelacanth

so alone,
swimming in thick ooze,
covered with plates
but soft underneath.
seeing the bones,
feeling the complex
prehistoric structure
with my mind.
squeezed like a grape,
you will pop.
a head like a potato
or a fetus,
bloated,
white and dripping--
you keep a secret very well

©JEF 1987

"Everything All at Once" by Oliver Baez Bendorf

For National Poetry Month, I want to share with you a poem that depicts the way I often view the world...an avalanche of humanity, a cascade of high to low and all in between...it can be overwhelming. It is depicted beautifully in the film "Wings of Desire" (seen here) and in this pure, lovely poem by Oliver Baez Bendorf...

Everything All at Once
By Oliver Baez Bendorf

                                           right now,
someone is having sex and someone
is dying and someone is trying to find
a lid so they can, before bed, put away
the soup and someone is dreaming
of that made meadow and someone
is gazing through a hospital window
to a faraway peak
and someone can’t decide what
to watch so they remain

on the menu screen for company
and someone wants to call but
can’t and someone wants to answer
but won’t and someone is studying
to become a moth scientist and someone
is dizzy and doesn’t know why
and someone is, after work, practicing
the vocal techniques of opera
and someone receives
a phone call saying listen it’s my

neighbor I told you about the singing one can you
hear it and someone
is clutching the heavy still warm hand
of a lover and someone is digging
a hole and someone is waxing
their back and someone
is remembering a poem permitting
bits and pieces to return
and someone
would do almost anything to forget

Oliver Baez Bendorf
Photo: Jennifer Koskinen

https://www.oliverbaezbendorf.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Ghosts" by Yungblud

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

"Ghosts" by Yungblud is an ode to tenacity, about finding beauty in the face of ugliness, tenderness in the face of barbarism, hope in the face of despair, and good in the face of evil...something we could use now. It is an organically arising resistance based on a simple, undying desire to be present in this world...really present.

I always post songs in this series without any link to the video or music since the lyrics are the point. But this is one of those instances where being able to hear the music--and see the performance--only enhances the strong message, so click here for a soaring, energetic experience!

Ghosts
by Yungblud (Dominic Harrison)

I see the distant smoke
Across the water way
I’d swim a thousand miles
Just to hear you say
The words that never come
When you need them most
To dry your eyes out

Is it your mother's tongue
Or your fathers ghost
Remember sticks and stones
And how they broke your bones
Pain is how you learn
And boy you learned a lot
When they hit you in the face
And you begged them all to stop
Until you rose up again
And you tried your best to surrender
Bowed down your head
Then you looked up to the sky and said

My god, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
Wanna stay here forever
God, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
You’re my gateway to heaven

From underneath the dust
You see the curtain call
Can’t bear to watch another generation stall
To the hands of greed
That will take it all
And cut your heart out

See the face in the shadow
Just a thread in the seams
We’ll be ghosts by tomorrow
Just a day in a dream

But you’ll rise up again
And you’ll fight against the surrender
My friends don’t wait
Just look up to the sky and say

My god, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
Wanna stay here forever
God, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
You’re my gateway to heaven
God, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
Wanna stay here forever
God, what a beautiful scene
Now I know what you mean
You’re my gateway to heaven

https://www.yungbludofficial.com/

"Bring Me The Heads"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This one speaks about a world in turmoil, suffering inequality and injustice and violence, and a fracture in the ways of living in such a world.

Bring Me The Heads

Plates below us moving, grinding.
The earth is alive, serious, means business.

One city is underwater, another is underground.
Two views of the same world.
Neither of them have a chance.
This has nothing to do with myth or fiction.

I beg you to do something,
to create something, to step in,
slough off ribbons of time, of truth,
slice into our awareness, and if need be,
separate us like fighting children.

Of those who live above,
who would boil us, rip us apart,
make our hearts stop beating:
you send me to their cathedral
with these orders:
“Bring me the heads—”

©JEF 2010

"EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE" by Andrea Gibson

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am sharing exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. The late poet Andrea Gibson's vital, existential poetry was influenced by her journey through cancer. She died last July and left a catalog of devastatingly beautiful poems. Here is "EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE."

EVERY TIME I EVER SAID I WANTED TO DIE
by Andrea Gibson

--I meant I am willing to do anything to live.
Even leave this world forever.

