#poetry
It's strange time we live in....
Pro life and progressive, does not cover the lives of Palestinian children or their right to live free from occupation and oppression.
Watching Palestinian children starve to death is just something I can never forgive. No one who support such inhumanity deserve any respect from me. EVER
#Poetry #Children #Inhumanity #Gaza #Genocide #NeverForget #NeverForgive
From the just released Eye to the Telescope
What It Tastes Like
by Gerri Leen
He’s in the officer’s club
In the section that says
“Bad day, leave me alone”
When he sees her coming, wearing a
Sympathetic smile as she sets a glass of
What is probably his favorite
Bourbon in front of him and sits
She was his first officer
Now she has her own ship
Her eyes are full of compassion
“They were good people”
He raises his glass, unsure how
She knows this fast, but glad she does
“They were. To the dead”
She lifts her glass: “Never forgotten”
The bourbon tastes like sorrow and regret
He watches her find a table in the O Club
In the same section he did a few weeks earlier
She holds her side as she slides into the booth
“Two Shirley Temples” he orders
Then carries them over
“What are those?” Her eyes are wary
“Things that won’t interfere with
The no doubt very good pain meds you’re on”
“You brought two—you’re forgoing booze?”
He nods because for this she needs sober company
She survived the skirmish; others didn’t
Her first casualties
“You want to talk about it?”
“Really don’t.” But she does anyway
The Shirley Temple tastes like trust and pain
He has a bottle of champagne, is waiting for her
Even though he hasn’t asked her to come
But a captain they served under has made admiral
And he knows she’ll find him
And she does, her smile playful as she stops
At the door, as if she might not come in
But she does then bumps him with her hip
So he moves down the booth as she slides
In next to him, saying others are coming
Fellow crewmates, who smile as they join them
And then their captain now admiral
Pulling up a chair to sit at the head
With a huge grin on their face
He opens the bottle and they all toast
One of the good ones getting rewarded
The champagne tastes like liquid joy
He’s at the bar, enjoying a beer
She slides onto the stool next to him
Tells the bartender-bot she’ll order later
Not her style—he studies her
She’s blushing, also not her style
“We’re the same rank now and you’re
Not my boss and I’m not your subordinate
And I want to ask you out but if you’re
Going to say no, then just tell me now so I
Can flee and drink somewhere else… forever”
He’s marveling at how many words
She got out so fast and how red her
Face is but he plays it cool, waves over
The bar-bot and orders her a beer
“You’re saying yes?”
“I am. And thanks for asking first”
They clink their bottles, her eyes are
As soft as he’s ever seen them,
He’s pretty sure his are too
The beer tastes like respect and love and things
They never reached for before their time
—Gerri Leen
Be a voice not an echo.
In a world of whispers, rise and speak,
A voice unique, no echoes weak.
Forge your path where none have tread,
Let your thoughts be boldly spread.
In shadows where the echoes hide,
Step into light, with strength and pride.
Be the voice that breaks the mold,
A story new, a truth untold.
Echoes fade in time's embrace,
But voices leave a lasting trace.
So dare to dream, to shout, to show,
Be a voice, let your spirit glow.
Banksy Poems
#banksypoems #poetry #poetryletters #poetrylovers #writersofinstagram #writer #writersofinstagram #Writing #author #poemoftheday #LIFE #lifelessons #lifeisgood #peace #loveislove
Rewind
by Steffan Triplett
When two men kissed there used to be danger.
On television where there once was danger, there is now vibrant color.
Color bursts & vibrates on screen, even if no one is there to see it.
Have you ever seen something that buzzes inside you?
I am watching two kids encounter each other with pure admiration.
Television shows me alternate pasts in technicolor.
Glimpses of the past will make you imagine safety where there isn’t any.
Tense is a lie, what is your present is someone else’s future.
A show I adore made me feel like we were living a warm, pleasant future:
Two high school boys go on a date & their parents know.
A boy I adore takes me back to my adolescent past.
Most days I can distinguish between my own experience & a character’s.
Some days my own adolescence feels as if it were extinguished.
A me I love’s past is disappeared, so I fill it with my guts.
