My Friend, Be Present

joybragi84
6 minutes ago
2 min read

I've done something over the last week and a half that I thought I would never do. I deleted two poems from the book, Atheists and Empty Spaces. The two poems, Lover Lost in Time and Not Knowing If You Dream are not lost forever. I have saved them to a folder of unrevised poems, but, right now, I don't feel like I can save them. I worked and fretted and thought about them, and the more I changed, the worse they got. Some critics might say that there are dozens more poems that I should move to the trash heap, but I don't believe that.

I did replace the two poems with a poem from the Essential Words book, which, by the way, is still available here at Lulu.com, but it is not available anywhere else. https://www.lulu.com/shop/michael-thomas/essential-words-revised/paperback/product-959dn25.html?q=essential+words&page=1&pageSize=4. Please help support independent and self-published artists. They are the only place you will find great art these days. Publishers only publish cookie-cutter material. They don't truly support creativity, imagination, and novelty. Thus, publishers support pop culture and not innovation. Think about that for a minute.

"But Michael," I hear some folks cry, "Even you are using AI to create images for your poems!" Yes, I am. However, I do not claim the images are art, and I would gladly work with any visual artist willing to put my poems into images as long as we shared the profits--or most likely, the losses that came with the collaboration. That would be awesome! It would also be awesome to set some of the poems to music. Any composers out there?

Anyway, I had Copilot put the poem in the image that it created so you can read the poem in the image or right here. As always, ENJOY!

My Friend, Be Present

(Inspired by a P. Shelley fragment)

Sit down here and clear your mind

Of all its grief and sorrow,

For they are guests of yesterday

Who won’t be here tomorrow.

In Eastern skies, the sun will rise

But it drifts through its ranges.

The steady moon’s a stalwart friend,

Who’s noted for her changes.

We may suffer much today,

And troubles seem to last,

But let us not haul misery

From the unchanging past--

A past that’s locked within its time

That never ebbs nor flows

While we are free to seek our peace

Wherever present goes.

Michael Thomas Thoughts on Poetry, Short Stories, Essays, and Ramblings-It's All Here in...

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

My Friend, Be Present

My Friend, Be Present

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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats