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“Our Takeaway”…. and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

 

My apologies to all those who shared poems in response to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt. I didn’t realize today was Tuesday and time to post your wonderful work for all to see. The reason – not excuse, as they say – is I am totally in airhead mode with this relocation. So, here we go … still Tuesday by me but I know for some of you it’s already a new day …

The last prompt, Wednesday, March 21, after the injera, the way, the niter kibby: tell us about a take away from your travels or vacation garnered us these lovelies. Thank you to Kakali Das Gosh, Pleasant Street, Paul Brookes, Sonja Benskin Mesher, and Reena Presad. Enjoy! 

Our Takeaway

always on a Friday. A menu
taken out of the kitchen drawer,

unfolded. Dad scribbles what everyone
wants. I choose egg fried rice.

Using phone on the phone table
in hallway Dad rings order through.

Sister and I chorus:
“Can I come when you go, Dad?”

After days of school meals,
meat and two veg. at home,

takeaway is exotic. In the car
usual casual joke “egg flied lice.”

Inhale fragrance of garlic,
soy and foreign voices far above

as we join the queue, Dad collects
a thin white plastic bag that bulges

with sharp edged foil cartons
on kitchen side carefully

extracts each box, bends back lips
releases plumes of spicy heat

to put on already warmed plates,
carried through to front room.

Empty cartons are placed back in white bag
rushed out to a bin so smell does not linger.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

I A Glede

dark wraith,
elegant, rangy,
float russet and goldflash,
above winter’s woodland,

street cleaner,
snatch roadkill from gutters,
pavements, lobbed pizzas, chips,
knickers, jackets, teddy bears,
odd shoes, toy giraffes
rest with my feathered young,
decorate my nest.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

Servant

For a time I do bother
to polish the surfaces,
hoover, wash and iron.

If only for myself,
but then myself is not enough.
Dust piles, crumpled clothes dirty.

I fall asleep among dirty sheets,
empty crisp packets,
half eaten cold pizzas,
stink of mice piss.

Awake to freshly laundered sheets,
clean carpets, clothes washed, ironed.
Surfaces polished smell of Lavender.
How could this happen?

Again I fall asleep while tv on,
amongst discarded chocolate papers,
left over cake on plates,
half drunk cans of lager.

Awake to tv off, rubbish binned,
plates washed, dried put away,
Citrus not stale beer and rotting smell.
I’m intrigued. Curious.

It takes no effort to be a slob, again.
Spill crisps down sides of chairs,
dribble tea into carpet, crumbs.
Energy drinks ready I stay awake.

Energy sup is the biz. Make
Me hyper so I see these two tiny
Folk, man and woman, like regular
Nanites sorting my crap.

Like my old man never were
this one hoovers up crumbs,
packs his black bin bag with cans,
busies, polishes, scrubs to his bones.

His old woman like mam, I guess,
dusts, scours a whirlwind devil.
Part of me says they do as they must,
the other sees what they lack.

Next night I leave them a gift
of nothing to tidy, to put away.
They seem contented as I watch
surrogate mam and dad leave for good.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

I’m Man Enough

18 in 1980 week afore starting uni,
lads night out and your dressed
in Burton’s bright yellow like a canary,
socks, shoes, shirt, jacket, because it’s cool.

Lads boast they down 11/12 pints
of John Smiths bitter a night,
shag a lass then do same next night.
You’ve never done neither.

Follow lads round like fresh meat,
loud and brash, they talk of shagging
bints, fast cars, live bands you’ve
never seen coddled by your mam and dad.

Four pints in and your eyelids droop,
bitter makes you fall asleep, lasses
in short skirts with intentions nuzzle
up but loud music means you can’t listen

to what they’re saying and wouldn’t know
what to say. Lads jostle you. “We’re off
to neet club. A tha cumming?”. I shout
an apology. “Got to be in by 11.”

They get off. I leave the pub, buy
a pizza and pissed walk home uphill
chomping on greasy slices, cardboard
box too big, one side of road to another.

© 2018, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow)

# I’d depart this land #

His visage is still vivid in this misty evening
Those eyes
Those pink hands
Those lips
Those jowls
Those days in Kashmir
still call me in this lonely evening
That crystal lake
That stream
Those golden apples
Those flower boats
Those diamond peaks
Are playing in my weepy eyes
His words
His kisses
His smile
His last touch
Perhaps still have retained a token of our fancy
In the last cherry tree of that garden
I’d depart -I’d depart this land
To searh for those flying hairs
Those heavenly fingers
Embracing me
in that florid houseboat…

© 2018, Kakali Das Ghosh

. it is a holiday .

they say, and close the stores.

it is complicated, to do with floor space and employees rights.

we had chocolate eggs, worked hard, let our arms loose.

warmer now, the sun shone, people came, visited,

smiled, fondled the wool, spoke of age and weaving.

he said there were many looms in his day.

he is eighty eight, he told me many times.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)

. permanent traveller .

having had a few days off, no not from honest work,

yet writing, rests the mind, i find that everyday

things, mote well on my behalf.

i heard the cock crow early,

looked for swallow flight, seeing none,

cleaned, tidied, then came to write.

it has been a pleasant morning.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; sonja-benskin-mesher.co.uk)

You Do The Math

(what I wrote while traveling
back to the town we met in and fell
in love, and back again)

dancing tall in my living room
to George and Elton
(does it really happen
if no-one sees it
like that tree in the forest)
he says sometimes I never go out
(could tell him stories about 1985
when I lived ten years in 12 months)
and I dance and dance

my head full of 1990
(wonderwall,hammer,hit me baby)
one more time–let’s dance as one
I’ll lead this time–you follow
if you still have that notion
that 1+1=1
and 2+1=no end of joy

perhaps we will find
a new kind of happy-
ness, wrapped in understanding
and lessons learned
(old flames, new rites of passage)
let’s not forget, and dance to now
(rhianna, poison, blended with
the Beatles, Eagles, and 21
pilots, shaken and stirred)

once I thought it was most crucial
to fly without a net
but I believe
the trick
is
to not let go

© 2018, Pleasant Street (are you thrilled)

AESTIVATION

The road is an arid breath
wheezing through barren boughs

I unpacked you on the green bed
My hair flying wild
Bees humming about silken valleys

We left together to explore the trail
of a dust-swept summer
Drunk bees still buzzed in hordes
till a flycatcher caught up with us

Your summer, a mirage
A shimmering wall of sorrow
Dry-eyed, I listened to its howl
They lamented in Nizwa and Sohar
yet you held your sorrow in
waiting for Khareef

The Hajar mountains twisted to get
a glimpse of tourists
fooled by bursts of paper blooms

Parched, we returned
A white eye of a flycatcher followed us
The wall wept then at my infecundity

But in my rucksac, carefully preserved roots lived
To soak in tap water at leisure
and bring forth a trail of sprouting greens

I smelt then
the base notes of a buried south-westerly monsoon
feeling buds of earthy love
from this land of hidden green
burst open beneath dry skin

© Reena Prasad (Butterflies of Time – A Canvas of Poetry)
originally published in GloMag May 2016

ABOUT

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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

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“desecratory deliverance”… and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

I think it is safe to say that this week’s responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Environmental Justice, February 7, a gift to us from Priscilla Galasso (scillagrace, striving to live gracefully) and Steve Wiencek (Scholar and Poet Books, EBay and Scholar and Poet Books, Abe Books ), are consistently marked with an awareness and appreciation that gives us hope for the future .

We extend a warm welcome to poet and musician Dick Jones, new to Wednesday Writing Prompt, and a warm thank you to our treasured regulars: Colin Blundell, Paul Brookes, Kakali Das Ghosh, and Sonja Benskin Mesher and to occasional participants Gary W. Bowers and Denise Aileen DeVires. Welcome back! 

The Northern Maronite Basilica in Brad (Barad), Aleppo courtesy of Hani Simo under CC BY 2.0

I’m pleased that Dick chose to write about Abu Ward, a citizen of Aleppo, the city from which my family sailed from the Middle East to come to the United States a little more than a century ago. CNN called Abu Ward the “last Syrian gardener.” He’s not, of course, though there are few like him. Nonetheless, how some support their spirit in the face of a tragedy so monumental is remarkable.

Like my Lebanese grandmother before me, I season my cooking with Aleppo Pepper. I know that it no longer comes from these beautiful people and their cultured city, which was one of the oldest in world. To say the heart aches is understatement. Rest in peace, Abu Ward, and all victims of this multifaceted violence. The peoples of Syria are not forgotten.

Join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome: novice, emerging or pro. See you then … Meanwhile, enjoy – and perhaps be inspired by – this rather special collection.

ABU WARD

‘The presence of the world is flowers’.
Abu Ward

This was the man
who planted flowers

where the bombs
were falling.

This is his son
who kneels alone

by the garden gate.
The dust he pushes

around their stems
with his thumb is where

his father lives now.
And each flower

will lift some dust
as it rises in spring.

Abu Ward (from the Arabic for ‘Father of the Flowers’) maintained his carefully nurtured flower garden during the worst of Assad’s systematic bombing of Aleppo. He was killed by a bomb dropped near his home. His son Ibrahim left school at thirteen to help his father. After Abu Ward’s death, Ibrahim attempted to maintain the garden, which is now closed. Sadly, in this instance, environmental justice has been, as so often, a victim of warfare.

© 2018, Dick Jones (Sisyphus Ascending)

DICK JONES says he was initially wooed by the First World War poets and then seduced by the Beats. He has been exploring the vast territories in between since the age of fifteen. His work has been published in a number of magazines, print and online, including Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review, Qarrtsiluni, Westwords, Mipoesias, Three Candles, Other Poetry, Rattlesnake and Ouroboros Review. In 2010 he received a Pushcart nomination for his poem Sea Of Stars. His first collection, Ancient Lights was published by Phoenicia Publishing and is available from them or via Amazon. His translation of Blaise Cendrars’ epic poem La Prose du Trans-Siberien… was published in an illustrated collaborative edition with artist Natalie D’Arbeloff by Old Stile Press in 2014. Dick writes lyrics and plays bass guitar in acoustic/electric songwriting trio Moorby Jones.

as you take the road to Paradise

about half-way there
you come to an inn
which even as inns go is admirable

you go into the garden of it
and see the great trees and the wall
of Box Hill shrouding you all round

it is beautiful enough (in all conscience)
to arrest you without the need of history
or any admixture of pride of place

but as you sit in a seat in the garden
you are sitting where Nelson sat
when he said goodbye to Emma;

if you move a yard or two you will be
where Keats sat biting his pen
thinking out some new line of poem

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

From Colin’s ‘The Recovery of Wonder’ 2013

desecratory deliverance

we have grown to love distillates

bagged sugar cherry extract oil
of cloves buckminsterfullerene

essences pantheonized for delectation
bottled genies at our command

we so love purities
fleece white as snow
anthracite darkly dense
radial 24-caratotomy
kruggerrandom acts
and we feel godlike
magicmongering

we soupify the sky
we landfillet the lakes
sadsaturate soil
slagsilt the seven seas

it is a remorseless juggernaut
this megamodular magicker
and some of us are waking up

some of us want a different magic
the magic of the camper
who goes sees enjoys records
leaves the site none the worse

some of us want a reckoning
a calling to account
shame and punishment
some of us want to be sheriffs

but YOU STOP THAT NOW
is just like any other war
on any other badguy

and artificial value
has yielded unartificial power
and corruptive pushback
and corrosive continuance

deliverance must come
as with any other childbirth
spasmodically and with some blood
crowning and pushing through membrane
a slap and a gasp and a wail

our magical recording
and
transmitting devices will help
ill-gotten gains though they be

our one-person choices will help
at least
the enormity of the challenge
the size and perversity of the beast
will be revealed
as you yes you
give up your midas’s vehicles
stop eating the factory-farmed
children of hell’s misery
and reduce
the
“places you must see before you die”
to
zero

serve up justice to yourselves
and fire the single brick
of your life’s commitment
in the kiln
of paradise

© 2018, Gary W. Bowers (One With Clay, Image and Text)

A Matter Of England

I stroll the matter of England
every workday. Recall rich
ancestral lords use miners sweat
lay clanking rails, raise putrid stench,
employ.

I walk the matter of England
see lives snatched by unmarked
uniforms, history laid waste
to make a point and remove sting
of sweated labour

I tread the matter of England everytime I chronicle the artificial lake, pit demolished, rails removed, soil has been moved on, seasonal.

Decipher its taste when we in/exhale its dust, decode invasions private/public, ingest new blood, remember old.

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

Land Is History

is a past pitman.
ancestor, a nailmaker
whose strong coffin nails
stout fasten the woods
grain swish as land without
skeleton to hold its’ skin.

Both open cast places.
where redundancy rips
old features from their faces,
old skulls from beneath their skins.

Redundancy within weeks drains the Dearne from their arteries, smooths disused canals from their cheeks, wetlands asset-stripped from their eyes.

