Grace at dVerse engages us to try a new poetic form: the Zéjel,
a Spanish form with Arabic influence related to the Qasida
and adopted by the Spanish troubadours of 15th century.
The rules for the most common form:
1) 8 syllable lines.
2) stanzaic, opening with a mono-rhymed triplet followed by any number of quatrains.
3) rhymed, the rhyme of the opening mudanza establishes a linking rhyme with the end line of the succeeding quatrains. Rhyme scheme, aaa bbba ccca etc.
Click on Mr. Linky to read more poems.
Image credit: Roman Odintsov.
Universes and grains of sand Threading dreams, like daisies, by hand Unstrung the quicker when more grand.
I sought the visions of a dream Where suffering ends and life would seem Heavenly, as every soul would beam To see wishes fulfilled as planned.
Long I searched by day and by night Like Eldorado by the knight The end I sought grew dim not bright As all my hopes came to a stand.
Now gray and old, I do decry The day I fell for that old lie: Apart from God to live and die And build my towering hopes on sand.
The night was thick with Southern mist the road steamed where darkness sifted
sweet desire: the devil smiles the basket away and disappears like will-o’-the-wisp
sifted, sifted my soul like chaff, alone at the crossroads looking after him
Mish at dVerse Poetics: "Always in Season" asks us to write about fruits or berries, giving us a broad flexibility of topic, from concrete to abstract. This poem was inspired by legendary blues singer and guitarist Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" (1936).
Cicindela sexguttata, also known as the green tiger beetle, Catoctin Mountain Park
It was my walk you were on hunting caterpillars, spiders and ants: cicindela sexguttata, tiger beetle after its prey in a flashy fluorescent kind of way
I stopped, you froze, neither of us camouflaged, me turmeric topped in white jeans, you in green metallic sheen me on all fours to examine you better you on all sixes to beat it if you had to
I exited stage left, you stayed put, focused, a cirque du soleil wanderer, stray spotlight hoarder ready to celebrate with a juicy meal of tang-colored butterfly puddling nearby
When comic relief: a crow flaps its wings while you race for your prey but your timing is late, the butterfly flutters off and I shout off the bird and you meander onward, a green blaze of disgust.
Join the dVerse poets as we write on "Creepies and Crawlies," for Poetics Tuesday.
There she was: I realized she was me crouched in the beating room, hateful she, a thing that cried piteously ugly she, crying stupidly, screwed up she, she ugly, she stupid, she dumb, nothing deserving.
Dark, glassy the room: no color, but a stink of loathing a stink of putrid fear, foul abhorrence disgust mirrored through the open door of midnight huddled waiting for the next well-deserved blow.
The rustling of leaves: standing many a time at the doorway dreaming she was never there, the she that was me this still-born excrescence, but now she, suddenly shielded with the cloak of pure light of the Ancient One, holy, whose right cannot be denied, his blood the price for she, for me.
Photo by Masha Raymers on Pexels.com
Romans 7:14-25 (NET) For we know that the law is spiritual – but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. For I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want – instead, I do what I hate. But if I do what I don’t want, I agree that the law is good. But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For I want to do the good, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the very evil I do not want! Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me. So, I find the law that when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God in my inner being. But I see a different law in my members waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Romans 8:15 (NET) For you did not receive the spirit of slavery leading again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry, “Abba, Father.”
2 Corinthians 3: 17-18 (NET) Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is present, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, which is from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
For dVerse: Poetics - Dungeons and Dragons, Sanaa asks that we "play a poetry game called,'Dungeons and Derivatives.' The idea here is to select one (from a list of eight sentences) and to change at least one word or more by replacing it with a derivative. Once you are done, unlock the muse from its dungeon and write a poem with the existing sentence." I chose the line from one of her poems which runs: “The rustling of leaves; I have stood many a time at the doorway of dreaming.” Click on Mr. Linky to read more and join in!
fare thee well, my sister fare thee well, my brother too well met this day to savor a spell of time to share
what see you in my path what see I in yours a cross laid upon our shoulders to follow in His steps
be gentle, sister, brother ours is not to judge called are we to tarry in comfort and in love
kneel and pray o sister kneel and pray today kneel and pray o brother Manna for this day
For He who died on Calvary is Bread of life to us and He has sent His Spirit to quench the thirst in us
now we rise to journey on our way again the time that we have tarried a well of joy has been
I’ll see you at the Wedding I’ll see you with the Lamb we’ll sing with great rejoicing never to part again.
