When Hamlet Saw Sri Anandamayi Ma

What an uncanny phenomenon is this woman!
How penetrating in perception!
How infinite in faculties!
In form and moving how express and admirable!
In action how like an angel!
In apprehension how like a god!
The beauty of the world!
The paragon of  the wise!—
How may I remain close to this quintessence of bliss?

You're the Beautiful Resistance

There’s something about your sharing with me
Tears usually are the result

Not sadness as in Ach
But gratitude as in Ah

I’ve known  you nine years plus
So, of course, we inter-are

Muriel Ruykeyser: The universe
Is made of stories not atoms

You were a theatre wiz
Sassy smart aleck

Devotee of Boal
Proud hoosier

Companion to the refugee kids
Evoker of their stories

You used theatre to touch them
And so helped them to touch us

You read Mev’s gospel at LBB
Which sealed the deal for you, for me

Mev: Putting our bodies before the wheels of the great machine
That crushes the bones of the poor, blacks, gays, ...

For a couple months we meet week after week
At 6 North Coffee on Laclede

You making your jottings in your notebook
Me sharing scenarios, possibilities

You know the theatre of the absurd
Yeah there we were, Lucky and Pozzo

Trying to prepare for that
Which is beyond preparation

Then you performed the play about your alter ago Rachel Corrie
You fucking were Rachel Corrie

Summer 2006
Right before you left for the West Bank

Then you phoned me at some crazy hour
You were about to get on a plane

“Professor-friend, I’m scared shitless”
You admitted as Israel was leveling Lebanon

“What should I do?”
And then you accompanied your fear and soon got a taste

Of some of what the Fayrouzes of the world
Endure as they hold on to their humanity

Zora Neale Hurston: There’s no agony
Like bearing an untold story inside of you

And you transformed your months
Into not just one, but two plays

I’ve long been impressed, relieved, and inspired
By how honest and raw and real you are

Like when you sent me three pages of comments
About Dear Layla

I felt so honored
By you soul-probing reading of it

(Of course you inhabit the characters
Of Carla, Nirmala and Natasha)

Harold Clurman:  Theatre is
Propaganda for a better life

One day I promise
I’ll come to New York

Come see you in a performance
Then stay out regaling you till dawn

Today I got your postcard from Harlem
Your spirit and spunk radiated off of it

That’s why I’m writing these lines now in my notebook
Remembering a few flash moments

Of the goosebumped and glorious blessings I've known
Courtesy of the Indomitable and Tender Miss Magan Wiles

Would Someone Please Start an Institute for the Cultivation of Slowness?

Rushing is a way of life
We’re speed freaks
Yeah it’s a drug
Move the mind
Faster and faster
Get more done
Faster and faster
Our lives are one long Stair Master’s routine
The pace ever increasing
The intensity more than the week before
Go
Go!
Go!!
Go!!!
Day in
Day out

Cece's Smile

A while after Mev died
I went to a gathering at Jesuit Hall
In honor of Guadalupe Carney
Who had lived in Honduras with the poor

Scores of people were there
Across the crowded room I saw Cece Weinkauff
Who must have been 14 at that time
She saw me and let loose a smile to raise the dead

That beam of eyes and mouth and hand wave was familiar to me
I felt instantly at ease
Happy and grateful
To behold Cece (to remember Mev)

The Miracle of Beng Cheerful

Years of nausea
Anxiety
Affliction
Heart being battered
Hourly taking up your cross
And carrying it
Night after day
Day after night

And when I've seen you
Always that smile
Always that glow
Always that effervescence
Always that mirth
All the while being intimately familiar with agony
Your embodied miracle:
Not being bitter

Mary & Lindsay

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for the Boeing Company

O Lord God
We joyously thank you
For the many gifts
You have provided us in Saint Louis
With the Boeing Company
Who sees to it
That we are gainfully employed and
That our community is the recipient
Of its generous philanthropy
In the arts and education

Leaving the Comfort Zone

When we get bored and complacent
Playing it safe
Staying stuck in our routines of "I, me, mine"

May we remember and act on that phrase

Which can immediately enliven us
Bring out our daring side
Free us from the grind of self-preoccupation:

“Seventy times seven”