“Hallelujah is a Hebrew word which means ‘Glory to the Lord.’ The song explains that many kinds of Hallelujahs do exist. I say: All the perfect and broken Hallelujahs have an equal value. It’s a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion.” Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian musician, singer/songwriter, poet and novelist
Walkers are lined-up neat by the dining room,
like race horses at the starting gate and the
Asians wear crosses, insured by Christianity.
The Europeans find comfort in Vipassana,
Savor the ironies. Hallelujah. Glory be!
Glory be, Hallelujah; glory our broken bodies
and the broken gods that haunt our lives
Praise in all perfect and fractured Hallelujahs
At three they’re viewing Brokeback Mountain,
but I’m staying in my room, playing Hallelujah!
Compressor humming in the background.
I’m just toking O2, pondering the complexities,
savoring the ironies. Hallelujah. Glory be!
Glory be, Hallelujah, glory the broken bodies
and the broken gods that haunt our lives
Praise in all perfect and fractured Hallelujahs
© 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
Write a poem in praise of all the hallelujahs, the perfect and the fractured, an affirmation of ultimate faith in life despite the broken places and the ironies. Share your poem/s or a link to it/them in the comments section below.
All poems shared 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 participating in The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com in order to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
Deadline: Monday, June 25 at 8 p.m. PDT.
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, sharing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning nonjudgemental place to connect.
“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.” Ursula K. Le Guin
These responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, the lesser being of a lesser god, June 13 certainly take us through time and geography, touch lightly or deeply on theme, all while warming our hearts and spinning our minds along the way. Enjoy! and Thanks! to Paul Brookes, Irene Emanuel, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Marta Pombo Salés. These poets seem always up for a challenge.
Thanks also and a warm welcome to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt to Debbie Felio, Carol Mikoda and Anne G. Myles, accomplished writers all. Debbie’s work was featured before on The Poet by Day but not for Wednesday Writing Prompt, so here she is introduced in this context.
Join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome to share their work on theme.
Least of These
I find myself
in losing self
amid the grander
moments in creation
for why would I
settle as the larger
of the lesser
among so little
grant me the serenity
to seek the enormity
of a great God’s creativity
lesser me at the edge
of Grand Canyon’s
cragged colors
lesser me in the depths
and breadths
of roaring oceans
lesser me in the wonders
of rainbows and cloud banks
snowstorms and tornados
lesser me counted
as one of millions
stars and galaxies
never am I so grand
as when the Grandest
includes in His resume
the lesser me.
© 2018, Deb Felio
DEBBIE FELIO is a poet/witness living and writing in Boulder, Colorado
Death’s Immensity
Stand next to one wall, let’s say
the north side, of a massive
building. Look up into the
sky, noticing only a
few puffs of clouds. Sweep your eyes
back down, catching sight of this
wall — gray, smooth, unending — and
recall it.
Instantly, the personal fantasy of
existence disintegrates,
leaving only wisps. Lungs
empty,
breath sucked away.
Only flatness,
a loss of all
color and detail.
Once again,
know Death
and be
paralyzed.
© 2018, Carol Mikoda
CAROL MIKODA teaches writing and new teachers in upstate New York. She lives in the country where she walks in the woods, studies the sky to photograph clouds, and grows vegetables and flowers. She also sings and plays piano, guitar, and bass. Although she enjoys travel, her cat, Zen Li Shou, would rather she stayed home.
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Scaffold
For Mary Dyer, Quaker martyr, d. 1660
1.
The only woman to be taken to the scaffold twice.
In October, you watched your friends drop,
then they let you go. In May you came back
and the second time it was for real.
Both times they marched you the last mile
flanked by soldiers, drummers, ministers —
the charivari of execution. You said
It is the greatest joy I can enjoy in this world.
I hunt online to see what you saw before you,
gaze lifted, sure and unrepentant:
the raw wood architecture of terror
set up on Boston Neck,
a strange delicacy in it perhaps;
its silence, its certainty, full stop.
The light that was the frailest metaphor
pouring through the noose.
2.
Scaffolding, as educators call it,
means how you model or demonstrate
the way to solve a problem,
how you build on students’ experiences
adding support, until in time
they can do it for themselves.
When the terror of the present gripped me
I wanted to write your story,
attempt to interweave it with my own,
tell what happened while it was possible.
By the time I reached the end, I hoped
(though I no longer believed what you did
as I’d tried to many years ago
and it almost crushed me)
you would teach me to be brave.
3.
Before they led imaginary
John Proctor to the scaffold,
before he thought better of it,
before he chose the honor of his name,
he bellowed in desire
I want my life!
4.
The poet said in workshop:
The scaffolding of a poem is its skeleton.
Consider the poem as a body;
what’s keeping it upright?
What are the rules that keep it alive,
that build its world?
I couldn’t help but smile.
I saw that after all it was this I got:
in middle age as you were,
you helped bring me back to poetry
and left me there, lesser, grateful,
heart pounding with desire
to walk and keep on walking
in my own recovered light.
© 2018, Anne G. Myles
ANNE G. MYLES, originally from the east coast, and now Associate Professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, specializing in early American literature. You can find some of my earlier academic thoughts about Mary Dyer in her Wikipedia entry, as I recently learned to my surprise. I have been drawn back to my lost origins in creative writing in the past year or so, and poetry (the form in which I was trained) even more recently, including but not limited to working on a series of Mary Dyer poems. I hope to begin sending work out soon. I have a blog about matters related to my recovering my creative voice at “How public — like a Blog –,” annegolda.blog
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My god is
Imperfect, a perfect image for me.
Humbled by its mistakes.
My god is a mistake.
A wrong answer,
Differently abled.
Its winters often in spring.
Its summers sometime in autumn.
My god is a fracture, a flaw.
Gender fluid. Defined by its
Inhumanity, it is complete
in its incompleteness. Aspires
not to aspire. My god is contradiction,
counter intuitive. Fresh in its decay.
Its more is always less. Thank god.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration * History * Imagination)
Gust Is Deaf, Hills Are Blind,
trees can’t walk properly,
Flowers twitch haphazardly.
Grass is mute, rivers are dumb.
Nature is differently abled.
Mountains are too tall,
struggle to talk when they can’t
bend a knee, get down to those smaller
who are in awe when all mountains need
is to speak face to face , dispel their myth.
Same with water that rushes by,
no time to stand and stare, moments pass
before they have time to fully comprehend.
Flux needs a still moment but has to go on.
Still waters wish they could rush.
All hankers after what it Is not,
Cannot accept their place as their lot.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration * History * Imagination)
© 2018, Irene Emanuel
. the robe.
kept in a box, precious.
lifted down for those to see,
that care.
did the understanding come,
the idea that all old things
are wanted, needed for their story.
not discarded on higher ground,
where dust and moth abound.
the lesser garment became prefered,
as the last shall become the first.
we shall look at the photographs.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (poetry and illustration below)
.. bad night dreaming ..
dreamed of devastation, flew miles low
over concrete . skeletons, bones of the thing.
all is dust, as dust we have become. slow.
grey. nothing moves here no more. no sighs.
they have forgotten us. we have forgotten them.
are we now the bones of what we were?
bad night dreaming.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher
Confidence
With ebbs and flows
like sea and lake waters
the ground was trembling,
magnificent earthquake
confidence was at stake.
Wanted to do your best
so never felt at rest
you are too self-demanding
so confidence faded.
Too much self-exigency
leave me please, let me be
tell it now.
That parent, sister, brother,
that relative of yours
or that good friend or lover
if not, the teacher you had
someone said: great, keep up
or someone said, instead,
I think you have no talent
you will not earn a living
you are now wasting your time.
Your confidence fluctuating.
Ghosts of self-exigency
ghosts of negative people
let them vanish.
Hateful comparisons,
like storms amid the sea
till everything seems awash,
like strong winds on Earth
till each house looks swept,
mercilessly taken.
What light dwells in your soul
what thoughts in your mind
this is not to be disregarded,
disrespected or dismissed.
From your uniqueness, your creation
comes as a true revelation.
Let the ghosts of comparison
fade away from the sea
from the land you inhabit.
As the sun shines on you
so will confidence.
© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die.
O me! for why is all around us here
As if some lesser god had made the world …
Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King
i always come back to the sea ~
in the winter when gardens lay waste
and the contemplative time is upon us
and in summer, languid and color crazy
no matter the season, she shines
self-confident
decked-out in sunlighted spray
tossing her waves into wild arabesque
roaring her traveling chants
no reluctant tourist, the sea
the eternal sea,
in the power of her isness
she mocks me
marks me as the lesser being
of a lesser god
© 2016, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Photo courtesy of morgueFile
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
Sometimes in the face of nature’s magnificence, I really do feel as though I might be the child of a lesser god, though goodness knows we humans are as much beauty and miracle as any other manifestation of that creative energy, called by many “God.” When, how, where have you felt like a lesser being … in the face of what? Tell us in your own poem/s and share them or a link to it/them in the comments section below.
All poems shared on theme will be published next Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook.
IF this is your first time participating in The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com in order to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
Deadline: Monday, June 18 at 8 p.m. PDT.
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, sharing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning nonjudgemental place to connect.
“No man can reveal to you aught but that which already lies half asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.
“The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
“If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.” Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
The theme for Wednesday Writing Prompt, awakening on our rockey rebel road, June 6, 2018, was to share with us the poet in non-ordinary reality, the doorways that lead from the physical to the spiritual. This was perhaps not the easiest of prompts but these poets rose to the occasion with depth and panache. Lovely!
Thank you Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pangelov and Anjum Wasim Dar. Bravo!
A warm welcome to poet, writer and educator, Michele Stepto, new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. I included a link below to her book, which looks fascinating. It’s on my reading list.
Enjoy this fine collection with its profound delights and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. Links to each poet’s site are included below so that you can visit, read more of their work, and get to know them.
Fog
She received as a gift a carpet
with fog in it and moved
the furniture and rolled
the carpet out in the middle
of the room and found
that fog was rising out of it
in little wisps
and that when she stood
at the edge of it it
was just like standing at the edge of a cliff
high up over the ocean in the evening
when the fog is coming in
She moved the furniture back
and it did not
fall through the carpet
it did not disappear
she sat down in her old
armchair next to the lamp
and thought
she was floating in mid-air
on a foggy day
or flying a plane in the fog
everything feeling pleasantly
cold and damp as she closed her eyes
She sat there for a long while
dreaming about trees seen in fog
and things coming toward you
out of the fog small birds
who stayed put and didn’t fly in the fog
as she was staying put
now in her chair
their heads tucked
under their wings and dreaming
as she was of paradise
of their own Shambhala
high in the mountains
girdled in fog
or clouds
it hardly
mattered
© 2018, Michele Stepto
MICHELE STEPTO: I have taught literature and writing at Yale University for many years, and recently at the Bread Loaf School of English in Vermont. My work has appeared online at Verse-Virtual, What Rough Beast (at Indolentbooks.com), Ekphrastic Review, NatureWriting, Mirror Dance, Lacuna Journal, and One Sentence Poems, which nominated “The Unfinished Poem” for a Pushcart Prize this year. Along with my son Gabriel, I translated from the original Spanish Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World.
„Убийството на Марат“, Бодри, (1868)
“Miss Corde was reading Plutarch by night the books then used to be taken seriously” Zbigniew Herbert
(Adam Lux – Meditations)
Miss (or already, why not, Missis)
is reading.
So did she before getting married. The revolution of 1960s All is Love is over.
She used to sleep in tents. Why not?
The freedom has to be defended.
Drums, fires, the screams:
“Down with! Who doesn’t jump is.”
Rumble behind the walls. Marat is. Alive? Death? Used to live?
The time is traveling. The crown’s refined hat.
The hair short. With all the colors.
“In a dress like a blue rock.”
Obelisk? Yes! of passing from
necessity to
necessity (for survival).
Mrs. Corde, is reading. The Game of …
She’s dreaming. “All is love”.
The day is the most usual.
Charlotte?
She administrated justice.
The falling stars are glowing.
Democratic changes in Bulgaria started after the Berlin Wall in 1989 Jean Paul Marat, a prominent French Revolution. Charlotte Conde is his murderer. https://shortprose.blog
© 2018, bogpan [Bozhidar Pangelov] (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)
REALM
Sleep deprivation
May lead to conversation
That you wake up inthemiddleof
Even though it is you who is talking.
The Goddess of Sleeplessness
In that other underworld
Has made you an emissary of her
Realm,
And conferred on you
The demigod’s trick
Of creating monsters.
Taillights
Become eyes…
© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)
A Smooth Skin
is ugly. Trace beauty
in bloody edges of scars.
Tattoo your face and hands
with raw wounds. Glow.
Bruises brighten your looks.
Pimples and spots mark sexiness.
Wrinkles entice awe.
The look is all in scabs.
Containers
do not contain. Vacuum
is packed with it all.
I wish you were more obtuse.
I can’t understand this clarity.
All is tightly enclosed in open space.
All is nebulous.
Please talk in riddles. Plain
Sentences confuse my head.
Exactitude is imprecise.
Clarity is obscurity.
Distance is not a measure.
I need you to be woolly with words.
Only The
incompetent do their jobs properly.
Ensure you are only partly trained.
Half skilled emergency services save lives.
It’s what you don’t know that counts.
Amateurs are the only professionals.
Fully trained and experienced cause accidents.
Complete competency leads to lack of trust.
Once experienced you are useless to society.
Successful people are always trainees.
They are oil in the cogs, ensure smooth running.
Mistakes ensure a job is done thoroughly.
They ensure society is rectified.
Be Promising
There are no promises.
Money does not exist.
Nothing to breach.
No agreements or vows.
One can never be broken.
You can never be on one.
No laws, no lines can’t be crossed.
You promise not to promise.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
This Poem Must Be Taken Literally
My body is a rainbow
My blood is an explosion
My heart is a rusty cage
These are not metaphors
Please take this literally
That cloud is my opinion
That road is an orange
That wish is my house
That burnt toast is my belonging
These are not metaphors
This hand is a metal spade
This foot is a knife edge
This mouth is a dark valley
These words are made of light
This is not a poem
This is the ultimate answer.
This tells you how to live
This tells you the only truth
This Mop And Bucket
are poetry to me.
My pen is a mop
I stick in a bucket
of disinfectant floor cleaner
pull out mop sodden
with words and splash
them backwards and forwards
slop lines one after the other
Until the floor fair shines,
My mop is dry, needs another dip.
I squeeze out the gunk
back into the bucket.
More the floor shines,
dirtier the bucketful gets.
A good poem is a clean floor.
© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)
. reading for anna .
carrying the book, gently,
i find that jesus
is off the wall again.
breeze from the doors
blows him and cobwebbed minds
away,
as i write the small book,
on black keys of words.
gentle here this morning,
sun dreams in,
quiet in all the rooms,
and arms held high,
i come into the morning,
with string and sealing wax.
sbm.
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher
.valley of the widow.
grey day, rain.
squeaky bath taps.
this is the valley
of the widow.
this is the day.
writing the wall,
trees stand tall.
yellow flags, the route,
to another place
© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher
There Is Someone
There is someone who talks to me
And keeps me waiting-
If only I could see The Spirit
Which I feel close by, yet so far
A bar on thoughts and actions,
I cannot think because my mind is quiet
And not moving or stirring
Lest the sweet words of The Spirit
May not find their way in-
And I may crush the tender layer thin
In between which keeps us bound,
I cannot let go the joy
I have found in my heart
at hearing the mellifluous melody
of the affectionate aura around,
which seeps into my soul to make peace
and washes smoothly away the tears
and the fears so deep,
I can now sleep with ease
For I cannot speak of the
Good Night Prayer
That descends in time so rare
my soul, to repair
And I cannot say that if I wake
Life may be like a snow flake
White and pure and sure, as
The Angels will come to Heaven, take.
© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 