“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
– Mark Strand, Selected Poems

Magazine international d’information et d’éducation culturelle.

Levure litteraire is an eclectic online Zine with an international masthead featuring art, music and literature in multiple languages.  It’s the sort of Zine you will love to swim in, rich with color and experience. It’s worth your time. Meanwhile, here are three of mine published HERE in Levure litteraire. Enjoy!

Between Language and Myth

In the garden of light, I stand,

between language and myth.

Strands of wild green words
weave irresistible vines to climb.

I find the rules of grammar written
in the language of cellular memory,

strung like seedlings and pollen dust
around my bare and willing neck.

Each day I walk to the quarries
to hard mine for the sweetly lyrical.

I blister from digging in hot sands
and hard stone for parables.
The walls that bind my heart
are broken by the solace of

language spun on a vision quest.
I stride the hills of my heartland.

I write as though the fables are
my only real nourishment –

perhaps they are

Once Upon a Sea Green Day

We flew along the freeway yesterday under
a cold coastal expanse of a blue ceiling.

It reminded me of you and how we dusted
the vaults of our minds to rid them of fear
and the old lexicons of grief and guilt, the
whalebone girdles of unfounded faith and
common conventions, saccharine and sticky.

I thought of that one sea-green day we spent

under just such a sky in a land far away and
how we changed your name then, reframed
your story to tell of hope and not despair.
You sketched flowers blossoming in the dust
of a spring that promised but never delivered.

Now we don’t speak of men but of cats with

their custom of keeping heart and claws intact.
We tell ourselves stories in rhythms that resound
in deep sleep. Soon now the ancient calls to
feral festivals will still and the time’s arrived when
our only play is in the margins, fate hanging from
our skeletons like Spanish moss on old oak.

It pleases me that life’s passage spins
into poemed reliquary and a memory of the
red peau de soie I wore to your prom that June.

Le Fée Verte, Absinthe

in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
ascending the rosy ramparts of heaven

“A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.” Oscar Wilde

Poems by Jamie Dedes. All rights reserved.

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My Sidto (Grandmother) Adele Riachi Aboumoosa circa 1942

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently 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. My poetry was recently read by Northern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton

13 Comments

  1. Oh, Jamie, these poems are so lovely. I especially enjoyed the first one because it so wonderfully expressed the joy of your soul as a poet. Your hard labor in finding the right words brings me great joy.

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  2. Beautiful poems, Jamie! The line “The walls that bind my heart
are broken by the solace of
    language spun on a vision quest.” has stayed with me the past few days. Words are a solace! Thank you for sharing these. I will also have to check out the publication these were in. Hope you are doing well!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Thank you!