The responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, April 4, Where is the will of the cup to overcome the sword?, are marked by compassion, concern, insight, and sadness. A collection of heartfelt works by three poets new to Wednesday Writing Prompt (June G. Paul, Frank McMahon, Siobhan Tibbs – bios included by way of introduction) and by three of our dear regulars (Paul Brookes, Sonja Benson Mesher, and Mike Stone). As a part of her response, Sonja has treated us to some of her artwork this week.
Thanks to all six poets for generously sharing their work and coming out to play. We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome – encouraged – novice, emerging or pro.
The Golden Shovel Poem
The bar brawl began after midnight, blood and wine splattered where
she was sitting and asking herself, Has everyone gone out of their mind? Tell me if this is
real? Is it true that some people still do not believe that the holocaust has happened? The
ignorance and denial of people, the erasing of and rewriting, of the history of mankind will
certainly be the cause of the end of
us all. And will the end of the world come before the end of all time? The
woman wondered, as she leaned over to pick up the cup
he had dropped during during the brawl. Standing there with the empty cup she opened her mouth to
speak, quietly asking him in whispers, Why is it so hard for you to overcome
your past, your addiction to alcohol and fighting about the weapons of warfare when it was the
Word of God, who spoke before and on the cross, offering peace with his two edged sword?
“Where is the will of the cup to overcome the Sword?”*
* line in the poem: time for the temple whores to sleep with insanity, and take the war from it, (c), 2017 by Jamie Dedes
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enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
*
We drink the cup of the new covenant without
taking in its meaning, for God’s sake
Jesus Christ
turned water, into wine, into blood.
The blood of the Passover lambs replaced with
the wine in the Passover cup he called the blood of the new covenant.
There is wine to be shed, wine to be poured out at the altar
instead of blood being shed all over this earth. Enough!
Enough drinking from this cup without living into its meaning,
without remembering Jesus Christ and his will for us – Peace.
Enough! Overcome the sword, wake up, stay, and pray, save yourselves.
Enough of the drunken soldiers drinking, trying to forget, and crying over
the blood shed from all the wars they’ve fought on this earth, Enough!
Enough! Drink, all of you, the cup of the new covenant and remember
Jesus Christ
lifted the cup in his hands while speaking his will for it and for all –
Drink, all of you, it will be shed for the forgiveness of sin.
He poured out his life of prayer for us, remember Jesus,
Remember his will for us – Peace.
It’s time we sacrifice our sin for Him, to overcome the sword,
for our own sakes and for God’s sake, to save ourselves from
the hell we’ve been causing on this earth – Nuclear blasts and bombs
bursting over and under and into the air, the land and the sea
we’re polluting ourselves and our own eternity.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
Now is the time to cease our fighting, now is the time to bring an end to war.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH! the battle cry of peacemakers,
Kings and Queens and Princes of Peace on earth are crying out.
Now is the time to call out and bring out the peacemakers
Those who believe in the will of the cup and the new covenant
will overcome the will to draw their swords, setting world at ease
There is time, Today, time to fill and bless the cup and lift it up
There is time, Today, time enough to be forgiven of sin,
There is time, Today, time enough for us all to sacrifice our sins and live
There is time, Today, for us to live in peace with all nations.
Now is the time to set the nations at ease instead of keeping them on edge
Now is the time for the will of the cup to overcome the sword and the world.
In peace, let the people of the earth, heal and forgive,
In peace, let us all find joy in co-creating Heaven on earth,
for that and therein is where the will of the cup is found.
*
(c) 2018, June G. Paul
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June G. Paul
JUNE G. PAUL is an aspiring poet, wife and grandmother who enjoys creativity. She and her husband live in Portage WI. She recently scheduled a series of monthly poetry readings with featured poets and open mic time. June is currently working on several different writing and art projects. She has self-published two books and will be soon coming out with her first Chapbook which she is titling, My Poems: Chapped not Trapped.
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FIND me WORDS
Find me words to stop the slaughter.
Find me words which will be heard
and not just heard but taken up,
amplified and echoed. But not
just voiced by millions or painted
onto banners. Find me words which
will pierce concrete walls and steel-clad
minds, find me words which will stop.
Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms
the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order
more assaults. If they will not desist,
then give me power to move them
to the cellars, the shattered streets
and farms and make them wait alone
while we decide their future. What
can they offer to atone? The dead
and maimed must speak, pronounce. Find
them words to write the final page.
FRANK McMAHON is a professional social worker in the UK and includes work with the Red Cross. He’s written several plays and more recently had a creative burst writing poems. His publications include I am not a silent poet, The Cannon’s Mouth, and CirencesterScene. Frank lives in Cirencester. He’s had two more poems to appear later this year in other journals and is also a member of a local writer’s group.
Demolishing Starlight
Shreds of ideas conflate and implode in the city.
Misconnected selves await, lone and lurching,
Fresh numbness to kill the face of the unknown.
Action for re-action, tornado for square yard.
Ambitious chimneys pump carbon into skies:
Deflated vistas, echoed in angry eyes.
Life all around – nature on shutdown.
We lost the midday sun to a rash of window-blinds,
Partitioning humankind. Demolishing starlight.
SIOBHAN TEBBS is a poet, spoken word artist and fiction writer living in Barcelona and originally from Cheshire, UK. Her work has been published in The Fem lit magazine and Parentheses.
On Bloodwant
She wears the helmet of war
above her red blitzkrieg eyes
and holocaust smoke.
It is her day of blood.
She makes me frenzied.
I mutilate my own arms and legs.
Stab, and let my bloodpain
flow into a cup to drink,
or offer to her.
Invoke the war fury,
so we can lob the spear
into foreign earth.
She is being modest.
Before she wanted sliced
flesh to feed her bloodwant.
Sigmund wins an gets hitched to Sword Spirit
One o’ younger suitors Lyngi says “Tha not ‘aving ‘er. al av thee bollocks on a spit, first. Thas won battle but not war. I’ll av thee.”
Reight scrap an battle ensues,
fists in heads, lamping one another.
Siggy can’t be defeated ‘cos o’ his sword
as is one only he could pull out
on oak int mead hall.
One Eye arrives wi his invincible spear, Swayer. When Siggy sees
One Eye, he attacks him, when he strikes Swayer, Wrath shatters into two.
At night, Sword Spirit, preggers wi Siggy’s bairn, finds her husband still compos on battlefield. Siggy says ” Gather brok bits o’ ma sword, so r son can forge a new un”. “He will avenge me an thy father.”
Lyngi, still wants to marry Sword Spirit,
fails to find her or her treasure,
she’s flitted to Alf, Sea Rover an marries him
Sword Spirit bears a son, she calls Siggy.
Alf, brings up Siggy’s son as his oan
Sigurd
After Counsel’s tale, Siggy agrees
to help his foster-father to get Ottergold
Twice, Counsel meks Siggy a sword,
both brek on anvil. Finally Sword Spirit giz
her son brok bit o’ dead Siggy’s sword.
Counsel forges wi brok bit, Siggy calls sword Wrath. Wi Wrath, Siggy cleaves anvil in two.
The awful conscience cavalry and infantry swept down from their concealed positions in the surrounding hills, blocked the road and engaged my unsuspecting good feeling from three sides.
Surprised and outmanoeuvred,
my good feelings did not have time to draw up in battle array, and were forced to fight desperate hand-to-hand battles
in open order.
My good feelings quickly split into three parts. Westernmost was attacked by awful conscience cavalry and forced into the lake, leaving the other two groups with no way to retreat.
The centre, stood its ground, but was cut down by black dogs after three hours of heavy combat.
In less than four hours, most of the good feeling was killed.
My day went so badly
earthquake has overthrew cities,
turned rivers, levelled mountains.
And all of this was renamed
as Blood River by Charnel House,
my Place of Bones, my Sepulchre,
Cape Red, my Subdued Place
Foggy midnight fingers in a November sky,
Grey-orange leaves on a wet path,
Betrayal in the moon.
The old strength returns,
The pale green light returns to the eyes,
The bloodmyth returns to the arms.
Existence is a form from the future.
Standing at the graveside
Of my friend’s father,
I’d heard of him although
I’d never met the man.
