Rayn Roberts

Poems by Rayn Roberts appear in PoetsWest, Voices in Wartime, Rattle, Rattapallax, The Sow's Ear Review, Poetic Voices, four anthologies and many others journals. In 2003, he toured the U.S. to promote, Jazz Cocktails & Soapbox Songs and The Fires of Spring a collection of Buddhist poems. He lives in South Korea where he teaches English. There is an extensive website at www.geocities.com/raynrobkorea

  

Meditation at the Dawn of a New World

This is how I spend my days, my youth gone;

with it the rage, all the wee hours on web-page

free for a friend ‘til morning flowers into sun.

I stand at the window, watch herons off to sea,

Trees fill the air with more green each instant,

but sleep is overtaking me, so I prepare a bed,

hope to know nothing there but long May hours,

know too much awake and dream far too little.

Wind moves the fine yellow Gobi dust of China

with a scent of wisteria in my room, and I wonder

not why world peace is unattainable, if Darwin

or intelligent design should be taught in school,

but rather should I meditate or masturbate, both

in my home, being good and of equal benefit;

then let go of everything to take the rest I need.

The sun rises, lives darken where terror reigns;

Nothing is sure or what it seems; yet it is exactly.

The third eye sees through: the warnings of wren

and jay are not song, but of and like all the world:

will and blood; not what I dreamed at age seven,

when the greed and grief of war were not so clear;

turning mind and heart to fear, far from heaven.

 

When Ray Charles Checked Out

He could not escape the news reports

  Of how he used women

  Like dope

Had them, tossed them when done,

  But the week he left his body

America mourned Reagan’s death,

  Remembered

  The good and evil made--

Poor, blind and black in America,

  Had the Boogie-woogie at an early age

  Had the calling,

  Wrapped in shades

Ray Charles leaned his body back

  Tilted his head up

As if he’d turned his inward gaze on paradise

  And sang

Swayed above the black and white

  Wood and wire,

  And for the short while

  He took the stage

Time ceased to turn, death squads ceased to kill

  There were no AIDS, A-Bombs

Arms sales, Contras, cold war…

  All the walls

  Of every evil empire fell

Because a sightless man found a way

  Into the Seeing Heart--

And though death takes all, some are honored

  And some grieved for: that week

  And longer

I remembered Ronald,

  but grieved for Ray