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Cooking Carrots . . . responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Such a wonderful mini-anthology of poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, August 20, A Puppet Dancing in the Dark. Featured today are three poets new to the weekly writing prompt. They are Iulia Gherghei, Kakali Das Ghosh and Reena Presad and, since they are new to this activity, their photos and bios are included. Also this week are the remarkably productive Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher and Renee Espriu. These poets are all experienced, smart, talented and devoted to this art.  It’s fun to see how differently they spin the prompt, though clearly they share some values.  Enjoy! and please support and encourage our poets with likes and comments and visits to their blogs.

Spinning Endlessly

We are spinning endlessly
Around the sun
A sun who
From time to time is hiding under the moon
Probably he is bored too
History, a book of tales
Bible, a book of tales
Ideologies, some well sewn tales

Why do they feed us with tales
Are they responding to a need
Our need?
The need to fill the time between two blinks of the sun…

© 2017, Iulia Gherghei, (Sky Under Construction)

IULIA GHERGHEI is a Romanian poet writing in English. Her debut collection is Prisoners of the Cinema Paradiso.  In 2014, Iulia received the Poet of the Year title from Destiny Poets, run by Louis Kasatkin. In 2015 she won the Blackwater Poetry Group contest with her poem Lost in Blue Curtains. Her poetry is featured in many anthologies including The Significant Anthology (2015) edited by Dr. A.V. Koshy and Reena Prasad.

#The grave of darkness#

The brightest of lights is obscuring my vision ,
An aroma of darkness is permeating my vein,
Please – come as storm addicted to rain and thunderbolt,
I have kept my tears in a camouflaged hidden in dew drops over grassy lawns,
Craving the dumb show be arranged as a farewell through the last faraway train,
I’m waiting lonely for your storm in this dark station
Descrying a tormentor’s kick in an impoverished stomach,
My acoustics is shattered in lakhs* with a cramped girl’s cry,
And witnessing to a stabbed sanguineous boy
lying down on the railway line;
A demon of darkness is swallowing me wholly,
Is everyone born deaf, dumb and blind?
None has illuminated a flare,
Whistles of the trains reverberating through the night are no more greeted;
Perhaps one more corse**
or corpses would be waiting to be evacuated,
I’m scaring of the fair of sky burial
And eagerly waiting for your storm with celestial light and pearly raindrops,
As I’m encountering a gloomy grave frantic for drops of blood.

© 2017, Kakali Das Ghosh

* lakhs – rupees
** corse – corpse

Self-employed poet and writer, KAKALI DAS GHOSH was born in and lives in India. She did both her undergraduate and graduate work in Personnel Management. Kakali also works as a teacher.

Asphyxiation

The jungle crow is truthful. When he caws, he is the grandfather
and great grandfather too. The soul doesn’t differentiate between
male bodies charred at different times. The feminine rots to mute dust.

The rat snake and the cobra are slinky eyes
crawling over female forms-young, widowed or both
Fertile coconut palms brood over the misogynist terrain

The curry leaf plant recognizes friend from foe. The *Koovalam
disapproves of monthly spurts. The lemon tree withers away
upon female touch but is immune to bird eggs in its straggly, green shirt

The kitchen steps face south. I must not sit there, elbows on knees
or chin in hand. It is mourning that they fear here, more than death.

I will lie in the clearing, strangled by the vengeful biota
and the temple priest will chant mournful curses to free the trees

© 2017, Reena Prasad (Butterflies of Time, A Canvas of Poetry)

(*Koovalam = stone apple tree)

REENA PRASAD is a poet from India, currently living in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). She is the co-editor with Dr. A.V. Koshy of The Significant Anthology (2015). She writes poems looking in awe at the world from the seventeenth floor of a high rise in the Arabian desert. Her poems have been published in several anthologies and journals including The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane’s PoeTree, and Mad Swirl. She is the Destiny Poets UK’s, Poet of the Year for 2014.  More recently her poem was adjudged second in the World Union Of Poet’s poetry competition, 2016. Reena’s passionate essay about the comforts of poetry – Sanctuary – is popular here at The Poet by Day and in The BeZine.

Stained Glass Windows

She embraced the rituals of worship
of which practicing seemed to bring calm
to a personal life bereft of its’ being

whereupon entering a sacred place of
stained glass windows and the statues
of holy saints long dead brought
daily tests to question her soul

she watched men cloaked in white robes
garnished with vestments hung about
their necks symbols of their holiness

where the incense they spread in the air
afflicted her senses but must be done
for it was said it purified & cleansed
raising up the prayers of the faithful

but nothing addressed her innocence to
enlighten her of past holy wars that spread
death to those who believed naught the same

so she entertained a communion white veil
to be replaced later by a robe of red as
she promised to put her belief in those
words written by nameless faces of others

she believed in it all until the day her
faith stood the ultimate test of the reaper
causing her heart to have a hope of its’ own

© 2017, Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight and Haibun, ART & Haiku, Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity With Wings)

Red The Strong Says

“Belief is a ship
on the fish flecked sea,
close hauled and tacking,
against this Christian gust.

