“Come sleep with me: We won’t make Love, Love will make us.” Julio Cortázar (1914-1984), Argentine novelist, short story writer, and essayist.

One summer night
you stood on the beach
where the sky touched the sand
and spoke in midnight blue.

A thousand twinkling eyes
watched and winked.

You were a handsome boy,
as straight and serious as a sigh.

The other girls giggled,
thinking you too stodgy, too old,
but I stepped back,
looked at your heart
and lost my breath.

Your winter gave birth
to my spring, your
darkness my light and
we’ve never been the same.

© 2018, Jamie Dedes

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

How does it happen that love transforms us? Tell us in a poem or poems.

Share your poem/s on theme or a link to it/them in the comments section below.

All poems on theme will be published next Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook. If you do it’s likely I’ll miss it or not see it in time.

IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.

PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.  

Deadline:  Monday, October 8 by 8 p.m. Pacific.

Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro.  It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

36 Comments

  1. Arrivals

    (foreword)

    I want to write about a man beside a train.
    A year later and I’m still looking for the words.
    The palm of that strong hand-
    balm on small of my lower back;
    always, pulling.

    I’m getting closer.

    Arrivals

    I’ve only taken a few steps
    when my legs stop responding
    to the signals from my brain

    my vision locked
    on an image

    you’re running
    beside the train
    your green hat folded
    in your hand

    five hundred thousand minutes
    careen

    into this
    one

    my feet can’t feel the ground

    airy echoes
    of your name
    far away and
    thrumming

    she sounds like me

    in s l o w m o t i o n
    cinematography
    we are captured
    in these frames

    in front of the lens
    behind the lens
    we are the lens

    we are

    standing still
    and spinning

    as the clocks vanish beneath

    we are

    heaved beyond
    the gates

    of this brief ceiling

    cs moon

    Liked by 1 person

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  6. EVOLUTION

    It takes a big leap of the imagination
    to see the line of descent from dinosaur to
    blackbird, until you view the fossil record. But
    you still can’t quite collapse fifty million years into
    an hour’s time-frame. Think then instead about falling
    in love and being in love. Falling, but more
    crucially, being caught in passion’s net, held or trapped
    depending. Two tyros learning their moves on high-wire
    or trapeze, diving earthwards, hands outstretched. Maybe
    love really begins when they both discard the net.

    This poem was first published in England in The Cannon’s Mouth.

    COSMOLOGY

    Some millions of years ago two stars collided,
    creating cosmic dust of platignum and gold.
    Seven shillings: your nuptial ring, signifying
    the conjunction of orbits,love’s trajectory,

    not like Cassini, all mapped out. Some few details
    clear, the rest to be discovered in those early
    starlight days; trial and error, error and trial; flesh and
    blood, proud children, losses, carefree days and friends,

    small frustrations and winter days
    yet love lacing a necklace of stars
    round deepening inner space, new elements
    re-fashioning our Periodic Table.

    Liked by 1 person

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  7. Here’s another one on-theme:

    “Something in the Nothingness”
    (Raanana, October 5, 2017)

    Starry Night on a blank canvas
    David in a block of granite
    Toccata and Fugue on an untouched organ,
    There’s something there in the nothingness
    Faint words and even fainter music
    In the deep silence,
    I can see and hear them.
    There are shades moving in the darkness,
    Can you feel them moving around you?
    Uncreated universes in the moments between us
    Unimagined futures in front of us
    Unknown pasts behind us,
    And all you see is the nothing in the somethingness.
    Open your eyes
    No, close them
    For they serve you not
    To see inside you.

    by Mike Stone, from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/bemused/

    Liked by 2 people

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  8. Here’s one more I just came across that’s on-theme (at least as I understand it):

    “That Which Is Not”
    (Raanana, July 24, 2017)

    1.
    The space where you were is still there
    Though you are no longer,
    The words that you spoke are still spoken
    Though they are no longer heard,
    The path you walked is still walked
    Though you have long gone to other paths.
    That which is is that which is not
    And that which is not is all that is left.

    2.
    I become a metaphor for other things
    Which becomes a memory in your mind
    As you have become a memory in my mind
    And we all have become in each others’ minds.

    3.
    Ghosts who never were
    Walk beside ghosts who were,
    So many it is hard to tell
    One from the other,
    In the empty streets.

