Posted on

Out of the Womb of Time, a poem

Photograph courtesy of Graham Holtshausen, Unsplash

“Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.”  Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

out of the womb of Time they slide
peasants and kings, artisans and queens
murders, warriors, healers, peacemakers
the grandfathers and grandmothers
on whose shoulders we stand

they are with us, their spirits sensed
. . . . though unseen
their hearts are in our mouths
as they guard and guide

feet rooted in the mud of Earth
we drink the wine, eat the roots
and sing the songs we inherited
their sayings are our sayings
their voices are our voices
carried on breezes
like the music of cathedral bells
like the call of the muezzin
they chime and summon
they sum what came before

from their gnosis
whispered in the ear of silence
we learn: we are nameless but not lost
we too shall echo
shall be the shoulders
shall be the great progenitors
shall hold the Vision and the Light
along the path . . .
. . . . beckoning

Originally published in Brooklyn Memories

© 2012, Jamie Dedes

This was making its way around Facebook a week or so ago and it reminded me of the above poem.  All of us, no matter what our immediate family history, have heroes in our family line. That’s how we’ve come to be.  A cause for gratitude and celebration and perhaps a sense of responsibility too.

Wishing everyone the best today.

Warmly,
Jamie

Origin unknown

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

With Twice Found Hope and Tender Love, a poem . . . and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
Immaturity, George Bernard Shaw, The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays

We four, we fumbled our pas de quatre on river rocks in
a faraway place of raging Hudson and an antique cloister.
No escape from mutilation but for books and theater,
old stories reborn, told in graceful moves and music made
for those with better breeding, more cultivated minds.

Home, our home, a place of first loves, unfounded hope
where simmering, Sidto* served soup to my sister,
a dark-olive girl-fugue in tar black and char dust.
In that place whirling with church spires and myrtle trees,
grimacing and breathless, we spun along twisted shores.
The mothers buried anger in silence. Cold bile leaked. I
slipped, broke my ballerina legs in a premature grand jeté.
I failed to heal those fissured old hearts.

We were lost, our frenzied dabke* danced in crazy time,
passing green humid summers and silver crisp winters,
swinging the stone shackles of the earth-bound. Home . . .
At home, such a tangled skein of love and lies and ties where,
by the bogey breeze, tripping on river rocks, hysterical
imaginings, one stepped lively in schadenfreude.

Solitary now

Alone above rainforest layers of a lyrical mind, I dance
triumphant, a pas marché on rain clouds, plumbed, bursting
with hard-won poems in roses, willow greens, and light.
With twice-found hope and tender love, I dance for them.

*Sidto (Arabic) – grandmother; Dabke (Arabic) – folk dance of the Levantine peoples 

© 2019, poem, Jamie Dedes; Illustration courtesy of Fran Hogan, Public Domain Photograph.net.

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

This week’s challenge is to juxtapose your life as a child against your life now as an adult. Share your poem/s on theme and . . .

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted on theme in the comments section here will be published in next Tuesday’s collection. Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published. If you are new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, be sure to include a link to your website, blog, and/or Amazon page to be published along with your poem. Thank you!

Deadline:  Monday, June 29 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

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, showcasing your work, and getting to know and befriend other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

Maintain the movement.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

Hypoxic Moment, a poem . . . and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

“She closed her eyes and began very gently picking imaginary flowers from the blanket.  Then, peacefully and without any struggle, she stopped breathing.  It was January 1930.” from The Woman Who Remembered Paradise [about Ascencion Solorsano] by Larry Engelmann, San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 1988 as quoted in A Story Also Grows, poems by Charlotte Muse

anyone who was anyone
was lined up along El Camino Real
waiting his/her/they/them’s turn
i took my place, but dropped off
to visit penny arcade, it was
the day she ran out of quarters
sang “this’ll be the day that I die”
san francisco bay poured
into my lungs, filling them
it preached
life is death
death is life
penny’s head
rattled with plucked stars
and blue june descended
like a spontaneous smile
she chanted
free at last
free at last
then we strolled El Camino Real
hand in hand
waiting our turn
penny arcade
blue june
and me

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

This week’s challenge is to write about a suffocating situation. It may be a literal near-death experience as is mine or a figurative one, perhaps something stifling that went on or is going on politically/culturally in your country, or at home, school, or work.  Share your poem/s on theme  . . .

