Monthly Archives: July 2016

Inspirational Poetry

Don’t Quit by Unknown

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When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh.
When care is pressing you down a bit.
Rest, if you must, but don’t you quit.
Life is queer with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns.
And many a failure turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out:
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt.
And you never can tell how close you are.
It may be near when it seems so far:
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

– Unknown 

Source: BeyondtheQuote.com

Inspirational Poetry

Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

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There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

– Shel Silverstein 

Source: PoemHunter.com

Inspirational Poetry

Quick to Judge

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Why are we so quick to judge one another
Divide our feelings and our facts
In our inability to look past
Red or blue
The left or the right
Me versus you
Must we always be divided
And always be one sided
Why are we so quick to hate one another
When the men in Texas with the conservative views
Are made the same way
With the same heart and skin and DNA
As the democrats living in Santa Cruz
And that if we stop looking past our political and ideological differences
People can truly come to see
How much alike we really can be
Why must we be so quick to argue with one another
When our arguments leave us no where
Our refusal to get along only leaves our future generations impaired
Yet we walk around with our haughty pride
Why?
Because we know we’re the ones who are right?
But when everyone thinks they’re right
And everyone else is wrong
The numbers don’t add up
And who’s left wronged?
Our children
And our future.
Those who haven’t even learned to argue yet
And still just want to have fun and get along
Why are we so quick to blame one another
And never admit when we are wrong
Yet we have the right
To tell others they don’t belong
Because they’re different
They have the same figures and facts
But they bisect or dissect those facts
And think more or less abstract
More or less compact
More or less trapped
In their own thoughts
Their own history
Their own reality
And see reality is what you say it is
We don’t see the world as it really is
We see it as we want to see it
We see it through a dirty lens
We see it with blind eyes
And even blinder ears
Refusing to listen
To those who are different
They must be ignorant or idiots or vile
Because they see the world we see
But still disagree
But that’s just it
They don’t see the world we see
You don’t see the world I see
And that doesn’t make me evil or ignorant
Or the epitome of idiocy
So why are we so quick to judge one another
When the world is different in everyone’s view
Things are not only black or white
And their grays are easy to misconstrue
So instead of hating and blaming
He or she
For being different from you
Listen to their point of view
And then why don’t you try
A little thing called compromise

– Katie Rose Waechter

Inspirational Poetry

Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes

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Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today-O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again-
The land that never has been yet-
And yet must be–the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME-
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-
All, all the stretch of these great green states-
And make America again!

– Langston Hughes

Source: History is a Weapon

*In honor of the fallen…

#AltonSterling #SandraBland #TamirRice #EricGarner #TrayvonMartin #MichaelBrown #FreddieGray #WalterScott #PhilandoCastile #DallasPoliceShooting

and the many others who continue to die everyday due to race, hatred, bigotry and gun violence in our country.