And children sit on father’s knee as on a hill hear how men
made hills a sack of land
a weight of meaning
emptied.

Land no longer propped
by miners hands
subsides

into history.

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

(Land is History is from Paul’s first pamphlet: “The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, 1993, revised 2017)

We Stop Decay

devote lives to prevent decay
of wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our minds,
faculties of our hearts

Each day we weed, we resow,
rework, rebuild
the wood, breath, bone, brick,
gardens of our hearts,
faculties of our minds.

Laugh to heal the stench
of rot, worm eaten
brick, bone, breath, wood
landscape of flesh
fresh produce of light.

Born to decay in decay
heal the ever opening wound
brick, bone, breath, wood
flesh of landscape
light produce of flesh.

Laugh.

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

Purple Moors

were once forests
national parks heavy industrial
this oak headland a pitsite

lads snap off livelimbs
anarchic coppicing
black dogshitbags sway
on limbs left alone

don’t visit in a storm
oaks are lightningtrees
people can be oaks

oakgroves of druids
duir means a door
exit and entrance

raw open wounds of sacrifice
still bleed sap

this hand has molded
a garden out of wildlife
words out of nonsense

she used to say “when
one door closes
another opens”

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

Village Circle

Cactus seedlings nestle in the shade
of green-trunked nurse trees, creosote
and heart leaf limber bush.

Elf owl and gilded flicker nestlings
rest in cozy, cool saguaro boots
above beetles building galleries.

Long-nosed bats sup on pollen and nectar;
pack rats pillage ripe vermillion fruit.

All, like me, look forward to rain.

© 2018, Denise Aileen DeVries (Bilocalalia)

#For Your Future’s Sustenance #

O my son!

Raise your head
I’m your benevolent mother
My eyes -your azure sky
When you are blown by caustic fervor
My brimming watery eyes turn into serene raindrops to alleviate you
My hands -your verdurous trees
When you lie wearily on my verdant lap
My hands spread florid twigs to shade you
My moist lips -your rivers
When your thirst touches me
Words of my lips turn into rivulets to kiss you to mitigate your thirst
Now -my son
Why are you burning my eyes with your voluminous black smoke
Why are you cutting my hands with your severe axe so grimly
Why are you tearing my lips throwing poisonous blues
I’m your mother earth
I’m your reason of survival -with snowy peaks
-golden flowers
-dancing rivers
Wouldn’t you be just to me
Wouldn’t you be fair to me
Not only for me but also
For your nourishment
For your children’s nutriment
For your future’s sustenance ages after ages …

©2018, Kakali Das Ghosh

.. spaces..

connect with spaces,
you may move differently.
sound different.

a specific style of dancing?

which reveals the environment as a character,

animation through animated intent

or something.

Johann Botha said this.
he is in Pretoria, he is
part of our audience

another sat quietly.
it can be dark.

the date is set.

24 this month
of winter

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

.earth & #8211..

he asked me what i missed, i told him.

he suggests we look after the environment.

eat carefully, mind our ways.

i will.

these are the falling days.

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

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY

Posted on

“Moon Child” . . . and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

I’ve so enjoyed the responses to the last prompt, the republic of innocence, January 31, which was to tell us how near to good and honest is that which is untamed in ourselves. Thanks! and Bravo! to John Anstie, Lisa Ashley, Colin Blundell, Bozhidar Pangelov (bogan), Ginny Brannon, Paul Brookes, Sheila Jacob and Sonja Benskin Mesher.

I’ve also included some information on Pretichor Rising, a collection of The Grass Roots Poetry Group (proceeds to UNICEF) and Anjum Wasim Dar’s gentle response to Evelyn Augusto’s passionate U R Not Your Gun.

Join in tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. You are welcome here.

Moon Child

Once in a while you exceed yourself.
Are you blue, because we thought no more of you
as the driving force for life on Earth
or potent impetus for the exciting waves of witches.
Thrilling moments … or contemplative
of a thriving, muddy, salty, riverine universe of life
waiting for you to draw the pelagic
covers repeatedly over the fruits of sustenance.

A force of nature, fully formed
yet so much smaller than the mother of your birth,
you hold sway, in countless ways
you touch our lives and drive us through our days.
Humble, unassuming, even unnoticed
by those who hurtle, mindlessly, and make no time
for the wisdom of our insignificance
or feel the difference between our age and yours.

As necessity tramples over truth
most days, we hide in fear of the darkening,
of the madness that ensues.
Does not the hunter choose your waning dark
to spike the nervous memory,
and remind us of the untamed Wolfpack?
We may not ever tame you
but your mother is dying a slow and painful death.

Oh super blood blue moon,
does not your God and our God sing the same tune?

© 2018, John Anstie (My Poetry Library and 42 … Of Life, the Universe and Everything)

JOHN ANSTIE is a poet, musician, renaissance man, The Bardo Group Beguines core team member, and editor of and contributor to Petrichor Rising (eBook and paperback), a delightful 2013 poetry collection of The Grass Roots Poetry Group. The proceeds from sales go to UNICEF.

I dislike using the word “accessible.”  It’s usually code for a lack of intricacy or profundity. The work here is comprehensible but still complex. The poems move from nostalgia to appreciation, from the beauty of nature to the frailties of humanity, from sorrow to hope. From Craig Morris’ Introduction, which sets the mood, to Joe Hesch’s theme poem Petrichor, which closes the book, it’s a joy. Well organized with the weather metaphor as the through line, the sections are The Drought, Gathering Storm, and The Rain.

For more about Pretrichor Rise, John Anstie and The Grass Roots Poetry Group, read Pretrichor Rising and how the Twitterverse birthed friendships and that in turn birthed a poetry collection.

Two dancing white butterflies have no idea
how dark the world is today—
fires and floods, ethnic cleansing,
wars in deserts and in words—
nor the brown spider who just lowered herself
from the red and purple fuchsia blossom
to the green basil glowing in the September sun.
Those lives go on, still, as does mine,
part of a greater web, gossamer threads, tensile strength.

The neighborhood is noisy with construction equipment
moving earth for seven new houses. Seven.
People need a place to live,
though the trees are gone, crashing to earth,
once homes to birds, insects, mosses, squirrels.
And though I’m tucked away in my own private paradise
I know school buses are lining up
to carry young ones home.

We’d go for rides when he was very small
searching for construction equipment so he could name them—
front-end loader, grader, the double-dump. He knew them all.
The big machines, the small boy, the love bursting from my heart,
pink flush on his cheeks when he spied a big scoop,
Mary Ann, Mike Mulligan’s steam shovel, in the flesh.

He turned over rocks on the beach
to touch tiny crabs
before they skittered to safety,
oblivious, like the butterflies and the spider,
of their near-death experience at the hands of a toddler,
or the suffering of the huge world,
still with us these many years.

The apples are turning redder every day.
I made a pot of soup yesterday.
Apples and pears in golden crust,
juices oozing warm cinnamon and ginger breath
to my eager nose, salivating mouth,
hedging my heart against the misery of so many
struggling mightily to survive.
The butterflies dance down the yard,
untamed,
as they must,
lighting my wild love, again.

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

a lion hunt

begins with the hypothesis of lion:
a roar in the night; a boy gone missing
or a bullock; an enormous spoor
in the path where the women walk;
a fur-net caught in the thorn bushes
speculatively examined by the old men

so it is with the pursuit of poetry:
one assumes that there is
something called poetry to be found –
but compared with hunting a lion…
well you can know in advance
what lion will look like
when you catch up with him
while the whole purpose
of the pursuit of poetry us to discover
by running it down just what a poem is

the pursuit must begin more or less
where it hopes to end – with a report
of the rather dubious quarry; if you start
with the wrong report you will end up with
the wrong phoenix or the wrong unicorn –
or whatever the fabulous creature
turns out to be

what one needs is a reliable scout
– somebody who was there at the end and
(against all odds) managed the journey back
– then you become the scout

*

From my ‘Years Later’ (2016)

*

© 2016, Colin Blundell  (Colin Blundell, All and Everything)

Return to innocence

The hand that caresses the wave.
The mouth that hardly opens –
breathes in the fresh wind of the stone-pines.
To speak to the stars,
to write out signs –
that can be learnt.
It is known by the astrologers, magi,
illusionists, newspapermen.
All this can be learnt.
To be in conformity
with the expectance.
That is the art
of the skilful ones, the thought of the blind men.
People who sing in the boat
that has sailed off, do they know?
Does the sand remember other steps
but those of the children?

The hand that caresses the wave.
The mouth breathes in – the fresh wind
of the stone-pines.

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

Optical Illusions, Dreams, and Delusions

We watch as moon ascends in eastern sky,
a massive disc now peaking over fence—
an optical illusion on the rise,
appearing ever larger to our eyes
than any image captured through a lens.

And what we see and what the mind imprints
border between concrete and surreal;
we tuck away to pull out and reprise,
but should we find delusion has dispensed
we search to understand what was revealed.

Same could be said for all the pain we feel,
whether it is caused by physical distress
or mental anguish covert and disguised—
setting off alarms and raising shields,
then leaving us despondent and depressed.

‘Hope’ rises like the moon in pale nightdress
her whisper carried soft among the stars—
and even earthen mother can surmise
that if trials and tribulations are the test;
then blessings and endowments are our prize.

© 2017, Ginny Brannan (Inside Out Poetry)

Believe

I don’t believe folk who are honest.
I were brought up with lies.
I’m happy with dishonesty.

It’s more real. Tell me porkies.
Elaborate. I take my wife, my kids,
government with a pinch of salt.

If anybody tells you you’re good
You can see their eyes twinkle.
Same if they tell you you’re rubbish.

Tongues forked or straight
wind you up. I smile sweetly

when you say I’m handsome,
talented. Always I say, “O, aye!”

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

The Need

for your inattention.
Don’t compare and copy me.

My life is not an example.
Don’t follow my words.

Don’t try to match your skills
and attitude to mine.

All these sites ask for followers
and likers. My popularity

is not measured in clicks.
A comment is not a vaiidation.

A share is not a support.
You are not mimetic.

Do not find yourself in others.
You’re not hollow.

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

History (A World Where 2)

is only ever now.
Events marked as then

can be dismissed as unreliable
personal testimony.

All records are falsifiable,
vague and without substance.

Numbers and dates are prone
to change with new evidence.

The past is uncertain.
Only the now is trustworthy.

Memories are full of doubt,
false and fake images.

Have faith in the eternal present.
It can’t be held onto.

Whatever can’t be grasped
has our hope, faith and trust.

I love you now. Whatever happened
is subject to conjecture.

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

In the garden with Caius

I follow him across puddles,
his yellow wellies twinkling.
He climbs onto a tree stump,
points to water-logged grass.

“Now look,Gran,look,
this is the floor,
down,
and this”
-gesturing upwards-
“is the sky.”

He stretches out his arms,
raises them, leaps,
lands and cheers.

“You do it, Gran”
and I do it,
his face
the unruffled lake
where I run
clear as moonlight,

balance perfectly
on damp, sawn wood.

We take turns, root
beneath the garden’s
green memory,
our hands brown leaves
cupping the breath
of early autumn.

© 2018, Sheila Jacob

::you say such nice things, sir::

one dot.

not two?

you say such nice things sir, while you are one in many,

many

disagree.

some struggle with the work each day, yet carry on, what

else can be done?

working in the field is good & honest.

quiet day with bread, purposeful baking, folding and pleating.

tomorrow is the run of the mill type daily.

as before, this is no metaphor.

where is the self worth sir, when we look full long in the mirror, see

darkly the things of youth, darkly those ideas & happenings not

written of here.

no guardian review.

it has not been the

experience we hoped for. we shall wear pyjamas. the book remains

tied.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; Sonjia’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)

.he wanted a garden.

have you collected seeds of many years, packed, labelled, dated.

have you died, and left the table unprepared. i have them now in boxes, a gift.

from those who love. they will bring me work, joy, an independent air.

seeds need water.

sun stays later.

i have imposter syndrome, never diagnosed yet googled when heard on radio live .

there may be too many additives these days not enough honesty grown.

she said i should have something new in the greenhouse.

i have, i said, and thought of you who

planted the seeds.

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher (sonja-benskin-mesher.net; Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings; Sonja’s daily blog (WordPress) is HERE.)

Anjum wrote the following poem in resonse to Poet Takes a Stand Against Gun Violence in the United States

If Guns Were Flowers

if guns were flowers they would be colorful

beautiful, appealing and smell so nice

they would be light to carry, would carry love

and powder of affection rather than affliction

if guns were flowers there would be gardens

more and graves less, joy more, sadness less

would soothe comfort please and caress

friends favorites fans more,enemies less

if guns were flowers I would plant them

then gather the seeds to share for PEACE

then gather some more, go to the shore

sail the seas on ancient ship,to get more

Anjum Wasim Dar

Pakistan

CER Copyright 2018

ABOUT THE POET BY DAY