The bad news. Predictable. Never-ending.
The good news buried under sensation
…..,,,,,,,and, ,,,,,,they mentioned that man again.
…..Sigh! Too late for miracles.
[Did someone prescient write that between the two world wars?]
Yet the new year burst into bloom,
full of mettle and vision and a
singular aspiration …
– be the peace – be the peace – be the peace
“Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.” Thomas à Kempis,The Imitation of Christ
What is on your mind and in your heart as you start the new year? Tell us in a poem or poems and leave your work or a link to it in the comments section below.
All poetry on theme will be published here on Tuesday next. You have until Monday, January 8 at 8:30 p.m. PST to respond. All are welcome to come out and play no matter the status of your career: beginning, emerging or pro. Thank you!
This may be one of our finest collections yet, poetry written and/or shared in response to Ecce Panis [Take This Bread], Wednesday Writing Prompt, December 6, “What event or experience or time in your life (doesn’t have to be associated with religion) birthed for you the freedom to explore beyond the boundaries set for you?” These poets have certainly risen to the occasion. Much thanks to Denise DeVries, Paul Brookes, Mike Stone, bogpan (Bozhidar Pangelov), Gary W. Bowles and Sonja Benskin Mesher.
Join THE NEXT WRITING PROMPT, JANUARY 3, 2018. Once I put The BeZine to bed on the 15th, I’ll be offline for family time and taking a rest until January 3. Many blessings for joy in this season that is sacred to so many and for your peace of heart in the new year.
Thank you for your support, kind comments and sharing through The Poet by Day site this past year. In a world gone mad, you are the hope, the grace, and the voices of sanity. Poetry is the flagpole around which we gather in compassion and acceptance. You are valued.
All are welcome to come out to play for these writing prompts no matter the stage of your poetry career: beginning, emerging or pro. It’s about sharing and friendship, discretion not judgement.
A Town Where Nothing Ever Happens
I lived in a small landlocked town
and would probably never go anywhere.
My parents rejected the foreign
language teacher’s offered lessons.
They didn’t like the looks of him.
Something could happen…
Years later, I find myself
in Central America, in a town
where nothing ever happens,
except me, trying to speak Spanish.
In the market, the black
head of a calf stares up at me.
A tiny tiny old woman in
native dress embraces me
and kisses my hand, speaking
a language I’ve never heard before.
Beggars wait on cathedral steps
for the priest to finish asking God
in his North American accent,
“Quita los pecados del mundo.
Danos paz.” The children want
to know why I am crying.
That I know what my wife is feeling,
That my love will be enough to protect her
From the lovelessness around her,
That my particular being might have some worth
In the eye of the Grand Schemer of Things,
That the sun will climb over the eastern mountains tomorrow,
That the ground on which I walk
Is as solid as any reality,
These are small beliefs I think
That won’t hurt anyone else,
At least I don’t believe so.
But there are grander beliefs
That grow stronger
With every man and woman who believes them,
That only the grandest edifices
Can house them,
These beliefs,
Like who’s a chosen people
And who’s a virgin, an only son, or a true prophet,
Beliefs that hurt those who don’t believe them.
These are the beliefs I don’t believe
Are any good for anything
That’s not a building.
“An Agnostic’s Prayer”
(Raanana, January 23, 2014)
Just for the record
I don’t believe in you
So there’s no point in capitalizing, is there?
That doesn’t mean I don’t wish you were
Here, there, somewhere.
God knows I do,
Well, maybe not the you
Of everybody else.
You know exactly what I mean,
Someone who’s not always
Making clever excuses
Why he’s never around
When we need him.
I’d like to see you try that on my wife.
She wouldn’t fall for it.
She’d tell you
You’re either here or you’re not here,
So don’t bother trying to be
Somewhere in between.
She’d say if you want someone to believe in you
Then be there, front and center,
Instead of hiding behind the guy
Who’s hiding behind the curtain
Hoodwinking the true believers.
Then tell them they have only
One life in this godforsaken universe
And that one life is so gut-twistingly precious
That they should get up off their knees,
Walk out into the sunshine,
And smell just how blue the sky is.
Frozen shards of light litter the dusty ground and
The moon-colored skulls of creatures whose blood
Once warmed the earth and sated its thirst
If only for a moment.
There is a trail I must follow
Through this forest dark and mordant
That snakes its wending way from
The womb of my first love
To the parched throat of my last.
I think sometimes of the ancient ones
And the things of their world
Of which they were certain.
It is not so hard to believe in a God,
An animus for every animal
Or a hoary herald above the spheres.
