Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and Filling their hands with your bounty? A Lover’s Call, Khalil Gibran
this is no city of ultimate bliss,
the traffic is backed up to kingdom come
and the streets are a scrimmage, full and rough,
teeming with feral bits of hope and hunger
the people here are virtuous though,
ripe with love for one another, for Christ and music
hear the music winding, insinuating
and tumbling from la iglesia y las casas
the rents are morbidly obese, don’t you know?
though the wages and hours are skeletal
too often along B Street and downtown,
a man begs a cigarette, a woman begs for lunch
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet * Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire Upcoming in digital publications:
“Over His Morning Coffee,” Front Porch Review
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Make a place to sit down. Sit down. Be quiet. You must depend upon affection, reading knowledge, skill – more of each than you have – inspiration, work, growing older, patience, for patience joins time to eternity . . . Excerpt from How to Be a Poet by Wendell Berry, Given: Poems
The poem stands somewhere
between your heart and mind,
Waiting to capture, to study
Nature in all its complexity,
The shock of the corpse that
Once was your mother
The sea that embraces you
The pain that drowns you
Floating on silence, words white
And black, pure and tarnished
Like Iustitia, you are moral force,
Not blind but tongueless, let the
Keyboard be your mouth, let fingers
Dance in sacred space, the words
That arise are your sword, your
mirror and your snake . . .
……….rest in this
this place, this quiet, this haven,
this heaven of cup runneth over,
nurturing your own true voice
Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme are published on the first Tuesday following the current Wednesday Writing Prompt. (Please no oddly laid-out poems.)
No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, June 10 by 8 pm Pacific Daylight 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 other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet * Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire Upcoming in digital publications:
“Over His Morning Coffee,” Front Porch Review
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.” ― Gandhi
Lacking discretion . . .
she mistook agenda for wisdom
and suffering for sanctity.
She confused sex with intimacy
and saccharine with sincerity.
Because she endured,
she thought she was strong.
She fancied pain was her Cross
and treasured the confines
of her dark, singular world,
mistaking the fallout born of folly
for her God’s perfect plan.
Recent in digital publications:
* Four poems in I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom in HerStry
* Three poems in Levure littéraire Upcoming in digital publications:
“Over His Morning Coffee,” Front Porch Review
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“There are three types of baseball players: Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who wonder what happens.” – Tommy Lasorda
What’s interesting to me about baseball is not the game itself but that from the boardroom to the streets, the language of baseball permeates the vernacular. Using some baseball idioms, I wrote what I think might qualify as a “found” poem.
The Bottom of the Ninth
The bottom of the ninth
and my deadline was pending
when life threw a curveball:
thoughts less hit than miss.
Every word off-base, in a
strike-out scarred draft. “Oh” moaned my editor.
Three strikes. You’re out.
Sports in general are not my thing and hence the resulting poem is certainly not one of my best. However, I did think this might be a fun prompt for many of you. This week, write a poem about any sport that engages you. What delights you about it? Perhaps for you the topic lends itself to poetic memoir? Maybe you’re a soccer mom or a baseball dad. Do you see your fave game as a metaphor for life? Or, as a poet and writer, do the idioms delight you?
Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme are published on the first Tuesday following the current Wednesday Writing Prompt. (Please no oddly laid-out poems.)
No poems submitted through email or Facebook will be published.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These are partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, June 3 by 8 pm Pacific Standard 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 other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning non-judgemental place to connect.
You are welcome – encouraged – to share your poems in a language other than English but please accompany it with a translation into English.
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press,The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clifton
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, I Am Not a Silent Poet, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, an info hub for poets and writers and am the founding/managing editor of The BeZine.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 