My poetry is moving!

And I don't mean emotionally, though I hope it is that too.

I will leave this blog here as an archive, but future poems will be at "Enheduanna's daughter". If you want to follow that blog or subscribe by email, when you get there you'll need to click the small horizontal bars high on top left, so as to display the sidebar where you can make those arrangements.

Why am I doing this? I struck a formatting glitch at "The Passionate Crone", which I can't fix. And maybe it's just time for a change anyway. (*Grin.*)

Unanswered Messages

Oh, what mystery there is in silence! The mind rushes in to fill the void with imaginings. You are no longer the dear you I think I knew before; you become an amorphous, shifting proliferation of possibilities. The human mind is hard-wired to attach meanings to all phenomena. So the absence of communication doesn't stay simply that; I make it mean this about me and that about you, many thises and thats. I make it mean that someone is wrong, someone is to be blamed. I did something wrong, therefore you don't communicate. Or your non-communication is you doing something wrong. Or maybe neither: perhaps circumstances are to blame. Perhaps your computer is broken, or lost, or stolen. Perhaps you are busy, or tired, or sick, or dead. Something is to blame, something is wrong. It cannot just be: a thing in itself. Nature doesn't abhor a vacuum nearly as much as that part of nature called the human mind does.

the air turns cold
after the sound of rain
ceases


I came across this journal entry from some time ago – the prose piece – and thought it just needed a verse added to become a haibun.

Linking to The Tuesday Platform for Feb 6 2018 at "imaginary garden with real toads".  I am shifting my (future) poetry to a new blog, which I did not anticipate when I posted this one. It seems kinda appropriate / ironic that the last one here is about unanswered messages, which might even be unread – so, by linking, I am making sure it is read!

A Ghazal On Whether the Beloved Is Aloof Or Touchy-Feely

A ghazal, we are told, should be melancholy
with craving the Beloved. Heavens, what folly!

Who, then, is this elusive Beloved? Golly –
it seems that the longed-for one is the most holy.

Yes, God. And who's that? A Santa, roly-poly?
Or a Jehovah, much less cuddly and jolly?

People seem to see God as masculine wholly,
whether that figure is Almighty or lowly.

But let us consider this carefully and slowly.
Perhaps as Great Mother we perceive Her truly.

Then, do we crave hugs She might give to a dolly?
Do we hunger for the sweetness of a lolly?

I think She must be rather more than that, surely!
Nor would She separate Herself from us coolly.

OK, I'll tell you the truth of it. (Or shall I?
Who of us knows the truth of anything fully?)

Nevertheless, I can make a sortie or sally.
Know this: I was once with Hafiz. I was really.

A seer told me this – and he was not merely
a charlatan, I promise. So you must rally.

You must set your will to accept I see clearly.
Poor Hafiz. In that life he was off his trolley!

He got it wrong about God. Well, it was early
in our understanding. Now we guess more nearly.

It is true we've always known God loves us dearly.
Therefore She will never depart from you, silly!

She is not trivial or fickle or frilly.
Neither is the path to Her side steeply hilly.

The one who tells you this is speaking truthfully 
from deep Remembrance ... if not strictly ghazaly.


Written for dVerse "Meeting the Bar – The Ghazal".
I added a further constraint, rhyming every line rather than just every couplet. On the other hand, I ignored the refrain. However it's more un-ghazaly in mood than form. 

[Fellow-Aussies, please applaud me for having resisted working in "Up there, Cazaly!"]

After reading all the beautiful poems others have written to this prompt, I feel a bit ashamed. Perhaps I'll try a serious one too in the near future. (Though actually this one does have a serious message underneath the play.)

Wendy Rule's Concert, 31 Jan - 1 Feb 2018

To Andrew

The full moon singer

live on my computer

is in America, next to a mountain.

It's cold there. She is dressed

in warm black pants and jacket,

red beret and hiking boots.

She plans to see the dawn, 

she tells us, after her singing.

Here in Australia, it's midnight.

I'm still in sarong. The electric fans

are still blowing air around my living room.

The sky outside is black with cloud. 

Between songs, Wendy reminds us:

the blue moon blood moon super moon,

Leo moon of creativity and sovereignty,

is present though we cannot see.

So are you, whom I also can't see

except in my mind. When 

did you not celebrate full moon with me?

When did you not watch an eclipse

alongside me? When didn't we 

attend Wendy's concerts together, here

on her visits to this our magical home

under our own mountain?