I am watching two boys kiss on screen, & for once there is no secondhand shame.
There are flames there. Right here there are burning flames.
About:
When visiting my parents, I streamed a television show, “genera+ion,” in which a character encountered a brief, beautiful, queer love—all at the age of seventeen. I was so moved after witnessing the ease in which this pair approached one another, I stood up. Full of feeling as if it were happening to me. Time compressed. I went to sleep in my childhood bedroom after. Everything good felt possible in a space where once anything good had felt impossible. (The earliest seed of this poem was inspired by Xan Forest Phillips.)
Steffan Triplett on “Rewind”
from the journal TYGER QUARTERLY
A New National Anthem
By Ada Limón
The truth is, I’ve never cared for the National
Anthem. If you think about it, it’s not a good
song. Too high for most of us with “the rockets
red glare” and then there are the bombs.
(Always, always, there is war and bombs.)
Once, I sang it at homecoming and threw
even the tenacious high school band off key.
But the song didn’t mean anything, just a call
to the field, something to get through before
the pummeling of youth. And what of the stanzas
we never sing, the third that mentions “no refuge
could save the hireling and the slave”? Perhaps,
the truth is, every song of this country
has an unsung third stanza, something brutal
snaking underneath us as we blindly sing
the high notes with a beer sloshing in the stands
hoping our team wins. Don’t get me wrong, I do
like the flag, how it undulates in the wind
like water, elemental, and best when it’s humbled,
brought to its knees, clung to by someone who
has lost everything, when it’s not a weapon,
when it flickers, when it folds up so perfectly
you can keep it until it’s needed, until you can
love it again, until the song in your mouth feels
like sustenance, a song where the notes are sung
by even the ageless woods, the short-grass plains,
the Red River Gorge, the fistful of land left
unpoisoned, that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on,
that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?
Slash and Mr. Spock Sitting in the Waffle House at the End of the Universe
by Amorak Huey & W. Todd Kaneko
In the dying light of the final star,
there will be breakfast at the last
truck stop between here and oblivion,
a pair of quasars sunny side up,
a bundle of flimsy bacon and a bottle
of Jack Daniels. Spock can't help
but admire that hue and ooze
of yolk, that way an egg is all
things—an embryo, a planet, a goop
of sunshine with a prehistoric bob
and quiver for the fork. Outside,
the truckers shake their heads
at the loads that won't ever reach
their destinations: dilithium crystals
burned out for warp drives, wall clocks
with hands stuck forever at ten and two,
cans of chili con carne and cling peaches,
their expiration dates now irrelevant.
The Vulcan takes a slug of whiskey
as he observes Slash preparing to eat
a waffle, pouring syrup into every crevice
without spilling any onto the plate.
Just eat it, Spock says. At any moment
we could tumble ass over ashes, collapse
back into that cosmic dust that spawned
us in the vacuum. Slash takes a first bite
and wipes a dribble of syrup from his chin
on his sleeve. That's rock and roll, he says
with his mouth full. Spock cannot argue logic
for the supernova, reason for catastrophe,
appetite for the eater of worlds.
Fish Tale
I didn't know the fish would die
flapping on sun-warmed metal
Peacefully domestic afternoon
Children discover death
and other worlds.
Sitting by the well
to draw inspiration.
Spinning yarn, weaving words.
Dusty work. Flakes of skin
embed the fabric.
Struggling through childhood,
the tales get twisted.
Little boys & little girls
separate language.
We think we know our place,
our destinies,
from the games we're given,
the words we've learned to say,
rhymes, reasons, rituals.
Imbibing passion body to body,
we awaken rules of blame.
The woman tempts.
The hero conquers.
The sad boy desires a
self-fulfilling fantasy,
stomping upon his heart to
start the flow of real blood,
real rage.
Out of water, out of earth,
out of air
flopping upon some inert surface
the tale mechanistically repeats.
What world can we discover
nurturing life?
https://bobrich18.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/bobbing-around-volume-23-number-12/
Bobbing Around Volume 23 Number 12
Posted on 23/06/2024 by Dr Bob Rich
New content Posts during the past month
#ENVIRONMENT We still have a little time. Here is how to use it.