But a monstrous God
Who plots to devour our innocence
And rend our hearts with the cruel beauty of its beings,
Indifferent yet demanding our prayers and oblations;
Such a God I believe in:
A God of holocausts and broken promised lands.
There is a certain silence
On a day like this
That carries you on its wide wings
But only those whose souls are weightless
A silence that muffles the shouts of children
And banal chatter of adults on mundane matters
But only for those whose souls are transparent
A silence that vows to be true
Even when we live among lies
But only among those
Whose souls are consumed by other souls.
The Repentant Peter (El Greco c. 1600 Spain), Phillips Collection, Washington D.C., U.S., public domain photograph of the painting
Repenting Peter (El Greco)
since as
everything is Uttered
a land to even up
the eye
you touch grope about
the walls
more and more high
(on) cracks
the third road is the hardest
nowhere somewhere
the third road is the easiest
am I
I
cursed
cursing
swear
in net
(Peter)
“that the mighty angel tugs
along with net of fishermen”*
A legend has
A courier
Who ran and ran
And told, and died,
Per Lucian,
Pheidippides’
“We win–rejoice!”
The dying words
Of this young man.
A summer day
In ’84
Ten thousand ran
On Market Street,
And skirted San
Francisco Bay,
And saw through fog
The Golden Gate,
And past its Park,
And up a hill
So steep a man
In wheelchair
Went but four in-
Ches at a time.
We crossed the thrice-
Blessed Finish Line
At Union Square
To cheering crowds,
To honor dead
Pheidippides,
Who, truth be told,
Did not exist,
Or, if he did,
Not quite the way
The legend tells.
But there WAS strife
In ancient Greece,
And Persians died
At Marathon,
The site now known
As the event,
A footrace long
and arduous.
And when I ran
In ’84,
I briefly WAS
Pheidippides,
Defiant of
Impossible,
Horizon breached,
My battle won,
And I rejoiced
And did not die.
Clad in blue-gray woolly plaid, black oxfords
and pressed, pristine white uniform-blouse
on the morning walk from the dorms to the convent,
past the apple orchard dripping rubescent fruit,
past long-lashed benign cows gently grazing,
walking briskly across that green pasture land
into the greener wood rich in conifers and
the piney debris that crunches amicably under foot,
in single-minded pursuit of that brass-hinged door,
on into aprons, to Sister Mary Francis, the kitchen, bread.
… we therefore beseech thee, O Lord, to be appeased, and to receive this offering of our bounden duty, as also of thy whole household …
The romance was not with bread to eat,
but with yeasts to proof, batters to mix,
and dough to knead, and rest, and grow –
that beautiful, mystical living thing you have
before the baking and dying into bread, and with
the crackling timpani of wood-ovens firing up, pans crashing,
the rhythmic swish and sway of our community,
punctuated by the clicking of Sister’s rosary as she
monitors the students and novices in silent industry at bakers’ tables.
This is the sacred work of those meditative hours before Mass and school
and the business of music lessons and art classes and
the methodical ticking of Liturgical Hours until finally Compline, sleep and
the contemplation of that final sleep and dust-to-dust.
And this being Tuesday, the day to commemorate St. John the Baptist,
and the day to bake our bread for the week to come.
…order our days in thy peace; grant that we be rescued from eternal damnation and counted within the fold of thine elect. Through Christ our Lord …
The next bake day, Thursday, commemorates the Holy Apostles.
Oh, palpable Presence, we work in the silence of Adoration,
preparing pure wafers for a week of Masses.
In a solemn alcove reserved for this task,
we mix flour, salt, and holy water blessed by Father Gregory,
then the fragile process of baking on baking tongs,
silvery antiques, perhaps a hundred years old.
… which offering do thou, O God, vouchsafe in all things …
Receiving the Eucharist
knowing it was formed by my own hand.
…to bless, consecrate, approve, make reasonable and acceptable that it may become for us the Body and Blood of thy most beloved Son,our Lord Jesus Christ…
Friday, The Cross and Theotokos (Mary),
mother of both God and man, Divine and human.
A girl, like me, perhaps a baker of breads.
…who the day before he suffered took bread into his holy and venerable hands, and with his eyes lifted up to heaven, unto thee, God, his almighty Father, giving thanks to thee …
Mysterious. Numinous. Inexplicable.
A lifetime ahead to figure it out.
Ecce Panis.
Take this Bread.
… he blessed, brake, and gave to his disciples saying: Take and eat ye all of this…
from the pastures and the woods, from the sky and the stream
from nature’s great cathedrals, everywhere present
... hoc est enim Corpus meum…
for this is my body
for this is my life
Amen.
