Sep 2013
Bring 'em on home
A long time ago,
A fellow New York Jew,
Happened to be a poet too,
Like someone else I knew,
Wrote some lines
The people of France
Thought were pretty grand.
So they built a statute to,
Her words, realized in copper,
And placed those words on its base,
Where it rests today in the harbor.
Everybody, especially a lady of
A goodly number of years,
Needs an occasional makeover.
A colossal mistake of unbridled arrogance.
Natty, you sure?
For sure, my words to greet, to welcome meet,
A special class of people,
Who come not by sea, but electronically,
Who need a statute of their own!
Give me them again and again,
The sad eyed teenagers of the lowlands,
The cutters, the pill poppers, the heartbroken,
The incomplete poems,
Send them my way
So I can
Bring 'em on home.
I have no lamp just many arms
And a handful of words,
To comfort them tween the lonely hours
From midnight to dawn,
When the ancients are on duty,
On the lookout, on patrol,
For these special many.
My qualifications you ask?
I can read, I can feel, torment, he be,
My right hand man, scars to prove it too.
Do I need more to simple want, please,
Bring 'em on home.
Like scraps of unfinished poems,
I want them all,
My job to complete and send them on their journey,
Back slapped, chin chucked, safe home,
Secured, knowing, that there are many o'me,
Who desire the same.
I cannot give them absolution, or permission
To do what they feat most in their submissions,
Lend them my grays, my ancient perspective,
My heart that has no shape,
But room enough for them all.
Unafraid to cry alongside them,
Unafraid to say it is beyond belief, inconsolable,
That hurt has entered thine bloodstream,
That there is no drug to cure what drugs undone,
But I have intent, I have poetry aplenty,
To assist, write with you, new endings,
For you are but a stanza now,
And someday you will be a
New Colossus...
And I will still be
Here, in case...
--------------------------------------------------
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus
The New Colossus
"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–87), written in 1883. In 1903, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
A long time ago,
A fellow New York Jew,
Happened to be a poet too,
Like someone else I knew,
Wrote some lines
The people of France
Thought were pretty grand.
So they built a statute to,
Her words, realized in copper,
And placed those words on its base,
Where it rests today in the harbor.
Everybody, especially a lady of
A goodly number of years,
Needs an occasional makeover.
A colossal mistake of unbridled arrogance.
Natty, you sure?
For sure, my words to greet, to welcome meet,
A special class of people,
Who come not by sea, but electronically,
Who need a statute of their own!
Give me them again and again,
The sad eyed teenagers of the lowlands,
The cutters, the pill poppers, the heartbroken,
The incomplete poems,
Send them my way
So I can
Bring 'em on home.
I have no lamp just many arms
And a handful of words,
To comfort them tween the lonely hours
From midnight to dawn,
When the ancients are on duty,
On the lookout, on patrol,
For these special many.
My qualifications you ask?
I can read, I can feel, torment, he be,
My right hand man, scars to prove it too.
Do I need more to simple want, please,
Bring 'em on home.
Like scraps of unfinished poems,
I want them all,
My job to complete and send them on their journey,
Back slapped, chin chucked, safe home,
Secured, knowing, that there are many o'me,
Who desire the same.
I cannot give them absolution, or permission
To do what they feat most in their submissions,
Lend them my grays, my ancient perspective,
My heart that has no shape,
But room enough for them all.
Unafraid to cry alongside them,
Unafraid to say it is beyond belief, inconsolable,
That hurt has entered thine bloodstream,
That there is no drug to cure what drugs undone,
But I have intent, I have poetry aplenty,
To assist, write with you, new endings,
For you are but a stanza now,
And someday you will be a
New Colossus...
And I will still be
Here, in case...
--------------------------------------------------
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus
The New Colossus
"The New Colossus" is a sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus (1849–87), written in 1883. In 1903, the poem was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
She asks me what's wrong, and I say I made the coffee too strong, too hot.
