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“A Dark Matter” … and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech”
– William Carlos Williams, Paterson

These responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, your darkness, my light – how is it that love transforms us, October 3, 2018, delight, intrigue, thrill your mind and touch the heart. I know you will enjoy them and the two “value-added” sections (Frank’s lastest victory and Mike’s comment) as much as I have.

Kudos and thanks to Renee Espiru, Frank McMahon, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Marta Pombo Sallés, Mike Stone and Anjum Wasim Dar. A very warm welcome to Christi Moon. I’ve been reading her work on Facebook for some years and am delighted to have the opportunity to include her here today.

I’ve included links to blogs or websites where available. I hope you’ll visit these poets and get to know their work better. It is likely you can catch up with others via Facebook.

Enjoy! … and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.

Arrivals

(foreword)

I want to write about a man beside a train.
A year later and I’m still looking for the words.
The palm of that strong hand-
balm on small of my lower back;
always, pulling.

I’m getting closer.

Arrivals

I’ve only taken a few steps
when my legs stop responding
to the signals from my brain

my vision locked
on an image

you’re running
beside the train
your green hat folded
in your hand

five hundred thousand minutes
careen

into this
one

my feet can’t feel the ground

airy echoes
of your name
far away and
thrumming

she sounds like me

in s l o w m o t i o n
cinematography
we are captured
in these frames

in front of the lens
behind the lens
we are the lens

we are

standing still
and spinning

as the clocks vanish beneath

we are

heaved beyond
the gates

of this brief ceiling

© 2018, cs moon

CHRISTI MOON grew up in a small coastal town in California and currently resides in rural southeastern, Pennsylvania.  Her poetry has been published in the journal Brush Strokes and Ink Spots, an Anthology of Poetry and Art ~ The River Journal, Nomos Review edition 3 ~ Women on War and Conflict, Meat For Tea ~ The Valley Review Vol 8, Need Change, Poets Against War, and Twisted Tungz art & literature magazine, and online on Combustus, VerseWrights, The Creative Nexus, Solstice Initiative ~ Aqueous, and The River Journal. When not writing poetry, her personal interests also include; photography, yoga, and exploring local nature trails. She also facilitates poetry workshops for local cancer patients.

Flourishes & Whorls

When I first made your acquaintance
my hand wrapped ’round you
and found warmth & light

even though a tiny fragment of cedar
I minded not the lustrous feel of
your soft black carbon
within

as I grasped you time & time again
my muse trembled in anticipation
as she watched gradations of lines
forming

creating magic with loops curving
in every direction
to give life to every breath I
inhaled & exhaled

giving substance to the wind
to the very universe of which
the rotating earth is
contained

with each flourish & curve
you became as putty in my hand
as burning fuel for my muse

whereupon the light of day
merged with the dark of night
transforming sunrises
sunsets

igniting the embers in my soul
within my heart
into a flame

I have kept you close since
that crucial moment
the dawning of
a single
letter

© 2018, Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight)

EVOLUTION

It takes a big leap of the imagination
to see the line of descent from dinosaur to
blackbird, until you view the fossil record. But
you still can’t quite collapse fifty million years into
an hour’s time-frame. Think then instead about falling
in love and being in love. Falling, but more
crucially, being caught in passion’s net, held or trapped
depending. Two tyros learning their moves on high-wire
or trapeze, diving earthwards, hands outstretched. Maybe
love really begins when they both discard the net.

This poem was first published in England in The Cannon’s Mouth.

© 2018, Frank McMahon

COSMOLOGY

Some millions of years ago two stars collided,
creating cosmic dust of platignum and gold.
Seven shillings: your nuptial ring, signifying
the conjunction of orbits,love’s trajectory,

not like Cassini, all mapped out. Some few details
clear, the rest to be discovered in those early
starlight days; trial and error, error and trial; flesh and
blood, proud children, losses, carefree days and friends,

small frustrations and winter days
yet love lacing a necklace of stars
round deepening inner space, new elements
re-fashioning our Periodic Table.

© 2018, Frank McMahon

Frank McMahon’s first radio play was broadcast last week.  It concerns the last two years in the life of William Tyndale, the priest and scholar who translated much of the Bible into English and was convicted of heresy for so doing. If you want to hear it, then go to: http://www.Corinium Radio.co.uk, follow the link to Listen Again and look for Somewhere Else Writers Present ” A death in Flanders.” Bravo! and Kudos! to Frank.  

Tyndale, before being strangled and burned at the stake in Vilvoorde, cries out, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”. Within four years, four English translations of the Bible were published in England at the King’s behest, including Henry’s official Great Bible. All were based on Tyndale’s work. Woodcut from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) / Public Domain.

.love . the numbers.

he kindness that is. glass reflecting. slowly it starts. maybe we need to check our numbers?

