“an image or phrase can jump into your head,
so strange you nearly get run over by a taxi”
Matthew Sweeney and John Hartly Williams, Write Poetry and Get It Published

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In one of Mike Stone’s comments on the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, How to Be a Poet he said, “They say it’s a sin for poets to write about poetry. Poets should write about everything else in the world besides the subject of poetry. What they really think about writing poetry will be reflected in the poems they write.” As it turns out, I am grateful that I and others here didn’t know about that injunction and that Mike – knowing it –  ignored it. What an enthusiastic response to the last prompt! It’s not a surprise really, given the nature of our community. Here today you have in effect a digital chapbook … or “pamphlet,” depending on from whence you hail.

Thanks for coming out to play mmbrafield, Paul Brookes, Kakali Das Ghosh (welcome back, Kakali), Jen Goldie, Sheila Jacob, Frank McMahon, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pengelov (Bogpan), Mike Stone, and Anjum Wasim Dar.

Enjoy! this collection and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are encouraged to participate.

I know this is a late post for many of you; but, in Northern California it is still Tuesday.

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a genesis with a Dada twist

in  the  beginning  when She  did  pick oxygen carbon hydrogen and nitrogen and He did stir the clay with hot holy essence all the words in the world were at a finger’s length beyond my reach

so close they were that i then leapt out of the nest of my pink blue galaxy and into the pavement of down town LA the words they did follow in time i’d pluck tiny words for tiny worries and the Nephilim smiled for they knew i was falling

in love with the charge of turning the misery hatred pain starvation violence and rape of it all into the beauty found on the hem of the robe of the Goddess and the wing of a humming bird

that’s reaching for the higher hanging words drenched in the nectar from the Tree of Knowledge i strung them up to detail the anatomy of a broken heart with its crystal shards wrapped in Cleopatra’s linens sanctimoniously tucked away in a Payless shoe box atop an urban closet shelf

of the condemned building in the bosom of desperation and the pool in eyes of children stack did i those words like bricks made of powder to bring the kingdoms down and with the rabble of defeat as i burnt down i built up a nation of wordsmiths

who with their quills pens papyrus key boards tablets and marketing firms wait gingerly drinking lattes on the Stratford Upon Avon wicker chairs

that my English teacher said she dusted for the scribes who mused the signs letter symbols into the dendrites of my mind but not before Allen Will Bill Jack Hank Dylan Langston Lou Bowie Leonard and Ms. Angelou were anointed and leaving me with words less spoken

HERE is the link to mm brazfield’s poem more properly laid out

© 2019, mm brazfield (Words Less Spoken)

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Sound Sculpture.

Look at the noise.
Listen to the squiggle.

Kaleidoscope a still symphony.
Music is stillness.

When your eyes move over
Its surface there are bass notes,
treble, wooden mallets on metal.

When your eyes focus on one part,
orchestration deepens, zooms

into the chord runs. When are you
alive?

Between the notes.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

This Poem

touches the photo
hears the photo
sees the photo
tastes the photo
smells the photo

This photo is invaded
This photo is annexed
This photo is a refugee
This photo has no home

This photo knows
It’s photographer is dead
This photo feels
the photographers fingerprint

This photo does not
know what colour it is

© 2019, Paul Brookes

Poem as Competent Nineteenth Century Merchant Mariner

This poem is able
to Chock a Block,
make a mat
or splice a rope.

This poem is
a rope block heaved to its full extent.
Full up, no room for any more.
When the two blocks
of this poem’s tackle meet
it will prevent any more
purchase being gained
Keep cargo from a shift
in the dark hold

This poem is
a rope yarn mat used to fasten
upon outside of exposed parts
of standing rigging exposed
to friction of yards, bolt-ropes of sails,
or other ropes.

This poem splices rope
twists words wrapped
into sentences that strengthen
when tautened by meaning.

This poem is
carefully rigged
for cargo
into your imagination.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

The Hyperbolic Poet Awakes

My eyelids open
are two worlds unfettered by cloud.

I splash the seven oceans
on the continents of my skin.

Rake the tombstones inside my mouth,
tumble downstairs is scree down a mountain.

Open the wooden doors of delight,
recover the pottery of ages,

pour an avalanche of muesli
farmed on sunny hillsides,

crushed by the quern.
Grab the milk hosed out

by gargantuan herbivores,
refined in their udders of heaven.

Wash and restacked pottery,
I stride over the open threshold
a veritable colossus.

If Poet Cries

the world cries

If poet laughs
the world laughs

Poet is world.
Solipsistic.

Poet tells life as poet finds it.
So this is the world.

The world is not beyond the poet.
Poet is not beyond the world.

Poet is history. Relate to the words
of the poet. The poet has you

compare your life to the words.
Poet is reader is poet.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

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.

From my 2018 collection Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018)

© 2018, Paul Brookes

Dustpan

and brush are poetry.
Brush is my pen

sweeps all the words
dust, ripped plastic packaging,

used sucked lollipop sticks,
shop receipts, religious pamphlets

sausage roll pastry, used product
labels into a neat pile,

position the dustpan to receive
the words. Carefully flick

the words towards a dustpan page.
Inevitably, some words are swept

under the page. I have to rescue those.
Sometimes the page is the floor.

Sometimes the pen cleans away
a chaos of words to leave a poem.

From my 2018 collection, Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018)

© 2018, Paul Brookes

Paul’s website is HERE.

FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in The Poet by Day Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running an ongoing series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Connect with Paul if you’d like to be considered for an interview. Visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

• Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
• Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

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a bloody poem

When a dawn gives a blue bird its ears
I walk along the far away beach
The vast sea lullabying giant waves speaks with me in whisper
I listen all his untold stories
And a poetry evolves in my heart.

When a dusk gives a fallen leaf its heart
I walk towards those broken shanties
tingled by dull last sun rays
I listen there stories of hardship
And a bloody poetry awakes in my heart.

© 2019, Kakali Das Ghosh

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Ode to a Poet

we seek a synonym
to sanctify a noun
to agitate an adverb
to verbiage a mime
All equally compelling
Just short of being crime.
Then we sensually sanctify
The confessions of the mind
A poet you say?
Oh, the menacing muse
leading to confuse.
I would give half thrice and twenty
Even more if you please
To subjugate a wiser muse
who added to my purse
to reimburse my verse.

© 2019, Jen Goldie

Penning Prose

Music moves my soul to dance
or heave a sigh
or weep a tale perchance
or pedigree a poem,
or to, like Shakespeare,
rail and “beweep my outcast fate”
and “trouble deaf heav’n”
“wishing me like to one more
rich in hope.”
as I cry for lost love, or
perhaps a Beatle tells me to “Let it Be”
or McKuen’s part words and phrases,
I would rather Emily be, with luscious
integrity laying down the words
with solemnity, en class
To contemplate their symmetry
and pen the prose my soul can see.

© 2019, Jen Goldie (Jen Goldie and Starlight and Moonbeams … and the Occasional Cat )

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My First Poem

How could I not be moved
and try to make sense
of the war in Vietnam?
My best friend felt the same
but when I showed her my poem
she raged. I’d gone too far,
I’d dared to write as though
I was a teenage G.I.in Laos.
What did I know?
What had I ever suffered
compared with the stench
of a battlefield?

Our friendship faltered.
We stopped connecting
even as I remembered
I’d inhabited that world,
lay flat on my belly
and wormed through
damp undergrowth,
rifle on my shoulder.
Fear clung to me like sweat.
I waited to obey orders
and wondered why I was there.

It became my history,
my tragedy, my time.

There’s always a life
that runs alongside mine
and a place
where the two paths meet.

I write this path:
step into army boots
or the skin and bone
of bare feet on broken glass.

© 2019, Sheila Jacob

A review, interview, and selection of poems from Through My Father’s Eyes, Collected Poems by Sheila Jacob coming to The Poet by Day soon.

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To be a poet

is to leave behind the thronging
crowds and head towards the empty
shore; sleep beneath the stars, catch
your breath as the sky fills with light,
walk slow below the cry of birds,
turn your face to the stinging rain,
inhale the scent of kelp and salt;
imagine your past as dreck, pebbles,
flotsam, jewels, petals, all
spread out for you to comb
before you plunge wordsticks in the sand,
watch what the tides take away
and what they leave; fashion
from what you find a song
to take back to the thronging crowds.

© 2019, Frank McMahon

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.the rewrite.

rewrite it, add the dots, delete the rhyme.

erase the last draft, start again,constantly.

wrap arte facts in paper. box for transportation.

lose the plot,scrap the lot, fear the repercussions
constantly.

now there is a good word, if the space bar works.

do you wish you wrote longer stuff, important tomes,
well i do,
constantly.

it is all ready now, i just need your instructions,
and i know you have asked.
constantly.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.the writers.

not thinking it comes good,

just write, share and eventually

correct, edit,delete

you like, comment.

on reading others ( pause ) regret these

simple ways

i am not clever, everyone is a writer.

she said so.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.anonymous writer.

Having trouble getting back.

