I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

November 18, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is about why artists sometimes seem attracted to ugliness.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

I wanted nothing less than hope,

But, relishing despair,

I plunged into the nearest hell

And spent some weekends there.

I saw no answers on the walls,

No rebirth in the rain,

No saving grace in suffering,

No rapture born of pain.

What held me there? It must have been

The jackal, crazed and lean,

Who took my face between his paws

And, hungry, picked it clean.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/leshop.html . For more poems about beauty, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 18: I Wanted Nothing Less than Hope

Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

November 17, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is a humorous number poem to a conductor of youth orchestras.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Flutes are doubled by the violins.

Organ tones are held by brass and basses.

Racing madly, the inner strings and winds

Try with all their might to keep their places.

Yet the brass blare hides a multitude of sins.

The conductor waves his arms while making faces,

Wincing as one errant oboe wins,

Out of step as the next mad dash begins.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/flutes.html . For more humorous poems, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/funnypoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

November 17: Flutes Are Doubled by the Violins

By the Tulips

November 16, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is about the beauty of people in a garden.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

By the tulips people stop to take

Pictures. One wonders which are more

Beautiful: the people or the tulips?

Lush, almost flourescent, like cups,

Like vases, like wet crimson towels

Hanging loose about the naked style.

Or an Annamese girl in striped mini

Just below her drawers, on her forehead

A pale red moon. Or two Indian women

In brilliant prints and gold nose pellets,

Nipples pressing through silk. Or an old

Man with his mother, identical blue chips

Glinting through corrugated skin. Families

Like flower beds, varieties of love

And anguish, phenotype and genotype,

And Babel, magnificent garden!

Or the glory of laughter, that needs

No language, the glee of children racing

Away, the silence of tulips calling

Wildly, pouring out love in perfume.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/tulips.html . For more poems about beauty, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 16: By the Tulips

Tell the World How Lovely Is the Earth

November 15, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is a number poem for a park ranger, whose job is to help people enjoy the beauty of the Earth.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Tell the world how lovely is the Earth.

Hear, O World! The Earth! The Earth is lovely!

Introduce the guests to their own home.

Remind them, please, that everything's on loan,

That what they borrow they should not use roughly,

Yielding back a jewel of equal worth.

Find words to give them words that are their own.

One can be a midwife of rebirth.

Undo with patience people in a hurry,

Restoring melodies they then can hone.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/tellth.html . For more poems about the environment, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/environmentalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 15: Tell the World How Lovely Is theEarth

At Evening the Boats Crowd Towards Shore

November 14, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is beauty.

Today’s poem is about the beauty of sailing.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

At evening the boats crowd towards shore,

The yachtsmen eager for a night of talk

In bars and cafes, weary of the wind.

At dawn they drift back into the harbor

And sail loosely scattered into the bay.

From shore there is nothing more beautiful:

A schooner moves reluctant with the tide,

Sails taut, yet trailing the current,

Hung as if absorbed in meditation;

Or a sloop leaning into the water,

Ropes groaning, skin cracked in salt and sun--

Why does it do battle with the wind?

In winter, white with moonlight, the harbor

Holds nothing in the darkness of its arms.

The boats await the coming of the yachtsmen,

Who once again will fill the bay with grace.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/boats.html . For more poems about beauty, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/philosophicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Beauty.

November 14: At Evening the Boats Crowd TowardsShore

Searching for Significance

November 13, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is politics in honor of Election Day (USA), which falls on November 8.

Today’s poem is about how the desire for political change can lead to violence.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

Searching for significance,

One finds a bloody trail

Leading to a sea of bones

Upon a sun-drenched shore.

In the end there's no defense

For something that must fail,

As politicians work the phones

To dredge up one vote more.

All social schemes eventually,

Besieged, must turn to those

Who make a livelihood of death

Serving unchecked zeal.

For those who would change history

Unleash a world of woes

Upon those who, with bated breath,

Wait for hearts to heal.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/search.html . For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Politics.

November 7: Elections, as You Know, Are Bought and Sold

November 8: After All, the Market Runs on Greed

November 9: Even When There’s Little Choice, We Choose

November 10: Fifty-Eight

November 11: Proverbs for Legislators

November 12: Proverbs on the State

November 13: Searching for Significance

Proverbs on the State

November 12, 2016

Dear Subscriber:

Each week we examine a theme from a variety of points of view. This week’s theme is politics in honor of Election Day (USA), which falls on November 8.

Today’s poem is a set of proverbs on the nature of the State.

I welcome comments on my poems at http://nicholasgordon.blogspot.com.

Yours,

Nick Gordon

1. The end of the State is security: of property and person; from conquest, injury, hunger, exposure, and injustice.

2. To obtain security, citizens cede a portion of their liberty. This "social contract" is agreed to every time a citizen recognizes the legitimacy of the State.

3. States are legitimate, therefore, to the extent to which they provide security.

4. States rule through violence, either exercised or threatened. The degree of violence varies inversely with the degree of legitimacy; that is, the more security a state provides, the less violence it needs to rule.

5. States are also, and paradoxically, instruments of oppression, enforcing laws and practices that transfer wealth to the ruling class.

6. These contradictory visions of the State--as provider of security and as oppressor--are and have always been simultaneously true. The tension between them is played out in every decision, act, and pronouncement of government.

7. A state that is too oppressive loses legitimacy so completely that no amount of violence can prevent its overthrow. A state that is too just loses the support of the ruling class, which engineers a change either in policy or in government. Thus all states exist somewhere on a continuum between these two extremes. This is true regardless of their form of government.

8. The advantage of democracy is that the regular replacement of government by majority rule mitigates oppression. The disadvantage is that weak governments may fail to make citizens sufficiently secure.

9. To survive, democracy must provide enough security to make the relative weakness of a divided and restrained government worth the increase in liberty and justice. Otherwise, citizens will be willing to cede additional liberty in return for additional security, and democracy will fail.

© by Nicholas Gordon

Hear or watch me recite this poem and listen to the music I chose for it at http://www.poemsforfree.com/statpr.html . For more poems about politics, go to http://www.poemsforfree.com/politicalpoems.html.

This week’s theme: Politics.

November 7: Elections, as You Know, Are Bought and Sold

November 8: After All, the Market Runs on Greed

November 9: Even When There’s Little Choice, We Choose

November 10: Fifty-Eight

November 11: Proverbs for Legislators

November 12: Proverbs on the State