“Where is God? Wherever you let him in.” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk, Poland 1787
What event or experience or time in your life (doesn’t have to be associated with religion) birthed for you the freedom to explore beyond the boundaries set for you? Tell us in a poem and share it or a link to it in the comments below. All poetry on theme will be published here on Tuesday next. You have until Monday at 8:30 p.m. PST to respond. All are welcome to come out and play no matter the status of your career: beginning, emerging or pro. Thank you!
Welcome and thanks to Short-Prose-Fiction, new to our pages, and many thanks to these talents: bogpan, Sonja Bensking Mesher, Gary W. Bowers, Ginny Brannan, Paul Brookes, Kakali Das Ghosh and our old friend, Lady Nimue. Enjoy! … and please join us tomorrow for the next prompt. All are invited to take part: beginning poet, emerging and pro. This is about exercising your imagination and your writing muscle and getting to know other poets.
*Fated to Love*
Destiny thought I was born under the brightest star
Thought I would conquer worlds from near or afar
But he miscalculated by one grade
And fated me to love you till the end.
SHORT-PROSE-FICTION: “I am a published author, and an academic. However, here I am just a humble blogger, a voice among billions of others. None of my friends or acquaintances know that I created this blog. Every post that I write is for you. I do not seek accolades. All I seek is to touch your hearts.”
White shirt
I am passing by at dusk
in a white shirt.
I am looking sidelong
in the boiled soil
the growth so wild
of yellow flowers.
I do not know
what Evil is
(“Flowers of Evil” –
how did you guess which ones they were?
Oh, Baudelaire!) .
I do not know,
what Good is
(in His name
I swear) .
And I am passing on again so distant,
again in a white shirt…
I just found out about Bozhidar Pangelov’s (bogpan) collection, A Feather of Fujiyama(2013, Hammer & Anvil Books), which is illustrated by his daughter and available on Amazon in a bilingual English/ Bulgarian. All proceeds from the sale of this collection go to the Bulgarian Integrated Education Foundation, working to improve the lives of children and youth with special health and educational needs (including mild Down syndrome, autism / autistic spectrum, cerebral palsy, language-speech disorders, and hyperactivity) and their families.
Bozhidar “has been present among contemporary Bulgarian poets for some time, a long time. He is a poet who manages to disorder the order of the usual in order to breach a material world for a more human world of ideas and feelings. Using dramatic tensions within the poetic and semantic, Pangelov’s spare yet verdant imagery evokes the sound of bamboo sticks and Zen Buddhist monks, poem after poem.
Writer and poet Palmi Ranchev says, ‘Pangelov will enrich the palette of world poetry with new colors and nuances.’
“With a light melancholy of something desired but not known to the end, forgotten but endlessly close, no lover of international verse will go unmoved by Bozhidar Pangelov’s A FEATHER OF FUJIYAMA.”
boy howdy
his pockets are lumpy. heavy. marbles
and a little money, a golf pencil,
bent feathers, string,
something for luck, something
metal lying on a canal bank,
and much more
he cannot remember
fifty-eight years later.
what he does remember
is emptying those pockets,
marveling at the quantity
and variety of that boystuff,
and gloating over it.
some went into a drawer of treasure,
some got thrown out,
some got spent,
and one thing was held up to the light
and found miraculous.
remembering, the man
looks at the surface of his drawing table,
so cluttered, so discoverable,
and knows the boy
abides.
Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings (This is her Facebook page, so you can connect with her there as well as view photographs of her colorful paintings.)
Some years back,
I packed a part (major one) of me;
The void now left
To fill with whatever flowed.
Some years since,
I let distances grow between
parts I missed and the ones new;
The mirror mocked,”is that really you?”
Some months past,
The bells rang loud and clear
I sacrificed my self and peace some,
To chase the dreams of someone else.
Went back searching what was locked away,
The yellowed photos,the dusty hopes,
Fixed them,framed them,gave new light
And yet the person I seeked, refused to step out.
Neither here, nor there I feel
Yet I like this person – mix of old and new;
Maybe this is how it has to ideally be,
Or perhaps I the transition is our true being.
I’ve never been good at playing games—
I can’t bluff to save my life
all that I feel is written across my face,
so cards are out.
And chess would not be my forte;
I barely have the ability to see one move ahead
much less twelve to the win.
Monopoly, like poker, and chess,
requires certain skills,
none of which I possess.
No, my life is more like Snakes and Ladders
a mix of skill and chance, good and bad,
of climbing and slipping back again.
How many times have I ended up where I’ve begun
—falling back to square one?
I can only hope when the game is complete
that the good will outweigh the bad
that I will find the salvation that awaits
those who persist.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 