For Thankful Cranks
Some Thanksgiving Poems
larry goodell 2012
a duende offering Š 2012 larry goodell po box 571 placitas, new mexico larrynewmex@gmail.com
For Thankful Cranks
Just Breath. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Tao of Grace. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Create-A-Hymn. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Tough Turkey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Red White and Blue and Rainbow Too . . . . . . 8 Cheated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Morning, Day After Thanksgiving, 2001. . . . 10 Top of the List. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Gratitude Toot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Happy Dumb Turkey Day.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Feasts.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Heavenly Blessed Earth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Just Breath 1. Count your blessings become a gratitude freak. Be thankful for everything Left & Right Up Down & Center. Especially for the fact that You are breathing. 2. Especially for the fact that You are breathing in and out and now getting up from this chair & walking step by step out the door with the laundry to, in this Spring-blooming weather, hang the laundry up on the clothesline to dry just like my Mamaw did every Monday morning down in Roswell where I took my first breath.
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The Tao of Grace
Thank a saving given green to come up being harvested late in the scene. Put up, froze, dried till mixed with fresh eaten. Thanks agriculture getting even with the mean The angry gone down the tubes of yams, potatoes, green beans peas, salad greens corn wheat rice, carrots onion, nuts celery, garlic oats everything amidst the bird, the turkey platter It’s hard to be angry if you thank the food for being what it is. Thanks to the food the bird and all the rest Thanks to everything growing with the rest Without you, there is no me. No us. Without us there is little of you so you are bigger than us thanks to the crops, the creeps & the crushed cranberries thanks for the hope that got sparked between us.
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Grace. Grace says Grace. Thanks for the plants & you & us. You have no face. You certainly are a benefit to the human race as it races towards extinction. Glad we knew you bird trimmings, greens, veggies high powered cooking herbs & spices of the mind. Glad to meet you eat you along our annual way. Thank a saving given in. Thanksgiving in. Thanks giving in. /23Nov95
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Create-A-Hymn
The aim is not to blame but to create the same love that created the world volatile powerful sustaining beautiful and fierce beyond vision, gentle and retiring as the womb working to create everything good above us below us behind us everything good created in life parading forth pleasure in the slowly evolving round and dance of the planet the planets blessed ourselves, myself now everything good above me below me behind me around me beside me within me the aim is to aim at the center of myself, no blame creating in rest in strength of heart muscles pumping and brain relaxing into early morning dawning life love mystery of the Unknown reveals itself in purely being, breathing great gratefulness everything sings the sun up okay better than okay alright! Dawning brother, sister father mother partner friend end no end imaginary partner real God mindfulness, full body sings in heart the art of love 4
the gift of grace the beautiful fragrant bower of the personal Higher Power ascends, descends Father Sun Mother Earth Great Spirit gives birth every moment to this surprise of friendship and love, this sun slowly up and brightening hills behind me as I not seeing love more that it’s there– the growing evidence of all the light when I can’t see the source nor would I want to or could I in this peace flowing down everything good above me, below me, behind me around me, beside me within me the aim is not to blame but to open to the love that creates the world.
/26Nov98
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Tough Turkey (Thanks to Procrastination) (Dessie Goodell–Grandma born July 25, 1889) Tom Turkey totaled. Or maybe he wasn’t Tom. Dick Turkey done in. Too old to be good. Now roasted. Maybe I’ll make turkey soup tomorrow lots of it. A 22 pound turkey a year & a half old. After gutting 15 pounds. I’m telling you, guts make up a lot of us. Joel cut the head off as I held him. Axe sharpened. My little folding Gerber knife sharpened. Water boiling in the big galvanized tub. Dipped him in heavy as he was he floated. Took out feathers, for hours. I have my procrastination to thank for this tough turkey. Putting it off getting someone to help me. Well when I’m dying and I haven’t gotten around to that big task it’ll be too late. Maybe I’ll join the turkey in the sky, or in some deep canyon where his repeated gobble and my self-pitying sighs will amuse the coyotes and fall on deaf ears of the dry river bed. /02
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Red White and Blue and Rainbow Too
As America stretches into showing its true brown-shirt colors in November, Thanksgiving and dread the election might be rigged with multi-billions going into secret manipulations to favor the fascistic source, I’m stripped of every option but my one vote as minute as it seems it’s all I have left, anyone has left, so cast it carefully, I remind myself. Everyone red white and blue and every color of the rainbow must vote to see where we really stand, what kind of country we are living in, proving we are many more colors than one or, we will become a nation of brown shirts, a nation totally screwed. /19jun2012
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Cheated
God help me please throw the weight of loss off me that form of being cheated that haunts me who cheated us and caused all this fuss & dark worry that we can’t even have a birthday & pretend things as normal. Just to be able to enjoy giving without thinking you’re indulging someone who doesn’t deserve it. Just to be able to sit down at a table and enjoy Thanksgiving or a dinner together, on occasion or anything without this constant worry and feeling we’re been cheated out of this reality that comes with right living. Just a simple birthday, a dinner together a semblance of family. Who took it from us? Why can’t we live? What did we do, wrong?
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Morning, Day After Thanksgiving, 2001
The flower of light opens where last discovered as trying, ignorantly, I can’t find it. Even any sense of its fragrance. So I light a stick of incense and pretend I have its presence like all those who tell me they love this delicate spiritual essence this glow that maintains such power this more than anything this more than a flower. No word is enough. I’m permanently lost in pretense. But go on and sit, enjoy the incense. Breathe it in with the air my life depends on.
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For Thankful Cranks Am I thankful, prankful, frank? Or am I merely a crank. What turns me on, or rather what turns me around? am I a clown without the makeup? Am I a member of a secret society that has clan powers, respect in the lower community? And you don’t know about it obviously is that where my power comes from? What power. Confession of a confused member of society, reluctant member. Not a member a recluse cracking jokes & listening to cosmic slips between episodes of deep despair. The other side of night is what more night, or day? Day day day day one, dancing around with the paraphernalia of auras spikes & zigzags, bands, layers ever upward piercing out I hit my brain into heaven and heaven wasn’t there to receive it. “Ahoy down there, there’s no one up here, it’s very uncomfortable living I’m sending this brain-thing down, when it gets there don’t be surprised if half of it is gone.” Now I sit here with what brain I have miraculously restored. Imagination covers all errors, don’t worry everything will be perfect in the realm of the imagination. Fantasize who you are and you well may be thankful, prankful, frank.
/Thanksgiving 06
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Top of the List Thank you, thank yous. What can I possibly be grateful for sitting here in this body. Well I’m breathing, for one. And I know how to write. And read. I can see, that’s Four. Hear. Five. Feel. Six. Taste. Seven. Get up & put a log on the fire. To be able to do things, that’s Eight. And I don’t have to act like some vengeful jerk all the time, that’s Nine. I have a cord of wood to help keep us warm, and we can pay our utility bills: that’s Ten. And all these things we have, clothes, electronic equipment, computers on & on, the car, the truck, my God this house isn’t that a few dozen a few hundred, maybe a thousand and more on my list to be thankful for? And the love of my wife my son my family. The dog, even the cat.
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But mostly the spirit of energy that keeps me going it comes from friends, community and nature, this earth this night. Everything spreads out endless like a desert landscape full of surprises. Most of all, let me be grateful for really feeling grateful. /4Dec#2
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Gratitude Toot If I feel gratitude what is that? Great, greet, grit a release, dizziness, a pleasure tears come to the eyes standing I almost fall over thankful to be in everything at once or just my humble self for once awake, aware, alive, just one, of many, many great are the grateful and true to themselves. Am I one? I work at it other times and greet it when it comes, just a swoosh! Thanks.
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Happy Dumb Turkey Day I am so grateful for the hate-filled dialogue of America the constant saber-rattling and the depositing of fear everywhere like huge piles of shit that stink up the airwaves no matter where you go I am so grateful for our government’s half-assed leaders with their pact to take over the world and kiss each other’s royal ass endlessly so we don’t have to bother with anything but destitution growing. I’m so grateful for a war to control the Middle East & teach them a lesson that we are the rightful Christian leaders and we need to be bowed down to. I’m so grateful for the giant piss-assed fantasy of domination & triumph that our leaders bolster while the world goes to hell and the Earth warms up for the next universal disaster. Yes I’m grateful the infrastructure our highways & our schools our air & our forests, our water and our health care all so prominent near the bottom of the world-wide list. I’m grateful for the upper 1%, those billionaire Americans who rule much of the world and have our interests at heart. I’m grateful for the anti-intellectual bent of America the dumbing down down down of my country and the fascination with celebrity and wonderful plastic surgery that excludes old age. Oh thank you dumb country for the right to live in a world free of habeas corpus. Oh thank you dumb turkey day, dumb-country, dumb poet. – Dumb Poet /2006
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Feasts Listen to the thanks of a thousand reasons you enter the season, the holiday free zone. Now we can work up a feast & then play, everything at once: is the Solstice the reason? First there is Thanksgiving, giving what you think of, grace around the table. Things could be worse, you jerk, lighten up! Hanukkah is coming with all the candle lights, and Christmas after the Sun’s shortest day, just enough giving, and New Year’s to celebrate a happy beginning to a long labored past: what more to suggest but be free with your compliments, strive with the winners and plan a new feast. Rest is appropriate after eats. /27Nov08
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Heavenly Blessed Earth Oh heavenly blessed Earth kissed when the embrace of love is steady it is the rule of Paradise, oh right here on Earth the enlightened fall and picked themselves up again. To be one of us and examples. Writing and teachings lift the Spirit a right community supports and the highest of all powers enervates our atoms and excites the Universe. Oh community, fellowship, the band of each to each as a perfect circle touches tolerance and love. May this thanksgiving last in substance & sustenance. Creator, created, creating we love you through one another. As the Earth supports fruitful if we cherish it, as gardeners and gatherers and dissolves most greed Oh heavenly blessed, Earth kissed.
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love to all friends & acquaintances online, in line and out of line peace to all larry
a duende offering 2012 po box 571 placitas, new mexico larrynewmex@gmail.com
For Thankful Cranks
Some Thanksgiving Poems
larry goodell 2012