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

. mathematics .

irregular, you came, your best clothes shining. never mind. the first tune hit the mind, patterns and mathematics. the kindness that is.

he said. machine you see. glass reflecting. slowly it starts repeating. the walls of differing colours. we have the dvds. on and on repeating on and on repeating on and on repeating.

back to the counting, how many have there been, how many are left still standing. an issue for some, yet we amend the figures here and move on. lucky ones, maths divides and decimates others.

1.2

repeating.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher

The night is speaking like a cascade

The night is speaking like a cascade.
She’s knitting filigreed lights and shadows.
Sunk in the deep sea
of Sargasso eyes
I stay quiet and don’t find words.
And the scars on your hand
are fading, in order to burn
in my heart.
Oh, sailboats after a long trip
with all the winds in the sails –
sand is calling you.
But it isn’t death!
Oh, it isn’t the end too!
The hand
is going to knock up a hut for you
and in the wide garden
it smells with magnolia and manuscripts…

And I am a sign.

© 2018, bogpan [Bozhidar Pangelov]  (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

When Silent Love Met with Boasting Vanity

A long time ago
I got used to living with
My open wounds,
The last withered while
I was staring at the sunset
In the middle of the fog.

Yes, you told me so many times
About your suffering,
How your heart shrunk
Fisted in bleeding red
While your eyes tasted
The salt of the ocean waves
And cristal pearls were running
Down your cheeks.

On that plane you felt
The freezing coldness
Where just one thing
Would not freeze:
The fountain of your tears.

Yes, indeed I remember
All the pain on that plane.
You sent me back to the
Land of rejection.

Yet I am a resilient rock
With my withered wounds
That I carry since ancient times
On this eroded earth.

But to exist is to resist
And so I dwell in human hearts
Who care for each other.
And may I receive your boasting waves
Crashing on my shores
Those hearts will restore me again
For I am silent love and not vain.

© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)

“Your lines (and prompt), “your darkness my light” caused an explosion of thoughts in my mind. I thought about the latest scientific speculation about the composition of the universe, that most of it is composed of dark matter and dark energy that don’t interact with the matter and energy that we sense. I thought about how we focus on the sources of light and its reflections, the things that exist, the presences, but gloss over the sources of darkness, dismissing it as merely the absence of light, rarely able to sense the absence of things that once were, or that never were. Our world is filled with those things, words that were never spoken, or were spoken and unheard, or forgotten. I will try to come up with a poem that embodies these thoughts before the prompt is due, but I do have one poem that is more-or-less on theme. [Dark Matter – below]

“… and of course there’s the idea of somebody composed of dark matter falling in love with somebody composed of “normal” (baryonic) matter, although current laws of physics declare that impossible. Dark matter is not anti-matter. Anti-matter and matter interact by destroying each other. Dark matter and regular matter are just ships passing (through each other) in the night.” Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)

“A Dark Matter”

(Raanana, October 4, 2018)

I see you everywhere I go
You follow me even into the bedroom
And crawl into bed beside me
Entering my dreams.
You are the dark sun shining your dark photons,
Your shadows are my only light.
You are every age you’ve ever been,
You are the idea of you
Just after I discovered I was pregnant,
You are this thing growing in my belly
Now, this homunculus bursting from my womb
Suckling my breast,
And suddenly you are human,
Helpless, still inchoate, primal.
Then you see me seeing you and you smile,
You crawl, you stand unsteadily on your feet
And then you start to run.
You hold my hand, going to the nursery
And won’t let go.
Suddenly you’re holding her hand
Going to the Homecoming
In our car.
Then you come home
From the place you can’t talk about,
Your uniform full of grease and stench
Which I wash and iron throughout the night,
Then they knock on the door
And tell us you can’t come home,
That we can’t see your body
Because there’s nothing left to see.
When you were alive,
You were just a single person
In just one place, nowhere else.
Now that you are dead,
All of you,
The idea of you, the homunculus,
The primal human,
The little boy holding my hand,
The young man holding her hand,
The soldier coming home,
The soldier never coming home again,
Are everywhere, all the time.
You are my darkness,
I want no other light.
Your absence is so palpable to me
I don’t think I could live without it.

© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/Call of the Whippoorwill) 

“Dimdumim”

(Raanana, September 14, 2018)

Here they call it dimdumim
But you call it twilight,
Still light when the orange sun
Sinks behind the distant trees
Or the purple sea under the far horizon
And the colors of the things around you,
The whites, the browns, and the greens,
The grass and trees, even the faces of people,
Bleed into gray, move farther away than before,
Not yet dark, yes, darkening perhaps,
But not quite dark. Suddenly the air
Through which you wade cools slightly,
Is easier to breathe, making you almost weightless,
Waiting for the absolute darkness of night.
In its obscurity possibilities hide,
Almost anything can happen
In the cool darkness
And the obscurity takes any shape
That thoughts can touch.
When night does come
You never see just when
The dimdumim disappears.

© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/ Call of the Whippoorwill )

“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 (Uncollected Works/Yet Another Book of Poetry)

“Waiting to Be”

(Raanana, December 4, 2015)

What does a poem look like
Before it is written?
Just like a lover looks
Before you have met her
Or an infant looks
Before it is conceived
Like a soul looks
Whenever you look
Like potential,
Pregnant but barren,
Like the blank page of a notebook
But more than that
More than nothing
But undefinable
Waiting in the dark
To collect itself
To be.

© 2015, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/Yet Another Book of Poetry)

Bemused is Mike Stone’s third book of poetry, covering the years from 2016 to 2017. The title means “perplexed” but Mike intended a more literal meaning: “in thrall to the Muse”. Mike has been in the Muse’s thrall for most of his seventy years. This collection shows his maturity as a writer and his courage in facing the dilemmas of life’s endgame without fear or delusion.

Kindle (digital): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0786JQJHQ/ ($2.99)

Amazon (paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1981543775/ ($19.95)

Mike is one of The BeZine’s nominees for Best of the Net 2018.

Does Age Matter

And I believed in you because

I loved you

as a charming human being

Knowledgeable attractive witty and quick

And I tried to bear with your weaknesses

Because we all have them and impress

And I believed in you because

I wanted to

For I could see the tremendous potential

In you as a creative enthusiastic loveable

Charming personality that

The Almighty

Had made you.

And I believed you

That you knew so much more

than me

You could drive the car so perfectly

And examine the patients

so expertly

as your learning taught you.

And I believed you that you would share

With me all

That I wanted to tell you

That I wanted you to learn

You could do so much more

In your profession

And I believed you when you said

I always say’ Help yourself’

And you planned your time

And tried to read every book

that came your way

and after meeting you I had hopes of

reviving my shattered faith and trust

In relationships

And I loved you because

I believed we could make it together

I gave you all the chance

And I am still hopeful

That despite our age difference

We can still be happy with each other

And share care and learning and achievements

And I am sure it will be so

Because I believe in You.

CER © 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)

This is Anjum’s poem in Urdu. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the breaks right for which I apologize to Anjum and to any readers who speak/read Urdu. At least we have this, another example of how our poetry crosses borders.

مسکراؤں تو کس کے لئے آنکھوں کو چمکاؤں تو کس کے لئے غم کو بھول جاؤں تو کس کے لئے کوئی اپنا تو ہو کیوں دنیا ایسی لگے کیوں اپنے بوجھ بڑھیں کیوں اپنے غیر لگیں کیوں میں غیر بنوں میں بے وفا تو نہین چمکتی ہوں سب کے لئے رات بھر ٹمٹماتی ہوں خاموش کس کے لئے کوئی اپنا کہنے والا نہ ایگا کبھی انجم دل کا دروازہ کھلا رکھنا ، محبت انجن جگہ پانے گی

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and the 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 River Journal, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

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“enough, Enough, ENOUGH!” … and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

The responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, April 4, Where is the will of the cup to overcome the sword?, are marked by compassion, concern, insight, and sadness. A collection of heartfelt works by three poets new to Wednesday Writing Prompt (June G. Paul, Frank McMahon, Siobhan Tibbs – bios included by way of introduction) and by three of our dear regulars (Paul Brookes, Sonja Benson Mesher, and Mike Stone).  As a part of her response, Sonja has treated us to some of her artwork this week.

Thanks to all six poets for generously sharing their work and coming out to play. We hope you’ll join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome – encouraged – novice, emerging or pro.

The Golden Shovel Poem

The bar brawl began after midnight, blood and wine splattered where
she was sitting and asking herself, Has everyone gone out of their mind? Tell me if this is
real? Is it true that some people still do not believe that the holocaust has happened?  The
ignorance and denial of people, the erasing of and rewriting, of the history of mankind will
certainly be the cause of the end of
us all. And will the end of the world come before the end of all time? The
woman wondered, as she leaned over to pick up the cup
he had dropped during during the brawl. Standing there with the empty cup she opened her mouth to
speak, quietly asking him in whispers, Why is it so hard for you to overcome
your past, your addiction to alcohol and fighting about the weapons of warfare when it was the
Word of God, who spoke before and on the cross, offering peace with his two edged sword?
“Where is the will of the cup to overcome the Sword?”*
 
© 2018, June G. Paul
* line in the poem:  time for the temple whores to sleep with insanity, and take the war from it,   (c), 2017 by Jamie Dedes
*
enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
*
We drink the cup of the new covenant without
taking in its meaning, for God’s sake
Jesus Christ
turned water, into wine, into blood.
The blood of the Passover lambs replaced with
the wine in the Passover cup he called the blood of the new covenant.
There is wine to be shed, wine to be poured out at the altar
instead of blood being shed all over this earth.  Enough!
Enough drinking from this cup without living into its meaning,
without remembering Jesus Christ and his will for us – Peace.
Enough! Overcome the sword, wake up, stay, and pray, save yourselves.
Enough of the drunken soldiers drinking, trying to forget, and crying over
the blood shed from all the wars they’ve fought on this earth, Enough!
Enough! Drink, all of you, the cup of the new covenant and remember
Jesus Christ
lifted the cup in his hands while speaking his will for it and for all –
Drink, all of you, it will be shed for the forgiveness of sin.
He poured out his life of prayer for us, remember Jesus,
Remember his will for us – Peace.
It’s time we sacrifice our sin for Him, to overcome the sword,
for our own sakes and for God’s sake, to save ourselves from
the hell we’ve been causing on this earth – Nuclear blasts and bombs
bursting over and under and into the air, the land and the sea
we’re polluting ourselves and our own eternity.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH!
Now is the time to cease our fighting, now is the time to bring an end to war.
enough, Enough, ENOUGH! the battle cry of peacemakers,
Kings and Queens and Princes of Peace on earth are crying out.
Now is the time to call out and bring out the peacemakers
Those who believe in the will of the cup and the new covenant
will overcome the will to draw their swords, setting world at ease
There is time, Today, time to fill and bless the cup and lift it up
There is time, Today, time enough to be forgiven of sin,
There is time, Today, time enough for us all to sacrifice our sins and live
There is time, Today, for us to live in peace with all nations.
Now is the time to set the nations at ease instead of keeping them on edge
Now is the time for the will of the cup to overcome the sword and the world.
In peace, let the people of the earth, heal and forgive,
In peace, let us all find joy in co-creating Heaven on earth,
for that and therein is where the will of the cup is found.
*
(c) 2018, June G. Paul
*
June G. Paul

JUNE G. PAUL is an aspiring poet, wife and grandmother who enjoys creativity.  She and her husband live in Portage WI.  She recently scheduled a series of monthly poetry readings with featured poets and open mic time.  June is currently working on several different writing and art projects.  She has self-published two books and will be soon coming out with her first Chapbook which she is titling, My Poems: Chapped not Trapped.

*

FIND me WORDS

Find me words to stop the slaughter.
Find me words which will be heard
and  not just heard but taken up,
amplified and echoed. But not

just  voiced by millions or painted
onto banners. Find me words which
will pierce concrete walls and steel-clad
minds, find me words which will stop.

Find me powers to lay across
their desks and war-room floors broken
bones and flesh, find me powers to
make them cradle in their arms

the headless child, to salve her mother’s
napalm-shredded skin, unclog
the students’ gas-filled lungs, prise out
the shards of shrapnel while they order

more assaults. If they will not desist,
then give me power to move them
to the cellars, the shattered streets
and farms and make them wait alone
while we decide their future. What
can they offer to atone? The dead
and maimed must speak, pronounce. Find
them words to write the final page.

© 2018, Frank McMahon, originally published on Reuben Woolley’s I am not a silent poet

FRANK McMAHON is a professional social worker in the UK and includes work with the Red Cross. He’s written several plays and more recently had a creative burst writing poems. His publications include I am not a silent poet, The Cannon’s Mouth, and Cirencester Scene. Frank lives in Cirencester. He’s had two more poems to appear later this year in other journals and is also a member of a local writer’s group.

 

a few help the others, while the others suffer

 

there was a picture of a bomb   in blaenau, next

to a drawing of a dick, and a passage from the bible.

hash tag.

deuteronomy.

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“On a Passage from the Mishna” . . . and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“There are people in the world, I imagine, who are born and die in the same town, maybe even in the same house, or bed. Creatures without migration: have they not lived a life because they have not moved? What of the migratory los González, moving from one place to another and marking every stopping place with angst? What kind of alternative is that? For once my father and I are thinking thinking the same way, sharing a similar yearning for our starting points to have been different, for our final destination to be anything other than the tearful, resentful arrival it is likely to be.” Rigoberto González, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa

When I wrote the prompt last week, February 14, Brooklyn, In Memory Most Green, I wrote from my passion for the place to which my family immigrated and in which I grew up. I wrote from my respect for the grit I’ve almost always encountered in immigrants and refugees. I wrote from an appreciation for my country’s highest and best ideals, however much we so often fail to fulfill them. I wrote from a place of gratitude: by what unearned grace am I safe and not running for my life across some bomb-riddled landscape?

Several of the poems shared here today by poets Lisa Ashley, Paul Brookes, Mike Stone, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Anjum Wasim Dar remind me of my father’s sighs. I barely knew the man, but I do remember his lament: “a-MHE-rrreee-ka. a-MHE-rrreee-ka.” Life was hard for him in the beloved city. Contrary to the mythology of the day, the streets weren’t paved with gold. He was something of a linguist but few people knew his language, his culture, his history.

Enjoy this collection and …

Note: I am going to be moving to a new place and will put The Poet by Day on hiatus after a few more posts that are in the hopper. Hence, Wednesday Writing Prompt will not return until March 21. The March issue of The BeZine will be published on the 15th as scheduled. It’s currently in the works. Updated submission guidelines will be available on March 25 along with the next theme.

Reluctant Immigrant

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Emma Lazarus

Plaintive song sung in childhood, beloved melody that touched my heart,
Often tired, sometimes wretched, always poor, though not homeless

Before I understood the words, I knew the yearning
to belong, to fit in, to be accepted—we were outsiders

Immigrated to the west, escaped, searching for a better life
I left family behind, severed ties for years, survived

He was forced to flee the genocide, board the boat,
Fighting his friends to go to his wife and child, already dead, they said

Landed in New York, no English, cooked for men like him in the hostel
Once a proud Armenian, now a conquered, bereft, shamed man

Reluctant immigrant to a strange land, mourning his home, far away
Arranged second marriage, nine children born on a farm, a life lived, survived

Trauma lived and re-lived, DNA passed down the generations, his story lost
No golden doors for him, just a desire to blend in…and forget

Grandfather to father, father to daughter, I stop the cycle of abuse
Exiles that no God, no Lady Liberty could return home, sheltered here

Safe now, loved, loving others, a good life carved out of pain and shame
He survived that 1915 holocaust, I am, we are, his legacy, immigrants yet.

© 2018, Lisa Ashley   (www.lisaashleyspiritualdirector.com)

Refugee

is good. To belong
is wrong. Be homeless.

Mortgages and rents are chains.
Tread the world without burden.

Find a banquet in a crumb.
A glassful in a droplet.

Warmth in a newspaper blanket.
Comfort is a concrete underpass.

© 2018, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Refugees Rule Each

Nation. The seat of power
is one that must travel.

If it was to ever stop
the populace would revolt.

Folk who stay in one place
are a public nuisance

who don’t get rid of their own
trash, who have a reputation

as thieves from the greater majority
who are travellers. Stayers

Put pressure on others as they insist
on a place to put down roots,

occupy a piece of land when all
land is in common to be used by all.

Stayers cordon off land with fences
which restrict travel and onward journey.

From A World Where (Nixes Mate Press, 2017)

© 2017, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Our Edge

Each time it is a border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

I am discovering my story,
remembering where I have
been, but I recall it as
a
border,
an end of the road,
a new building,
where I am asked same questions
“What’s your name?
Where are you going?
Why?”

© 2018, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

My Daddy

A soldier moves Dad
with the butt of his rifle.

“Why, Dad?”

“They don’t know where
we belong.” He says.

© 2018, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

.. wouldst thou be pm, an abbreviation..

archaic or dialect question, in appropriate. a lowly start

with slight misgivings, i come arrived from the country, an immigrant

here.

if the task came to me unlikely, i should sew profusely. a safe bet in that

something grows decently.

do you know how to stitch a lie, when all about grow honesty? mine was

white last year,

now nothing germinates.

the question is irreverent, no disrespect meant. forgive me, this is the second

time. this time,

i shall stay.

despite my nationality.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

#russian

‘i came from another country, you know,

some time ago. i lived in the jungle’

yes.

‘i have been here so long, i feel i belong’

yes.

‘ they call me an immigrant’

said the bear, sadly.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

.shopping in town.

wednesday, the shops shut early.

here.

there are still tourists around.

or new people. i bought some sweets,
a thimble,a packet of screws, one
light bulb.

chatted about face book in the mongers.

i moved here in 1993. I am an immigrant.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

. the questionaire .

is this a mill, or is it a shop,
is it both, when did the looms stop?

twenty years now sir, yet you can see some
working elsewhere.

shall i write it down, all the pattern,
and most of the history? it has different fibres,
yet mainly wool in it.

these are made in yorkshire, the bags are italian,
yet i am from wales, an immigrant they say, yet we
are all from another place originally.

we came from the sea.

so let us move things about.

cloth by cloth.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

 

. another country .

grandma came from malta, or was it

gibraltar, anyhow dad was very dark.

his hair remained so, with help and support.

i came from england to live here with you

#thebear.

also from another country.

i hear there is trouble in the village.

yes. i am scared they will shout

and say go home.

another country.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher  (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

On a Passage from the Mishna
….(Raanana, November 17, 2017)

It is written that whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved a world
And whoever snuffs out a life
It’s as though he snuffed out a world,
And why is that?
It’s because that when we walk
We walk with an entire world in front of us
And we walk with a whole world behind us
On either side of us
Above and below us
So we are six worlds saved or destroyed
And who can know from whence will come the savior
How he’ll look or what he’ll do,
So whoever saves a life
It’s as though he saved himself
And whoever kills a life
It’s as though he killed himself.

Note:
The fourth chapter of the Mishnaic tractate of Sanhedrin “whoever destroys a single life … is considered … to have destroyed the whole world and whoever saves a single life … is considered … to have saved the whole world” sometime prior to 250 A.D.

© 2017, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

A Visitor
…..(Raanana, January 10, 2018)

A multiplication table,
Two times two is four,
She could read a multiplication table
And you’d swear it was poetry
But when she’d read you her own poem
It’d sound like her skin was torn from her soul,
Like she’d invented meaning in your mind.
She was a visitor,
She didn’t come from here.

© 2018, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

Call of the Whippoorwill
…..(Raanana, January 30, 2018)

O Whippoorwill, O Whippoorwill,
I alone do hear your plaint.
It comes from deep inside my breast,
Would that I could let it out
To fly free singing,
But no such birds exist here
In the promised land.

Note: This poem expresses how I often feel as an American-expat-Israeli-immigrant in Israel.

© 2018, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

The Old Colossus
…..((an alternate plaque for our Statue of Liberty))
…..(Raanana, February 16, 2018)

What have I done
What
have
I
done
to warrant these insults and injuries
to our once rich lands,
our once free skies,
and our once clear waters?
You’ve stripped me of my soil,
you’ve fouled my air,
and you’ve diverted and poisoned my waters.
Have you found another land,
another sky,
or another water to love?
Or have you no soul anymore
to love any land,
any sky,
or any lake or river?
Take what you will from me
then leave me alone
and I will recover without you
but what will you do without me?
What
will you
do without
me?

[Note: This poem is addressed, not to fresh-off-the-boat-or-plane immigrants, but to those who have forgotten that they are immigrants and take their country for granted.]

© 2018, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

Born in Srinagar Kashmir, migrated to adopted country Pakistan in 1950 with my mother and sister..travelling in a refugee convoy, escorted by soldiers crossed the border at Sialkot.

Title: Partition
(Inspired by T S Eliot )

August is the cruelest month, bare branches
Sprouting tiny greens,
life bursting from the lifeless,
A rising,
mixing sorrow of defeat with defiance,
Spring rain drizzles consistently,
snow suddenly surprised us
We stopped in the plains,
leaving the mountains’
Went in half daylight so we should have
Known the path,
and the unknown traversed rarely,
So we should have known the faith,
and the faithful and the Emperors of Ice creams-
Not long ago, when I was a child,
was carried across borders
frightened, slept in a camp for two nights,
-wonder how Mother felt? She never spoke
About those days, then on we
came to Murree Hills, and felt free
And I knew not, was I taking refuge or was it a
New land?
What was left in enemy hands, where
Are the roots that make a family?
Out of the masses who survived who committed
Suicide-you cannot say or guess even for you
Have seen only images and heard only broken voices
Who lost half the thought in trying to forget
Spoke not all-scenes of horror
Heaps of bodies cut and slayed
Blood splattered on trains roads and fields
Death, for a cause? Yet not so or was it?
Many went South, separated, lost, confused-
All said ‘we shall go back, one day’
The Day never came-
And then the beginning of the end-
One by one
Who has seen Spring again, after the Fall
Providence persists prevails
Acceptance and non-acceptance is, what ails
Unreal cities, unreal people, so unlike what
Was expected-
War War War and again War-
When will it end, fear strikes within
Shelter is scarce, fashion abounds and all
Is a show off! Young dead glorified
on the mini screen, what are they dying for
now? Half the barren land, minerals in ranges
The enemy changed and we thought ’this is Right-
People crowd the roads , daily beggars are children
And who said ‘we shall have enough, and peace”
Mountains and Rocks
Mountains are dangerous, no rocks will give
Shelter, there is no water, nor wells
A waste it becomes, filth in the drains overflowing
And the big man’ said’ we have worked hard’
But the mountains will not protect,
Truth is linked , Faith is strong
It will not be long when the Shadow
Will turn to Light and the darkness will go-
Go in the shadow of the mountain
Sit by the stream and clean all
The mind and soul, wash away to the sea
Impurity, or else be prepared to face,
a tsunami, or the jolts and shakes
there is still a chance-look! Be the Dance
not the dancer, in the circle of life
Come to a still point with Nature
Where nothing matters anymore-
Think and feel, help and heal, the needy
Feed the hungry, for I can see-there comes
Someone-keeps close and watches , ever present
Who leads us on unseen and the Third we say
Who helped us –its not our doing but The Mercy
Of The Merciful-
Bow bow bow –pray pray pray…
Welcome love from above , eternal peace will stay

© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

Posted on

Sonnet of State Secrets … and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

These are the responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, January 17, Dancing Toward Infinity. It garnered a neat collection of responses, including work by three poets new to these pages: Carolstar286, Pamela Ireland Duffy, and Pleasant Street. Welcome to all!  Back for this round and in stellar form are: Paul Brooks, Renee Espriu, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Mike Stone and Anjum Wasim Dar.  Enjoy! And do join us tomorrow for the next prompt.

