Oh Very Young

By Cat Stevens

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time?

You're only dancing on this earth for a short while

And though your dreams may toss and turn you now

They will vanish away like your daddy's best jeans

Denim Blue fading up to the sky

And though you want them to last forever

You know they never will

You know they never will

And the patches make the goodbye harder still.

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time?

There'll never be a better chance to change your mind

And if you want this world to see a better day

Will you carry the words of love with you?

Will you ride the great white bird into heaven?

And though you want to last forever

You know you never will

You know you never will

And the goodbye makes the journey harder still

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time?

You're only dancing on this earth for a short while

Oh very young

What will you leave us this time?

Child for a Day

By Cat Stevens

Child For A Day

I was a child

Who ran full of laughter

I was a child who lived for today

My eyes full of sunshine

My heart full of smiles

I was a child for a day

We were the children

Who sang in the morning

We were the children

Who laughed at the sun

Who listened to those who spoke with their wisdom

We are the ones we would say, but

We're getting older as time goes by

A little older with everyday

We were the children of yesterday

We are the men who worry of nothing

We are the men who fight without aim

We listen to no one, yet speak of our wisdom

We are the pawns in the game

We're getting older as time goes by

A little older with everyday

We were the children of yesterday

I was a child

Who ran full of laughter

I was a child who lived for today

My eyes full of sunshine

My heart full of smiles

I was a child for a day

We're getting older as time goes by

A little older with everyday

We were the children of yesterday

Haiku for your autumn

By James W. Hackett. September, 2004

Come, lie in this stream––

all the sun of summer gone

is within its flow

Autumn . . . the path now

wanders to oblivion

under every tree

Even while squatting

the puppy diverts herself

by smelling flowers

City loneliness . . .

dancing with a gusty wind:

yesterday’s news.

A tiny spider

has begun to confiscate

this cup’s emptiness

Beijing rush hour . . .

horse and cart heading home,

driver fast asleep

SINCE I LIVE NOW ON THE WIND

By James W. Hackett

Since I live now on the wind

wafting in from the sea,

I dread the suffocating lulls

when both sky and land fade

into the fuming ###### of man.

The flowering hours of my garden

once blessed with butterflies

of every size and hue––

have emptied

from the dancing grace of a few

into the loneliness of one,

to none . . .

Beauty that winged

through eons of creation

decimated within a decade

by our rampaging pursuit

of progress.

What a master of war is man––

with death and destruction

he is supreme;

yet how easily the blessings of peace

are forsaken by the ideologues

who could destroy life’s dream.

How long will fate allow us

to tilt the world

into an ever more cataclysmic course

with our careening technology?

For man–– the paragon––

is so off-centering the wheel of life,

the sun of some tomorrow

might well dawn

upon the insensate prospect

....of a moonscape earth.

Poems of Darrel Grayson

Darrell B. Grayson was born 2.26.61. He was raised in Montevallo, Alabama with 11 siblings in a single parent household. He dropped out of school in the 9th grade, and with no prior criminal history, received the death penalty from an all white jury at age 19. After some years of severe depression, which he describes as spending flat on his back, the death of his mother brought about the decision to do what he could to better himself. He began to write poetry and received his GED and Associate Science degree.

In 1994 Darrell became active in Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, an organization founded and run by deathrow-inmates. In 2000 he became its chairman. Under Darrell Grayson’s strong leadership, PHADP was restructured and became a 501 C3 organization. It received its first grant, doubled attendance at its vigils and became a member of other grassroots organizations in Alabama. He took over the editing and formating of Wings of Hope, the PHADP newsletter, which up to then had been done on the outside.

His poetry, which he defines as "a contagion of insecurities", reveals Darrell Grayson to be a spiritual, sensitive writer with a deep love of life and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Recently a fellow poet interrupted a reading of his own poetry in Birmingham and read Darrell’s "Universal Song," moving many in the audience to tears. He speaks with a unique voice to the power of the human spirit to live in darkness without being vanquished by it. "Oh, teach me the meaning of tenderness, dear skies…"

____________________________________

Universal Song

Oh, teach me the meaning of tenderness, dear skies,

Through the unfurling ribbons of your embrace.

Whisper to me the ethics of being lean

In my feasting celebration for life

For love…for kinds.

I hear your voice in bounteous boughs,

In the nectar driven honey bee.

It resonates in inky caves of tribal spleens,

In the life of life flowing ever onwards,

Those that bubble up and sweet,

In the fragrant blossom of lovers’buds

In grasses nurturing and decorative.

I see your voice in heavenly colors,

In shooting stars and half hills,

Mountains,

In the heavens.

Teach me Virgil’s history of tender plan,

And open the eyes in the confrontation of self.

Give me visions of supping lions and tigers,

Moors and Spaniards and Romans,

Of Apaches and Pilgrims,

Of Africans and Mankind.

Oh, teach me gentleness,

As the palms sway on the breeze,

As soft wings night creatures surviving

Survive, then gentleness.

_________________________________

The Musings of a Mad Man

Strident this mind of mine,

Enough naïve still, to

Seek yonder what wonderments

Reside in radical signs.

"These musings of madness

Asleep, in pale beige cold

To awaken only at threatening displace

From illusions of misty roles

That bind not by chance this inky race.

From steaming brain in a pan,

A respite from those wicked clocks,

The tic toc’s wretched song moans

As you contemplate intricacies of locks

And count the years in ancient stones.

Revels in pains of gladness

At times he misses the sinking sun,

Its distance as through bars of orion.

Oh, that he were a rainbow child,

Yet, born mad ‘neath mystic cowl.

Embracing its beauty the thrill

Toot natural this wicked span,

Led by a bland Texas man.

Show us your ire if you can

And pour-out tears in mother’s hand.

Of empty hearts and malicious wills.

Race blinds so too few see

That human is enough to be free.

Talk to a man and a tree,

We’re the same, ask the flea.

Murdered with perfect skill

Children laugh and play together

Happy in any kind of weather,

And hate enters their heart never.

If only this could last forever!

This open mind a perfect steal

He’s just a fool, a talking head,

Speaking seductively to the dead

And those monsters under bed,

To catch a ghost before they’ve fled.

As the mirror reflects what you kill,

Musings of madness catch a chill,

Wrapped in the warmth of the ill,

Of flights where the states pay the bill

For madmen looking towards the hills.

Be happy your fate is sealed.

____________________________________

Ghosts Over The Boiler

A hall flunky informed

The cubical operator

Of a man hanging in his cell.

I lifted my head,

As I was one at the time.

Eventually, a guard walked

To that part of the Row.

Preacher’s death was like the others,

Nope, wasn’t the first time:

It started with a complaint,

The kind fixable.

The guard manages every step,

He takes out his key,

Opens the outer door

Walks to the cell door.

He sees Preacher hanging,

Walks to the cubical,

Calls the operator and mumbles something,

Lights a cigarette, then leans.

Eventually,

A fat nurse climbs the stairs

Another guard passes her,

I continue to mop.

Eventually, they come out with Preacher

On a stretcher with a sheet.

I know he is dead,

It is on his face.

Like ghosts they walk.

The guard and nurse,

They were talking about buying a truck.

Didn’t hear what kind.

Well I told a few guys.

They said:

He was a strange old fellow,

Tried to change cells.

One not over the boiler,

He said he couldn’t take the heat.

I said, yeah,

Those other guys were fed up too.

It was bound to happen again,

But what can you do

When you’re a ghost over the boiler?

________________________________________

This Cold Unholy Basement

Tell us how thrilling it must be having the world stamped upon

one’s back? Each letter carrying the uniqueness and weight of

continents. The space in between filled with every villainous act

known to man; while the over-lords of malice are riotous in

self-satisfaction.

Pale, impaled upon the brutal circumstances of our estates, we

seldom stand, still, our bodies are bowed in anticipation of the

great release, into the embrace of the mystic void, where relief

is no longer colored by mortal precepts.

Our eyes are open from within. We see the multitudes cower, then

rage in fear and ignorance as we walk towards the shining road

of creation, displaying badges of tribulation, the results of a

people’s mood; not, a movement of the people.

Here we are, bound in states of misery and Hope, induced as

grains of bleeding sand, their vibrancy the shape of renewed

consciousness, limitless in scope and nobility.

Wallowing here, our bodies and souls twisted like a knotty walking

stick, challenging this cold Unholy basement as a besieged flock,

knowing we have reaped the world’s bitter harvest, its lack of

decorum, displayed—forever-more?—in the wearing of uniforms

that blot-out the soul’s individuality.

Ceremoniously—we scrape the jaw, leg, arm with dull blades:

enthralled, by the chorus of those who love unconditionally (even

the dark side of man) as they lament the quickening of spirits

before flight.

And on the morrow our company shall be acceptable, aware, that

the mystic white has persuaded our suffrage through unopened

doors, where our release is born, again, deep within the blushing

breasts of immortality’s unquenchable thirst. And this ignoble of

place shall pour-out its occupants to stroll winter’s leaf-strewn

passage to celestial warmth.

Darrell B. Grayson

Alabama Death Row

hi'

Yesterday

Yesterday, when I was young

The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue

I teased at life as if it were a foolish game

The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed

The splendid things I planned

I always built alas, on, weak and shifting sand

I lived by night and shunned the naked light of the day

And now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday when I was young

So many drinking songs were waiting to be sung

So many wayward pleasures lay in store for me

And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast that time

And youth at last ran out

I never stopped to think what life was all about

And every conversation I can now recall

Concerned itself with me and nothing else at all

Yesterday, the moon was blue

And every crazy day brought something new to do

I used my magic age as if it were a wand

And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond

The game of love I played with arrogance and pride

And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died

The friends I met all seemed somehow to drift away

And only I am left on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won’t be sung

I feel the bitter taste

Of tears upon my tongue

The time has come for me to pay

For yesterday

When I was young.

Tending Distant Fires

Far from hearth and home, watching

Cold alone but not alone

On distant shore and only wanting

Safe return and little more

What tales we’ll tell

When that time comes

When tales can be told

When things grim

Seem far away

When other fires go cold

Some distant sunset, vision fading

Memories remain

And tired eyes gaze ‘pon folded flags

While distant drums beat their refrain

Saluting fallen friends whose names

And youth will never fade

Here’s to those on other shores,

for them live well, the price is paid.

hi'

as I said one day pictured with a nice text from a famous poet, I love thoughts

here is another one I like, and in the time of now, made me think about what mankind have done for ages without thinking to consequences ...

Nature is as it is:

curved things don't need any arch,

straight things don't need line,

round things don't need compass,

rectangular things don't need square,

things that get unified don't need glue,

things that get attached don't need rope.

All the things born spontaneous

without knowing where they are from

neither how they are produced

and each possess specific qualities

that happens as it is, since immemorial times

in the natural state

Tchouang Tseu