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Sticky Summer Morning . . . and other poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Photograph courtesy of Martin Widenka, Unsplash

“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

Here now Tuesday and the responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, A New House in the Suburbs, April 22, 2020.  That prompt asked poets to write an ekphrastic poem inspired by this painting.

New House in the Suburbs
1924 – National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Today’s responses are gifted to us by Anjum Wasim Dar, Sonja Benskin Mesher, and Adrian Slonaker. I’ve included an old poem of my own. Do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are encouraged: beginning, emerging, and pro poets.

This Is The House

this is the house I dream of and long for
on a beautiful piece of Gods Earth, where I
first cried and opened my eyes, I am told
It was a cool evening of June otherwise hot
It was my Grandma’s house, made of strong
wood and and a roof of iron sheets-

logs burnt in a small brazier kept inside the room-
the place a hill station built around a lake, bordered
by the River Jhelum-houseboats lined the lakeside,
but my grandma’s house was on land, with trees
around a small lawn, and a small vegetable garden

but I have heard only stories about the house
never saw it nor ever will, the real houses are fading
memories,
‘we shall meet in a house in heaven’ father used to
say,’pray for that for that is real’ , and so he left this
world, and grandfather too and grand mother even
before him- all in a home in heaven-

and now we say, ‘stay home stay safe’ as safe as
houses indeed. but not always, not in war with bombs
falling and shells blasting’ but perhaps in a pandemic
of the Corona kind,
O heart mind and soul, true love strong faith breaks all
roofs,distances, spaces and walls
houses or no houses, the faithful are, will be together
all-
all culture erased all traditions wiped out-life’s uncertainty
matters not for new ones, memories survive like tender
butterflies as love and life itself flutters with colors
fragrance and the softness of a pansy flower.

© 2020, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum ji’s sites are:

“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar

Houses of Silence

they dwelt in houses of silence
chewed through grudging fences
swam in oceans of best intentions
tried to find one another on the
shores of their fears and confusions,
alienation was their warrior shield

their lives were lived in a boxing ring
the fist in the glove was a malignancy
and the mom passed her days sparring,
she thought the winner would be the
woman who was pretty and hushed
she saw herself as a victim,
she exhausted her own mother’s charity

when she turned her silence on kinfolk
there was no one else she could
beat upon or say her grief to or even
show her bruises and lacerations ~
except for that wee child of silence,
useless in matters of such magnitude

© 2012, Jamie Dedes

My sites are Jamie Dedes’ The Poet by Day Webzine and The BeZine

..new house in the suburbs..

was not for me

though i imagined it to be

pleasant

i would have wondered how

it could  have been

to live there

new and important

with parents tidy

neat garden and no bashing ever

not in that house

yet

maybe that is where it happened

behind the shiny clapboard

the neat hair and spectacles

foul mouths hidden

tempered by gins those

other nasties

came gathering here

hidden in the shiny

exterior

my honeys

oh really

down in the cellar

not painted so fine

© 2020, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

Sticky Summer Morning

Daybreak mimicking Homer’s “rosy-fingered Dawn”
(once hammered into my head by a high school literature teacher)
attacked the starkly white aluminum siding
on the boxy property
my parents had built just before I turned two.

They’d never predicted
that an accountant a decade my senior
would someday park his sedan in the driveway
under the basketball hoop –
where my brother and I played “H-O-R-S-E” –
after said sibling and Mom and Dad had departed
for an August adventure in Boston that I’d
flaked out on
following one of our gargantuan arguments

or that the visitor would deflate my dream of what
my deflowering would look like,
unfolding on the family room floor as
a poorly-paced procedure between
a basket of oily onion rings and a
yawning goodbye,
but I didn’t regret the “meh,”
since it had to happen sometime,
and at least I’d proved I wasn’t
too grotesque for sex,
as some of my classmates had concluded,
so I raced through my prayers and nestled
on the settee for an
air-conditioned nap
as a black-and-white sitcom
flickered across the TV.

© 2020, Adrian Slonaker

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

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Blackbird, a poem by Frank McMahon

Photograph courtesy of John Yunker, Unsplash
“I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.”

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

He’s there again on the apex of the gable,
telling the world he’s got the title deeds
to number 14. There’s a boundary, not marked
on any map but he knows where it is,
so stay outside. Unless of course you’re a female
looking to share a very des.res. And raise some chicks.

Was there ever a warning sign as musical as this?
Not the baritone drone of the collar dove
or the obligato chatter of the sparrow’s octet,
not even the starling’s jazzy chuckling
somewhere between a sax and clarinet

No, none of these but the fluted mastery
of notes and scales, the end stops of our waking day
as he rings down the dark-blue curtains of the sky
and echoes curl inside the silent leaves.

