If you just smile…

                               “You’ll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”                                                     – Sir Charles (Charlie) Chaplin

 –

If you just smile

 

If you know him

At all – through old

Black and white

Silent screen film

You may know he was rich

Knighted by the Queen

 

But it wasn’t always so

He made other people

Laugh – his gift

The bootstrap to pull

Himself from poverty

From deep insanity

 

Learning to read others

A vital defense mechanism

Served him well

Distract, divert attention

He mastered it all

Survival of the keenest

 

Reaching deep inside

His darkness – producing

A smile, then another

They became easier

They were natural

From deep inside his pain

Rescuing others from theirs

 

All the while, he smiled

Made others smile, laughing

Till they thought they would burst

Slapstick – a special gift

Self-taught, an avid reader

The common man related

Core smiles don’t lie

 

Eyes that twinkle and 

Tell his secrets – little tramp

 

 

Bisous,  

 

Léa

WE ALONE: by ALICE WALKER

Alice Walker is an American Poet/Author. Born to slaves in Georgia she now resides in Northern California. She has said that  “My poems – even the happy ones – emerge from an accumulation of sadness, when she stands again in the sunlight.” After reading the poem below and others in the book, I read an article on Genetically Modified Foods. Between the two I moved on to create yesterday’s post. I do hope you enjoy her work and you can find much comfort and courage in her words. She has been recipient of an American Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for her book THE COLOR PURPLE  which was later adapted into a film and a musical. For those unfamiliar with her work, I have posted one of her poems.

 

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”  –  Alice Walker

“We have to wake up. We have to refuse to be a clone.”  –  Alice Walker

“This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and too much power and no empathy.”  –  Alice Walker

*
WE ALONE

We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it rises
in the marketplace.
Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain
is gold
so much the worse
for you.

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.

This could be our revolution:
To love what is plentiful
as much as
what’s scarce.

–  ALICE WALKER: HORSES MAKE A LANDSCAPE LOOK MORE BEAUTIFUL

*

Bisous,

Léa