AFFIRMATIVE

by The Bangkok Bards

Saknarin Chinayote & Charles Frederickson

Say yes to natural existence
Observing how plants animals grow
Learning to live dying gracefully
Acceptance simply being truly yourself

Life’s rhythms coexisting in harmony
Unfinished symphony awaiting upbeat coda
Spiritual serenity vision quest guide
Wholehearted cooperation with inevitable Fate

Accepting things we cannot change
Focusing on making positive adjustments
Governing ourselves without being overruled
By external circumstances beyond control

Seedling sprouting from infertile soil
Revitalized cool breezes soothing angst
Overburdened restless spirit regaining strength
Restorative nature uplifting serene oneness

If only I could grow
Stronger firmer quieter perceptively wiser
Learning what sedentary rocks know
Perpetual stillness simply being content

Life adapts to irresistible spontaneous
Change letting things flow calmly
Nurturing nature’s strange creatures world
Freely running own predestined course

No Holds Bard Dr. Charles Frederickson and Mr. Saknarin Chinayote proudly present YouTube mini-movies @ YouTube – CharlesThai1 .

JERUSALEM IN SNOW, 1/10/2013

by Maryann Corbett

Image source: Occupied Palestine

The pious author of the book of Job

lacked maps of isobars to show him where

pressure allows the tongues of wet, warm air

delicately to probe
the hill country, tickling at slippery flows

where winter chill has settled on the height

of Zion. In his poems, only the might
of God breathes down the snows,
pure as surprises. What the psalm observed,

the morning news reveals: a world scrubbed clean.

Changed utterly. Pristine.

The stones of the Old City softened, curved;
old habits stalled; and humankind’s false starts

brought to a standstill. Ancient poets see

how snow grants us new vision, so that we

dream of our own changed hearts.


Maryann Corbett is the author of Breath Control (David Robert Books, 2012) and Credo for the Checkout Line in Winter, forthcoming from Able Muse Press. She has been a winner of the Willis Barnstone Translation Prize and a finalist for the Morton Marr prize, the Best of the Net anthology, and the Able Muse Book Prize. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared in many journals in print and online, including River Styx, Atlanta Review, The Evansville Review, Literary Imagination, Measure, Subtropics, and The Dark Horse, as well as in a number of anthologies. New work is forthcoming in PN Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Barrow Street. She lives in St. Paul and works for the Minnesota Legislature.