I had just completed the next to the last verse when I received the news that my dear friend, A. J., had passed into glory. It was as if all the verses that had been written before were not a coincidence but had been a preparation for this, a reminder to all those who hear that our journey leads homeward to our heavenly Father, to God our Savior. “As it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him’”— (1 Corinthians 2:9).
pax,
dora
image resource – https://www.lovethispic.com/image/56666/pathway-to-the-unknown
Join in Eugi's Weekly Prompt, "journey"
For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light do we see light. (Psalm 36:9)
Not Our Will, But Thy Will Be Done
Silvery strands, hair falls in brush-fulls one saint’s covering glory thread-bare every thread-count, hair-count numbered tears bottled, not nameless not in a warehouse, but in the house of the Lord, O En-hakkore, on Zion’s mount, where nations stream one day, El-Shaddai, that day don’t delay, Yahweh, that hour cry the faithful weeping from hospital beds prison cells, beside mass graves, the suffering martyrs, broken families soldiers and civilians mere fodder for power, numberless babes murdered in wombs: hear our prayers, O LORD our God, for the coming of Thy Son.
For today's dVerse Poetics, Ingrid asks us to "try to complete the poem as far as possible without writing it down. Think about the devices discussed above: regular rhythms, repeated phrases or ‘motifs’, alliteration and rhyme schemes – anything to aid the memory and help the words to flow....Make an audio/video recording of your poem and post it to your blog and/or transcribe your poem, so we can read the finished version." Click on Mr. Linky to join in and read more poems.
Mothers have always wandered and searched still as gravestones in blood-soaked cities and fields for their daughters, their sons.
It concerns them not when lies unravel, whether thugs come in uniforms or turbans by force of law and terror masking regime bureaucrats and zealots.
Ten people, including seven children, were killed by a U. S. drone strike on Sunday. “At first I thought it was the Taliban,” one survivor said. “But the Americans themselves did it.”1 Thirteen U. S. Marine Corps, Army & Navy service members were killed in Kabul’s suicide bombing last week.2Their average age was 22. That same day, August 26th, in Chicago, a security guard shot a man three times for not wearing a mask3.
Writer Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) is one of Russia’s great absurdists, his black humor seemingly politically opaque, but troublesome enough to alert Soviet authorities who threw him in prison where he died forgotten by his jailers.
Join us a dVerse where we are writing a quadrille (44 words exactly) using the word "heart." Click Mr. Linky to read more.
“Poetry makes nothing happen: it survives”¹ unlike young Icarus² who would fly to freedom under the belly of a giant whale ascending but he plummeting, free-falling, down to his death while a world watched, still watches in horror through that silver screen of the mind’s eye as of an oracle that survives in the folds of memory forecasting doom, like the poetry his heart sang of a better life, a New World of winging hopes now a land in chaos helmed by venal fools where yet survive as in the Ark the few whose hope shies not away in whom Life supplants death to whom Bread is provided and thirst quenched whose city is built not with human hands whose cornerstone is the Lamb that was slain.
2On Monday, August 16, 2021, seventeen-year-old Zaki Anwari fell to his death after clinging to a US military plane taking off from Kabul as he tried to flee the Taliban takeover. He was one of several Afghans who rushed onto the tarmac of the capital’s airport and desperately held onto to the side of the C-17 aircraft before takeoff, captured in a widely-shared video that encapsulated the chaos of America’s exit from Afghanistan. A member of Afghanistan’s National Youth Football Team, Anwari was described by a spokesman for the sports federation as “kind and patient.He had no hope and wanted a better life.”3
You were four with a Daddy when you laid out dancing colors of pink, blue, green and purple
When you were four and a day the colors went orange viral of corona, corona everywhere
You sat half-hidden in shadow your diamond father stolen from you with black words like ICU
Now pink, blue, green and purple have fled a world of frightening red your mother widowed in white
And you are four and counting looking back at days of gray a rainbow shining over you: we pray
Reena at Xploration Challenge gives us an update on the four-year-old pictured above: “I came across a heart-wrenching picture of a drawing by a 4-year old, whose father [was] battling lung failure due to Covid in hospital. When asked what was it she had drawn, she said “Corona, Corona …. Everywhere Corona.” The entire family was infected, but all others have recovered…. She lost her father today. Her mother, whom I see as an exceptionally strong woman, fought till the end, staying afloat with her Buddhist beliefs and chanting “Nam myth renge Kyo.” It kept her going, if nothing else. She is totally deflated now, after the incident. She, who led a fatherless life (her father being a drug-addict), just uttered the words ‘My daughters will meet the same fate.'”
Whom the fire burned is under gauze. Was it once black or white or non-white? What the closed eyes? What myriad colors swirl beneath the bandages? Sins of color stain even a child. What absolution have we if we offer such sacrifices as the gods decree? And if it walks like blind Tiresias what will it prophesy but death which comes to all and judgment.
In keeping witht the theme of minimalism in art, Sanaa at dVerse writes: “I want you all to select one out of the twelve photographs shared … and write a poem. It can be an Ekphrastic poem, if you like. Go philosophical. Go dark or romantic or solemn. Share what you feel about Minimalist photography when you see it. The idea here is to provoke an emotion, and what better way to pour them out other than poetry?” Click on Mr. Linky and join in.
Girl with Balloon or There is Always Hope, original mural by graffiti artist Banksy (2002) on Waterloo Bridge in London’s South Bank; photo Dominic Robinson, 2004
writers are knife-walkers we walk to make the final cut where the blade ruptures the heart
surgical artists dissecting ourselves in the Circus Maximus for the amusement of the gods in their curtained prosceniums
they, eviscerating each other, we rip ourselves up to see the truth in fictional lives stitched up later as scarred tissues of lies
only to find we’re not hopelessly alone that our arteries flow into one another through artful bridges of aqueducts leading one to another’s aortas
in ancient tides and ocean swells, each as wombs incubating embryonic lives of who we are meant to be where the bone meets the marrow.
Today Tricia Sankey guest hosts at dVerse Poetics, and she challenge us with writing about risk. Inspired by Tricia's own poem, well, writing poetry is a risk for me, but as I tried to say, one well worth taking when it's done in community like the poets at dVerse. Thanks to one and all.
Sitting across the table from you Wonder what you’re thinking Is it just the food? Something more? You look up. The sweetness in your eyes Dispels all doubts in wedded bliss All conversations merge into one There’s no one for me but you.
Sitting down at Your table with You Dark the vagrant thoughts in my head Not on the bread, nor on the wine Your living Presence hid to my eyes Your tender, humbling gaze on me, I look up: Enthroned majesty cloaked in a naked Lamb Slain for the love of a sinner like me There’s no one for me but You.
For Laura’s dVerse Meeting the Bar prompt “of poetry craft and critique, ‘to turn again, about turn again‘ we are employing the device of ‘epiphora/epistrophe’ which makes use of consecutive end line repeats of words or phrases. The optional extra is ‘Symploce’ – a consecutive repeat of first and final words.”
Laura points out that ‘epiphora’ is also “a medical term for excess tear production,” which can result from both comedy and tragedy.And so I have incorporated quotes from the classic Frank Capra film, “Arsenic and Old Lace,”to write a farce and an omen, reflecting perhaps something of the state of the world today.
In Melbourne one night I dreamed of you Cold-eyed in June with summer roses hanging tough Knew I’d meet you when the four horsemen rode With plague and famine and war on their hooves With plague-driven carts bouncing off their hooves.
Ribbed, malnutritioned, unhallowed eyes knuckle mine And without turning I see in wintry desert climes A thing to be desired above all others A taste to consume and be consumed by A reign of terror sublime where worms meet flesh Of tree-fruit hung, mouth-watering pulp of initiation Plucked, bitten off, in excess of secret concupiscence
In ravishment of the verboten, for that which I hate, I had done, and thus doing, am undone, the unmaggoted Fruit in its rainbow pride turning to dust and ashes in my mouth. For I have traded a Love without price For emaciated fruited-husks littering the fields of deceit Yet again, an unslumbered hungering malice ever-stalking At my heels, until out it comes, the vinegared indigestible
Bulk of it spilled vomitously, wretched retchings of a fool Words and deeds like knives ungorged flying mercilessly And I with unclean hands, naked in the cool of the evening Hidden, yet sought, drawn to the hallowed treed shade where Gratuitously, there is room for me, manna for me, Bread of life, Water that quenches my thirst, Whose wine-dark blood Spent in mercy divine washes over and covers me so To walk at last in honeyed valleys and orchards free.
Song of Songs 2:3 [She]: As an apple tree among the trees of the forest, so is my beloved among the young men. With great delight I sat in his shadow, and his fruit was sweet to my taste.
Grace at dVerse asks us to meet the bar by writing a palinode or palinody, “an ode or song that retracts or recants a view or sentiment to what the poet wrote in a previous poem.” She has various examples of this and I’ve chosen to follow Monica Youn’s model. Modernists like the young T.S. Eliot have always intrigued me, their loss of faith, their perceived dissolution of any moral center so that it could not “hold” (Yeats) leading to a hellish fragmentation of their psyche, the untethered remnants of a “lost generation.” Their poems nevertheless are replete with the religious symbolism of earlier ages. I thought I’d pluck a character from one of Eliot’s most famous poems (“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”) and see how he would do in a palinode.As a palate cleanser, which you may be in great need of after my clumsy fan fiction, listen to the Jeremy Irons reading of Eliot’s poem below.Click on Mr. Linky to read more dVerse palinodes and join in.
Inspired by the Georges de La Tour painting below, the following poem attempts to give an added voice to the eloquence of Tour’s work by “unmuting” Job’s wife. As a character in the Book of Job, a Gentile living during the time of the patriarchs, Job’s wife is not prominent. But, perhaps, she delivers the most bitter blow to Job. Through her, we hear the voice of Satan speaking most directly to Job when she asks, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). In the midst of his sufferings, I believe Job’s greatest challenge was to withstand this voice and choose to trust God.
“Job Mocked by his Wife,” Georges de La Tour (17th c.)
No, Job, I didn’t sign up for this. The ships lost at sea, drowning spices Camels marauded, flocks lit into carrion husks Children buried by an ill-wind where they danced And my jewels? Bartered for funeral meats
Shall I proclaim it for posterity, inscribe in stone Your endless complaints, the hollow sounds Of jagged grief and friends’ scorn? Look at me! Washing our rags, hiding my shame From the maids that I once kicked out of doors
Job, I didn’t sign up for this, my darling. Your boils how they stink where they fester Open wounds that run dry and break open again The prayers that you whisper late into the night While in the city they dance and they dine
Gentiles we are, not of Abraham’s tribe! The God you both serve has given you hell So leave it, I tell you; curse Him and die! Don’t live like a fool trusting Him with your life When a stillborn child has much better luck
I heard you this morning sing like a lark, Of your God who will come to intercede and save Who with your own eyes you will see at last So you’ll wait, diseased, though you’re slain. You’re mad!
The sacrifices you offered once smoked to the sky Yet you speak of a Redeemer as if he were a man But, husband, what broken body, what blood can make clean Hearts bitter with hate, hands wicked with lust? This God that you worship is too holy, too proud Do what I say! Curse Him and die!
I didn’t sign up for this! Do you hear? I didn’t sign up for this.
Job 19:19-27 All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me. My bones stick to my skin and to my flesh, and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth. Have mercy on me, have mercy on me, O you my friends, for the hand of God has touched me! Why do you, like God, pursue me? Why are you not satisfied with my flesh? Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!
Roughly reworked from an earlier version for dVerse "Poetics: "Exploring the Narrative Voice," guest hosted by Ingrid. Thank you, Ingrid for a superb prompt.More dVerse poems, at Mr. Linky's.
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