Lunch Poems - Fall 2007 Series Kick-off

I love so much of it and still hear the echos of the educational experience.

[IF] Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

Rudyard Kipling
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

Here I sit alone and bitter..
Quietly stuck upon this shitter..
I wish I could just squeeze and go..
But then unfinished business be the seed I sew..
So I must sit here till this ends..
Maybe next time I will use depends..

:)- Cube 9/3/2008

Poetry is the breath of eagles
Perched on the heart.
One word and they cry.
Two words and they fly.
In silence they die.
Broken winged and dead
Like poetry unsaid.

Flight is the arcing of invisible geometries
Which leave no trace on the air.
This is the purpose of the wing :
To unfold the flight path of spirit
And in poetry sing.

Oh look it's Robert Hass who makes money writing poems about trees printed in superfluous numbers on paper from trees, who has to date nothing to say about his campus planning to slaughter of one of the last stands of coastal oaks, as well as thousands of trees in the hills.

I learned "If" as a young child, yet feel as though I never heard it before hearing Coach Braun read it.

Lunch Poem???!!?!!????!?!?...???