I know your spirit is with me tonight

as she casts the circle. Here in the South 

it's Lughnasadh, aka Lammas, a time 

of early harvest. I gather up in thought 

blessings that form my harvest, including 

you and the times we had together.

In the Northern half of the world it's Imbolc,

beginning Spring: new life. And I renew.

For Midweek Motif  ~ Moon at Poets United.

Musician Wendy Rule, an Australian now based in Santa Fe, is also a witch who casts circle at all her concerts. You can still find this one on YouTube.

Words of Power

The man next door

is beset by demons.

When he's off his medication 

I hear him banging around

trying to fight them off. 

He always resorts at last 

to his most potent curse

which he yells with grim intensity

and awesome courage: "Fuck off!" 

Judging by the sudden silence,

it works. Then he switches on

his talkback radio, loud

enough to hold the spirit hordes

back beyond his walls:

words from the outside world

making a noisy babble in his ears 

to drown those other messages 

only his ears can hear.

I have words for him too.

"If you keep using my phone

or cadging milk and sugar, 

I'll need you to pay." (Thinking, 

"I'm not your mother.") Now 

he never speaks to me, which I prefer….

But he's in the right place. Every night 
I send through the fence, like lasers, 

the words "Light" and “Love".

Magaly, in Art with Me at "imaginary garden with real toads" says she believes words have power (I do too!) and that they can be a way towards healing (so do I!). She asks us to explore "one or three (even thirteen) things you believe words can do for you and others". 

'Plenty of Time Later,' You Said

Dear, one day

I might die,

and most likely

(we could suppose)

before you do.

Such a thing

need not matter –

need not sound

the faintest bell

inside your mind.

Already you stop

the taking in

of my presence

in the world.

I am erased.

The real erasure,

when it happens,

will be anti-climax.

You are wise,

are you not?

How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy, Mister Death?

Thank you, I like him fine.

Buffalo Bill will never 

not be handsome now,

and his prowess won’t deteriorate.

And when I give him back

to the cradling earth again

– for I don’t get to keep them, you know –

dressed in a new body and sporting a new name

perhaps you’ll meet him once more, in a different dream 

… unless it is you I am holding then. 

Unless it is you I lead by the hand
to your new, true awakening….

At "imaginary garden with real toads" Brendan asks us to "dance with a ghost", i.e. to respond to another poem. (Well no, it was to play tennis, but I prefer to dance.) The original e. e. cummings poem is one of my favourites – and hey, if someone's "defunct", they're really a ghost! (I have read the cummings poem bitterly in the past, identifying with the questioner. So in a way I am here talking to myself, using Death's voice to persuade myself of a different, kinder perspective.)

The "different dream" is an allusion to the final passage of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, and in Death leading one by the hand I was recalling Sir Terry Pratchett's lovely posthumous tweet (involving his fictional character, Death).

Summer Evening

The heat cools to comfortably mild.

I look out the front door

and see, on the top step,

my dear man taking the air

in his chair on the landing.

Our pantherish old black cat, Levi,

sprawls near him on the mat.

Tortoiseshell Freya is curled up neatly 

close by on the second step.

And there's me. I am sitting  

on the top step, leaning back

against the rails: positioned to see,

talk to and touch all three....

             *********

It's five years ago and more. 

All of them are dead now.

Even on such a pleasant evening

I never sit, these days, on 

the front steps, enjoying the air.


Sharing at Poets United's Poetry Pantry #388.

Featured by Sherry at Poets United in Poems of the Week: Furry Feline Friends We Have Known and Loved, along with poems by Toni Spencer and Susan Chast.

The Opening of Doors

I usually barge right on through, and usually

there is some light on the other side, even

when one might think I’d have done better

to leave that door shut. Sooner or later 

there is always light – some – and  often

a late burst of unexpected brilliance … and

sometimes the door opens onto sustained

sunlight, and I need only enter and bask.

And there are times when I’m just here, 

and a door opens to let someone else 

come through, towards me, and that 

can be sweet or exciting or possibly

nothing at all – but nothing demands nothing, 

which is restful; and so, one way or another,

I tend to like it when doors open: I tend to see it 

as a good thing … for the most part, anyway.

Best of all is when doors become irrelevant:

when, instead of traversing some boundary or

entry, some turning-point or edge, we rise

skyward, unfettered, on waves of pure thought:

lifting into flight, cavorting on clouds, floating

and dancing in long arabesques, ethereal

pirouettes … which pleasure is encompassed

even better together, and so let our minds 

entwine. Meet me in the middle of the air!

The final sentence is stolen from a Paul Kelly song based on the 23rd Psalm. This particular line, which he inserts into it, is by Kelly himself and not the psalmist – and has different connotations from those I give it here.

This poem was inspired by the Doorway(s) prompt at Poets United this week.

A Manifesto for the New Year

I have not got the music

but I have the words.

I have not got the dance steps

but I have the words.

I have not got the numbers

but I have the words.

I have not got the science

but I have the words.

I do not have the lovers (any more)

but I (still) have the words.

I call out loudly with the words.

I throw my arms up and my head back,

shouting the words triumphantly.

I whisper softly with the words,

bending close to your secret ear

and breathing them, 

exhaling so lightly you can hardly feel –

but listen hard and you'll hear.

Sometimes I shout them in rage. And outrage. 

Sometimes, I wish to whisper venom.

The words are mine

to do with as I will.

(God said so, 

who gave them to me at my birth.)

I can make them sing, 

I can make them dance.

I can make them count.

I can make them explain – if you will follow –

the secrets of the Universe.

I can make them bring back my lovers.

Yesterday is breaking up, falling away.

Yesterday is getting thrown out with the garbage.

But the old words live on,

unable to be entirely discarded.

Words have power. I call up the power

from deep inside. I call up the words

from where they too are anchored within.

I set them free. I let them loose.

Now I make them new, like seedlings, like cubs.

They will play. They will grow. They will climb all over you.

At 'imaginary garden with real toads', Bjorn invited us to write a manifesto for 2018. I am not much for such things ... but then I watched Patti Smith on YouTube (who does have the music and the dance as well as the words) and – in the mysterious way it happens – suddenly became inspired.

Also sharing this at Poets United's Poetry Pantry #386

Discovering Three Pratchetts Not Yet Read

I'm sitting up in bed last thing at night

reading Terry Pratchett – one of my grand-

daughter's books, which I seized on with delight

when I discovered it so near at hand.

I’m visiting for Christmas. It's all right 

that I'm in her space; she’s a good girl, and

is young enough to like the blow-up bed

she gets to use in the front room instead.

Or else she sleeps on a trundle mattress

in the study, but anyway I get 

her room and her bed and – what happiness –

three books of hers by dear Terry Pratchett:

Sir Terry, whose name I shall always bless

for Discworld and its inhabitants – yet

this is tinged with some grief. Though they live on,

their gently humorous author has gone.

They are ‘young adult’ books, a genre I

often choose for its own sake anyway.

I may be regressed, but I don’t know why

I need worry about that. Reading’s play

in my book (ha ha ha!) and I’m not shy

of admitting this. Could there be a day

without a book in it? No, not for me –

glad I’m still here, in bed with Terry P. 

Winding up the month (and year) with a final offering for the Poetic Asides Ottava Rima Challenge.

I'm also sharing this with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #384, the first after our 2017 Christmas break.

Happy New Year, dear readers!

The Roses I Post on Facebook

My hobby is to photograph roses.

I like to find them growing in gardens.

The good God, whom we are told disposes

all things, knows how a heart sometimes hardens,

therefore is using me (one supposes)

to remind others of love and pardons.

Each comes with a message, unique each day –

yet all the same really. 'Be Love,' they say.

When I visit my family down south

in the temperate climes, I thrill to see

gardens full of roses. They spill and froth

and crowd and dance, and almost sing for me.

(Or is it that songs burst from my own mouth

in my joy that so much beauty can be?)

At home I photograph roses for sale

in hot-housed bunches … but still beautiful.

The words I add to these posts are simple

wishes for peace, for love, for happiness,

for a bright day – nothing original.

Yet people cherish them, feel that they bless.

I do go into my heart for them all –

risking banality, seeking sweetness.

Whether they come from within or above,

each message is really the same one: ‘Love!’

And again, an ottava rima for the form challenge at Poetic Asides.

Also shared with The Tuesday Platform for 9 Jan. 2018 at "imaginary garden with real toads".

There's Nothing Now

There’s nothing now that I can do for you,

and how it hurts my heart that this is so.

My sky has darkened from its sunny blue

as I discern that yours is thick with snow.

I always held to what I knew was true –

only to wonder now if I did know.

We were each other’s shelters once; that’s gone.
Like swords: the cutting rain, the piercing sun.

A combined ottava rima / ghazal, for the Poetic Asides ottava rima challenge. (Or rather, a quasi-ghazal – since, among other things not present here, a ghazal should have at least five couplets ... whereas an ottava rima cannot have so many.)

