Wonderful responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, August 30, your wise owl eyes. I’m delighted with these works from Kakali, Sonja, Paul, Iulia and Mark and know you will be as well. Enjoy, like, comment and encourage these intrepid and imaginative poets. Visit their sites and get to know them better.
This week Mark Lanesbury has joined in with a profoundly lovely piece and as always with those new here, I’ve included a short bio by way of introduction.
Another prompt will post tomorrow and you are invited to come out and play.
The Waters of Life
Life and all its hardships, the rivers we do dare
Traveling dangerous waters, captaining its glare
The mastering of the winds, the swells of our pride
The holding of our tiller, for there is nowhere else to hide
But if I could but show, the beauty that dwells within
The reality in this path, built from where we’ve been
We see so much in our wake, but only through our fear
All the while on lookout, glancing to the rear
So grab that tiller firmer, know through this gale we go
That the sails of this journey, need this truth to blow
Find the hearts compass, point it as a guide
Hold it with gratitude, for in there you know you’ve tried
So seek out all your glory, venture to every port above
For within that travel far and wide, is a journey full of love
© 2017, Mark Lanesbury (Healing Your Heart, a manual of life from within)
MARK LANESBURY: My search for meaning in life. Going through the ups and downs in life trying to come to terms with that ongoing question that we all have…’is this it?’. And the process I took to finally understand that I’m a package and most of my life I had been playing with the wrapping, not realising that further in was this incredible present just waiting to be held, felt, listened to, understood and integrated into who I was to become. After recognising this part of myself, spirit asked that I put what I had learned somewhere that others may gain from it and help their journey just as I had also been helped to find that present within.
# Resurrected Quietude #
Scintilla of firewood I had kindled last year in your fireplace,
Celebrated its return last night to my destiny;
My fuzzy keekers,
My languid -feverish corpus,
My throbbing toes;
Were in most spectacular finds for thou,
In the dale of eclipse;
Unguarding my state
essence of my wise owl eyes,
Resurrected years after,
From the cinder of my mystical conjecture;
Like a phoenix;
The most spirited one -the Almighty resounded through my crinkled bosom;
Leaving abaft a lingering instant;
Immersing me beneath the rear of his wavy quietude.
© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh
Once Them Lasses Start To Spin
with distaff and spindle whorl,
another year of sweat and effort
to break the stubborn sod
in the fields begins, so lads,
this day only, play the fool,
burn their flax and tow,
and lasses, while we laugh,
scurry round with water,
dousing our flames.
Virgin, mam, and crone, and present,
fate, and future, and spinner, alloter,
and unturnable are the stick
that holds flux of the flax,
delicate web of their clothes,
spin their unspun blood, breath,
bone and sinew and event
in a thread from underground.
Their spindle is a wooden rounded rod,
that tapers toward each end,
twists into thread, story,
fibres it pulls from
the distaff, the imagination.
The whorl is a stone weight,
fitted onto the spindle
to increase and maintain
the speed of the spin,
pace of the story,
twist of the imagination.
Spindle and whorl
spinner controls
suspended from the thread
that is being spun.
Worlds and stars spin,
use force and gravity,
to “turn” one thing,
into another.
Spindle and whorl
create through movement,
spinner at the centre
of be and become.
Once the lasses start to spin
with distaff and spindle whorl,
another year of sweat and effort
to break the stubborn sod,
while the threads twist.
© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
The Sky Is Food
The sky is food.
Above iridescent coral canopy of trees
let us throw nets of birds
to catch the fish of clouds
the spider balloons
aeroplankton
aphids in the currents and eddies
cross the atmospheric bridges of gusts,
dead cells in clouds and ice
morsels for migrants in the swim
through rivers and waterfalls of air
© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
..grey..
I wish to say that I do not mind the grey,
dark over lakes, morning mists, my hills,
my window shows graves, the quiet ones
**
the colour comes later, in the studio.
the land reclaimed, is bolder now,
energy splashes in orange.
colour comes, from friends in conversation,
music and sounds, and i eat them
with hunger.
© 2017, Sofia Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
..illness..
is a short word in varying degrees.
a slight one, can be alleviated with
unecessary treats, parfum , curling
round in soft places.
lift the spirits with little things, be
glad it is not a more serious form
of the word.
i drove the road yesterday, it
is such a pretty place.
© 2017, Sofia Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
:: the pool of tears ::
from where comes the love,
comes the pool of fear,
the fright of interrogation,
guilt,
i hear.
from where comes the mourning,
late afternoon,
and evening,
comes the spirit,
and singing,
dancing, ringing.
i hear the bells,
the crows,
the chaffinch,
and it shows,
my hearing.
from where comes the whistling,
comes the pool of tears,
the laughter we hear.
here.
© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)
The dual nature of clouds
A sponge to filter light and wash the pavement
A hammer to bang my head
And rise my blood into my ears
So I could see thunders and lighting shows before my eyes
A preview of the storm to come
The dual nature of the clouds
The dual nature of the light
The multiple nature of the human beings
An artist work of art
A dual nature artist
Both God and Flesh
Just a matter of perspective
A free will down to the subatomic level
And up to the clouds
© 2017, Iulia Gherghei (Sky Under Construction)
ABOUT THE POET BY DAY
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BEST PRACTICE/STAND UP FOR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION by expressing yourself and your positions: All writers and poets, artists, musicians, playwrights and film-makers, clergy members and friends are invited to join us on September 30 for our sixth virtual 100,000 Poets (and other artists and friends) for Change (100TPC) beginning at 12:01 a.m. P.S.T. and extending at least 24 hours. We are doing this in concert with global 100TPC. American-Israeli poet, Michael Dickel, is Master of Ceremonies. We’ll provide direction on how to join in with us in the blog post that day. Find us at The BeZine.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 