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted on theme in the comments section here will be published in next Tuesday’s collection. Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published. If you are new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, be sure to include a link to your website, blog, and/or Amazon page to be published along with your poem. Thank you!

Deadline:  Monday, June 22 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

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, showcasing your work, and getting to know and befriend other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

Maintain the movement.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

Posted on

Hello, Nazim . . . Hello, a poem . . . and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

Photograph courtesy of Victor Rodvang, Unsplash

Let’s Give the World To the Children

Let’s give the world to the children just for one day
like a balloon in bright and striking colours to play with
let them play singing among the stars
let’s give the world to the children
like a huge apple like a warm loaf of bread
at least for one day let them have enough
let’s give the world to the children
at least for one day let the world learn friendship
children will get the world from our hands
they’ll plant immortal trees

– Nazim Hikmet

After Nazim Hikmet

What happiness that today
I can be “open and confident”
Though normally I would hide
in the safety of feigned ignorance,
feign joy, pretend
that I can see my clear sky
in spite of his clouds

Respectfully, I provide the detail requested …

The year is 2016
The month, January
This the first Wednesday
The hour is 6 a.m.

now that i am getting to know you,
now that i am chest-high in your poesy
it’s your time that interests me
……….1902 ~

You were birthday twins, Nazim,
You and my mysterious father,
born the same year, into the same culture,
spent your youth in that turmoil

If I study you, Nazim, will I find him, my diffident father,
in the dissident roots of your Turkish sensibility ~
they said he left with a price on his head
only to be caught, chained, imprisoned
in America, between a lover and a wife,
……….strong women . . .
………………..well, at least stronger than he

Hello Nazim!
I say “Hello!” gleefully
……….without a wink
I think we could have been perfect friends
that we might have understood each other
……….Hello! to you and your poetry
……………….Hello Nazim, Hello!

© 2016, Jamie Dedes

Note: My father and Nazim Hikmet would have come of age just as WW I (1914-1918) was ending and the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) was beginning. Hikmet (1902-1963) was a renown poet, playwright and novelist, a communist and a revolutionary who spent his life in and out of jail. He won the International Peace Prize in 1950. My father (1902-1977) was a furrier. I didn’t know him well and saw him only two or three times a year, always at his office, never his home. This poem is after Hikmet’s Hello Everybody from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved. I appreciate his poetry for many reasons, but not the least as one way to get to know the world of my father’s childhood and youth..

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

June 21 is Father’s Day in the U.S., where I live. In honor of fathers everywhere, please share poem/s about your father or about something that reminds you of your father or makes you feel connected to him and ..

  • please submit your poem/s by pasting them into the comments section and not by sharing a link
  • please submit poems only, no photos, illustrations, essays, stories, or other prose

PLEASE NOTE:

Poems submitted on theme in the comments section here will be published in next Tuesday’s collection. Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published. If you are new to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, be sure to include a link to your website, blog, and/or Amazon page to be published along with your poem. Thank you!

Deadline:  Monday, June 15 by 8 pm Pacific Time. If you are unsure when that would be in your time zone, check The Time Zone Converter.

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, showcasing your work, and getting to know and befriend other poets who might be new to you.

You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.

Jamie Dedes:

Your donation HERE helps to fund the ongoing mission of The Poet by Day in support of poets and writers, freedom of artistic expression, and human rights.

Poetry rocks the world!

FEEL THE BERN

For Peace, Sustainability, Social Justice

Maintain the movement.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton