Break, break the splitting cataracts Send skin-sharp torrents to set free Remold with Spirit-sinew mottled clay Jarring-fiery Sinai-thunderous The deep unseen core.
Hide me there upon the Rock See me a revelry of particulate force Lifting light, water, earth, and air Across a timeless mist of song.
You, O God, who overflows my praise Falling upon sun-spun life baptized Fathomless One who fathoms me To dance in the compass of Thy heart Break, break the splitting cataracts!
Fay Collins, “Full Spate,” Lodore Falls, oil on board
Sarah at dVerse asks us for an ekphrastic poem, "to choose a picture, and let it inspire your words," with the picture being one by artist Fay Collins. Click on Mr. Linky and join in!
An inch the moon moved, me eyeing through sleepless lids I lay dying: apple-fed.
Dim my sight, breath weakening death’s poison ever strengthening: apple-cursed.
Whispered prayers, hurried words of flesh plead soul’s deliverance afresh: apple-damned.
Darkness now floods the mind distraught I would, I could, but I cannot: apple-bent.
God’s Son whose flesh my guilt impaled On cross for me o’er death prevailed: apple-freed.
Photo by Tom Fisk from Pexels
Grace at dVerse challenges us today to write a Compound Word Verse, an unfamiliar form to most ous I daresay. She writes: "The Compound Word Verse is a poetry form invented by Margaret R. Smith that consists of five 3-line stanzas, for a total of 15 lines. The last line of each stanza ends in a compound word and these compound words share a common stem word which is taken from the title. (In the first example below the stem word is “moon” from the title “Moonlighting”; the compound words related to the title are moondust, moonbeams, moonsongs, etc.)
The Compound Word Verse (3 lines) has a set rhyme scheme and meter as follows:
Rhyme Scheme: a,a,b
Syllable/Meter: 8, 8, 3
Click on Mr. Linky to read more and join in!
I watched you go, the empty sleeve of your coat brushing my cheek long before the final goodbye
on riddling ground east of Eden, west of the moon, where dead roam among the living as infernal winds sweep through like furies spitting over our destinies
in the wasteland where visions die where banshees howl, half-formed men bay round fires of Cain’s wandering offspring; yet the eternal revelation, tri-folded, goes forth to the hungry and the poor in spirit
on ground riddled with the treacherous dust of history, walking as quickened ones, lilies of the field, dandelions harboring the unsearchable riches of Christ showing forth the unassailable purpose of God
as dumb to the world’s riddles, we carry on, spinning out of bereft arms into shrouds or across canyons of a diseased mind losing each other to time’s grasp, till time stops, and we, with joy unspeakable, walk on new ground.
Photo by ROMAN ODINTSOV on Pexels.com
Ingrid at dVerse's "Poetics: From a place of pain" asks us to "try your hand at writing your way out of a place of pain" which I have done combining fragments of poems from the past. Join us by clicking on Mr. Linky.
Salvador Dalí. (Spanish, 1904-1989). The Persistence of Memory. 1931
Five minutes ago insurance was on the phone something needed watching a chore couldn’t be ignored prescriptions waited in the hallway voices cluttered up the inbox the sun was breaking hot motes star-fished into eyes death landed on the floor space folded into halves you went into your room the music turned up loud in the spaces of my heart where you still pace and pray the speakers turned up high distance crumpling in my hand the clock stretched round a bend five minutes ago
For dVerse's Open Link Night 293 hosted by Lisa. Click on Mr. Linky and meet us there!
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
Sarah of dVerse asks us to choose a poem we’ve read over the last year and write a response to it in conversation, as it were, with its preoccupations. I’ve chosen John Updike’s “Fine Point,” written just weeks before his death in January 2009. His consciousness of our tainted public and personal history, and faith’s endurance as he alludes to Psalm 23, is what engages me most. And so my response, “En Pointe.”
En Pointe
What divinity is this that tempers our clay
with hammers of wrath expended on temple,
church, in our uneasy play with pagan tunes
of lust? Even as we covet our neighbor’s lamb
we would sing tuneful papyrus songs in our Babylon
with lyres hung under willows, calling out as children
“Abba, Father,” knowing we are heard by the Name
of One who bore the curse of our sinful rebellions.
O Son of David, thou whose lips have tendered infinity –
“It is finished” — mercy and justice united — blood
spilled and body spent on the cross so that Surely—
yes, “surely”— and all the days of my life wilt thou
pursue — not merely “follow”— poor substitute
for the ancient tongue which reaches out in mercy
as unbounded as a lover’s song of songs to me
now to dwell in the house of the Lord, forever. Selah.
A wingless phoenix in Wal-Mart
By Special K and Quaker Oats
Stands mid-aisle, stock still, face pinched.
His eyes shift blank and stare
At a nightmare in the lightning flashes of his brain
Even with the doctor’s little pills, Franken-Berry,
Untethered chemistry, synaptic discord
A conflagration he could barely control
Or it would blaze into fiery immolation
As it was doing now
Had done a thousand times before
But for the clenched claws
Would knock down the hazy stupor of the day
Into wide Tartarus.
Storm-flash gone, he lifts his hand
Past packaged heads, past canned voices
Past paranoia, past schizophrenia
For the Lucky Charms
Broken bits of childhood psalms
Crayon memories
Of a Man walking on water
Leading him home
A child of God by name.
Nota Bene (June 10, 2021):
I wrote this poem some time ago but it remains my favorite, not least because it deals with a subject close to my heart: children and adults who deal with various forms of mental illness ranging from autism to schizophrenia. If you yourself or someone close to you suffers in such a way, you know that life is a daily obstacle course in ways we can barely understand. This poem is dedicated to them and those who care for them. May God’s grace be their strength and their stay.
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Dreams from a Pilgrimage 