Photograph courtesy of Zoltan Tasi, Unsplash

“if i knew what the artist knows,
i would surely respond soul and body
to the echo of the Ineffable in rough earthy things

i would not fear decay or work left undone
i would travel like the river through its rugged, irregular channels
comfortable with this life; imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”
Wabi Sabi, Jamie Dedes (inspired by Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers by Leonard Koren

And this being Tuesday, here are the wonderful, inspired, and through-provoking poems from the poets who came out to play in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt and poem, The Art of Reinvention, April 29. I have no doubt that you will enjoy these poems by Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Frank McMahon, Sandra Benskin Mesher, Ben Naga, Nancy Ndeke, Eric Nicholson, Adrian Slonaker, and Mike Stone.

Do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome: beginning, emerging, and pro poets.

She said…
My birth was a reinvention, nature’s just intervention,
against worldly desirous selfish, the spirits conspired.

Ever since I opened my eyes and saw Land Ahoy’
my caretaker’s faces fell, Oh it’s a girl, not a boy’

O boy, O boy, how I lost all attention, in the newly
found dimension, and to adapt to the Earthly code

I was reinvented from a ‘star’ to the human mode,
Life was all peaceful joy, lots of frolic and fun

Books pens and colors, my best teacher was a nun,
all good till I grew a bit, life then pointed a loaded gun

Not a golden buttercup, nor a bed of red roses, life was
a journey with hypertension and little comprehension

Flashes of love, commands, reprimands, and countless
demands, as ‘you girl, stop romping like a tomboy, restless’

Reinvention began early in skin and bone , a change enforced
had to leave and move away from the personal comfort zone.

Repeated bouts of illness drenched me in sweat and pain
I came under the surgeon’s knife again and again and again.

So she said

Destined to shine in a constellation up high, for a purpose,
sacredly pure, nature tested experimented me for sure

Called ‘short’ in height and low on the scales, actively smart
at home with three sisters I became ‘The prince of Wales.’

The young carefree part was over too soon, reinvention
returned to transform me into a bride, wife and mother.

What people saw was a lucky lady, sari clad laden with gold
what my inner self felt was a commodity invented, and sold.

Reinvention did not stop, as roles and health kept changing
from bride to wife, to mother cook , a total maid in the making.

‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on’, all revels will end,
Earth’s surface is emptied, humanity to isolated lock down, sent.

People are reinventing a whole new digital life, a fresh slice,
but this time a tube a mask a cane or wheelchair may not suffice.

So she said

Reinvention is the art, part of life, it is in nature from the start
For all in this world, a role to play, a duty, before we depart.

© 2020, Anjum Wasim Dar

Some Lines

I am but a label in a category
of diverse species, of humanity
surrounded by crows, chicken
and cats,visited by cows, in
company with a grey African parrot,

Sun’s changed position gives light
moon sometimes peeps through the
window at night,silence distorted by
barking dogs, wonder they are angry
or happy at humans locked down.

Unseen ecosystems decaying or
surviving, green or brown,one moment
wood, the next misunderstood, sprayed
netted drowned in fathoms bottomless,
nature changes forms, reinvents, recreates
all terrestrial on Earthly plane, all celestial
in the Milky Way-

and I say
‘All life is forever to be-
O Lord Thou hast made me-
shall thy work decay?’

© 2020, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum ji’s sites are:

“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar

Red Cup Revisited

The red cup – a fixture in pictures
My focus yet blurred in my mind
Strong and sweet – the fake message
Scared and silenced – the truth
It matched everything
Or so I thought
Remember?
I can
Not
Stop
Drinking
Toss the cup
Where can I drown
This fear of living
Who can I reinvent?
Lost for so long in the mix
I need to climb out of the rocks
Where is the hand holding the red cup?

© 2020, Irma Do

Irma’s site is: I Do Run / And I do a few other things too . . . 

Schrodinger’s Cat

Desperate to avoid reality’s sharp spears,
the walls of his world closing in,
he thought he’d apply for the role
of Schrodinger’s cat. He’d read a bit
about it, liked the idea of being at the same time
somewhere and nowhere.

He thought he’d seen an advert inviting
applications, in a paper or on-line,
he wasn’t sure. He dug around
on the world-wide web, learned that Schrodinger
had died. Or so it said. But how could they be sure?

To be a cat, sure of its identity,
pampered master of the household!
To have nine lives! He’d need those, or one
at least if they sealed him in the steel-
walled chamber, give him for company
an atom, which might decay or then
again might not. And if it did go off, triggering
the deadly charge of cyanide or bomb,
then his other self would be elsewhere
outside the chamber, observing the scientists
or safely ensconced in Harrogate.

He dreamed of this happy feline state.
To be and not to be, that indeed
was the question, inside reality
and outside. It might lead on, perhaps,
to a part in Cats: Eric, the quantum cat.

He fell asleep, humming the Great Escape,
replete with dreams. Until a worm
of doubt began to slither and ruffle
his grey, drowsing cells, led him, nearly,
to the edge of a fundamental question.

© 2020, Frank McMahon

At the Storm’s Edge, Frank’s debut collection, is available through Amazon US HERE and Amazon UK HERE.

.reinvention, day one.

so we have no internet, the

tv went off, we slept lovely.

woke to pouring rain and i

am still in pyjamas,

not a bit angry.

was hoping to write grevious

and nasy, yet without the spell

check i am as nothing.

it is later now, a slight

reinvention.

© 2020, Sonja Benskin Mesher

…reinvention, another day…

seems i have reinvented

everything quieter than before.

wet autumn days or is it winter,

the change comes

gradually.

i dreamed a cloud of

falling leaves, awake to find it is so.

it is so very quiet here today.

© 2020, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

Unconventional Gambit

Shall I compare thee to a pile of dung
Left, still warm and steaming, by my horse?
So graceful, so well groomed, so well hung.
I describe the creature not myself of course
And pray my words may not, my darling, cause dismay.
Oh forgive a fool whose ardour outruns his tongue.
Should my simple similes offend thee what can I say
But that ’tis from untrimm’d spontaneity they’ve sprung.
If thou wrinkle thy nose at the smell, even sight
Of manure let my lips bid you reconsider the conceit.
Coming upon such ordure to the gardener is a delight
To be shovelled up and carried away tout de suite
For forking it into a bed is surely only but meet.
Without such sustenance would a rose smell so sweet?

© 2020, Ben Naga

Ben’s site is Ben Naga, Gifts from the Musey Lady and Me. “Laissez-moi vous recanter ma vraie histoire.”

Past This Corner.

Names define, like locales and culinary delights,
Faith’s too and the practices demanded,
Routines set, manners and etiquettes,
Arriving at ports of who the outside says we are,
See how the tides disagree,
With the silent wind howling and sweeping,
Knocking sense of old forts down,
Hear the rhythm of anxiety drive leaders to tears,
See the rise of questions over old biases,
Notice the flattening of hills of divisions,
Depths are shallowing with new eyes,
Everywhere a new dawn speaks,
Deference is no longer business as usual,
Indifference is learning a new thing,
Every truism is called for re-evaluation,
Hearts are matching with a light lense,
One not trained to pay allegiance to differentiate,
Reprograming the senses to acknowledge more,
We are back at the drawing board of humanity,
And shocking results bear witness,
That all we held prestigious is hollow,
And those we thought minions are angels,
And that material can be so valueless in times of need,
And that humanity needs a higher power to pull it out of it’s own mess,
Leading fact being,
It’s taken a tempest to teach us to be human again,
Harshness has sent us to observe,
Ever so carefully,
That either,
We reinvent our collective treatment of Earth and earthlings,
Or, tragically,
Man walks the dinosaur road.
Everything teaches.
Let agony teach us repentance ,
Forgiveness and fair play.
Respecting life and it’s sustainer.

© 2020, Nancy Ndeke

Nancy’s Amazon Page is HERE.

In the Shadow of Covid 19

In the garden
daffodils wilt; blossom falls.
Some may see today repeating
like a wind-up toy, while
what may seem hum drum,
the hum of the fridge,
a ticking clock,
the science fiction silence outside,
is the world renewing itself
in each dying moment.
And we too, while honouring
the bitter taste of each
remembered mistake
can fall apart again and again.

© 2020, Eric Nicholson

Eric’s site is: https://erikleo.wordpress.com

Long Night’s Journey Into Montana

Barely cognizant of the college town
just clinging to the jagged western edge
of Big Sky Country
the way a hostage hangs on to hope,
I’d never been to Missoula.
But at three-thirty a.m. last Thursday,
inspired by filtered internet images
and a kind wrestler in a cowboy hat
raised in the region,
I bought a one-way ticket,
concluding that this
must be a place capable of
incubating a fugitive from
stultifying status quos
who’s ghosted
his foot-gazing gait
and pizza-packed paunch,
swapping them for tight-fitting togs
and a swagger that surfaced
once he split from
toxic sap staining a family tree
and a metropolitan apartment
polluted with the vibrations of
vicious self-vilification.

So I spend the plane’s descent
placing a faded denim jacket
over broad, bony kneecaps,
extracting a pocket spiral notebook
adorned with the address of a
hotel-turned-home,
and noting down a new name
that spontaneously becomes
my own.

© 2020, Adrian Slonaker

Use the search feature on this site and on The BeZine to read more of Adrian’s poetry. Worth your time.

Body and Soul

All things physical were once naught,
Became, changed, continued changing,
And will be naught once more,
Whether it is a living breathing thing,
A skyscraper or a star,
And if it was once beautiful
That will also change,
But Plato spoke of ideals,
Perfect and so unchanging,
Untouched by the experience of time,
So impossible in the world of physicality
Yet so real as only souls can be
Where time never was nor will be
And if a soul is beautiful
Then beautiful it will always be.

Except from The Hoopoe’s Call

©2020, Mike Stone

Hope and Despair

There are but two futures to portend:
Hope is one, despair the other.
Despair comes to you from the western horizon
Bearing a large sack on his hunched back
And kerplatzes his fat tuches on your chest,
Plucking reasons why you can’t or shouldn’t
From his heavy sack.
Hope is not a safety net to catch you if you fall
Unless first you put one under you.
Hope comes to you from the east
Bearing nothing but her thin light
To dispel the western darkness.
Hope softly persuades you to change
What you can and must.
She gently pushes you over your nest’s edge
Impossibly high off the ground
So that you may fly
Or die.

Except from The Hoopoe’s Call

© 2020, Mike Stone

Creating a Language

I had a thought one day:
Why not create a special language?
After all, it has been said that
Languages shape the way we think
And likely what we think,
And since we can do whatever we do want,
I would like to change our language.

I would start by getting rid of certain words,
The hateful, hurtful, shameful ones,
The ones we wish we’d never said or heard:
Killing, hurting, raping, stealing,
Cheating, lying, disrespecting,
Boasting, pointing fingers,
Singing na-na na-na,
Warfare, torture, threats, and frightening,
Anger and self-righteousness.
There’s probably more, I’ll let you know
When I think of them.

I wouldn’t get rid of sad words
Since sadness is the other side of happiness
And nothing has just one side.

Then I’d add some brand-new words,
Some words we wished we had but didn’t:
Words that tell you how I really feel,
Rainbow words with all the gradients of feeling,
Like different grades of love,
Powerful words that can do what they say,
Single words that say everything,
Words that make you lift your head to hear them,
Different lengths of silence, like rests in music;
These are words I’d like to add.

Except from The Hoopoe’s Call

© 2019, Mike Stone

I Am What I Am

I’m not what I once was
Neither am I what I will be.
I am what I am
Until death do me part.

Except from The Hoopoe’s Call

© 2019, Mike Stone

To Survive in a Haphazard World

To survive in a haphazard world
In which good and evil are meaningless words
To understand what is happening all around
What has happened and what might happen or not
To feel what is good or evil to oneself and others
To think of what one’s done and not done
What one might do and what one must
To believe what one can’t think through
And to doubt those beliefs when doubts arise
To act when there’s no more time to think
But to stop that action when there’s time to think
Or it’s no longer needed,
These are what a mind is for.

Except from The Hoopoe’s Call

© 2019, Mike Stone

Mike’s website is HERE.

Call of the Whippoorwill is Mike Stone’s fourth book of poetry, It contains all new poems covering the years from 2017 to 2019. The poetry in this book reflects the unique perspectives and experiences of an American in Israel. The book is a smorgasbord of descriptions, empathies, wonderings, and questionings. It is available on Kindle and if you have Kindle Unlimited you can download it as part of your membership. I did.  Recommended. / J.D

Jamie Dedes:

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