My Personal Manifesto
Written on 03/09 at 05:02 PM by Andy Posner
0 comments
Filed under:
Musings
Prose
I am presently seated in an office. Behind me sunlight is banging its fist against a window whose shades are drawn, begging me to notice that Spring is arriving soon. Perhaps I should be doing work, but instead my mind has turned toward the broader sweep of history, time, philosophy and the role of the individual in the world (it should not be of great surprise that I am embracing such thoughts given that I am reading a biography of one of America’s greatest leaders: John Adams). I am contemplating the fact that people always seem to “act their age,” that they give in to the demands of “the real world” rather than adhere to the longings of their hearts, and I find myself longing to unfurl my personal manifesto like a flag and plant it deep into the soil of my being.
Poets fight fiercely against the constraints of physics and biology (let’s remember that Dylan Thomas wrote about how we should “rage, rage against the dying of the light) and, on rare occasions, they succeed. The words of Pablo Neruda, Federico García Lorca and Robert Frost emanate from their throats and make the earth upon which we stand tremble with their passion; that they are buried deep within that earth only serves to amplify the effect. And so it is for this reason that I, too, think, and feel, and write, for to take the violent passion that makes my flesh shudder with love and transform it into the sweet music of poetry, of entrepreneurship and of justice, is the greatest of endeavors.
Renewal
Written on 12/02 at 05:35 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
poetry
Renewal
It was raining sunlight when I rose,
Cascades of warmth densely falling
Like poetry written in prose,
And my heart, through stops and starts,
Galloped ever closer to repose.
December 2, 2009 12:00 PM
Myth
Written on 10/12 at 03:39 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
poetry
Myth
“The only thing truer than Truth is the story.”—Jewish Proverb
Scrawled upon the tattered pages
And etched into the voices
Of shamans, poets, warriors—the masses,
A thousand stories telling the human story
Turn men into gods and gods into men.
Long before I heard the tale, I saw
The actors brandishing swords, hurling
Their tears to mingle with the seasons,
And knew that though a hand belongs to a man,
Its gestures belong to history.
And so I beckoned the storytellers,
Reached out to the depths of awareness
Where metaphors and hopes were born,
In search of the hopes and the metaphors
That would give meaning to the days.
At night the actors were dressed
In the wild extremes of emotion, and I danced
Cheek to cheek with bliss, despair, unyielding love,
Until sleep bled into wakefulness
And nothing seemed real.
In the crucible of the human psyche
Two plots are forged: one reveals
The desire to construct cities, institutions,
The other explains why mortals toil
To make a lasting impression on the earth.
Lifting a pen, the poet’s ink mingles with the blood
Of the living, the dead and the divine,
Yet naked and alone, he must admit that
Though all people are poets, all poets gods,
No image compares to the beauty of sunlight and stars.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Poetry of the Morning
Written on 09/29 at 02:32 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
poetry
The Poetry of the Morning
The morning repeats itself, its poetry
Heard where feet first touch the floor
Upon which the soldiers of old
March in lockstep, fighting in vain
Against a newer yet ageless force.
The morning reveals itself, its long
Limbs stretching namelessly
Across the face of solitude,
While through a thousand windows
Sunlight makes mist of dreams and dreamers.
The morning teases itself,
Its abdomen pressing against
The smooth back of darkness,
An embrace replete with the hope and fear
Of another day.
Yet the morning surprises itself, too,
Its stark clarity sometimes
Sculpting a lover of longing,
An action of lofty words,
A poem of an idea.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
A Cruise to the Baltic
Written on 07/26 at 02:48 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments
Filed under:
travel
I recently got back from a 10-day cruise to the Baltic with my parents, and I wanted to share the photos and thoughts from the trip! The cruise left from Copenhagen, Denmark on July 5th. On the 4th, I flew to Newark, New Jersey, where I met up with my parents and from where we flew to Copenhagen via Amsterdam. Once in Copenhagen, we had a private tour of the city. Though I had hardly slept on the red-eye flight, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour. For one thing, the weather was absolutely fantastic, and the hundreds of massive wind turbines dotting the landscape were enough to make me fall in love. Throw in the endless bicycles, the quaint streets, and the kind people and, well, I was impressed!
When I was younger my mom, grandma and I would take a cruise every summer. We took quite a few cruises to Alaska, as well as trips to Hawaii, the Caribbean, the Panama Canal and the Mediterranean. My dad, however, had never joined us on these cruises, in part because he considered them to be “floating troughs” (referring, of course, to the fact that food is available 24 hours a day and the rather, um, large passengers...). So I was very excited to go on another cruise and to have my dad join us.
Welcome. On this blog things get a little more personal. This is where I chronicle my struggles and triumphs, my attempts to better myself and my world, my poetry, my prose, my bike rides, my travels, my day-to-day activities. If you want to know more about Andy Posner--that amalgamation of poet and monk--you’ve come to the right place. So have a look around, and enjoy the opportunity to learn what goes on inside my mind--only beware, my mind is quite a place!
- erlyn in Inspiration and Action:
completely agree with the above comment, the internet is with a doubt growing…
- Strategy Name... in The Gardener:
This is a great piec…
- fasat in The Gardener:
Great post! I’m just starting out in community management/marketing…
- March 2010
- December 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- Complete Archives
- Category Archives
- Meet My New Folding Bike! (Poetry & Musings)
- Photos of Some Upgrades to My Bikes! (Poetry & Musings)
- Executive Summary of the Capital Good Fund Business Plan (Ideas)
- Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States (Ideas)
- Photos of My Cervelo Race Bike! (Poetry & Musings)
Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States
Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!
My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…
A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?
Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development. To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…
Tonight, the Oneness of Things
It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come. I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…