“I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of “coffee shops” as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.” Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and ’70s
Dear Zorch,
No ~
it’s not the sixties anymore. It is a decade of upheaval
and people inflamed and lands laid bare.
Sea levels are rising and the
99% walk desiccated paths.
Once, you jockeyed in suits and ties
while I sat pregnant with poems,
just seventeen
the most unhappening girl in New York,
that most happening town.
We never did walk The Village streets for sips
of espresso in eccentric cafés, places
where Gibran Khalil Gibran might have lounged.
So okay, that was my dream. Yours was
Wall Street and manicured lawns in Westbury.
These days
there are strangers living in the old home place.
Our favorite stores are shuttered.
Our hip fashions are vintage.
Our parents have gone the way of all souls.
They never did hear
their truth over the cacophony of rote prayer.
You were happy to embrace high finance in place of Mystery.
Now though,
the future grows short
and
… word is …
you’ve taken Pascal’s Wager.
Once
we sang “make love not war,”
but
the power mongering persists, just a habit I imagine,
Write a poem that gives us a strong sense of time and place and how you and/or the times have changed.
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, April 30 by 8 pm Pacific Standard Time.
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.
Poet and writer, I am a former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently, I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“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.
Portrait of Bashō by Hokusai, late 18th century, public domain
On a journey, ill; my dream goes wandering over withered fields.
– Japanese poet Bashō (1644-1694) renown for his haiku, haibun and extended haibun, studied haikai no renga with Kigin, a distinguished poet living in the same region as Bashō. This haiku is alleged by many to be Bashō’s “death poem.”*
I’m on vacation. This is a prescheduled post. Regular posting will begin again with Wednesday Writing Prompt on April 24 and Opportunity Knocks on April 25.
You are encouraged to display your work (poetry, art, photography, cartoons, music videos and so forth) and your artistic successes and other arts-related announcements at The BeZine Arts & Humanities Facebook Group Page
“farewell to life”
Yoel Hoffmann’s Japanese Death Poems is an introduction to an honored Japanese tradition. It includes poems that are pithy and reverent or sometimes quite irreverent, and background on many of the poets, mostly Buddhist monastics.
A tradition among educated Japanese was to write jisei (death poems). These were spontaneously written during the process of dying. In part, it seems they were a kind of courtesy, a final farewell. It was also thought that at the moment of death some insight – perhaps enlightenment – was achieved and could be shared. Philosophically the poems where in accord with Buddhist or Shinto beliefs.
The tradition caught Western attention when Japan’s WW II suicidal warriors wrote them before a mission. More recently – 1970 – the well-known Japanese writer – famously and fiercely anti-marxist – Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) wrote the following before committing seppuku:
A small night storm blows Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’ Preceding those who hesitate
Some death poems are profound. Some are humorous or ironic:
Death poems are mere delusion — death is death.
– Tokō (1710–1795)
I suspect this tradition – practiced by Buddhists in China and Korea as well – could only have grown out of Buddhism with its central tenets: impermanence and an acceptance of life as it is, which includes death.
The jisei of Kuroki Hiroshi, a Japanese sailor who died in a Kaiten suicide torpedo accident on September 7, 1944. “This brave man, so filled with love for his country that he finds it difficult to die, is calling out to his friends and about to die” Courtesy of Wikipedia and Kuroko Hiroshi page
As far as I know, neither death nor enlightenment are imminent in my life. I merely happened upon Hoffman’s book, which inspired to try my hand at writing my own death poem, though not in the Japanese style.
GRAND CODA
Gratitude for seas, skies, and mountains,
for Earth’s jeté entrelacé through space.
Luminous, my grand coda with the stars
*The poem that is said to be Bashō’s death poem is actually not. According to Yoel Hoffmann in Japanese Death Poems, at the time of his death Bashō refused to write a death poem claiming that any of his poems could be considered death poems.
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.” Lucille Clift
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“We need four things to survive life: bread, water, oxygen, and dreams!” Avijeet Das, The Untold Diaries, The Real Entries of Five Different People, Vidushi Guptaa, Anish Talwar, Surbhi Bhalla, Deshna Jai, Avijeet Das [This book is free if you have Kindle Unlimited]
The
Garden
Is
Lost
Where
Once
Life
Played
On
Wings
Of
Angles
Trees
Offered
Mystical
Fruit
Cats
Were
Prophetic
The
Scars
Have
Swallowed
Time
Whole
And
With
It
Memory
Work
Tears
Dreams
Plummeting
Backwards
Into . . .
Ah, the stuff of survival: “bread, water, oxygen and dreams.” Write a poem about one or more of these four necessities of life and …
Share your poem/s on theme in the comments section below or leave a link to it/them. All poems on theme will be published on the first Tuesday following this post. (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, April 3 by 8 pm Pacific Standard Time.
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.
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“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.
“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.” Jack Kerouac, On the Road
California ~
A tapestry
stitched from turquoise seas
and flaxen hills
threaded with
the twists and turns
of fault lines
and mad rivers,
redwood forests and
citrus groves
shot with yellow and orange
The skies are woven with
fuchsia at sunrise
At dusk ripe apricot
tumbles across raw umber earth
In Napa Valley
the geometry of vineyards
is neatly plotted
An allegory of poetry by François Boucher/public domain
Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. I currently run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded. I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers. My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman. My poetry was recently read byNorthern California actor Richard Lingua for Poetry Woodshed, Belfast Community Radio. I was featured in a lengthy interview on the Creative Nexus Radio Show where I was dubbed “Poetry Champion.”
“What if our religion was each other. If our practice was our life. If prayer, our words. What if the temple was the Earth. If forests were our church. If holy water–the rivers, lakes, and ocean. What if meditation was our relationships. If the teacher was life. If wisdom was self-knowledge. If love was the center of our being.” Ganga White, teacher and exponent of Yoga and founder of White Lotus, a Yoga center and retreat house in Santa Barbara, CA
“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.
GRAND CODA
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 