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The Contours of Joy, a poem … and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

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“The ego gets what it wants with words. The soul finds what it needs in silence.” Richard Rohr

Rest. . .

In that place where endless sky meets ocean wave
Where plump blue berry meets thin green leaf,
Where clarity gifts a kaleidoscope of joy.

. . . . . Breathe and breathe and never mind

The house begging for repair, the tree wanting a trim.
Never mind the floors awaiting the broom
The accounts begging for their balance . . .

. . . . . . Observe the contours joy …

From the quiet mind and the stilled pen,
Joy! dancing on sunbeams and resting
On the limb of a moon-lit tree . . .

© 2019, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

Are we frail humans able to embrace the light, forgo the mundane for the miraculous? Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe sometimes?  Maybe we try and fail. Tell us about it in your own poem/s 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, March 25 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.

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

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Twitter

from the San Mateo Rose Garden

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 by Northern 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.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“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

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Three of mine from “Levure litteraire”

“Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.”
– Mark Strand, Selected Poems

Magazine international d’information et d’éducation culturelle.

Levure litteraire is an eclectic online Zine with an international masthead featuring art, music and literature in multiple languages.  It’s the sort of Zine you will love to swim in, rich with color and experience. It’s worth your time. Meanwhile, here are three of mine published HERE in Levure litteraire. Enjoy!

Between Language and Myth

In the garden of light, I stand,

between language and myth.

Strands of wild green words
weave irresistible vines to climb.

I find the rules of grammar written
in the language of cellular memory,

strung like seedlings and pollen dust
around my bare and willing neck.

Each day I walk to the quarries
to hard mine for the sweetly lyrical.

I blister from digging in hot sands
and hard stone for parables.
The walls that bind my heart
are broken by the solace of

language spun on a vision quest.
I stride the hills of my heartland.

I write as though the fables are
my only real nourishment –

perhaps they are

Once Upon a Sea Green Day

We flew along the freeway yesterday under
a cold coastal expanse of a blue ceiling.

It reminded me of you and how we dusted
the vaults of our minds to rid them of fear
and the old lexicons of grief and guilt, the
whalebone girdles of unfounded faith and
common conventions, saccharine and sticky.

I thought of that one sea-green day we spent

under just such a sky in a land far away and
how we changed your name then, reframed
your story to tell of hope and not despair.
You sketched flowers blossoming in the dust
of a spring that promised but never delivered.

Now we don’t speak of men but of cats with

their custom of keeping heart and claws intact.
We tell ourselves stories in rhythms that resound
in deep sleep. Soon now the ancient calls to
feral festivals will still and the time’s arrived when
our only play is in the margins, fate hanging from
our skeletons like Spanish moss on old oak.

It pleases me that life’s passage spins
into poemed reliquary and a memory of the
red peau de soie I wore to your prom that June.

Le Fée Verte, Absinthe

in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
ascending the rosy ramparts of heaven

“A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.” Oscar Wilde

Poems by Jamie Dedes. All rights reserved.

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

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My Sidto (Grandmother) Adele Riachi Aboumoosa circa 1942

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 by Northern 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.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“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

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Where the Wisteria Grows, a poem … and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

“A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in–what more could he ask? A few flowers at his feet and above him the stars.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

At the flower market this morning
I thought of us and our naked lives
Did you notice the star lilies bowing
and the whirling cups of green calyxes?

A painter’s pallette of color there
fretting in terra-cotta, feral and windblown
A fabulous fusion of scent and form,
forests of nectar-pots on knobby stems,
the stuff of heaven for the anthophilous
In just a day or two, they’ll be gone

I couldn’t help but think that these
yes! … these are our human days
our days to sow or steal our human joys
Another day will inevitably transform us
The moon will stew us in a sofrito
of tulips and night-blooming jasmine

At dawn on the day I decide to die,
we’ll sip oolong at the Tudor Rose,
but I won’t be there, I promise I won’t
You’ll eat orchids to celebrate our love
and our long walks in kempt gardens