    4.
    The thinker is a thought
    Of his own thinking
    In this whirligig of noumena.

    by Mike Stone, from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/bemused/

    Liked by 2 people

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  9. Hi Jamie — Here’s the poem I promised you yesterday:

    “A Dark Matter”
    (Raanana, October 4, 2018)

    I see you everywhere I go
    You follow me even into the bedroom
    And crawl into bed beside me
    Entering my dreams.
    You are the dark sun shining your dark photons,
    Your shadows are my only light.
    You are every age you’ve ever been,
    You are the idea of you
    Just after I discovered I was pregnant,
    You are this thing growing in my belly
    Now, this homunculus bursting from my womb
    Suckling my breast,
    And suddenly you are human,
    Helpless, still inchoate, primal.
    Then you see me seeing you and you smile,
    You crawl, you stand unsteadily on your feet
    And then you start to run.
    You hold my hand, going to the nursery
    And won’t let go.
    Suddenly you’re holding her hand
    Going to the Homecoming
    In our car.
    Then you come home
    From the place you can’t talk about,
    Your uniform full of grease and stench
    Which I wash and iron throughout the night,
    Then they knock on the door
    And tell us you can’t come home,
    That we can’t see your body
    Because there’s nothing left to see.
    When you were alive,
    You were just a single person
    In just one place, nowhere else.
    Now that you are dead,
    All of you,
    The idea of you, the homunculus,
    The primal human,
    The little boy holding my hand,
    The young man holding her hand,
    The soldier coming home,
    The soldier never coming home again,
    Are everywhere, all the time.
    You are my darkness,
    I want no other light.
    Your absence is so palpable to me
    I don’t think I could live without it.

    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/call-of-the-whippoorwill/

    Liked by 2 people

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  11. Thanks, Jamie. I am back again with my poetic contribution for this week. I wrote the 2nd and 3rd stanzas in italics, but the comment section of wordpress does not allow that. Anyway, here it is:

    A long time ago
    I got used to living with
    My open wounds,
    The last withered while
    I was staring at the sunset
    In the middle of the fog.

    Yes, you told me so many times
    About your suffering,
    How your heart shrunk
    Fisted in bleeding red
    While your eyes tasted
    The salt of the ocean waves
    And cristal pearls were running
    Down your cheeks.

    On that plane you felt
    The freezing coldness
    Where just one thing
    Would not freeze:
    The fountain of your tears.

    Yes, indeed I remember
    All the pain on that plane.
    You sent me back to the
    Land of rejection.

    Yet I am a resilient rock
    With my withered wounds
    That I carry since ancient times
    On this eroded earth.

    But to exist is to resist
    And so I dwell in human hearts
    Who care for each other.
    And may I receive your boasting waves
    Crashing on my shores
    Those hearts will restore me again
    For I am silent love and not vain.

    by Marta Pombo Sallés from https://momentsbloc.wordpress.com/2018/10/04/when-silent-love-met-with-boasting-vanity-2/

    Liked by 3 people

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  12. 2. then in love reflecting…come mathematics…

    . mathematics .
    Posted on March 6, 2017
    irregular, you came, your best clothes shining. never mind. the first tune hit the mind, patterns and mathematics. the kindness that is.

    he said. machine you see. glass reflecting. slowly it starts repeating. the walls of differing colours. we have the dvds. on and on repeating on and on repeating on and on repeating.

    back to the counting, how many have there been, how many are left still standing. an issue for some, yet we amend the figures here and move on. lucky ones, maths divides and decimates others.

    1.2

    repeating.

    sbm.

    Liked by 2 people

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  14. Ah, my favorite Cortázar!

    The night is speaking like a cascade

    The night is speaking like a cascade.
    She’s knitting filigreed lights and shadows.
    Sunk in the deep sea
    of Sargasso eyes
    I stay quiet and don’t find words.
    And the scars on your hand
    are fading, in order to burn
    in my heart.
    Oh, sailboats after a long trip
    with all the winds in the sails –
    sand is calling you.
    But it isn’t death!
    Oh, it isn’t the end too!
    The hand
    is going to knock up a hut for you
    and in the wide garden
    it smells with magnolia and manuscripts…

    And I am a sign.

    Liked by 2 people

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  15. and of course there’s the idea of somebody composed of dark matter falling in love with somebody composed of “normal” (baryonic) matter, although current laws of physics declare that impossible. Dark matter is not anti-matter. Anti-matter and matter interact by destroying each other. Dark matter and regular matter are just ships passing (through each other) in the night.

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      1. Yours, Jamie, is also a beautifully written poem, very vibrant, emotionally speaking. I love the whole imagery, the contrast light-darkness and getting rid of stupid prejudices. These lines are so beautiful and eloquent:

        “The other girls giggled,
        thinking you too stodgy, too old,
        but I stepped back,
        looked at your heart
        and lost my breath.”

        Liked by 1 person

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  16. Here’s another one:

    “Waiting to Be”
    (Raanana, December 4, 2015)

    What does a poem look like
    Before it is written?
    Just like a lover looks
    Before you have met her
    Or an infant looks
    Before it is conceived
    Like a soul looks
    Whenever you look
    Like potential,
    Pregnant but barren,
    Like the blank page of a notebook
    But more than that
    More than nothing
    But undefinable
    Waiting in the dark
    To collect itself
    To be.

    by Mike Stone from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/yet-another-book-of-poetry/

    Liked by 3 people

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  17. Here’s another I just remembered:

    “A Poem Unwritten”
    (Raanana, March 9, 2012)

    No one has ever written a poem about a poem unwritten
    Of the many virtues of such a poem
    The perfect meter of noambic nometer
    The clarity and minimalism leave
    Even haiku silent with envy.
    The language of silence is universal
    Requiring no translation.
    It will be unread by billions!
    It’s amazing that no one has thought of it,
    No one and I.

    from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/yet-another-book-of-poetry/

    Liked by 2 people

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  18. “Dimdumim”
    (Raanana, September 14, 2018)

    Here they call it dimdumim
    But you call it twilight,
    Still light when the orange sun
    Sinks behind the distant trees
    Or the purple sea under the far horizon
    And the colors of the things around you,
    The whites, the browns, and the greens,
    The grass and trees, even the faces of people,
    Bleed into gray, move farther away than before,
    Not yet dark, yes, darkening perhaps,
    But not quite dark. Suddenly the air
    Through which you wade cools slightly,
    Is easier to breathe, making you almost weightless,
    Waiting for the absolute darkness of night.
    In its obscurity possibilities hide,
    Almost anything can happen
    In the cool darkness
    And the obscurity takes any shape
    That thoughts can touch.
    When night does come
    You never see just when
    The dimdumim disappears.

    by Mike Stone from https://uncollectedworks.wordpress.com/call-of-the-whippoorwill/.

    Liked by 2 people

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  19. Hi Jamie — Your lines (and prompt), “your darkness my light” caused an explosion of thoughts in my mind. I thought about the latest scientific speculation about the composition of the universe, that most of it is composed of dark matter and dark energy that don’t interact with the matter and energy that we sense. I thought about how we focus on the sources of light and its reflections, the things that exist, the presences, but gloss over the sources of darkness, dismissing it as merely the absence of light, rarely able to sense the absence of things that once were, or that never were. Our world is filled with those things, words that were never spoken, or were spoken and unheard, or forgotten. I will try to come up with a poem that embodies these thoughts before the prompt is due, but I do have one poem that is more-or-less on theme. Here it is:

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  20. Does Age Matter

    And I believed in you because

    I loved you

    as a charming human being

    Knowledgeable attractive witty and quick

    And I tried to bear with your weaknesses

    Because we all have them and impress

    And I believed in you because

    I wanted to

    For I could see the tremendous potential

    In you as a creative enthusiastic loveable

    Charming personality that

    The Almighty

    Had made you.

    And I believed you

    That you knew so much more

    than me

    You could drive the car so perfectly

    And examine the patients

    so expertly

    as your learning taught you.

    And I believed you that you would share

    With me all

    That I wanted to tell you

    That I wanted you to learn

    You could do so much more

    In your profession

    And I believed you when you said

    I always say’ Help yourself’

    And you planned your time

    And tried to read every book

    that came your way

    and after meeting you I had hopes of

    reviving my shattered faith and trust

    In relationships

    And I loved you because

    I believed we could make it together

    I gave you all the chance

    And I am still hopeful

    That despite our age difference

    We can still be happy with each other

    And share care and learning and achievements

    And I am sure it will be so

    Because I believe in You.

    anjum wasim dar CER Copyright 2018

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Thank you!