It has a dragon’s head,
and aft a crook, which turns up,
and ends in a dragon’s tail.

Gilded carved work on each side
of the stem and stern.
I call this ship “The Serpent”
Its hoisted sails are dragon’s wings.

I’m brought before me boss,
who offers me baptism.
“And,” says he, “I will not
take thy property from thee,

but rather be thy mate,
if thou wilt make thysen
worthy to be such.”

I exclaim with all me might
against his offer, say
“I’ll never believe in Christ,
and this so called God.”

Boss was wroth, and says “Thee
shall die worst of deaths.”

He orders I be bound
to a beam of wood, me face
uppermost, and round pin of wood
set between my teeth
to force me gob open.

Boss orders an adder
rammed down my gob,
but adder shrinks back
when I breathe against it.

A hollow branch of angelica root
is stuck in my gob; others say boss
put his horn into me mouth,
and forces adder in
holds a red-hot iron
before me open gob.
So adder creeps into it,
down me throat,
gnaws its way out me side.

My last breath is a ship
on the fish flecked sea,
close hauled and tacking,
against this Christian gust.”

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

A Bridge

anastomosis [ah-nas″to-mo´sis] (pl. anastomo´ses) (Gr.)

It is bin day. Sound of breaking glass.

A vein.

between places,
one person and another,

A Bridge

anastomosis [ah-nas″to-mo´sis] (pl. anastomo´ses) (Gr.)

It is bin day. Sound of breaking glass.

A vein.

between places,
one person and another,
you and your kids,
a busy crossing between beliefs.
from wick to ash.
full to empty.

Broken, blocked, under investigation.

No link, information dammed,
Adamant your side is right,
other side apostate.
Bloodied metal sends a message,
via media bridges.

Bins must be wheeled back to their places.

a busy crossing between beliefs.
from wick to ash.
full to empty.

Broken, blocked, under investigation.

No link, information dammed,
Adamant your side is right,
other side apostate.
Bloodied metal sends a message
via media bridges.

Bins must be wheeled back to their places.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

A Toleration

So I says to our Vicky
” ‘ow come thas back so soon lass.”
Well she were in a right towing.
says “I were right with him, only he weren’t with me, the wazzock.”

Well, I like a strong fella, misen,
makes us all soft inside and tha feels cossetted, but when as they start, demanding tha do this or that.
It’s a right pisser.

That lad, Olly, asking to wed her,
says to her, ” I think it best love, as tha abandon this pagan stuff so we’ve a regular going on.”

Vicky says, “I’ll not abandon my faith,
and that of folk afore me.
I don’t want thee to abandon thy Christian doings, either.” Understanding his predicament, like.

Well, laddo, sloshes her int face
with his glove. Tosser.
Well, she slaps him back,
as you would, and
comes back home, quicksticks.

Tha can only tolerate so much.

© 2017, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

“1712 we write of wool”

again, and weaving.

listen to the coventry carole,

little tiny child, fingers tapping

in time, the medieval, the membrance

of cathedral . walking up hill chanting.

repeatedly. they moved the stairs.

we hold the cotton, the wool

for comfort.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

white linen

.. cooking carrots, and thinking of belief ..

the other side of the mirror

orange.

it is a source of inspiration, and research. it is written, yet having writ. we use. imagination, add a dose of suggestion, slightly thinking this is fact we do not move on when perhaps we should. so moving on quickly……

cut them.

maybe we need to check our numbers at the end, see if one or more are missing. need to count them carefully, one side then the other.it is all a pattern, that keeps us safely, leads us onward.

simmer them.

what about this list, to do it before you die, well as she said, you probably can’t do it after. some may disagree – another belief. we try not to judge, yet that bucket was not worth five pound,so

we paid two.

strain them.
ready for later.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings)

. magna carta .

is left behind with tiny writing. salisbury cathedral.

the back way. written in latin for those who matter.

those words and those words

an historian uttered sent me reeling outside.

where air is cleaner.

oh , by the way

left you both there too. were you trying to appease

the barons?

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher (Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA and Sonja’s Drawings )

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

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SANCTUARY, an essay on poetry by Indian poet Reena Prasad “Poetry finds you when you are broken.”

img_8295This essay was originally published in the December 2016 issue of The BeZine. It is by Reena Prasad (Butterflies of Time – A Canvas of Poetry) and with her permission I share it here today.  It is simply not to be missed. I can’t think of anything better with which to start 2017. Over the years, I have not seen another poet work with quite the same passion, consistancy or intelligence at her craft. She is diligent not only in the creative process but in getting her work out to publishers. I am pleased to be able to feature her essay here and her poetry in The BeZine. Enjoy! Reena’s bio is below the essay. J.D.

Poetry finds you when you are broken, insists on taking you into its fold, puts your pieces together and then you never leave.

It struck me when I was standing at the doorway of my home one July that the sunshine over the mussaenda was a rare shade of rose-gold and that the leaves under it were a luminous green. The street noises seemed to recede as if the stage had been taken over by some other troupe and sure enough, there was a sudden onset of activity. An excited squirrel ran up and down the guava tree, a few babblers screamed and the jackfruit tree came to life with bird cries. All because there was a long rat snake slithering leisurely across the sunlit ground. There had been stray tears on my cheek and I was a dam on the verge of a collapse but then the other world swung in and took over from me.

I was privy to nature’s poetry slam. I wanted nothing to capture it, not a camera, or a laptop nor pen and paper. A poem followed by several others swung its legs over the cacophony of humdrum routines and marched into me settling deep into waiting trenches filling me up with purpose and with immense joy. While steadily ploughing up the driest top soil and turning it over to the elements to ravage, it was changing me.

I remembered Stanley Kunitz’s translation of Akhmatova’s lines . . .

“No foreign sky protected me,
no stranger’s wing shielded my face.
I stand as witness to the common lot,
survivor of that time, that place.”

Writing a poem is akin to exercising. To begin is difficult at times because it is easier to wallow in conceptual dramas and imaginary hammocks than to sit in one place and write or type. Think about the singular joy of munching on peanuts and reading fitness magazines on the couch compared to going running on a cold day.

Mussaenda Frondosa
Mussaenda Frondosa

Some poems are difficult to birth even while being exhilarating with senses functioning at heightened awareness and making one sore with the intensity of thought . Once begun, every thought zooms into the present; nature, politics and emotions collide, collaborate and confound the notions of what constitutes poetry. The end comes when the experience has gone through like a sword and untwisted all the overlapping images to give one’s vision a clarity that is brighter than the sunbathed green leaves of the mussaenda.

Winner of the T.S Elliot award 2012 Poet John Burnside said,“Poetry reminds us that lakes and mountains are more than items on a spreadsheet; when a dictatorship imprisons and tortures its citizens, people write poems because the rhythms of poetry and the way it uses language to celebrate and to honour, rather than to denigrate and abuse, is akin to the rhythms and attentiveness of justice.” Central to this attentiveness is the key ingredient of poetry, the metaphor, which Hannah Arendt defined as “the means by which the oneness of the world is poetically brought about”. It’s that power to bring things together, to unify experience as “the music of what happens”, that the best poetry achieves.”

It also unifies the people reading it and the poets who write it because we search for affirmation, for reassurance that our feelings and experiences are shared by someone else somewhere and that we aren’t all alone though our pursuit of the game is almost always solitary.

While the visualized poem changes a lot after being handed over to language, the thing that is most changed at the end of the writing is me. I feel kindly and tolerant to all forms of obstacles and injustices that were hindering the poem till then, feeling mostly gratitude for the crash course on changing perception. If there is more indecision, more poems might be written.

As David Biespiel says”You become a poet when you navigate your poem’s labyrinths of mutability, not to a point of stasis, but to a point where your discoveries blossom into ecstasy, intoxication, even beatitude — or, to downplay that bit of grandiosity, into clarity, insight, judgment, understanding, private vision.”

And believe me language plays a mighty role here – give it all the vocabulary and range you can and the poem rushes through like a thing on fire. Don’t let anyone tell you that language doesn’t matter. It does. It does. It does. You wouldn’t want to be subjected to an operation if your doctor uses an rusty, blunt knife he found while swimming in the ocean. It is the same thing with poetry. Hone your weapons before you go to war. Because after that poem is written, you are healed of whatever ailed you. The better your poem, the better you feel. I have no complaints about life as long as I can write because there somewhere between the thought and the written word, lies my wetland, my wildlife reserve, my sanctuary.

Leaving you with Amiri Baraka’s lines from Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note . . .

“Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way
The ground opens up and envelopes me
Each time I go out to walk the dog.
Or the broad edged silly music the wind
Makes when I run for a bus…

Things have come to that.”

©2016, essay, Reena Prasad;  header photo, Jamie Dedes; photo of Mussaenda Frondosa courtesy of Vinayaraj under CC BY-SA license.

51hyatqlrtl-_sx327_bo1204203200_REENA PRASAD is a poet from India, currently living in Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). She is the co-editor with Dr. A.V. Koshy of The Significant Anthology (2015). She writes poems looking in awe at the world from the seventeenth floor of a high rise in the Arabian desert. Her poems have been published in several anthologies and journals including The Copperfield Review, First Literary Review-East, Angle Journal, Poetry Quarterly, York Literary Review, Lakeview International Journal, Duane’s PoeTree, and Mad Swirl. She is the Destiny Poets UK’s, Poet of the Year for 2014.  More recently her poem was adjudged second in the World Union Of Poet’s poetry competition, 2016.

♥

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