On Pain

By: Khalil Gibran

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the
daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem
less wondrous than your joy;

And you would accept the seasons of your heart,
even as you have always accepted the seasons that
pass over your fields.

And you would watch with serenity through the
winters of your grief.

Much of your pain is self-chosen.

It is the bitter potion by which the physician within
you heals your sick self.

Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy
in silence and tranquility:

For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by
the tender hand of the Unseen,

And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has
been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has
moistened with His own sacred tears.

Sunset

By: Rainer Maria Rilke

Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,

leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs—

leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.

Venus’ Fire

By: Kyle Elden

I am wide open
a cracked egg
raw on a cold black
frying pan
waiting for heat
to change what is

I try to love you better
to shape winter into summer
but the ice cuts my hands
and the blood drops
behind me
for all to see

The birds are gone –
no red breasted robins
to sing easily on an
outstretched Birch branch

Always hopeful
wanting to dwell in
the light
on all the
magnificence,
on all the things that
continue to shine

But today I hold
this darkness –
for it has been given
to me as well,
I turn from
every urge I have
to wrap it in something
beautiful

Today I am ready
to stare deep into the
eyes of the dragon
to walk through
Venus’ fire, which
in nighttime
outshines everything
but the moon

Unraveling

By: Kyle Elden

I don’t remember when the first thread came loose
I didn’t notice as it hung like a secret
the words suspended but never spoken
a ripe fruit dangling from a tree branch

Unraveling usually begins this way, a silence
moves in like a thick slow rolling fog,
and suddenly you can no longer look into
your lovers eyes, even though
you are face to face

You feel yourself being pulled downward
the bathtub begins to empty
and elusively like water on a steady descent away
you find yourself somewhere unfamiliar, unknown

You realize something has ended and begin to wonder:
How it is the buds are beginning to appear
on trees, when all you can recall is dead branches
and dirt crusted snow heaps

How it is the lilacs are bursting open
forging into a new season marking this change
as if it were simple and sweet smelling

Crooked Deals

By: Hafiz

There is a madman inside of you
who is always running for office--
why vote him in,
for he never keeps the accounts straight.
He gets all kinds of crooked deals
happening all over town
that will just give you a big headache
and glue to your kisser
a gigantic
confused
frown.