When I think of you, this beating heart Swells, like an ocean wave flowing toward the shoreline, Without you I feel a bit adrift, A little sail-boat unmoored, alone on the ocean I love you like the waves love the sand, Even if I know I'm made for depths and great journeys -- You will be there with me in each gale, Yet staying means I'll never get to where I'm going.
A rather melancholy group of landai, inspired by FOWC: Swell.
A reverse cherita, written while hiding in the restroom of a bookstore, so that the person involved would not see me cry (yet).
There are multiple reasons, but there's one That makes me seem altruistic: I'll tell you That you shouldn't need to deal with me. I love you, but this has gone on for long Enough now, I'm collecting my thoughts, writing goodbye Gotta get back out there, pretend I wasn't crying.
I am not feeling forlorn or despairing today but just wanted to share that. Here is a poem I wrote today on a similar theme:
Out of compassion,
My soul yearns for connection —
In my heart always
Even if you forget me
Memory will be precious
I want to be a part of it —
The biggest hug in the entire world.
I want to be engulfed, enveloped,
Held by Love itself, and feel
The biggest hug in the entire world.
But there are gunshots and I cry instead.
My free-verse response to Brian’s prompt, “back to basics.” It also uses today’s Dictionary.com Word of the Day, tenebrific.
I'm afraid of the future. Every day seems more tenebrific, Potentially terrifying, not terrific Drought and shortages, Heartbreak not far away Later will this be sufficient? I profoundly feel deficient, How much of what there is can stay? But I have enough: Food, water (coffee), Physical and mental shelter And even Love and Hope For today.
Side note: The word “tenebrific” reminded me of the Holy Week liturgy called Tenebrae, plus the word “terrific!” 😀
Woman
Clothed with the sun,
The moon under her feet,
And on her head a diadem:
Twelve stars
Mother
Of Christ’s body,
Praying for her children:
Let’s give her bouquets of roses
Today
Happy Mother’s Day!
This is a cento that I wrote (or, more like compiled) yesterday. A cento, which was our challenge for the last day of April, is a poem that is made up entirely of lines from other poems. I had a great time writing this yesterday, and it was awesome to mine the section of the Bartleby site that included Carl Sandburg’s poems. In addition, I perused my old copy of The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg. 🙂
This was from yesterday because I used up all my brainpower and haven’t had much today. Again, I started 9 or so poems and barely finished a thing!
PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Time runs with an ax and a hammer, time slides down the hallways with a pass-key and a master-key, and time gets by, time wins.
And yet—of all “and yets” this is the bronze strongest—
I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.
I will keep you and bring hands to hold you against a great hunger.
The time has gone by.
The river twists in a letter S.
How many times can death come and pay back what we saw?
Out of this prairie rise the faces of dead men.
I might ask: Who are these people?
The story is never told —
Long as the reach of time and space.
As a response to Fandango’s Flashback Friday and “inspired” by my previous post, I looked in my poetry notebook for April 29, 2019, and the surrounding days. I actually found several good poems, and not all were horrifyingly honest. However, some of them… *cue actual flashbacks*
Sharing this one, written 5/1/2019, with NaPoWriMo day 29 because it is tangentially related to today’s prompt about “blessings and a curse” given to you at birth. I will write one for that today or tomorrow, but it probably will not be shared here. 🙂 Nevertheless, I appreciate the prompt and think it will be a salutary exercise.
In the NICU, you looked so small,
Yet so perfect, so beautiful.
I have hopes for you, my little girl,
And I hope you love this life
You’ve already had to fight for.
I cannot hold you yet, can only
Touch you gently through this little window,
But I hope you know my love,
My love, I hope you know.
“‘Oh.’ the priest said, ‘That’s another thing altogether — God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint-pot of ditchwater. We wouldn’t recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us — God’s love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn’t it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he left that love around!
Another quotation from The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, which I am still reading. For One-Liner Wednesday. I have read that one of the Church Fathers (I don’t remember who) said that the fire of God’s love is the same as the fire of hell. I don’t pretend to really understand that, but this quotation reminded me of that. Hell is eternal separation from God, and although it is terrible, I have read that those in hell do prefer it to being with God in heaven.
I’m not a theologian, though.
For Ronovan Writes’s sijo prompt: passion and inspired by the fact that this week is Holy Week.
Passionate and everlasting love, put into action
Leaving an ineffably majestic kingdom, to save
Humanity by the pains of His Passion, to return us home.
revivedwriter 