What I like about Evelyn Augusto’s effort to help stop gun violence is that she combines poetry with action. She visits high schools to offer students tools that are not self-distructive. Evelyn’s contact info is at the bottom of the poster. Contact her if you’d like her to speak to your local high school.
At this writing, according to the Gun Violence Archive there have been twenty-five school shootings thus far this year resulting in twenty-five deaths and 118 injuries.
If you agree that we need to share this info – get the word out – please feel free to cut and paste this into a post on your own site or just use the WP reblog feature. Thank you!
i hear the crack of dawn in the dense concrete of this building and imagine the wind sculptured glaciers melting before their time, the roars and whispers of the oceans protesting while parents tear and children hum songs of longing, hearts sundered ~ in citrus layers of sunlight rising, the messages of earth are unbound, any soul can hear or sense them, even mine … and now i know, i know why poems are born . . .
no mendacity in the natural world, just an
untamed grace in the meditative industry of ants,
in the peaceable company of small creatures
going about the business of food finding
and mating and homemaking in the loam of
this province, the republic of innocence
here is the satisfying beauty of sunrise, of
jacaranda as she paints joy on a blue dawn;
robin with russet-hued breast hunts for worms,
her instinctive motherhood proud of babies in
the spar and scrap of nest life; it is in this,
the guileless cosmos, that gentle breezes
dance with us on muddy travels down
rocky paths through meadow and brush;
as the flaxen sun shifts from rise to fall,
we pulse with love and fear, soon we know, clouds will gray with the dark
the golden moon will show craggy depths
sooty with doubt and danger, humanity
projecting its own shadows; still, a certain
trust in nature’s homilies, content in this
province where we’re left to be ourselves, left
to write our wildness on the mirror of time
“How near to good is what is wild.” Henry David Thoreau
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT
Tell us how near to good and honest is that which is untamed in ourselves. Leave your poem or a link to it in the comments section below. All poems shared on theme will be published next Tuesday. You have until Monday 8:30 pm to respond. If it is your first time responding to a writing prompt here, please send a brief bio and photo to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. It will be featured along with your poem/s by way of introduction to readers … and me! 🙂
I appreciate the sentiment of the intro and poem and they are shared here with Tony’s permission. How nice to learn in the process of acquiring consent to publish that Tony has several self-published collections and a ninety-four page epic poem, Me, ME and Not Me, was published by Waterloo Press, 2014. / J.D.
How to find the right balance in a poem? How to deal poetically with the worst that mankind can inflict on itself yet at the same time avoid the accusation of voyeurism? And yet the worst must be told…
And so with the latest news that yet another boat-load of refugees from Africa has floundered in the Mediterranean I’ve revisited a poem in which I blame the innocent sea for a piece of wreckage… but, but, but …… what I’m really trying to say is that some part of me understands completely that screaming figure in Munch’s great work of art. Tony
A Name Painted in Blue
Gathering wood is easy after a storm.
Bits and pieces always litter the tide-line
and sometimes an enormous plank
or a stout tree stump will swell the heap
’til theres enough for a bonfire.
But now and then you’ll find something
that makes you shudder: a splintered oar,
a piece of decking, maybe a strip of ship’s timber
with a name painted in blue.
It’s at times like these you might hear the waves
chuckle to one another, or the wind
snickering amongst the rock-pools.
TONY FRISBY was born in Ireland and lives now in England. Tony began writing poetry as a hobby in 2000. Soon afterwards, he started reading his work in public. By 2010, Tony had self-published five volumes of poetry all of which were voted ‘Book of the Week’ by The Brighton Argus. In 2014, his ninety-four page epic poem Me, ME and Not Me, was published by Waterloo Press. His latest collection That Blue Pause was published in 2017. He is working on three further collections. Tony’s Amazon UK page and Amazon US page.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 