Even build a new home atop a nebula, stick a straw
into a buried lake on Mars, get tipsy on anti-gravity
and invent new constellations walking the lines

between undiscovered stars.

When god pulls me over and asks,
Can you touch your nose? I could say,

What nose?

I'd be bodiless, a shadow in reverse,
a patch of light made by the darkness

I escaped.

The psychology manuals say no one really wants
to die. They want relief. They believe they will never
find it in this world. That belief could be right.
Or wrong.

One would have to stay to find out.
Friend, if you stay, at least we will be
together, and I have an extra straw.

I could show you where the lakes on this planet
are buried. How do you not need light-years
to reach them. The dark years work too.
Sometimes better. Sometimes grief

is the fastest route to truth.

In addition to the straw,
I also have a slingshot that fires rock
bottoms directly at the sun until change

spills from its golden pockets--

that's how I got my hands on this
summer afternoon. We can do anything
with it. Sunbathe or scream or forgive ourselves
everything, most especially the thread we could not

convince to close our wounds.

If your wounds are still open, trust
they are doors to an answer,
and walk through.

What if we don't have to be healed
to be whole? There are holes in every inch
of the fabric that makes me who I am,

but pull the string on my back
and I'll say I LOVE YOU and mean it
whenever you want.

Come flood my home
with your eyes. I read that people scream
when they are in pain because screaming

actually lessens the pain--
anyone who asks you to hold your tongue
is asking you to hold the heaviest thing

in the galaxy. Forget them and remember you
can tell me anything about how hard it is
to stop flirting with your expiration date.

I understand being wooed by the finish line
of sadness. Infinity still sends me nudes
every day. I won't deny she looks amazing,

but I'm taken. My hand now promised
to writing every page of my story
except its ends. Friend, you are

who taught me that a difficult life is not less
worth living than a gentle one. Joy is just easier
to carry than sorrow, and you could lift a city

from how long you've spent holding
what's been nearly impossible to hold.
This world needs those who know

how to do that. Those who can find
a tunnel with no light at the end
of it and hold it up like a telescope

to show that the darkness contains
many truths that can bring light
to its knees. Grief astronomer,

adjust the lens, look close. Tell us
what you see.

https://andreagibson.org/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "One of the Greats" by Florence + The Machine

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry. And this ferocious piece started life as a literal poem that Florence Welch did not intend to turn into a song...but I am glad she did. "One of the Greats" was composed after Welch had a near-death experience and speaks not only about mortality but about sexism, and misogyny.

One of the Greats
by Florence + The Machine

I crawled up from under the earth
Broken nails and coughing dirt
Spitting out my songs so you could sing along, oh
And with each bedraggled breath, I knew I came back from the dead
To show you how it's done, to show you what it takes
To conquer and to crucify, to become one of the greats
One of the greats

I kept a scream inside my chest, killed everyone I'd ever kissed
Hung them on the wall like trophies, each name, a stain upon my lips
I told the truth but could never see it through
You see yourself hung on the wall but that song is not about you
I wrote down all my fumbling visions transmitted by a television
Got everything I thought I wanted and cried hungover in a hotel closet

Did I get it right? Do I win the prize?
Do you regret bringing me back to life?

Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead

I did my best, tried to impress, my childhood dream made flesh
And my dresses and my flowering sadness, so like a woman to profit from her madness
I was only beautiful under the lights, only powerful there
Burned down at thirty-six
Why did you dig me up for this?

Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead

You'll bury me again, you'll say it's all pretend
That I could never be great being held up against such male tastes
Because who really gets to be one of the greats, one of the greats?
But I've really done it this time (Ah-ah), this one is all mine
I'll be up there with the man and the ten other women (Ah-ah)
And the hundred greatest records of all time (Ah-ah)
It must be nice to be a man and make boring music just because you can (Ah-ah)
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a fan (Ah-ah)
You're my second favourite front-man (Ah-ah)
And you could have me if you weren't so afraid of me
It's funny how men don't find power very sexy
So this one's for the ladies
Do I drive you crazy?
Did I get it right?

Did I get it right? Do I win the prize?
Do you regret bringing me back to life?
Did I get it right? Do I win the prize?
Do you regret bringing me back to life?

Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting

Too feminine to function
A pile of bodies and a trail of destruction
I will let the light in, I will let some love in
I will be happy, it will be perfect
I will let the light in, I will let some love in
I will be happy, it will be perfect
I will let the light in (Arms outstretched, back from the dead)
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched, back from the dead
Streetlights bursting overhead
Arms outstretched
Arms outstretched
Streetlights bursting
Overhead
Overhead
Streetlights bursting
Overhead

https://florenceandthemachine.net/

"A Birthday Cake"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I am posting work by myself each Friday. This is a piece about fragility and feeling lost in a hostile place, far from comfort, far from safety...

A Birthday Cake

She got out the red Radio Flyer wagon that day,
she put on her shoes, white canvas sneakers with
thin rubber soles, very thin
and she put her child’s shoes on him, white canvas, thin soles,
it was his fourth birthday that day when they
set off, she on foot, he in the wagon, across the molten pavement
in this new place, so different from home, this land
of heat—fury heat, pain heat, so different from home:
the promises, turned out, were lies.
They set out to the market to get a cake
for his birthday, a small cake, all she could afford, with white frosting
and blue letters, Happy Birthday, they put the cake in the wagon
so he had to walk with his mother under a sun radiating
needles, so different from home, where they wanted to be, but
they returned the same way across the lava ground, so scorching it softened
the soles of their shoes and the cake in the wagon too, roasting the blue letters,
sliding, running, so they didn’t even say Happy Birthday anymore.
Not anymore. So different from home.

©JEF 2025

"We Have Enough Dead Friends" By Lena Oleanderson

For National Poetry Month, I am pleased I came across the work of Lena Oleanderson. This tender, vulnerable poem's urgency is deeply touching.

We Have Enough Dead Friends
By Lena Oleanderson

Come over. The doors are open,
my flat's a mess and
so is my heart
but the doors are always open.
Come over. I will make soup,
probably from frozen but
the important thing is
we will both eat.

You don't have to be dying,
but if you are,
or you feel like you are,
or if living's been hard,
call me, and I will show up.
It doesn't have to be that bad,
it doesn't have to be bad at all,
but if it is, please call.

Do you want me to do the groceries?
Do you want me to mop the floors?
Do you need to be held;
you don't have to be dying to be held.
If you want me to be there, I want to.

I'm on the bathroom floor again,
and breathing is hard,
and eating's been hard, and sleeping,
the world is a laden thing
rolling around on my chest lately.
Just being alive is heavy tonight,
but we have enough dead friends.
Come over.

https://lena-oleanderson.tumblr.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Why I Love The Stars" by Laurie Anderson

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs or contemporary music that also double as exquisite poetry.

And we start off the month with a set of short lyrics to a piece by Laurie Anderson called "Why I Love The Stars" which was performed live at the Chapelle Sainte-Jeanne-D'arc in Paris for a private concert of the same name as part of the Arte series last year.

Anderson is a national (and international) treasure and living legend. She is responsible for some of the most innovative music and musical inventions in the last one hundred years. I have seen her live many times over the last many decades (I saw her perform her "United States I-IV" in the 80s!) and whenever she is performing live in an area near me, I make an effort to attend. And I am always blown away by her storytelling, her presentation, her uniqueness, her musicality, and her astonishing ability to pinpoint aspects of culture and life from a new perspective, cutting to the heart of things in a devastating way (at the top of the Arte concert, she introduces herself as being from the former United States of America). This piece cuts to the heart of human nature and acts as a warning...and I wish it didn't.

Why I Love The Stars
by Laurie Anderson

You know the reason I really love the stars?
It's because
we cannot

hurt them.

We can't burn them
or flood them
or make them overflow.
We can't blow them up
or turn them out.

But we are reaching for them.
We are
reaching
for them...

https://laurieanderson.com/

"Paul's Neck"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I will be posting work by myself each Friday. I wrote this poem forty years ago when we were still struggling for rights and visibility was crucial. After a period where things seemed to progress, we now find ourselves back in danger, struggling to retain rights that can be taken from us, struggling to avoid damage and violence...

Paul's Neck

Trained over five summers
at football camp,
your neck is hard and thick
like a side of beef.
My love for you
is visceral.
I can eat it
like raw meat.

