The Birth of Poetry
A pad of paper and a pen––
when these two meet, new worlds begin.
Born in the head of one who writes,
each magic word many more ignites
until at last, the story’s told,
once more as in days of old.
How many years may it have been
since first a poet lifted pen?
May I invite you to lift your pen to comment below?
The SOCS Prompt this week is “Pad.”
Deep Voice
I am being visited by words.
Some come from the world
immediately around me.
Travel, experience.
Some come from my grandmother.
I listen to their shadows.
The voice of my mother
echoes from the center of our house.
Poems of the body,
where do you come from?
Books,
Sunday School
and Saturday night movies,
all equally determining
my voice.
Some fade away
but remain backseat drivers
as one after another takes control.
Nothing ever lost.
The Writing Prompts prompt this week is “Voice.”
Simple Inspiration
I’ll verify a dozen ways that I’m in the pink,
but I’m not as together as some folks may think.
The course I plod is littered by words I’ve thrown away,
hoping that I’ll come across some better ones some day.
I use no means nefarious to prod words into being.
My syllabic yield is rather based on what I’m seeing.
And so I am a plagiarist of wind and rain and flowers,
recording what is sweet in life and also much that sours.
The MVB prompt today is “Verify.”
Bogged Down in Blog
It’s hard to write while traveling–
your half-knit thoughts unraveling
as they call you in to talk
or have a meal or take a walk.
You sleep in other people’s houses,
wrinkles in your unpacked blouses,
possessions jumbled in your cases,
move at unfamiliar paces.
You live a life that’s not your own—
daily walking, driven, flown
while trying to remember faces,
confused by all these different places.
In the past I adored going—
miles passing, airwaves flowing.
I loved to move like a rolling log,
but that was when I didn’t blog!!!
Now I find I’m scurrying.
Wake up already hurrying.
I’m confused and frankly dumb,
forgetting where I’m coming from
as well as where I’m going to.
I’ve lost a sock and lost one shoe.
Still, I find time to write each day,
here in some room, hidden away.
This daily writing’s an addiction
that makes real life a dereliction!
I short my hosts to do my writing.
I’ve given up my life for citing!
The RDP prompt today is unraveling.
The Meeting Place
What are you waiting for––
divine inspiration?
Do you think Shakespeare waited for his muse?
And if your muse came,
would you even recognize her?
Will she wear long white flowing robes?
Will she play a lute or will your voice
be her instrument?
Will she whisper in your ear or speak to you
though your mind?
And will she be beautiful or will that even matter?
As you age will your muse age with you
or is she perpetually young?
And what about wisdom?
Will it be your own acquired wisdom or hers
that will make your words cut like a knife
though the soft texture of days,
that will give them purpose
when those around you
fail and fall
into the magnetic cloud
of forgetfulness or boredom?
What if as you sit there
waiting for your muse,
watching reality TV
or doing crossword puzzles,
your muse is waiting for you
in the keys of your computer
or in your pen point?
What if she has been lolling all these years
in the pages
of that lined notebook
sitting empty on your shelf?
I keep telling you
that every day I see her
pass behind you
as you pine for her,
always looking
in the opposite
direction.
The MVB PROMPT today is meetings.
Why I Write
I write for the same reason
that blue is blue and red is red.
I write because that is what I am.
Words are my sport
and my art
and my discipline.
My bones are words
and so is my flesh.
I am held together
by an understanding
I would never have found
if I didn’t write.
Words are the road I am choosing to take
to become who I will one day be.
Who I want to be.
Who I am intended to be
if there is any purpose in our universe.
Words wed us to our creator.
When I write,
I talk to a part of myself
that is united with the whole
and I become wiser in my everyday life.
Words are how I bring my dreams into reality
by creating a pathway between the two.
Words are the power I have
over the greatest things that I am subject to.
They are the only part of me that no one can take away.
In times of danger, they become thoughts.
In times of safety,
they venture again onto the page.
I write because it is what weds me to a past
I have been long divorced from.
I write because it shows me a path into the future.
I write because it is through writing that I become my best self.