Being childfree saves a future for children
Can individual actions have an impact on global warming? How do small changes in behaviour affect the environment?
GOOD NEWS Vermont leads: make climate criminals pay for damage
More on Vermont: saving pollinators
Four out of five people are sane: UN report
#POLITICS On human shields The Ukraine invasion hasn’t gone away
One of the major reasons I am proud to be in the Australian Greens
#PSYCHOLOGY Wired-in compassion
Terrified I want to die before the horrors of the near-future get me
Oh the stories we tell! How they can change your life
DEEPER ISSUES Human nature being what it is: cooperative and helpful
#TECHNOLOGY Pedal power Wheel in mouth disease
#HEALTH Medicated ecosystem
#WRITING Where do my ideas come from?: June, 2024 round robin.
ANNOUNCEMENTS Pragito’s free book
And Pragito’s course on creating miracles
Ned Kelly’s son rides again You just have to read Mary Tod’s thriller
#STORIES A new addition to my SF series
#POETRY Joyous Litha, by Laurie Corzett
"Content should be non-discriminatory, polite and relevant. Announcements should be 100 to 200 words, shorter if possible. Book reviews, essays and stories should be at the very most 500 words, poems up to 30 lines.
Author bios should be about 50 words, and if possible include a web address."
I HAVE THIS FANTASY
by Heather Bell
I have this fantasy
that I am dressed in a leather jacket
smoking a cigar
just standing there
holding Kafka or Adrienne Rich
by the spine
when an old boyfriend walks up with his
yellow-haired wife and says
Hey, remember me? Sean.
And I reply, casually
Sean? Maybe. The Sean with the big dick or the Sean with the small dick?
And his eyes dart around because he wants to say
Big dick.
but then he’s admitting to me seeing his dick at all
with his wife standing right there
who is holding a ratty looking purse
and what I think is a dead raccoon or
maybe her jacket
So he says
Sorry, I might be mistaken.
but damn, I look so good standing there in my cheetah-print leggings
and puffy hair and the sort of eyeliner that looks professional
that he repeats
But I really think we might have known each other at some point.
And I grin a little, lean in,
and whisper just loud enough for his wife to hear
Small dick, eh?
And I go home and I put on my pink bathrobe and sit on the couch and
I feel triumphant and my kids are running around with scissors
and the leggings are thrown over the loveseat
like a flag
—from Rattle #46, Winter 2014
Heather Bell: “Poem writing can be an interesting beast. I wrote this poem in particular in honor of Sean (real name), who once said, ‘I do not know how you are ever published, or why. Your poems simply make no sense.’ So, Sean, this one is for you.”
Narcissus
Callie Siskel
Time "Person of the Year" was "You."
I was a sophomore in college. I held the mirror up to my friend.
Outside a fraternity, I stood in a circle of women telling each other how pretty they were.
On the walk back to my room, I passed a monument: water running over granite.
The man I loved wanted me in his bed, so I could tell him he was exceptional.
There is a difference between Echo and the spring: one repeats, one colludes.
In his childhood bed, we had sex, and I turned bright red.
He said, "Someone had a good time," and I knew it was over.
I moved out of the dorm with a friend, paid less for the smaller room.
At dinner, she said the chef was staring at her. I agreed.
If I told you how she stranded me, the focus would shift to her, as it always did.
There is beauty in submission, but it depends on what one gains from it.
When a poet came to campus, old and failing, she bared herself like a wet stone drying.
(My guess is that the poet that came to campus was Sharon Olds. :) )
from the book TWO MINDS / W. W. Norton & Company
https://mailchi.mp/poems/todays-poem-narcissus-by-callie-siskel-6079344?e=6ec42bce63
The Second Coming
By William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43290/the-second-coming
Briony in Scotland sent such great poem.
Where is God?
It’s as if what is unbreakable ~
the very pulse of lfe ~ waits for
everything else to be torn away,,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose,
it dares
to speak rhrough us and to us.
It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.
~Mark Nepo
from: Reduced to Joy.