Your Daddy’s rich
and your Ma’s good lookin’
and some day they’ll
speak to you again
but until then,
I wouldn’t cry.

One of these mornings,
we’re gonna rise up
singing the same song
and it will be louder than
any church organ,
louder than any
protest march.
How dare they say
our love is wrong
when your neck is
the kindest,
the saddest
of all.

©JEF 1986

Happy National Poetry Month 2026!

April is National Poetry Month, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets since 1996. And this year marks the celebration's 30th anniversary! Over the years, it has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture.

How to celebrate?
- Read your favorite poet again.
- Read some new poetry.
- Find a new favorite poet.
- Write some poetry.
- Leave poems for people to find in public places.
- Read poetry out loud to family and friends.
- Dream a poem.

Throughout April, I'll be posting poems, some by me, some by others, as well as a series of lyrics to popular songs that double as exquisite poetry.

And this year, Poem in Your Pocket Day is April 30th! Every April, on Poem in Your Pocket Day, people celebrate by selecting a poem, carrying it with them, and sharing it with others throughout the day at schools, bookstores, libraries, parks, workplaces, and on social media using the hashtag #pocketpoem.

Poem in Your Pocket Day was originally initiated in 2002 by the Office of the Mayor, in partnership with the New York City Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education, as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, the Academy of American Poets took the initiative to all fifty United States, encouraging individuals around the country to join in and channel their inner bard. In 2016, the League of Canadian Poets extended Poem in Your Pocket Day to Canada.

To kick off the month, here is an incredibly inspiring quote about what it is to write poetry from Maggie Smith:

"Poetry isn’t just something I write, it’s how I move through the world—how I see, and hear, and imagine. It’s a way of being. I wouldn’t have it any other way."
--Maggie Smith, from Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (Washington Square Press, April 1, 2025)

HAPPY NATIONAL POETRY MONTH!

https://poets.org/

"What is there beyond knowing" by Mary Oliver

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have shared exquisite poems by talented poets each Wednesday. For our last poem for this 2025 National Poetry Month, I present a beautiful poem from the incredible Mary Oliver. She died in 2019 leaving behind a stunning catalog of work and this poem, "What is there beyond knowing" is a deceptively simple meditation on the human perspective of being alive in a big, sometimes unfathomable world.

What is there beyond knowing
by Mary Oliver

What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can't

turn in any direction
but it's there. I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off

fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,
or standing still

in the same—what shall I say—
moment.

What I know
I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,

important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
    and the weeds.

https://maryoliver.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Star-Field On Red Lines" by Duncan Sheik

To observe National Poetry Month, once a week I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry.

Duncan Sheik made a splash when he first appeared in 1996 with a debut album that featured a marvelous song called "Barely Breathing." Since then, he has released nine albums and created the music and lyrics for Broadway musicals including the multi-Tony-award winning "Spring Awakening." As a lyricist, he has always presented compelling stories and this song, "Star-Field On Red Lines" from his 2006 album "White Limousine" is quite evocative, and can work for multiple periods of American history like the Cold War in the 1950s, perhaps Vietnam in the 60's and 70's, and maybe even Bush the First's Gulf War in the 90s.

Star-Field On Red Lines
by Duncan Sheik

Playground
Home-land
A countryside to save

Blue skies
Air-space
Soldiers to raise
And sacrifice

Strong armed
Christians
Oiled up and fed

Safe as
Houses
In aprons of lead
And sanctified

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

How much
Longer
This empire of night

The smallest
Subjects
All begin to fight
And multiply

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Omens and Signs
A star-field
On red lines
Turn those blind eyes
To fantasies
And white lies

Head down
Brace yourself
Here it comes

https://www.duncansheik.com/

"Art"

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have posted work by myself each Friday. This poem is brand new after rattling around in my head for a few months and a few weeks of work, and I think it tells its own story. I hope you enjoy it.

Art

Did the makers know it wasn’t a game they made
but a life lived larger, out there somewhere
beyond the shelter of my bedroom, the house, our little town?
Christmas morning, 1970, stuffed animals, toys, and a box,
a treasury on post-cards: landscapes, portraits, still lives, portals
to different places and times.

