Prayers
In some way, poems are prayers. So, i shouldn’t have been surprised when people responded from a prayerful part of themselves. Over the eighteen months when the Poem Catcher stood in City Hall, i was repeatedly compelled to wonder about the spiritual state of our City. Somewhere between hunger and humour, light and strong, yet tentative and skeptical; i have included a sampling of both the evidently reverent and those entries that seemed flippant at best. People often, at a certain stage of our lives, make fun of things that are in fact too tender, too precious, too fragile to approach directly. Sometimes, we tease to cover pain and bitter loss, or to poke a toe out the door of expressing our deepest hurts and longings.
And little boys tease little girls.
So sometimes, maybe we feel we must tease Deity, lest we be overwhelmed by feelings of reverence, fear, anguish, love and longing.
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Visionary
Speak to this
World – with one
Voice, as loud as
Love …
Carve your poems
From moonlight,
We the poets
We the visionaries.
Listen long, the sun
Calls out to us,
May we wrap our
Hands around this
Broken world.
With silent prayer,
Our hearts fiery
With love, to sing
These songs
From above.
– Ryan Baier, Sept 2011
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Today is a celebration of sorts
Jack Schultz shared his story
of living under Clairview Bridge
finally finding some support
to transition from homelessness
to housed: reality – there is need
such great need to end despair
where addictions rule where, perhaps,
all are housed, all are respected
and “Welcomed Home” once and for all.
AMEN.
Rev A. Brooks
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Lived here 56 years
Don’t wanna die here!!!
-Lonely Guy
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I want
I want money, I want riches
I want a nice car
I want a nice home
I want new clothes
And most of all peace.
Love, friendship is what
I really want.
– Jasmine Sutherland
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I want a son.
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Lakota Instructions for Living
Friend, do it this way – that is,
whatever you do in life,
do the very best you can
with both your heart and mind.
And if you do it that way,
the Power of the Universe
will come to your assistance,
if your heart and mind are in unity.
When one sits in the Hoop of the People,
one must be responsible because
all of Creation is related.
And the hurt of one is the hurt of all.
And the honour of one is the honour of all.
And everything we do effects everything in the universe.
If you do it that way – that is,
if you truly join your heart and mind
as one – whatever you ask for,
that’s the way it’s going to be.
– Passed down from White Buffalo Calf Woman, via LJC
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to be strong as one
and continue
to be
strong as one
amen
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Creator,
Please, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot
Change, the courage to change
The things I can, and the
Wisdom to do and know
The difference.
-hye hye-
– Melissa Bullshields
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Jan 8, 2012
I pray the Lord watches over and guides our city leaders and all our government officials in Ottawa to give them wisdom for governing our cities and country. IN JESUS NAME, Amen. – Diana
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Change within and see the world anew!
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May the Lord Almighty be praised.
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may we all be free to go peacefully in our sleep
and not be chained to the ‘beep beep.’
Ode to Juan D.
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Munyoung Kim
Hi – Feb 1, 2012
Please give luck to me. Bye.
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I hope and pray this city hall will last forever.
– Ronald Karmi
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‘Divinity’ (Divine)
Love Thyself, thy neighbour, Creator, Mother Earth, Elders, women, children … the flyers, four-legged, two-legged, crawlers, swimmers, 4 directions, 7 ways of the wise … each goodnight, each goodmorning and all we are blessed with in between … love thy brother and sister, Mah Si Cho …
Nannaa, Tristaan, Alex ‘n’ Lee Desjarlais
Dene Tha!
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God Bless Wayne Randell!!! RIP
D.S.
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Pleaes(sic) give me good luck
I swoon to you, I come to you
I beg, I plead.
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let something happy happen
negative is bad!
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Hi! Hello! I’m awesome!
I’m cool! Give me money!
And good luck for me
And my frien K-bob.
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I want money too!
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To all affected by cancer may things become bright and your days happy.
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failure
remorse
indistinguishable
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Thank you for the poem catcher, our friends and families. Thank you for the lovely town we live in, our community and love. Thank you Edmonton for all these giving gifts! – Tallulah
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Espero pasar mi diploma de matematicas. Estoy aqui con mi amigo …
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“What a beautiful thing to discover
I am so utterly amazed
That they inherited a House that was our story of struggle.
Growing up in a family grocery store
As an early Chinese immigrant family
Who also escaped from the Communists
I saw it later as a ‘pretty-uped’ house
Any trace of our past grocery totally gone
Then what a beautiful thing to happen
A Tibetan Monk who had escaped with the
Dalai Lama after the Communist takeover
Buys it – our grocery story house!
Dad would be so very proud to know
All the good energy and good things
That this modest little store and house
That he had bought for our survival
Has generated.
This is nothing less than a spiritual blessing
Injustices and hurt we endured are being
Revisited with the power of love and grace.” – Anna M. Mah
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Dear Creator,
I know a lot of our women have come to you too soon. If it’s not too much to ask, can you please start turning them away? Because they are not there by their own choice, they were stolen from us, they need to live their lives that ended too soon. Please.
Ekôsi Maka, A grieving brother of a stolen sister.
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