STUDY WAR NO MORE/BODY LANGUAGE
#poetry
Study War No More
What lesson can be applied?
When imperialist troops crash down upon a people’s pride?
When might as right meets the instinct to survive?
When Midas greed lashes out to destroy?
We’ve been here before, o my brethren, o my children —
repeating fouled lessons poured into our thirsty minds,
pushing back the horror before our eyes with blinding rage
forged into weapons by mortal foes
who hide in plain sight.
The only thing I know —
The lesson repeating agony in all our souls,
haunted by the pleading eyes and bloody hearts
of slaughtered sacrifices to malignant gods —
There is something vital here to learn.
Body Language
Teach Peace
Dancing in the classroom
Body wisdom
reaches through neural pathways,
regenerates whole to whole,
soul to soul
touching life
exactly.
I feel you in my mind, my spine.
Feel me dancing,
elongating muscles
extending connections.
ENGLISH BELOW :
Me chercher, c’est me perdre…
Me trouver, c’est t’éperdre…
Mon aimé : Quand donc enfin nous réunir ?
Je te vois trébucher, t’agiter et courir…
Pourtant toujours je demeure, à portée
Quand donc alors nous retrouver?
Si l’oubli fut accessoire a te faire perdre tête
Retrouve la mémoire qui te rendra prophète.
L.V
To look for me is to lose myself...
To find me is to lose yourself...
My beloved: When will we finally meet?
I see you stumbling, flailing and running...
Yet always I remain, within reach When then shall we meet again?
If forgetting was accessory to making you lose your head.
Regain your memory, which will make you a prophet.
L.V
Image : L'aurore et Céphale Francois Forster
#poesie, #poetry,#symbolisme, #rêve, #dream, #animusanima, #fusiondesopposes, #unite, #spiritualite
#plants #woodbine #honeysuckle #poetry #mywork
Where The Woodbine Twines
I long to be back in time ~
a girl standing in front of
where the woodbine twines.
O, bring me my Chinese fan
embroidered with birds,
butterflies and peonies.
Take me by my hand.
Lead me away from the
asphalt, tall buildings,
and concrete.
Lay me down where
the woodbine twines
..and kiss me goodbye.
We shall meet again in another life.
BOTTOMLANDS DREAM
by Doug Ramspeck
The boy fell from the Monahegnee Bridge,
and his parents buried him, and the years
were a cottonmouth swimming in an oxbow
lake, and the boy became an owl as he fell
and lived in the woods so that when he held
himself motionless, he felt himself becoming
the gray bark of the tree. And sometimes
the boy swooped low across the bottomlands
behind the house of his parents, and sometimes
they watched him going by, and maybe he held
a mouse in his talons, or maybe the sun’s eye
blurred across the glass and transformed him
into a diffused smear of photons. One time
when he fell, he was caught in the updraft
of a prayer lifting itself toward the heavens,
and another time he landed in the lake then
became a catfish swimming along the muddy
bottom, his body twisting and raising swirls
of murky visions. And his parents dreamed
sometimes of opening their arms at the bottom
of the bridge and catching him. And the boy
became a cottonmouth twisting his way
across the water’s surface, and the water
rippled out behind him and made of everything
a transitory motion, something there then gone.
And the boy whispered in the air as he went by,
I fall and fall but never strike the ground.
—from Rattle #83, Spring 2024
Doug Ramspeck: “I wrote this poem in the fall, while being distracted by a bear with her two cubs as they climbed the oak trees outside my office window and fed on acorns and sometimes napped.”
The Horses
By Ted Hughes
I climbed through woods in the hour-before-dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost-making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird,—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the moorline—blackening dregs of the brightening grey—
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey—ten together—
Megalith-still. They breathed, making no move,
With draped manes and tilted hind-hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey silent world.
I listened in emptiness on the moor-ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.
Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted
Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,
And the big planets hanging—
I turned
Stumbling in the fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,
And came to the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming and glistening under the flow of light,
Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind-hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them
The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,
Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys, in the red levelling rays—
In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place
Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.
https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=58c6df03ad&u=c993b88231f5f84146565840e&id=1b1a8287d2