Difficulty finding words, of the
simple type, to type.

Spell out the consequences,
of an easy life.

Is it criticism, or a general sensitivity,
which abounds, confounds the
smallest heart.

She says we should not handle bats.

They write better stuff than me

words i never have

or think in

They have been to a university

I have been there twice visiting

while two have died

there

They write in patterns

I watch with difficulty

&

admiration

Yet glad i feel better today

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

• sonja-benskin-mesher.net
• 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.)
• Sonja on Twitter
• sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk
• Sonja’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.

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Creative Writing

at the corner are walking
people?
that
has nothing to do
with the creative writing
with your manner
to transfer (slowly)
the cigarettes into a cigarette case
to understand
I’m one of the others?
yes
like a white mountain is
the woman by me
who
is falling asleep

©. Bozhidar Pengelov (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

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Hey Mister Poetry Man

Raanana, December 20, 2018

Hey Mister Poetry Man
Make me a poem if you can,
Don’t put it on a shelf so high
That I can’t reach it
And don’t put it down too low,
My back’s not what it used to be.

Hey Mister Poetry Man
Tell it simple in plain words
That people use for every day.
It shouldn’t be too smooth or slick,
I trust a man who struggles with his words
More than one who doesn’t.

Hey Mister Poetry Man
Show me something I haven’t seen before,
I know you’ve been around places
I’d never get to.
It should lift me off my feet,
Throw me down,
And lift me up again.

Hey Mister Poetry Man
Let me try it on for size,
What’s good for you
May not be for me.
It doesn’t matter how long it is
As long as there’s some magic there
Before the end.

© 2018, Mike Stone

Hearty Low-Carb Poetry

Raanana, December 14, 2018

First, gather the ingredients:
Two or three fresh ideas from your backyard
A sprig of dappled sun and shadow
A touch of time
A pinch of rhyme (not too much!)
Don’t forget the meter
A bissel of iambs will definitely do.

Preheat the drawer to a comfortably musty degree
Add in the ideas, one at a time,
Into an old but well-loved pot
Stirring slowly all the while,
Finely chop the sprig of sun and shadow
Sprinkle time over the chopped up sprig
Pour the rhyme and iambs sparingly.

Put it in the drawer, no need to heat or rush,
Take it out when the poem’s done
And it will serve at least
One starving poet.

© 2018, Mike Stone

What Can a Poem Do?

Inspired by the poems of Linda Chown
Raanana, December 9, 2018

What can a poem do? They ask
With their sideways snickersnacks.
Well, a poem can swoop down
From high above the clouds
With talons bared and ready
Almost touching ground, but not quite,
The image of prey in its dilatated pupils,
But a reader will say,
Take me whole,
Take me now.
This is what a poem can do, it says,
So put away your snickersnacks,
It’s not for you, my talons bare
But if, by chance, my talons pierce your heart,
To the ends of space and time
Your heart is carried,
But your heart must find its own way home.

© 2018, Mike Stone

Somewhere, Sometime, to Someone

Raanana, September 6, 2018

One preacher opens church doors wide at night
To succor the homeless and the helpless
While another locks the doors against the thieves.
One imam speaks of love and peace
To anyone with an open heart
While another preaches death to infidels.
One soldier gives his food ration
To a hungry child
While another aims a joystick in the clouds.
One king honors poetry
And another hangs the poets.
Don’t look for truth in poetry
Though truth hides there
As certainly as souls hide in all things,
For everything a poet writes
Is true
somewhere
sometime
to someone.

© 2018, Mike Stone

Looking for a Poem

Raanana, March 9, 2018

I woke up this morning
Got out of bed
With an unexplained hankering
To write a poem today
So I slipped on my jeans
And looked for a poem to write
That hadn’t been written yet.
I looked in the cupboard and then in the fridge
But seemed we were fresh out.
I looked through the paper,
The stories and pictures,
Even the ads,
Page after page
For something between the lines
Or the silence before and after,
But nothing was found.
Honestly,
Don’t know why people read newspapers.
Daisy and I walked out
For her necessities
While I looked in the bushes and tree branches.
Sometimes I see something
Flashing the sunlight
Or reflecting the quick shadows of clouds
That let go a flood of memories
And old loves.
I used to go out looking for girls to love
But now I go out looking for poems.
I suppose that’s a kind of love too,
Sometimes a dalliance
But mostly unrequited.
Later I went to the gym
Where we torture our bodies
In hopes we’ll trim fat or grow muscles
And looked for a poem
Between the weights and the treadmills
But truth was the beautiful came beautiful
And left beautiful,
The strong came and left strong,
The rest of us stayed tired and tortured
With nary a poem to show for it.
After that,
I stopped at a coffee shop
My hand trembling a cup
I looked around at the other tables
But nobody was reading a dogeared book
Or writing a poem
Or looked up at me
As I looked away,
Though the tables were busy
With people reciting their well-rehearsed plaints.
No poems on the menu
For lovers of Buddha
So I went back home thinking
Maybe this is a poem.

© 2018, Mike Stone

Poems Like Ghosts

Raanana, September 18, 2017

Poems, like ghosts, won’t just come to you
Whenever you want.
They decide the time and place,
Whether to come at all.
They size you up and down
And sideways
Whether you’re worthy or not.
Oh, I’ve known people who’ve gone
Their whole lives without ever knowing one.
You can be pretty
You can be smart
You can pray to God almighty
But that doesn’t mean a poem
Will come to your house
And knock on your door.
When they do come though,
They come naked as the day
They were born
And they expect you to be that way too,
Stripped down to your very soul.

© 2017, Mike Stone

When a Poet

Raanana, June 30, 2017

When a poet wakes up in the morn
He puts his pants on
One leg then another,
And when he buys his milk and wants to pay
He stands in line between
The woman with her screaming kids
And the foreign workers,
But when the poet looks up at clouds
Or the night-time constellations,
Orion’s scabbard or Cassiopeia’s tilted throne,
He sees encyclopedias never writ nor read
By the likes of you or me,
And when he loves,
It’s Trojan Paris
Who’s faced ten thousand ships
And went to war for naught but one.

© 2017, Mike Stone

Seducing the Muse

Raanana, September 25, 2015

The room was dark except for one dim bulb
Trembling its cone of light above her head
Balanced delicately upon her swanlike neck
While the poet sat in shadow scarcely visible
Scratching his quill inside a notebook.

What care I for your poems poet?
I must have launched a thousand of them
But never read a single one.
Who has time or inclination for such pinings
When one is busy with life’s sordidness?
What’s that you ask for? Do speak up!
Oh, you want me to remove my blouse?
You’re all alike. My skirts, my shoes, my undergarments?
Shall I go on? My soft white flesh,
My muscles and my skeleton, you’re all the same,
Pornographers of the soul you are.

When all that remained was silence
And his empty head
He closed the notebook and wondered
What had just passed through him
And when it’d come again.

© 2015, Mike Stone

Ode to a Poem

Raanana, July 17, 2015

The first time I saw her,
Her flowered dress hanging loosely
From her slender body,
Her boyish haircut belying her doll-like face,
Her dactyl fingers holding
The frail unfolded page she recited from
Trembling but heroic in her hexameter,
Lips touching the microphone in a whisper,
I knew she was a poem
And not a real person like me.
I saw her once again in a city park
With her small daughter
Who is also a poem,
A haiku full of frogs and butterflies,
Ponds with bridges and lanterns,
And crayon buddhas
Dancing in her dreams of childhood,
Tucked in by her mother’s watchful love
But not a real person like my child.
My mother was a poem
A southern antebellum belle,
Sitting on the floor,
Her generous skirts flowing out from her,
Her freeform youth and beckoning beauty
To all who admired her poetry,
The only language she could speak and sigh,
She knew to be a poem you had to die,
Not a real person like me.
Me, I don’t rhyme, I scarcely scan,
My iambs died from anapestilence,
I go to work and come back home,
I watch the news and worry some,
My wife and I go to movies when there’s a good one,
I walk my dog and deal with encroaching silence,
And this man in mirrored parody
Becomes increasingly estranged to me,
But it’s a life I’d feign give up.
Still and yet at times I wish
I were a poem too.

© 2015, Mike Stone

On Poetry

Raanana, July 3, 2015

It’s been said by poets who should know
That it’s a sin to write a poem about a po-
Em, probably because it’s hard
To find a word that rhymes with poem
But, if I could, that sure would show ’em.
All of my life I’ve been thinking of poems,
From daybreak to nightfall, from five until three,
Why can’t they just once be thinking of me?
I may not be in possession of beauty but
I can rhyme truly in dactyl tetrameter,
Though most of my rhythm is sprung into free verse,
That’s no excuse, n’est-ce pas, for not thinking
Of me.

© 2015, Mike Stone

About Poetry

Raanana, March 31, 2012

Poetry is a mode of thought that allows us to use our language to break through the boundaries of common experience to speak of uncommon things.

