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      July 27, 2011These Are the RulesDiane Klammer

      What matters most is how well
      you walk through the fire.
      —Charles Bukowski

       

      The whole world may be burning
      around you,
      but you have knowingly
      chosen this.
      You must confront the blizzard
      with a tattered umbrella.
      These are the rules.
      You must stop the gaping
      head wound
      with only a tiny circular band aid.
      You do not have more
      and you cannot do less.
      This is the choice you make:
      to wash it with your tears,
      wring it out,
      and begin again.
      Eventually it may stick.
      The role you take
      is only as a guide.
      Your patient is the one
      who struggles each day
      through the snow and the wind
      but for the band aid,
      naked.

      from #34 - Winter 2010

      Diane Klammer

      “I started teaching poetry while working at my first agency, transitional living centers for the chronically mentally ill. When I work with the vulnerable I am constantly reminded of my own vulnerability. We are all walking through fire in one way or another. Bukowski also wrote, ‘these words I write keep me from total madness.’ I heartily agree.”