© 2020, Frank McMahon

FRANK McMAHON‘s debut collection, At the Storm’s Edge, was publish just this past January by Palewell Press. Frank is a frequent contributor to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt. He was born and raised in Birkenhead, Merseyside. After graduating he began his career in Social Work/Welfare as a practitioner and manager, working for three Local Authorities, British Red Cross and Action for Children. He also served for nine years as a school governor. His last full-time post was to set up and manage a SureStart Children’s Centre. “There is nothing like working with and for young children. They constantly teach you to look at the world with fresh eyes and be open to new experiences.” Frank is married with two children and six grandchildren. When not writing (plays, a novel, short stories and poems) he enjoys walking, (The Cotswolds are his new playground); his allotment (save for the weeds), golf, chess, travel, music, and counts himself fortunate to have some wonderful friendships. He is a member of Somewhere Else Writers Group in Cirencester, whom he thanks for their patience in reading and critiquing his work. As part of that group, he works with Corinium Radio on programmes and plays.

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

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The Ebb Tides of Eternity, a poem

Photograph courtesy of Kaitlan Balsam, Unsplash

“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose

Eternity flows deftly through these pandemic* days
enfolding in her stream the many with whom we
contemplated Knowledge and Mortality

Looking back, we ponder amazed at love among
our relations and friends
……….a love that blossoms still, as fragrant, as gentle
……….as a dewy rose among thorns and thistles

We thrash and crawl and climb
………puzzling over the sea and fire that stalks us
Our hearts are cupped in one another’s hands,
……    talking drums, they communicate across
……… time and space
Our measured moments grave lines
……….in real and phantom fears,
……….they fly, they hover, storm clouds above us

In words of jade, our softest speech is elegiac
Our tears merge into raging rivers
Our smiles mask our grief and yearning
Our laughter is love grown wild and reckless

We see one another in a thousand shapes and dreams
……….and in nameless faces
Our sighs ride the ebb tides of Eternity
…..Another moment:
…..and even the sun will die
…..but our lotus song will echo on ….
……….We have lived! We have loved!

* pandemic days: COVID-19, environmental degradation, hunger and starvation, poverty and lack of healthcare, nuclear proliferation. Will we succumb or evolve to conquer?  Either way, nothing can take away the love we’ve given and received or  the life we’ve had.

© 2020, Jamie Dedes

 

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New House in the Suburbs, an ekphrastic poem . . . and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

New House in the Suburbs, Paul Klee
1924 – National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

“Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye.”  Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

This clapboard suburban house is not like my Sidto’s, a
house with hydrangea blossoming below the front window,
purple and mauve, in a place where big maples gave us
their charming seed pods, those green whirlybirds
that quivered in the wind while determined dandelions
climbed their way to sunshine through breaks between
the cement squares that formed our sidewalks, a kind of
serendipitous geometry from the Office of City Planning

No, this suburban house is not a bit like Sidto’s where
air-raid sirens sounded at noon each day, disturbing
the otherwise peaceful hours of playing out front or
in the tiny kiddie pool on the second floor balcony,
the sun glinting in gold and red sparks off cousin
Linda’s light brown hair, the breezes drawing smoke
from Aunt Mildred’s cigarette to mingle with white
clouds milling above us and a blue sky offsetting
the pale jade waves of the Hudson, no … it’s not

At all like my Sidto’s self-effacing home, this suburban
abode brags and postures with its professionally tended
Kentucky bluegrass lawn, hapless whirlybirds imprisoned,
packed with the cuttings and fallen leaves into bags for
trash collection on Tuesday; this suburban house, painted
In pastels closely approximating the colors of Sidto’s
hydrangea, boasts an in-ground swimming pool out back,
fiberglass and cement, replacing the blue vinyl inflatable,
and here closets stand behind sliding doors, making
armoires unnecessary, an expensive antique indulgence
for those with the bucks and real estate to accommodate

Not at all like my Sidto’s house, no pedestrian chain-link
fences here, poplar trees separate one property line from
the next and dogs are leashed to prevent trampling the
neighbor’s flowers; a huge wall-bracketed television claims
access to three-hundred channels, a technology fallen from
a reasonable seven on a compact Motorola stored in a corner
awaiting special shows in that time before television as lifestyle;
and by day we didn’t have calendars filled with playdates,
we romped by the front stoop with its easy and spontaneous
access by neighbor kids and by adults coffee klatching over
home percolated joe, sipped slowly from six-ounce china cups

The new suburban house has a long drive and three garages,
multiple cars for trips to shops, school, and worship, walking now
a custom of treadmills, health clubs, and routine post-prandial strolls
or weekend hikes in the country; our room-sized closets and other
storage bare witness to our hoarding, which will find its way to
land fill and fish tummies, and our generous pantry is packed with
prefabricated foods and poor canned facsimiles of Sidto’s
cinnamon-scented chicken soup, secretly seasoned with love
and family traditions and I have to ask: Have our lives grown
larger or just our living space and our carbon footprint?

© 2020, Jamie Dedes

* Sidto (Arabic) – grandmother

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

“The New Suburban House” painting featured above triggered for me the memory of my grandmother’s simple economical home and homely customs as compared to many modern-day developed-world extravagances. This week use the painting as the jumping off point for your own poem in whatever way you are inspired 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, April 27th 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 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

The Poet by Day officially endorses Bernie Sanders for President.

The New New Deal

“Democracy is not a spectator sport.” Bernie Sanders

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