© 2012, Mike Stone

A Poem Unwritten

Raanana, March 9, 2012

No one has ever written a poem about a poem unwritten
Of the many virtues of such a poem
The perfect meter of noambic nometer
The clarity and minimalism leave
Even haiku silent with envy.
The language of silence is universal
Requiring no translation.
It will be unread by billions!
It’s amazing that no one has thought of it,
No one and I.

© 2012, Mike Stone

Want Ad

Raanana, June 5, 2009

Wanted muse to pose for poet
Work challenging but not too strenuous
(Just need to exist)
References desirable previous poets
Preferably Romantic though
Classic also accepted
Exquisite beauty and grace not required
Please reply in fourteen lines or less
Iambically
M.

© 2009, Mike Stone

I Ink Therefore Iamb

Raanana, December 22, 2004

A few things I’ve learned about poetry:
Never write a poem about poetry,
And the more emotion you put into a poem
The less you get out of it,
And rhyme is less important than reason,
And a poem not read is as sad
As a poem not written.

© 2004, Mike Stone

Little Jack Horner

Raanana, March 3, 2003

Little Jack Horner
Sat in a corner
Eating his humble pie;
He plunged in a dagger
Pulled out his heart
And said what a good poet am I.

© 2003, Mike Stone

6000 Miles and 30 Years Away

Raanana

Old world spirits must be overrunning this country;
How else to explain this poetry coming into my hand
After all these years.
Must be the autumn lights,
Same as childhood’s.

My mother was a poetess.
Father was a writer and a storyteller.
She wore a scarf.
Emily was the name she would have chosen for herself.
Her long autumnal hair, lifted by iambic breezes.
She wrote a book of poetry.
I never saw it.

Father had all the instincts.
She didn’t wear her motherhood so easily.
Father left school to be a father and a husband.

One day, Mother left home to be a poet.
One day, she left the country.
One day, she left the world.

© 2019, Mike Stone

Mike’s website is HERE.

Call of the Whippoorwill is Mike Stone’s fourth book of poetry, just out last month I believe. 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.

MIKE STONE’S AMAZON PAGE IS HERE.

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On— How To Be A Poet

See first in vision the falcon’s high view
invoke Calliope Erato Polyhymnia Thalia
acquaint thyself with the epic classics
sacrifice a black goat’s head to Writing God Thoth
grab a writing palette and an ink jar,like his
a copy of his book ‘Book of the Dead
arm thyself with powerful weapons,pens
pencils, quills ball pens tablets modern-
dig into a dungeon invisible,
in utter dark solitude,brood,for immeasurable
moments,be oblivious of waste and wild,think not
of companions beloveds partners-
be far removed,in fact farthest is best-begin
commence the quest- idea must be supreme
like the Idea of Order of Key West
remember,know,that you have a song to sing
first sing to self if by the sea then a water melody
It must be on chords of ‘dashing water’ and moaning wind’
you are now on the spiritual plain,
in the happy realm of the creative domain,leave aside
the sense of injured merit, maintain with steadfast love
outward lustre,transform the alphabet into shapes beautiful
match it with the idea and there -you have what is called – a poem
and you will be -who is known as – a poet

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

A divine gift …

A divine gift, a blessing in the discerning eye
in the receptive mind, an ability in the grey
matter , opening the unseen box , a theory
of participation, of creation, a revolution, an
evolution, a single color to a rainbow, opening
trapped emotions, releasing enslaved feelings
letting a catharsis emerge, a torrent of tears, a
burst of energy, a sudden sprouting of a seed,
an awaited blossoming of a bud, the fall of the
last leaf , an Oracle of Delphi, a prophecy, a
spell in the forest, an untreaded path, a road
not taken, a lashing wave, a light in a cave,
waning or waxing the moon, a constellation
in the Milky Way, a new world order, a new
planet in boundless blackness floating, A
destiny all known yet created in expressions
rhymed or un rhymed in lines and symbols
expressed manifesting new meanings, new
vistas opening to form overtures, notes musical
by a musician, painting by an artist , a poem
by a poet.

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

Poetic Idea

A thin screen
finer than the spider’s web
an unseen transparency
a void, yet a space, appears
between thoughts and the spirit,
a vision seeking words, to take
shape and form,to manifest the
idea, a thought normal transformed
from nothing to something, from
the mind’s eye to world view, to
see the hidden, expose it with beauty
more than inherent in nature and by
doing so initiate a movement, bring
into the seventh moment, language that
lay latent, to form the symphony from chaos
that would fill the sails of the harbored ship
and set it off on a journey through undiscovered
oceans and uncharted seas- this would be
the force called poetry and one who arrives
at the still point would be called a poet’

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar