“Come sleep with me: We won’t make Love, Love will make us.”
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.
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
LikeLiked by 1 person
♥️👍
LikeLike
How does it happen that love transforms us
Everyone knows but nobody warns us
LikeLiked by 1 person
😊
LikeLike
truly beautiful, Jamie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Deb.
LikeLike
Hi Jamie, I really liked this prompt so have written something you can see here. Hope you are well. https://reneejustturtleflight.com/2018/10/08/flourishes-whorls/
LikeLike
Beautiful poem Jamie. Hope you are well. Oh! sweet kitty photos. I am sure she is loved.
LikeLike
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.
LikeLiked by 1 person
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/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Mike.
LikeLiked by 1 person
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/
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you, Mike! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
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/
LikeLiked by 2 people
😥
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, my! I forgot to paste the poem’s title: When Silent Love met with Boasting Vanity
LikeLike
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/
LikeLiked by 3 people
Got it. 😊♥️
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry, I did not pay attention to this.
LikeLiked by 1 person
?
LikeLike
I mean I forgot to copy and paste the title of the poem.
LikeLiked by 1 person
🤣💕
LikeLiked by 1 person
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.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thanks Jamie.
1st response….
.love . the numbers.
he kindness that is. glass reflecting. slowly it starts. maybe we need to check our numbers?
LikeLiked by 2 people
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.
LikeLiked by 2 people
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.
LikeLiked by 3 people
♥️
LikeLiked by 2 people
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.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you, Marta!
LikeLiked by 1 person
You are always kindly welcome, Jamie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a lovely combination of science and lyricism in your poems and explanatory texts made of beautiful prose-poetry!
LikeLiked by 1 person
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/
LikeLiked by 3 people
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/
LikeLiked by 2 people
“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/.
LikeLiked by 2 people
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:
LikeLiked by 2 people
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
LikeLiked by 2 people