Well, here we are: Tuesday! This brings us to this week’s poetic responses to last week’s Wednesday Writing Prompt, Philosopher’s Stone, September 20. The poems that follow give us an intimate and intense view of our regularly participating poets, either from the perspective of family connection, educational inspiration, or perspectives on art and philosophy. Enjoy!
… and do come out and exercise your poetic imagination tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome no matter where in the world you live, no matter your style or your status as a poet: amateur or professional, beginning, emerging or established. These prompts are theme based, not form based. All works shared on theme will be posted in next Tuesday’s collection. You may share your poems – or even prose – or a link to your theme-based work in the comments section below.
how you live in my mind!
genius teacher of boys other than myself
(never in your class) so often floating past me
in your ungainly manner
during those severely wounded years
shortly after the period of reciprocal destruction
known peremptorily as World War Two
you had been caught (I have always imagined)
in a random machine gun volley
down some dark & horrible defile
stinking of blood & death
all in the same old idiot cause
returning after great suffering being pieced together
to Kingston Grammar School to amble disjointedly
along its corridors nick-named perhaps brutally
by previous generations of unkind boys to indicate
that they could hardly understand
a single word of yours whether spoken in fluent
Latin Greek Russian French or German
your command of which survived the wounds
of neck & face as well as arms & legs
and who knows what else now grave secrets
but once I heard you solo speaking loud & clear
in Dvorak’s Cello Concerto playing now
on the gramophone – and it’s not Rostropovich
but Gobbo as it might have been weeping for joy
at his survival in spite of all the suffering
this darkening evening in late autumn
Making up his abode in a distant land
Discerning the blue sea
He pierced beside me
Watery moonbeam playing on his visage
Vehicled abruptly his fervid miraculous fingers
Attiring a necklace of words
A mystic film
A palace of jade
I glowered at him except twinkling of my eyes
Surmising his authentic essence
Of a man a spirit or a god
Relating me his volition
to foozle me in his sea beside his mushy windy casuarina arbors
He left
Hurling his words into the blue bay
But nothing finaled
Albeit I recounter ,counsel
and -grope his lustre
Palping eyes of his verses
Savoring his left pages …
The poet was my father
He read his poems to our family friends
And all were mesmerized by them
How wise, how deep, how entangled but also bold
In a time of dictatorship
The poet was my hero
Till one day when the feeble man crawl from under his own built effigie
Sad day for me
I became deaf to his words
And started writing my own lines
Lines on my own coin
The poet left
Vaporised in some blond vagina
Only then I have found that was his pattern
Sliding slowly from one black hole to the next vortex
Blond haired and with witchy eyes
The poet and me lost track from one another then
I remained with the one instilled by him in the cells of my soul
Later, decades later
The poet have raised again from his pit
He stands besides his trees
The trees that in one of his poems were craving to see a naked woman for they never been in paradise
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT, April 12, 2017 (1) Vacations: Well, this one is akin to the first composition assignment on returning to school after summer vacation: Tell us about your most fondly remembered vacations. Perhaps you enjoyed it because it involved family and childhood. Perhaps it was a dream vacation come true. Or, maybe it was an unexpected adventure. Or, perhaps your best vacation is the one you are planning now.
To Italy
you never expected this
we touch Florentine great black hog’s ringed cold snout
a ritual au revoir
taste best bitter coffee on the TGV
see snowed peaks of lower Apennine mountains
out of warm train windows
enter massive
Milan train Station
nine days coach trip
poke me in the side
when coach pace nods me off
stroll spiral down to medieval streets and a tilted horse race square
walk Rome’s cobbles amphitheatre
marvel at Vatican mosaics
we thought paintings
want to stroke cordoned vast
marble muscles
lilt up Venetian canals
wonder why when renovating buildings at home
builders don’t have picture tarpaulins
of the building beneath
you never expected this
for my fortieth
expected Wales or Scotland
then I request you order
a passport,
and live nine days
out of a suitcase
and thank your late father
our invisible companion
who made this possible
when one bottle of wine
seemed as if it was going to last forever;
the one I’m thinking of (purchased
one dinnertime in summer at 7/6d)
occupied a space in my life
a mile high and spanned the gap
all the way to Tibet; as you drank a glass
that dinnertime it seemed to refill itself
from the dregs of love
when one kiss would last
as long as the Rachmaninov cello sonata
whenever you put the record
on the turntable and let the needle fall –
obliterated in the so well-known cadences
which I could have been whistling
had my lips not been squashed against hers
when a bicycle ride would construct a day
down to the sea and back
across the long valley and over the downs –
magic ride often repeated –
I fill it from these dregs of memory
WEDNESDAY WRITING PROMPT, April 12, 2017 (2) Memories of those lost. Have there been people in your life that you don’t loose no matter what? Perhaps people like parents who are so much a part of you, you seem to sense their presence even after they have died. How good is that? Or, maybe you don’t think it is. Tell us about it in poem or prose.
One of My Tomorrows
for Celia
Our last goodbye was casual
as if I would see you again
on one of my tomorrows
I touched your arm
you flinched. In pain.
I felt persistent guilt
Born of carelessness
only nervous uncertainty
could freely demonstrate
Born of habitual presumption
that you were in charge
you weren’t. Not really.
You never were, save
your own sense of duty
to boss, nay care for everyone
Too much on small shoulders
that weren’t as strong as the
force of that inner being
the force that stopped being
that was someone once
whom I loved and miss
Some time after we’d helped you
to meet your God, one starlit night
I heard your voice as clear as the sky
O lamb of God, who takes away
the sins of the world, have mercy
and grant us peace. I swear
Lantern swinging down path —
I wonder if it is really there,
if that is you, or just some accident
of moonlight and wind.
How is it possible for the night
to be so black that no adjective
makes sense? Just black-black,
with shadows hovering and the wild phlox
lopped over reflecting greywhite back up.
No lantern, but there might as well be,
my heart lighting every moment,
bringing you back through memory
to stroll ahead telling me that story
I promised to never forget.
This is the first time Jennifer Cartland is featured on The Poet by Day. . She says of herself simply, “In between meetings, in between errands, seat cushions, and ‘oms’, I try to nab those little guys flying though my noggin’ and shake them up a bit, turn them into something humans can understand. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Sometimes they are happy I did, sometimes they aren’t.”
Lavender & Whippoorwills
nasturtiums growing
in hollyhock fields
smelling of lavender
& blue whippoorwills
whose song bids me
follow the spirit
of you
entwined as we are
in consummate truth
i see you dancing
beneath the elm tree
with boughs your
dance partner
forever & free
as you slip transparent
from my view
the music plays softly
as it is never adieu
from the lemon bush
filtering meringue
soft dreams
to the orange orchard
citrus scenes
i knew you loved me
before i became a whisper
& held me near
before the dance…
taste of cinnamon cinders
nasturtiums growing
in hollyhock fields
smelling of lavender
& blue whippoorwills
Well, such wonderful responses to Wednesday Writing Prompts. I think it makes rather a lovely collection, which I hope you enjoy. I hope you’ll also visit these poets at their blogs and get to know them better. Look for another Wednesday Writing Prompt tomorrow.
LESSON NINE: Be kind to our languge. “Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own ways of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the Internet. Read books.” Prof. Snyder, On Tyranny, Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
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Poetry Group, he published a collection, Petrichor Rising (eBook and paperback), the profits from which go to charity. You can read more about John and his projects at: Petrichor Rising and how the Twitterverse birthed friendships that in turn birthed a poetry collection.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 