Did the makers hope to bestow a gift:
the freedom to choose content, then form, or more radical,
the ability to choose form for its own sake?
On a round braided rug on a hardwood floor I studied
this collection of masterpieces I’d never seen
from museums far from the rug and my toy box,
learning to think and see in a new world,
an art-shaped world, an art-colored world, a world
of mansions and safes and movie-heists,
vast collections in hushed salons of
white, red, green walls on worn parquet.
A future event: I will raise my brush wet with pigment, touch canvas.
It whispers back now, “no journey is simple, but this one will be long.”

The slow embrace of a language, a joining with
arthritic sunflowers in a bulbous orange vase,
cotton candy angels floating in a sepia sky,
a dour farmer with pitchfork and mournful wife,
a green-faced barmaid in a raucous dance hall,
whips of black and white paint slashing a surface,
umbrella-ed couples on a wet cobblestone street,
a bleached cow skull on white sandstone,
a bright diner counter seen from an eerie, dark city.

I never learned their dice and tissue-thin pastel dollar rules,
they didn’t matter, I had no one to play a game with anyhow.
I didn’t yet know a future where I would weep in front of a
small, tenderly ordered bedroom in Arles with a yellow chair,
in front of a dizzying cascade into a pond of pink-purple-blue
water lilies rendered in rushed gobs of paint like cake frosting,
in front of a geometry of sunlight slicing through windows into an empty room
and feel the primal urge to use form color texture repetition symmetry
asymmetry the head the heart

©JEF 2025

Poem In Your Pocket Day 2025: "For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper" by Joseph Fasano

For today's Poem In Your Pocket Day, part of 2025 National Poetry Month, I am stuffing into my pocket a beautiful little gem of a poem from Joseph Fasano. It speaks to the inescapable nature of being and the only thing we have to do while we are here: don't shirk it, let it take us, describe it, create something from it.

For A Student Who Used AI To Write A Paper
by Joseph Fasano

Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.

http://josephfasano.net/

"Rending the Garments" by Ronna Bloom

For this National Poetry Month, I am grateful I came across the work of Ronna Bloom. She has six published volumes of poetry under her belt and creates works of penetrating tenderness and immediacy.

This astonishing piece, "Rending the Garments" speaks to the idea of recognizing painful life changes--not just death--with ritual.

Ritual is the technology of the sacred, and can give events a shape and meaning, especially when those events are hard to comprehend and process. And ritual within one's community gives a kind of support missing in the world at large.

Rending the Garments
By Ronna Bloom

There should be a shiva for every kind of grief—
the break-up, the diagnosis, the assault—
where people come unbidden and
wash their hands and casseroles
and hold you.

They do this all day or three times a day
for seven days so you know, you know
it happened and matters to more
than you, matters to a community of you.

What’s needed is wailing with an ax, frights,
outings, and touch. Touch and singing.
Can you hear me?
Has anyone done that for you, lately
Or ever? Come over, torn open the sky
and let the snow fall in the wrong mouth
to show there’s a rip in the face of the world?

https://ronnabloom.com/

The Poetry of Rock n' Roll: "Wanderer" by Angelo De Augustine

To observe National Poetry Month, I am featuring lyrics of rock n' roll or pop songs that also double as exquisite poetry. And this track from Angelo De Augustine called "Wanderer" is just that: the narrative is very intimate, like a stream of consciousness voice in someone's head...a narrative of unease, of something just not quite right steeped in a tale of missed love.

The song appeared on De Augustine's album "Tomb" which he described as "a motion towards positivity, addressing lost love, the worthwhile cost of honesty, and the ramifications, of regret. In the end...it isn’t about burying or hiding something away, it’s about opening the seal and letting something new emerge. It’s about telling people how you feel when you feel it, instead of burying everything over the span of years."

Wanderer
by Angelo De Augustine

Wanderer
Just like a song
That's been rubbed out above your left arm
Full of light
Eager eyes
For the adventure of a lifetime

She's on the run
Who you running from?
It can't be me cause I'm no one
Turtle dove
Carried my love
And left it on the moon to shine

I'll try
My best to find some peace of mind
But the light fades to black
And you don't know where the exit is at

Wanderer
Labyrinthine fern
Planted in your dilated mind
Evil talk
Heaven above
Protect her in her darkest night

Angelo De Augustine | Photo by Jess Collins

https://angelodeaugustine.com/