Sonnet of State Secrets

As I told the State the other day, I rarely
dance but when I do I dance some Latin
sort of thing, like a salsa, in which one seems
never to stop moving, which makes it more difficult to pin
me down. My hips sometimes get tired so I have
to stop; two days later I ache but I am that much
closer to the goal, the infinite, the end-that-is-not-
the-end. The State is very goal-oriented,
hence the two questions that must be asked
of everyone with only four possible answers.
I almost always want to invent my own
responses but there you have it: no other
possibilities. Frustration ensues. Occasionally
I have thoughts of threats, murder, assassination.
The solution is to look up, to contemplate clouds, or stars
that look like lively souls in their dance to infinity.

© 2018, Carolstar 236

“Old lady dancing”

Not much music
at the end of the line
in this half-world
of might-have-beens
and time run out
but still she dances
on iridescent water
oil spillage not dreams
but still she dreams
of other universes
other lives
of endless possibilities
where words change worlds
and her grandchildrens’ laughter
is real
and she is dancing in her sleep
daring to dream
of somewhere
where the music
never stops.

© 2018, Pamela Ireland Duffy

Pamela Ireland Duffy

PAMELA IRELAND DUFFY is interested in Qi Gong, reading/lecture, writing/écriture, poetry/poésie. Pamela is also published on on “I am not a silent poet” and in “L’Inventoire”, She studied at the University of Leeds and at Larkhill House School, Preston, Lancashire. She currently lives in Périgny, Poitou-Charentes, France and is originally from Macclesfield. 

‘Do you fear the fire’
(for my mother, 1940-1997)

Walking through the woods
my mother spoke of fire–
of course I had noticed it
a lack of green, and the scent
of the foray of pitiless flames
in a matter of months
and the ashes beneath our feet

Was it a dream? Perhaps–
upon opening my eyes
seeing her feet, immaculate
walking amongst the flames
in a frantic dance for life–
and afterward, the renovation–
her attempt to cover it up
with a smile and a flower

Overjoyed to see something
colorful and blooming
my jaw went slack, while the flower fell
from where she had taped it
to the scorched vine, fooling me
with the comfort of red petals
amongst the endless black.
‘But black is your color.’

Black had been the color
of cool and calm, during a time
when I could not settle myself–
tailor-made for me, the crisp lines
of white cotton over black silk
were enough to blur the vision
of soot smudges
on her cheek and forehead

I had not been there for her.
I wanted to stay.

And, bending to grab at the rose
I moved too quickly
a thorn piercing my finger–
‘You have blood on your
shirt”, she said
‘you have work still to be done–
wake up.’

© 2018, Pleasant Street (Are You Thrilled)

PLEASANT STREET is a mother, baker, and poet. She has been writing poetry since fourth grade. Now she is writing a neo-noir thriller and a collection of poems about the seasons of life and God’s abundant and ever-changing earth. She thinks too hard and feels too deeply, and appears to be stuck in 1948. She is still dreaming up a way to use baked goods as legal tender.

Pleasant lives on a tree-lined street where nothing seems to happen on the outside, but she is certain many thrillers are contained behind closed doors. She is often carried away by flights of fancy, but that suits her very well.

once such night black

was a chance to gather strength
for the coming day; to invade
the stars in order to appropriate
their pinprick energy;
now its curious restless oblivion
is merely a rehearsal for the long sleep
that’s to come – the living out
of trillions of years
with nothing to think about

it tosses & turns and sometimes
dreams of swimming again amongst
those stars so often gleaming
through the apple trees of youth

come spring and I suppose
I will contrive to fling the curtains
wide once more to greet the sun
for the beginning of time once more
but now I hardly dare to wake
into this familiar night black

© 2018, Colin Blundell (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

 

On A Road  

a wick young lad meets Devil.
Wise with old tales

he goads Devil.
“Before I do owt for you

I want tha soul.” Devil gobsmacked
replies “I have no soul

of my own. Only souls of others.”
“Then gi me those.” answers

lad and I’ll do whatever tha hankers for .”
Devil hands him a mobile.

“This phone contains all my souls.”
“There is a woman who
would have your tongue. I ask
you visit her and take hers.”

“God didn’t sleep with me.
He chose that cow Mary.”
Devil put you on to me,
Young un’ tell you I need
Your tongue and you need
To take mine.

“I offer you hunger,
wrinkles, short life
and disease, and me
as an ugly bitch.
Except
on Saturdays when
I look like a model
and you have eternal life,
youth and health.
Manage your expectations.”

Young chuff replied
“To me you’re beautiful
for six days. Only a monster
on Saturdays when you’re a serpent
from waist down. Accept this mobile.
It contains all Devil’s souls.”

And young man returned
To Devil with her stories
“Accept the Sibyl’s tongue.”
He said and Devil scowled
at this young buck’s cleverness.

© 2018, Paul Brookes  (The Wombwell Rainbow, Inspiration, History, Imagination)

Angels Infinite

A symbiotic relationship in
a universe stretching infinite
where stars are like angels
their wings as chariots
taking flight becoming
a safe harbor for the soul
now desolate with grief
now hungry for peace
now joyous in its’ vision
however brief that it too
will be immersed
in that infinity

© 2018, Renee Espriu

::air::

layered in air

we dance with glass

small souls with small lives

rise

to the challenges

she says you know we do not gets what we want

we gets what we get

really

ours has been much easier than so many others

*listen to the radio

they threw them all on the fire

there

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

“A Poem about Nothing”
(Raanana, October 24, 2015)

This is a poem about nothing
How it happened that
Today nothing happened.
I didn’t turn on the radio
Well maybe I did for a moment or two
But then I turned it off again
Before something happened.
I slipped on some jeans and
Took Daisy for a walk
She still had a slight limp
From the night before
And I said a silent prayer
To the One who Barks at Infinity
That she’s not getting old on me
Remembering her shivering
First time I held her to my heart.
Then I thought about Dad
For no good reason on this earth
When I’d laid him gently down into the ground
How all the prayers we say
Were meant to send him on his way
But all I wanted was to call him back
Some prayers will never pass my lips.

© 2017, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

“Saint Yellow’s Gate Revisited”
(Raanana, March 24, 2017)

Through light Saint Yellow’s gate I’ve fled
Leaves long fallen, trees long dead
To come full circle as she said
No meaning, only clues instead.

Clues pointing to eternity
Open graves to see through pity
Stilted men walk through the city
The death of rationality.

What say you now of dreams my friend?
Succubi make love pretend
Climax waking in the end
Nothing left to comprehend.

© 2017,Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

“Walking to the Moon”
(Raanana, September 1, 2012)

Sometimes you have to walk a poem
To see the shadows of it go in front of you
And then behind you,
A funny kind of locomotion
Walking crablike, orthogonally.
It’s been so long since I’ve written,
You must have thought I’d forgotten,
If you thought about me at all.
No, I hadn’t. Couldn’t. Ever.
These were the dimensions of your loveliness,
The smell of sunlight on a field of wheat in your hair,
The cool touch of my rough hand on your soft thigh,
The vibrations of your voice as your meaning danced across it,
But the publicity of your smile
For all around you to see,
Not just for me,
Meant the sunlight soft vibrations of you
Might as well be like walking to the moon.

© 2012, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

“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  (Uncollected Works)

“Life’s Cold Eye”
(Raanana, January 7, 2016)

Hello Orion my old friend
I’ve come to battle you again
Though your sword is in its scabbard
You hold above my head the tides of time
And bury me under the horizons of eternity
But I’ll defeat you with love’s clarion call
And life’s cold eye on death.

© 2016, Mike Stone  (Uncollected Works)

waltzing on

spiral galaxy in Constellation, Coma Berenices, 60 million light years from Earth

waltzing on the melodious
music, feather like, rising
gliding,  embraced by light-
the Earth is All Bed
Sky all dome, a roof
shining in the day
glittering at night-
to show us the way

Boundless infinity oceanic
no end in sight,timeless,
and we mortals in oblivion
think about being en-gloved,
encircled we dance immersed
in  perpetual  meditation

we shall, in cool shadows be
with obedience and charity
for good we did, in year past
what good we do now, to last,
our hearts, swirling constellation
a nucleus smooth, unfurled silk

in time dissolved, myriads to
dust, rising spiraling merging
with countless orchestras in
harmonic symphonies of the
milky way, unknown infinity
like the never ending sea in oceans

cycling fresh blessings in motion
warming steam to vapors, floating
to infinity in dancing drops in
rotation, creating revolution
from sky to sand, and we say
rain falling, cooling drowning

IMG_20180117_135517_311

and I say Blessed, drenched in
peace like the circling dervish
one with nature,in stillness bent
‘in my beginning is my end’
Light makes me light,boundless
flight, I say I am embraced…
Embraced in Eternal Heavenly Light

© 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar  (EternalLights, Life Style and Strange Stories and Poetic Oceans)