He must have been religious,
His sons most certainly were.
Yisgadal vayiskadash shamey rabo …
Hallowed and magnified may He be.
They say there are no atheists on the battlefield.
As I near my own horizon,
My life has become a battlefield
Over-run by ghosts and lengthening shadows,
Stretched out toward some black hole.
The mourners take turns shoveling dirt,
Pushing small mounds on top of the shrouded body.
Around them a crowd of friends, acquaintances, and passers-by
Stand discussing current issues,
The rising belligerence of this nation and
The falling price of that commodity.
The world divides itself in two:
Those who’ve just lost a father
And those who haven’t.
The earth closes around the father’s death
And I think to myself
There is only one,
One earth, one life,
And it is here and now.
There is no Satan to tempt our sins
And no Hell but
The hell we make for each other,
No God to protect and guide us
And no Heaven but
The heaven we create for each other
Here and now.
It is the day before the Day of Atonement and I think
What does it matter if I’m a Jew?
That I believe or don’t?
In the end of days
There is little difference between the killer of six million
And his smallest dimpled victim.
It’s all for nothing
And nothing for all.
Jerusalem. It sits in your mind,
It rolls gently off your tongue,
It lingers languidly on your palate.
Jerusalem – four syllogistic solipsistic syllables.
Yerushalayim – five phonemes,
Last a little longer in my mouth.
Ir HaShalom, city of peace.
Al Quds, the holy.
Just saying its name is almost a poem.
Younger than the spring,
Older than the mountains girding her dry loins,
Like an old woman who has buried far, far too many children.
Her stones, cubit by cubit by cubit, glitter in the sunlight
And weigh heavily on the rubble of our bones,
Too heavy to carry, too dear to shrug off.
The clang and gong of her iron bells,
The nasal atonalities of her myriad muezzins,
The chaotic murmurs of gossip and prayer
Rumble and soar skyward from her breast.
The night flows in through open windows
And shushes her children to sleep,
But there’s no room for even one more dream,
One more hope,
One more ghost.
Then almost an after-thought,
A bomb bursts into jagged thudding light as
Thousands of ululating shrapnel sing through buttery flesh
And pock the burning stone.
Jerusalem will always have a place in her heart for
One more ghost.
Suddenly
The children fly out of the synagogue
Dressed in white shirts and shorts
And dresses with petticoats
Trying to be first on the swings
And slides and teeter-totters
Their voices yelling happily
Safely cradled in their parents’ certainty
That today of all days
Maybe the war won’t begin
But the war always begins
It’s just a matter of time.
Chorus of 30 men:
I dunno but someone says
God made the world in seven days,
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
One two three four, five six SEVEN!
Chorus of 27 men:
I dunno but I’m no wimp
I don’t come from no damn chimp,
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
One two three four, one two THREE FOUR!
Chorus of 24 men:
I don’t know but it’s been said
M’soul’ll go to heaven when I’m dead,
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
One two three four, one two THREE FOUR!
Chorus of 21 men:
I don’t know but it’s declared
God’s my shield and my sword,
He hates the enemy worse than me
And waves our flag from heaven free!
Take it on down –
One two three four, one two THREE FOUR!
Chorus of 18 men:
I don’t know if what they tell
Is right for me or straight from hell.
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
One two three four, one two three four.
Chorus of 15 men:
I don’t know but I’ve been told
Ever-thing’s fourteen billion years old,
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Space and time
Are infinite – and we’re null.
Chorus of 10 men:
I don’t know whether it makes sense
But we’re dead for most o’existence
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
One two three four, one two three four.
Chorus of 5 men:
I don’t know but I’ve been told
Outer space is mighty cold,
Sound off – one two!
Sound off – three four!
Take it on down –
Four three two one zero, Kelvin.
One man singing solo:
I don’t know, I’m all alone,
There’s no place to go to
No one to go,
Sound off – one two,
Sound off – three four,
Take it on down –
One
Two
Three
Four
We say that we follow God
But we are only following our own nature.
This is not a poem, but a prophecy:
Cover your mouth and your eyes,
For there will be an eye for an eye
And a tooth for a tooth
Until we are all toothless and blind.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 