I write to show my fear,
my admiration,
my love,
my revulsion.
It is like a bleeding,
getting these words out––
like a forced birth.
I write because it is the only thing I’ve ever found
that I have felt I am meant to do.
If I am a fish,
words are my water.
If I am a bird,
they are my sky.
Night Thoughts
They lie there like slumbering cats,
unaware of my presence,
then stir to stalk a field
where hidden metaphors hunch,
twitching, in the tall grass.
Whether they exist in a dream or not,
they do not know, but dwell there
in the shadow of my sleep,
transformed into jungle animals.
Exposed to the light of day,
they spring, as though tired of waiting,
into my conscious thoughts,
leaving their footprints on the page
where I jot them down guiltily,
a grateful plagiarist
who has merely trapped
the stuff of dreams.
Showing, then curling and retracting their nails,
paw after pawprint, they stalk
one line after another,
as, taking the credit,
I fill another page.
For dVerse Poets. What Animal serves as a perfect metaphor for how you write?
See how other poets wrote to the prompt HERE.
Bossing Words Around
Poems used be as easy as falling off a log,
but I get more rickety with every single blog.
Sure, there is a wellspring of thoughts within my head,
but there’s a bit of work involved before those thoughts get read.
Sometimes they disband and fall apart before they’re pieced,
and no one ever sees these poems that end up as deceased.
So though words are my idols, whether earthy or dramatic,
I must say dealing with them is sometimes most traumatic.
If only words would step in line in meaning and in rhyme,
perhaps I would achieve my goal every single time!
Today’s prompts are log, rickety, idol, wellspring, dramatic, and disbanded.
Maybe also for NaPoWriMo?
I had a very traumatic day, actually, and when I came to the end of it and finally had time to write this poem, I found that Forgottenman had totally set up all the prompt links for me, including for NaPoWriMo. This for me is sweeter than chocolates or flowers! And that is the reason why I’m even posting a poem today. oxoxox to him.
Spray-paint and Poetry
Written as calligraphy or scrawled upon a wall,
a book tucked in our pocket or extending down the hall,
expressed as tight couplets or as an angry stew,
words impart great insight and volunteer a view
into minds of wisdom or the hapless few
who unfortunately have little else to do
but to spray-paint imprecations of gender or of race
here in public places where all of us must face
those dark spots of the soul brought into public view
so volunteers of vitriol can share with me and you
those murky muddy sentiments better buried deep
instead of out here in the world to cause us all to weep.
If left to steep within the soul perhaps some inner magic
might turn them into poetry—profound and deep and tragic.
Some inner mental chemistry performing that gestation
that makes insight of vitriol, transforming imprecation
into understanding to write upon the pages
of potential misanthropes transformed now into sages.
Or, in a nutshell:
Metamorphosis
imprecation
perturbation
emanation
vacillation
gestation
germination
education
equation
mutation
anticipation
excitation
elation
maturation
new creation
True, probably more graffiti is about love than hate,
but these poems are written in response to the latter.
Guiding words today are hapless, imprecation, insight, volunteer, mud and calligraphy.
Reading Challenged
Diana Gabaldon’s romances are way too historic.
Koolkosherkitchen‘s recipes? Delicious, but caloric.
Mo Willems counts on pigeons to chase away the blues,
but I’d never volunteer to fill any pigeon’s shoes
due to my fear of flying, so even in a pinch,
to read of being airborne causes me to flinch.
Can’t read Cormac McCarthy or Murakami either.
When violence erupts in books, I have to take a breather.
Harlequin romances are too mushily romantic,
for I prefer my novels less sexually pedantic.
All-in-all you might have guessed I’ve little left to read
and so instead I write all day to satisfy my need
to hang out with a word or two that has not been written
by writers such as those above by whom I’ve not been smitten.
And though my poems aren’t edible or sexually explicit,
violent or airborne, I feel it is implicit
that I need an appointment with my therapist to see
if I can even stomach silly verses penned by me!
Prompt words are pinch, historic, appointment, volunteer, and flying. Image by Brendan Stephens on Unsplash.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 