AFTERNOON OF POETRY

MAKE A DATE

PNEUMONOULTRAMICROSCOPICSILICOVOLCANOCONIOSIS

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, 
Running through my mind,
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, 
Running through my veins,
                                   
A silica odor, dust walks through a fresh desert night
Cool air beneath and above the sea
A warm furnace smell, I don’t understand
Intricate to rise and receive without knowing
Up ahead in a virtue distance
A mysterious poisonous effluvium light-     
My face feels like a leaf'
My sun holds up its own pendulum rods
Inflammation comes and settles in for the night,
There it stands in a pertinacious manner, with quality
I resurrect this air created from madness, all over again
Twilight, rain stranger than strange
Visions, pursue my path into an infested dark pasture
"From the red Heaven I fell into the waters of a cobalt Hell"

Perhaps this venerable moment, will pass slower than slow
PERHAPS NOT!
If I accept, and then decline
Would this balance the precocious state I live in?
How about when wrong directions follow my promiscuous ways 
Is my conglomeration of ideas, no longer safe? 
When I no longer value the values of the young
Will I sleep at the mercy of his ancient heart
They're the voices give and take from our health

Today, those soft, perfect eyes are calling from far away,
Ashes high, vapors and infection welding me
The bright skies swallow every thin silver line,
Where the clouds sit somehow~ in bacteria
UNITY! 
YES UNITY! Fantabulously-fantastic!
Always, wanting more than love can touch

We are living' it up with no alibis!
A way to be and not to BE!
The champagne leaves their cup
Awaken in a life, disturbed ~ NOW INTERRUPT!
Only in this world, lava will reach her lips
Prisoners and doers; 
All night…. Too late for a treatment
Lungs, decaying, evil rats
Direction, affection, ending all the inhalation

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, 
Running through my lungs,
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, 
Flat-lined my life

This Song Manze

Power of Thanksgiving

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole. Luke 17:15-19 KJV 

The above story shows us the natural tendency/inclination of us human beings -- ungratefulness. Only 1 out of the 10 lepers who were cleansed glorified God and went back to give thanks to Jesus. It seems like an obvious thing to do once someone receives such a big miracle, but to the 9 it wasn’t so. The same is true for us. There’s a time we cried out to the Lord for some things and some miracles just like the lepers, and when they came we moved on very fast, and now are even complaining about the very things we once cried out to God for. The Bible says that unthankfulness is a characteristic of men in the last days (Tim. 3:1-2). Ungratefulness causes our hearts to be darkened and minds unfruitful (Rom. 1:21), besides causing us to miss out on God Himself. Everything God gives and does for us is meant to draw us closer to Him and His heart, and thanksgiving is the way we ensure that no matter what we receive from Him we don’t move further from Him, rather closer. 

When the thankful leper came back to Jesus, He made him whole. The rest were just healed, but this one was made completely whole (received all he was lacking). Truly ungratefulness causes us to miss out on God big time. Since it’s clear that thankfulness is not the natural human tendency, we ought to keep relying on God and His Spirit to help us develop and maintain a thankful heart that always sees and identifies God’s goodness and faithfulness and uses it to draw closer to Him even further. What God does for us or gives us will either draw us closer to Him, or further from Him. Thanksgiving is how we ensure that God's purpose for being good to us prevails in our lives, as we remain close to Him (Rom. 2:4). 

 Reflection: 
How important is thanksgiving to you? Are there some things you cried out to God for that you're not only not being grateful for, but are even complaining about? Allow the Spirit of God to reveal to you what God has done, is doing and will do, and help you develop a thankful heart. Grace and peace to you!

If I Should Die

If I should die,
And you should live,
And time should gurgle on,
And morn should beam,
And noon should burn,
As it has usual done;
If birds should build as early,
And bees as bustling go,–
One might depart at option
From enterprise below!
‘Tis sweet to know that stocks will stand
When we with daisies lie,
That commerce will continue,
And trades as briskly fly.
It make the parting tranquil
And keeps the soul serene,
That gentlemen so sprightly
Conduct the pleasing scene!

ONLY DEATH

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I’m not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!