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Our Small Beginning, a poem …. and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

Brooklyn, 1970

From the beginning, Son
you were our most profound joy,
a fresh poem finely etched in old gold,
holding fast to beauty and grace,
faithful to your own gentle spirit

Just yesterday
I retrieved my soul at last,
moved by the placid persuasion of a psalm
reminding me of my rootedness
in the archives of heaven

In earlier times
life lay ahead, a rhythm of reciting tones,
a paced chant before all that somber news
and facing facts and the quiet homely work
of peacemaking for your sake

But this morning
I awoke a fading mendicant nun,
reading my own rich requiem Mass,
a celebration of my heart’s trove
and your constant love

Another breath or two
and I’m a whisper in your ear,
just an old story of someone who birthed you
now melting into the ground of Being
leaving only our hallowed cord

Listen now, Son, to the voice in the wind.
. . . . .Listen, Son –
How love whooshes and swirls, encircles and fills,
echoing from our small Beginning
into the great Forever

© 2016, poems, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Write a poem for your child or grandchild or a niece or nephew and share it or a link to it in the comments section below. If you are new to Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a photo and short bio to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. It will be shared along with your poem/s by way of introducing you to readers … and to me.  🙂  Work shared on theme will be published here next Tuesday.  All are encouraged to participate: novice, emerging or pro.  You have until Monday, April 16, at 8 pm PDT to respond.

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“enough, Enough, ENOUGH!” … and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

The responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, April 4, Where is the will of the cup to overcome the sword?, are marked by compassion, concern, insight, and sadness. A collection of heartfelt works by three poets new to Wednesday Writing Prompt (June G. Paul, Frank McMahon, Siobhan Tibbs – bios included by way of introduction) and by three of our dear regulars (Paul Brookes, Sonja Benson Mesher, and Mike Stone).  As a part of her response, Sonja has treated us to some of her artwork this week.

Thanks to all six poets for generously sharing their work and coming out to play. We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome – encouraged – novice, emerging or pro.

The Golden Shovel Poem

The bar brawl began after midnight, blood and wine splattered where
she was sitting and asking herself, Has everyone gone out of their mind? Tell me if this is
real? Is it true that some people still do not believe that the holocaust has happened?  The
ignorance and denial of people, the erasing of and rewriting, of the history of mankind will
certainly be the cause of the end of
us all. And will the end of the world come before the end of all time? The
woman wondered, as she leaned over to pick up the cup
he had dropped during during the brawl. Standing there with the empty cup she opened her mouth to
speak, quietly asking him in whispers, Why is it so hard for you to overcome
your past, your addiction to alcohol and fighting about the weapons of warfare when it was the
Word of God, who spoke before and on the cross, offering peace with his two edged sword?
“Where is the will of the cup to overcome the Sword?”*
 
© 2018, June G. Paul
* line in the poem:  time for the temple whores to sleep with insanity, and take the war from it,   (c), 2017 by Jamie Dedes
*
enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
*
We drink the cup of the new covenant without
taking in its meaning, for God’s sake
Jesus Christ
turned water, into wine, into blood.
The blood of the Passover lambs replaced with
the wine in the Passover cup he called the blood of the new covenant.
There is wine to be shed, wine to be poured out at the altar
instead of blood being shed all over this earth.  Enough!
Enough drinking from this cup without living into its meaning,
without remembering Jesus Christ and his will for us – Peace.
Enough! Overcome the sword, wake up, stay, and pray, save yourselves.
Enough of the drunken soldiers drinking, trying to forget, and crying over
the blood shed from all the wars they’ve fought on this earth, Enough!
Enough! Drink, all of you, the cup of the new covenant and remember
Jesus Christ
lifted the cup in his hands while speaking his will for it and for all –
Drink, all of you, it will be shed for the forgiveness of sin.
He poured out his life of prayer for us, remember Jesus,
Remember his will for us – Peace.
It’s time we sacrifice our sin for Him, to overcome the sword,
for our own sakes and for God’s sake, to save ourselves from
the hell we’ve been causing on this earth – Nuclear blasts and bombs
bursting over and under and into the air, the land and the sea
we’re polluting ourselves and our own eternity.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
Now is the time to cease our fighting, now is the time to bring an end to war.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH! the battle cry of peacemakers,
Kings and Queens and Princes of Peace on earth are crying out.
Now is the time to call out and bring out the peacemakers
Those who believe in the will of the cup and the new covenant
will overcome the will to draw their swords, setting world at ease
There is time, Today, time to fill and bless the cup and lift it up
There is time, Today, time enough to be forgiven of sin,
There is time, Today, time enough for us all to sacrifice our sins and live
There is time, Today, for us to live in peace with all nations.
Now is the time to set the nations at ease instead of keeping them on edge
Now is the time for the will of the cup to overcome the sword and the world.
In peace, let the people of the earth, heal and forgive,
In peace, let us all find joy in co-creating Heaven on earth,
for that and therein is where the will of the cup is found.
*
(c) 2018, June G. Paul
*
June G. Paul

JUNE G. PAUL is an aspiring poet, wife and grandmother who enjoys creativity.  She and her husband live in Portage WI.  She recently scheduled a series of monthly poetry readings with featured poets and open mic time.  June is currently working on several different writing and art projects.  She has self-published two books and will be soon coming out with her first Chapbook which she is titling, My Poems: Chapped not Trapped.

*

FIND me WORDS

Find me words to stop the slaughter.
Find me words which will be heard
and  not just heard but taken up,
amplified and echoed. But not

just  voiced by millions or painted
onto banners. Find me words which
will pierce concrete walls and steel-clad
minds, find me words which will stop.

Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms

the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order

more assaults. If they will not desist,
then give me power to move them
to the cellars, the shattered streets
and farms and make them wait alone
while we decide their future. What
can they offer to atone? The dead
and maimed must speak, pronounce. Find
them words to write the final page.

© 2018, Frank McMahon, originally published on Reuben Woolley’s I am not a silent poet

FRANK McMAHON is a professional social worker in the UK and includes work with the Red Cross. He’s written several plays and more recently had a creative burst writing poems. His publications include I am not a silent poet, The Cannon’s Mouth, and Cirencester Scene. Frank lives in Cirencester. He’s had two more poems to appear later this year in other journals and is also a member of a local writer’s group.

 

a few help the others, while the others suffer

 

there was a picture of a bomb   in blaenau, next

to a drawing of a dick, and a passage from the bible.

hash tag.

deuteronomy.

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time for the temple whores to sleep with insanity and take the war out of it, a poem … and your Wednesday Writing Prompt

800px-castle_bravo_blast

does it bloom, this horror,
from my nonEuropean roots
from the scent of cinnamon in my blood?
the brown and yellow tinges of my skin?
or is it just your old soul and mine and
this intuition we share on the ground
of one another’s battles, witness the fuming
anger feeding disenchantment in the street
and the acquisitive tendencies of the elite,
cowardly saber-rattling, cut off from authority,
from that innate expressively honest power
of our erotic selves, our instinctive selves,
the non-rational knowing that embodies
strength, nothing weak or pornographic
in its expression, a profound antithesis
to the pornography of war and hate that,
in the end, is about impotence, about the
emboli of narrow minds, grasping oligarchs
fomenting tribal dissents for their own ends
or dropping bombs like a child bangs pots –
to overwhelm the fear of thunder, a game
of chicken, of the hawk-hawk play
toward a mutually assured destruction . . .

just a matter of time 

as we stand the ground of one another’s battles
where peace would be revolutionary and
the unholy alliance of wealth and fear-mongering
might burn itself out, find its way into justice,
but here we are, once again, in thrall to the
sociopaths, they have us bloodied and bound ~
their eyes are the aged face of clockwork orange,
numb to the obscenities of maim and murder …
where is the will of the cup to overcome
the sword? time for the temple whores to
sleep with insanity and take the war out of it

© 2017, poem, Jamie Dedes; Photo credit ~ July 9, 1956 nuclear weapon test on Enewetak Atoll, an image of the National Nuclear Security Administration and as such in the public domain

Note: This poem is an excerpt from the March 2018 issue of The BeZine, Waging Peace. 

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Where is the will of the cup to overcome the sword?  Why aren’t we succeeding in our efforts to bring wars and other violent conflict to an end? Share your thoughts … perhaps inspiration … in poetry. Leave your work or a link to it in the comments section below. All are invited – encouraged – to participate: novice, emerging or pro. Works shared on theme will be published here next Tuesday.  If this is your first time participating in Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photograph to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. This will be used to introduce you to readers. You have until Monday, April 9 at 8 p.m. PDT to respond.

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::wonderland:: . . . and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

The last Wednesday Writing Prompt, March 28, invited poets to write about place. Here are the interesting, intriguing, and sometimes poignant responses from poets: Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brooks, Kakali Das Ghosh, and Sonja Benskin Mesher. I’m touched though not surprised that home inspired a few of the poems featured today.

For some writers poetry may be a primary form of artistic expression but it is not the only one. You’ll note, I always include links to contributors blogs when they have them. I hope you’ll visit and get to know them or connect with them on Facebook. Gary, Sonja (an award-winning artist, so many I can’t keep up) and Kakali are stellar artists, very different in style but rewarding.  Paul (who often writes in regional dialet), Gary and Sonja are also photographers. Given Paul’s knowledge and love of art, he has distinguished himself with some very fine ekphrastic poetry.

