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From the Churches and the Houses, a poem … and your next Wednesday Writing Prompt

Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the
Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and
Filling their hands with your bounty?
A Lover’s Call, Khalil Gibran

this is no city of ultimate bliss,
the traffic is backed up to kingdom come

and the streets are a scrimmage, full and rough,
teeming with feral bits of hope and hunger

the people here are virtuous though,
ripe with love for one another, for Christ and music

hear the music winding, insinuating
and tumbling from la iglesia y las casas

the rents are morbidly obese, don’t you know?
though the wages and hours are skeletal

too often along B Street and downtown,
a man begs a cigarette, a woman begs for lunch

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT

I chose to write about the poor part of town, but you don’t have to do that unless you are inclined. Tell us in your poetry about a city or a particular part of a city in which you’ve lived.

  • 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:

  • only those poems on theme and shared in the comments section under this post will be published. 

Poems submitted through email or Facebook will not be published.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, September 2 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.

ABOUT 

Jamie Dedes. I’m a Lebanese-American freelance writer, poet, content editor, blogger and the mother of a world-class actor and mother-in-law of a stellar writer/photographer. No grandchildren, but my grandkitty, Dahlia, rocks big time. I am hopelessly in love with nature and all her creatures. In another lifetime, I was a columnist, a publicist, and an associate editor to a regional employment publication. I’ve had to reinvent myself to accommodate scarred lungs, pulmonary hypertension, right-sided heart failure, connective tissue disease, and a rare managed but incurable blood cancer. The gift in this is time for my primary love: literature. I study/read/write from a comfy bed where I’ve carved out a busy life writing feature articles, short stories, and poetry and managing The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights.  Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.

Testimonials / Disclosure / Facebook

Recent and Upcoming in Digital Publications * The Damask Garden, In a Woman’s Voice, August 11, 2019 / This short story is dedicated to all refugees. That would be one in every 113 people. * Five poems, Spirit of Nature, Opa Anthology of Poetry, 2019 * From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems), July 2019 * Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review, July 2019 * Three poems, Our Poetry Archive, September 2019

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

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::i too shall die:: . . . and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

“And anyway, it’s not as though I’ll never see Mum again, is it?” J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

A modest but rather fabulous collection garnered from the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, near death experience, September 26. Sonja Benskin Mesher, Carol Mikada and Bozhidar Pangelov (bogpan) rose to the occasion with insight, passion and even a certain verve. Read on … Enjoy! … and do join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.

. that feeling, that .

arrives unexpected from darkness, some winters’ mornings,

opening the door to the sound of one black bran bird calling.

track four repeated. that

comes on waking finding peace and comfort bound in clean
linen.

arises with perfume, an uncertain memory.

it may be chemicals, peptides in the brain as love, what
ever the germ or warfare

I find no word to describe, no random feather nor dust on
my plate. pass a finger.

that feeling of trimmed nails upon the keys pounding
words and silences.

while music plays. that feeling. that.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

:: i too shall die ::

we have a memory or two. the world goes dark, we teach and learn, wait for light to appear

it is the way of things, while there are birds. while you read, you will not understand all words, that is the way of things.

it is natural, it is what they do, they live in the wild. . we have no power, they, no disgust that reels and kicks. yet while small birds live, they too will die. like us.

drift. in air, in words. symbols of poetry, cut and pasted. literally. naturally .

everyday tiny things sing.

when some small birds have failed and gone others sound just the same.

touched by the small things, softly, we drew

we cannot delete things we do not like

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Last Words

In the style of Dali and Zappa,
fittingly obtuse, I say to you:
We exist only collectively.
We are all one force,
one consciousness.
It is all Love.
There is no I.
I will enter nothingness
so as worldly experiences are concerned.
I will move on to pure energy.
This is all a dream, graded gold,
burst in black light,
thinking of God, as God with God.
Nothingness and omnipresence
are one and the same.

Take my art. Take my writing.
It is all yours now.
Love my son, the best,
the best of all I have done.

In the end, there are no words.
Be grateful, as I am, for our time together.
Be grateful, each day, for life.
Be present, in each day, each hour, each moment
as if you were sure that
the present moment is all that’s certain.

© 2018, Carol Mikoda (At the Yellow Table)

Exploring the Memory

A light day…

My granny was a little
woman.
She loved to speak in other
languages:
Italian, French and
German.

And in the Grannies language for their grandchildren:
“my pretty”.
She didn’t get pension (that was
the time) and
our home was thronged with pupils. Surely because of this I learnt
neither one. Or with the guests who
dropped in
often (we lived in the downtown by the tail
of the horse* – they used
to say so), for having a cup of black coffee.
The coffee
was special – for fortune-telling. She
“was telling fortune” and they
were telling us. A lot of stories. Surely
because of this I
know neither one.
Then she started getting less and less and
slender.
One night my mother told me,
“Go to see her…”
A thin, transparent leaf.

Now surely she’s telling the fortune and
is speaking only in the Grannies language
for their grandchildren:
“my pretty”.
……………………………………………
*”the tail of the horse” is slang for the Historical Monument Tsar Osvoboditel (tsar liberator) that indicates the downtown of Sofia; more on the monument can be read here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_to_the_Tsar_Liberator

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

ABOUT

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