Who Says Words With My Mouth? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.
I don’t plan it.
When I’m outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

Poetry
- A Dog Has Died by Pablo Neruda
- A Moment of Silence – by Emmanuel Ortiz
- A Quiet Life – Baron Wormser
- A Wreath to the Fish – Nancy Willard
- Alone – Jack Gilbert
- Another Planet – Dunya Mikhail
- Be Kind, Rewind – Neil Silberblatt
- Black Momma Math – Kimberly Jae
- Capitol Air – Allen Ginsburg
- Combat Primer – Charles Bukowski
- Crow Blacker Than Ever – Ted Hughes
- Dismiss Whatever Insults Your Own Soul – Walt Whitman
- Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads – Martha Rivera-Garrido
- Failing and Flying – Jack Gilbert
- Feel Mo – Michael Korson
- Footprints In Your Heart – Eleanor Roosvelt
- For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet – Joy Harjo
- Forgetfulness – Billy Collins
- Growing Old – Emma Rosenberg
- Half-light – Dāshaun Washington
- Homesick: A Plea for Our Planet – Andrea Gibson
- How She Heard It – Todd Davis
- How to Slay a Dragon – Rebecca Dupas
- I Talked to a Lady – Tanya Howden
- If You Knew – Ellen Bass
- Instructions before visiting Earth – James McCrae
- KINDNESS – Naomi Shihab Nye
- Love is Not All – Edna St. Vincent Millay
- Men – Maya Angelou
- Millennium Blessing – Stephen Levine
- my brain and heart divorced ~ john roedel
- Ode to Those Who Block Tunnels and Bridges – Sam Sax
- Old Man Eating Alone
- Relax – Ellen Bass
- Shoveling Snow With Buddha – Billy Collins
- Sleeping in the Forest – Mary Oliver
- Small Stack of Books – Blake Nelson
- Soliloquy of the Solipsist – Sylvia Plath
- Squirrel – Lynn Ungar
- Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan
- The Caveman’s Lament – Brian Bilston
- The Four Noble Truths – Jake Onami Agnew
- The History of One Tough Motherfucker – Charles Bukowski
- The Layers – Stanley Kunitz
- The Long Boat – Stanley Kunitz
- The Moon is Full Tonight – Billy Collins
- The Shyness – Sharon Olds
- The War Works Hard – Dunya Mikhail
- There Is No Going Back – Wendell Berry
- To Diego with Love – Frida Kalko
- Tryst with Death – Gina Puorro
- Two-bloods – Rolando Kattan
- Wage Peace – Mary Oliver
- War Primer – Bertholt Brecht
- We are the Trees – J Raymond
- We will meet, don’t be in such a rush – Hala alShrouf
- What I Learned From Listening to a Stutterer – Ellen Zorin
- Who Says Words With My Mouth? – Jalal ad-Din Rumi

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