Templates

now browsing by category

This is for adding content and maintaining the standardized layout.

Posted by: Bruce Taub | on April 11, 2025

Shivering in Majesty

1.
I have earned and care for a small plot of land
A small cottage
A dog
Sometimes a woman
My son.

2.
My daughter has found a good man
She has love, wisdom, and a daughter of her own
If they keep loving one another
They will be lucky
That’s what the owl in my yard says

3.
In the yard are Tibetan prayer flags.
Brought and hung by my sister.
When the breeze blows in off the bay
The things I’ve wished for come to me
The smell of the salted air
Birds at the bird feeders
A sense I belong
That I do not consume more than my share
Some seaweed, some flax seed
Though I give back so little –
Juice for the hummingbirds
A house for bats
My flesh to feed the worms and earth
in a pauper’s grave
by a sacred lake

4.
When the breeze goes out
it takes my hopes and wishes with it
they ride over the Tibetan prayer flags
and are made holy
My wish for peace
for relevance
for the happiness and well being of others.
my compassion washes over the banners
carrying words I do not understand

5.
These words reach the bay
where small fishes
are being chased by bigger fishes
chased by men
in boats with two hundred horse power engines
towed to the beach in three hundred horse power cars
to catch one poor fish
to remind them of the hunt
the cycle
the natural order
of the big eating the small
forgetting the grace of small nets

6.
And beyond the bay
Are the wars I finance
Fueled with jealousy, envy, hunger,
The wish for relevance,
An inherent primate consciousness,
And a sense of mission,
A desire to be of use,
to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide
so that plants too may live
shivering in the majesty
of immense rolls of summer thunder
stretching out to remind us
of our tasks
and our roots
in the heavens.

POETRY

Comments Off on Shivering in Majesty

Posted by: Bruce Taub | on April 11, 2025

She Has Loved 100 Men

She asks
How is it possible
She has loved one hundred men
And at their impaired age
This is the best love making she’s known.
He says it’s an illusion.

She asks
Can he make her taller
With blue eyes
And unwrinkled skin
And can he really unearth the dead
But what she is really asking
Is that he hold her
And promise to never let go

She says
You are so solid
And means the flesh she draws near
And the man inside the flesh
With his flaws and foibles
And a willingness to be weak
Stands in his power and strength.

Then she says his name
Speaks it into the ether
In ways he’s never heard it spoken
Radiating out into the universe
Before she herself goes out
Radiating who knows where
Although before getting far
She taps on the glass
Peering in through the window
And again mouths his name.

©brucetaub – 02/08

POETRY

Comments Off on She Has Loved 100 Men

Posted by: Bruce Taub | on December 15, 2024

December 15, 2024

I have come to the conclusion that I have entered a new phase in my life, and that I am trying to adjust my behavior and expectations so that they are realistic and age-appropriate. I characterize this phase as preparing to die, and this involves an immense amount of acceptance as well as personal growth. While my consciousness and intellect seems to still operate at what I would call an adult level, my body is very clearly diminished in its capacities. God forbid I would have a fatal disease and a terminal diagnosis and this would all be more urgent and real. But the fact is that I am 84 years old and significantly weaker, limited, and slowed, and sooner or later I will stop breathing, lose consciousness, and no longer exist as a self-aware person occupying space on planet Earth. I have even come to imagine that there is some aspect of my being that is present in me, that preceded and existed before there was a me as such, and that actually may continue as an energetic entity without there being this Bruce as either consciousness or as an embodiment. Soul or spirit is what this entity is popularly referred to as, but those words really don’t have specific enough meaning for me to use them casually. But it is something beyond individual molecules, although if molecules turn out to be “alive” and energetic, which they must be, then I really have no idea what I’m talking about.

In any event, in the same way as if I had a terminal illness, I have a terminal is-ness and I know it, can feel it, appreciate it, accept it…and almost welcome it. I have separation anxiety, but not really non-existence anxiety. The universe is simply too immense in all dimensions, but especially time, for me to expect that my personal self-consciousness has any likelihood of persistence beyond my extinguishment. The drop of mist or spray that momentarily appears as an independent entity on the crest of an ocean wave and then falls back as H2O united with the great oceans is still the clearest analogy I can find to the notion of what my individual existence is. It’s actually a nice feeling when I perceive it in that manner.

And so I lay abed a lot, reading, listening to music, eschewing politics, challenged by how to fill the time, irrelevant and unproductive, comfortably breathing, knowing, being, appreciating. I am almost happy.

JOURNAL ENTRIES

Comments Off on December 15, 2024

Posted by: Bruce Taub | on December 15, 2024

Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads

Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads,
a woman who feels too much,
a woman who writes…
Don’t fall in love with an educated, magical, delusional, crazy woman.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who thinks,
who knows what she knows
and also knows how to fly;
a woman sure of herself.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who
laughs or cries making love,
knows how to turn her spirit into flesh;
let alone one that loves poetry (these are the most dangerous),
or spends half an hour contemplating a painting
and isn’t able to live without music.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is interested
in politics and is rebellious and
feels a huge horror from injustice.
One who does not like to watch television at all
Or a woman who is beautiful
no matter the features of her face or her body.
Don’t fall in love with a woman who is intense,
entertaining, lucid and irreverent.
Don’t wish to fall in love with a woman like that.
Because when you fall in love
with a woman like that,
whether she stays with you or not,
whether she loves you or not,
from a woman like that, you never come back.

~Martha Rivera-Garrido

Poetry

Comments Off on Don’t fall in love with a woman who reads

Posted by: Bruce Taub | on December 14, 2024

my brain and heart divorced ~ john roedel

my brain and
heart divorced
a decade ago
over who was
to blame about
how big of a mess
I have become
eventually,
they couldn’t be
in the same room
with each other

now my head and heart
share custody of me
I stay with my brain
during the week
and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another
– instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week
and the notes they
send to one another always
say the same thing:
“This is all your fault”

on Sundays
my heart complains
about how my
head has let me down
in the past
and on Wednesday
my head lists all
of the times my
heart has screwed
things up for me
in the future
they blame each
other for the
state of my life
there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying
so,
lately, I’ve been
spending a lot of
time with my gut
who serves as my
unofficial therapist

most nights, I sneak out of the
window in my ribcage
and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut’s plush leather chair
that’s always open for me
~ and I just sit sit sit sit
until the sun comes up

last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard
time being caught
between my heart
and my head
I nodded
I said I didn’t know
if I could live with
either of them anymore
“my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that may happen tomorrow,”
I lamented

my gut squeezed my hand
“I just can’t live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future,”
I sighed
my gut smiled and said:
“in that case,
you should
go stay with your
lungs for a while,”
I was confused

the look on my face gave it away
“if you are exhausted about
your heart’s obsession with
the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future
your lungs are the perfect place for you
there is no yesterday in your lungs
there is no tomorrow there either
there is only now
there is only inhale
there is only exhale
there is only this moment
there is only breath
and in that breath
you can rest while your
heart and head work
their relationship out.”

this morning,
while my brain
was busy reading
tea leaves
and while my
heart was staring
at old photographs
I packed a little
bag and walked
to the door of
my lungs
before I could even knock
she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me
she said
“what took you so long?”