Gary is sharp, original and unique. He honored me with one of his sketches. Thanks again, Gary!

jamie-dedes-02222017

I’m pleased beyond all the words with which we play to present these remarkably talented folks to you here, one of the gratifications of a “connected world.”  I hope you’ll share your own work with us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.

the phoenix and phoenix

phoenix arizona lies
asprawl across the valley of the sun,
and that sun in summer stuns one
who is wise to heads indoors,

but the winters, mild and tasty,
bid a million phoenicians rise
and form a wing-flexing phoenix
of basking and bonhomie
and renewal.

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)

the phoenix and phoenix

phoenix arizona lies
asprawl across the valley of the sun,
and that sun in summer stuns one
who is wise to heads indoors,

but the winters, mild and tasty,
give a million phoeni

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)

Our Wombwell

sunbreaking brought bling jewels from overnight
rain, droplet tiaras/earrings trees, lampposts ankle bracelets.

On bus glimpse un netted/unblinded windows massive TVs window on window on corporate images: ogle goggle boxed.

Fresh grass laundered, barbeque wafts, rounding white clouds sky ablaze: Natural delights

cat trots downhill to bike shop. Black stringtied purse roadside. Folded bus pass at bus stop: ways home

© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)

My Black Spot

A treasure island mark on a palm
for which mam says she has blankets
in the airing cupboard.

For any metal crashes
we might hear from
the busy A one.

A grey metal bridge
over the spot
I trundle my Raleigh bike

to meet with crystal set Duncan,
bright as the guards
on his new bike.

An overgrown cottage
with walls like broken teeth
and shattered windscreen glass

meets me at the footbridge bottom.
There is no blood,
only what’s left after the event.

On return footbridge
is now flyover, black spot removed.
Folk fly by too fast.

My old home is a turn off.
into village quiet.
A place folk glance at
on the way to elsewhere.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)

Flinch At Cold, Cold,

sticky touch
of scaffold pole steel,
in the sunblaze,

negotiate unlashed wooden
planks of a half built brick house
opposite my Mam and Dad’s,

miss my foothold, bang my knees,
graze my elbows, dazed, brickdust gob,
lightblinded

see behind closed eyes, few years earlier,
another bright, warm summer,
my fall

fifteen feet from a branch
in a tall forest, to sharp earth,
concussed, bruised, rip

my jeans, leaf litter gob,
so mate John,
who I’ve played with

for months takes
me, where I’ve never been,
over the massive quiet

of the cricket pitch of a cut lawn
his dad’s garden,
crunch pristine, white gravel

to his big sandstone Hall,
John says “Take them off.”,
as he takes his shoes off,

I take off my forested sneakers,
through white barndoor
of a front door, smell fried onions,

pad over red tiled hallway,
into a bright, high frontroom,
bigger than our village school

assembly hall,
to a vast leather settee
and first colour tv I’ve ever seen,

looks small in the centre
of this space,
asks me to sit while his mam

fetches a warm
cup of tea in a china cup,
and asks if I want her

to fetch my mam or dad.
I say “It’s kind of you to say,
but, no. I’m ok.”

And sunblinded, sore,
bloody again, on the scaffold,
reluctant,

as mam said, “And don’t let me
catch you clambering over
that building site!”

© 2018, Paul Brookes (Wombwell Rainbow)

#It Was The First Time #

It was the first time
I was there
It was the first time
I felt his touch on my shoulders
Bay of Bengal :gazed at me with its profound look
With its stories untold for years immemorial
With its beach bathing under April sun
With its wavy dance dashing over boulders carving relics
It was the first time a heavenly child on a horse threw a celestial smile at me while passing through rocks
It was the first time he rehashed me
a statue spellbound
And it was the first time that tamarisk wood in the skyline
swayed each corner of my heart
My courage unfolded to say you -“I’m yours -just yours .”

© 2018, Kakali Das Ghosh

:: wonder land ::

it was a long winter

spring came, and i went to

wonderland

finished work, drove the hill,

there before me, misted,

pink polaroid,

pointy trees,

i could not breathe

for wondering.

plas newydd, the house

of lady friends

who flew from family

to nest in looking

glass.

a world away.

breathe came,

all there was in the

whole world was this place

yesterday.

pin pointed, pinhole,

and mindfulness.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)

.home.

to live in this place,

walk down to see fish,

waterboat men, dimpling

miniscus.

rest amongst bird

song, tapping the wood.

know you have

a piece of mind,

however fleeting.

to be in this place.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)

.this place.

enjoyed waiting with you, leaning on the fence.

quietly remember you who made this place. special.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)

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