Once you picked forget-me-nots –
meant as the soul of our redemption
When their colors fade and leaves wither,
it will be time to look for me …
Look for me where the wisteria grows
With subtle euphony my blue-violet tendrils will
call you, weaving and binding you in love again

© 2017, poem, Jamie Dedes; Photograph courtesy of Geoff Doggett, Public Domain Pictures.net

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

If our spirits are allowed to hang out anywhere they want, mine would hang out with flowers and use them to wrap my family with love. Where do you think your spirit would like hang out and what will you be doing?  Tell us in poem/s 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, March 18 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.

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

Jamie

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 by Northern 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.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“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

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“Her Power Leaps” and other poems for International Women’s Day

Art is when you hear a knocking from your soul … and you answer.” Terri Guillemets

In solidarity with all women and their children I offer four of my “women poems” written and originally published here and elsewhere between 2011 and 2017

HER POWER LEAPS

she’s present

returned to bite through the umbilical of tradition,
to flick her tongue
and cut loose the animus-god of our parents,
like a panther she roams the earth, she is eve wild in the night,
freeing minds from hard shells
and hearts from the confines of their cages,
she’s entwined in the woodlands of our psyches
and offers her silken locks to the sacred forests of our souls ~
naked but for her righteousness,
she stands in primal light,
in the untrammeled river of dreams
the yin to balance yang
the cup of peace to uncross the swords of war ~
through the eons she’s been waiting for her time
her quiet numinosity hiding in the phenomenal world,
in the cyclical renewal of mother earth,
whispering to us in the silver intuition of grandmother moon
watching us as the loving vigilance of a warming sun ~
she, omen of peace birthed out of the dark,
even as tradition tries to block her return,
her power leaps from the cleavage of time

I Read A Poem

I read a poem today and decided
I must deed it to some lost, lonely
fatherless child… to embrace her
along her stone path, invoke sanity

I want to tell her: don’t sell out your
dearest dreams or buy the social OS
Instead, let the poem play you like a
musician her viola, rewriting lonely
into sapphire solitude, silken sanctity

Let it wash you like the spray of whales
Let it drench your body in the music
of your soul, singing pure prana into
the marrow and margins of your life

Let your shaman soul name your muse,
find yourself posing poetry as power and
discover the amethyst bliss of words
woven from strands of your own DNA
Yes. I read a poem today

I must deed it to a lost fatherless child

A Madwoman, A Madonna, A Medusa

What’s it to me? …
A knotted and nasty old poet of introverted time
wearing five-dollar sweats
dressing in black on black like a fly
with silver earrings tinkling softly in the winter breeze
What’s it to me? …

A Madwoman, a Madonna, a Medusa
Traipsing neighborhood streets, city parks and country lanes
Nibbling on sharp yellow cheese and glossy red apples
Sitting down on some wayward curb to sigh in wonder at
noisy birds and children, wizened old men, whiskered grandmothers
Dogs walking their humans by the side of the road
Feral cats scratching out a living of pigeon stuffed with stale bread

Muttering, muttering, whispering, watching, writing
Writing long poems and short about what it was to be us
through clocked days trapped in pointless, punctilious youth
Enjoying now the wild, gnarly randomness of life
and the music of our dusty blue souls jingling as we walk …
What’s it to me? What’s it to this so lately untamable me?

The Scent of Onions

Seriously, she considered murder by food,
sausage, potatoes, and Boston Cream Pie
Gleeful, she stuffed his arteries with salami,
used suet in pasties and plum puddings,
sought quietus from onions fried in bacon fat
Strategizing slow-death by Swiss fondue,
she dreamed of being single while sharing
broccoli trees with the toddler on her knee

– Poems by Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved

ABOUT

Testimonials

Disclosure

Facebook

Twitter

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 by Northern 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.”

The BeZine: Waging the Peace, An Interfaith Exploration featuring Fr. Daniel Sormani, Rev. Benjamin Meyers, and the Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi among others

“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