That Sentimental Place, the Past

She dreams of roses. Her father grew them

when she was a child, in all the colours

roses came in then. She remembers him

tending them closely. He would be outdoors

morning and evening, flexing his green thumb

(he hoped) outside his daily working hours,

and longer on weekends. The hues and scents

he revelled in, she treasures … and laments.

Yet another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge

Also shared with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #387

On Going Within

I speak into a void. He, Hermit, goes

so far into his cave, no-one can see

his lone attempts to heal his current woes.

I don’t know if he’s even hearing me;

he’s possibly so deep he never knows

that messages are sent at all. Will he

restore himself by hiding as in womb –

or does he pull around himself a tomb?

Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge

Sharing this (nearly a year later) with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #428

Time Off

for Julie

She’s gardening, before the weather heats

as morning widens into brightest day;

before the dense humidity repeats

its everyday assault. Meanwhile I play

indoors with poetry, creating feats

of formal exercise – the kind I may

do seated: scanning metre, choosing rhymes,

while she indulges in more physical pastimes.

We’re both on holiday, and catching up

with things which called us in the busy year

but were perforce passed over. Now, to stop

does not mean inactivity. The dear

preferred preoccupations fill each cup

with our own versions of post-Christmas cheer. 

She brings me a tomato, tangy-sweet.

I try for poems good enough to eat.

Another ottava rima for the current Poetic Asides challenge.
It came second!

Also sharing with The Tuesday Platform for 2 Jan 2018, at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

And What If Light?

‘And what if light surrounds us like a song –

or what if we are made of singing light?

You cannot prove these propositions wrong,

no more than I can prove that they are right.

Yet what if we had known it all along –

that light and music meld beyond sound/sight?

What difference might it make to you and I?

Perhaps we’d live more lightly, perhaps fly.’

He whispered these reflections to the air,

sending them out upon a rising breath –

then bent again to tend the garden, where

beneath the plaques folk rested in their death.

A woman came towards him, crying, ‘There

is where I want my dears, in solid earth

where I can come and talk to them and pray.’

Her tread was heavy as she moved away.

Around the grave-beds, grasses, flowers and trees

firm-anchored in the soil, while stretching high

into the air, moved slightly in a breeze

as if they danced – as if they’d almost fly.

Wind in the leaves made soft noise; humming bees

thronged the flowers. The sun rose in the sky.

The insects and the birds moved through the day,

uncaring of what he and she might say.

Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides form challenge.
Also shared at the latest Tuesday Platform, for 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Un-Scrooging

It’s Christmas time, and I do not believe

in all that crass, commercial carry-on.

I like to give. Most focus on ‘receive’

this time of year. The feasting, though, is fun.

I did that twice, the first on Christmas Eve;

then Christmas Day we fronted up again.

I must confess, the presents that I got

are great. ‘Bah, humbug!’ doesn’t hit the spot.

I had good conversations. One young man

regaled me with his fishing expertise;

I matched him catch for catch and line for line,

our heads together half the evening. He’s

a schoolboy, still a youth of just sixteen,

while I am far into my seventies, 

and yet we found such happy common ground

each counts the other now as a new friend.

On Christmas Day we dined with son’s old mates

(several I have known since they were small).

The hours of well-spaced courses, fun debates

with smart, like-minded people did not pall –

music, movies, books, fish, cheese, desserts …

we rose reluctantly as evening fell,

and drove home peaceful, happy and replete.

So now, goodwill to all! My life is sweet.


Another ottava rima for the Poetic Asides challenge.

Later: Although it is now far past Christmas (February, in fact) I am sharing this one with Poets United's Poetry Pantry #390

Secretly Super

These copper cuffs that ornament each wrist

are solid copper, not mere coated tin.

I trust that my arthritis may desist

as this good metal swiftly does it in.

And look – they also help me to resist

all evil, crime, wrongdoing, error, sin.

Raising my crossed arms like Wonder Woman

deflecting bullets, I’m an Amazon!

Another for the Ottava Rima challenge at Poetic Asides

Prodigal Friend

I had not looked for him these many years.

It seemed I must resign myself to fate.

Despite a sense of loss, there were no tears,

and certainly no reason to await

a reappearance. No-one reappears –

do they? – after such a lengthy absence,

such an unrelieved and total silence.

Yet here he is, with thanks upon his tongue

for all the truth we shared a decade past –

and suddenly I’m roused, as after long

and peaceful slumber, opening eyes at last ...

awakening to dawn and daylight, song

of early birds crescendoing, and vast

blue skies unfolding to the spreading sun.

Written for the Ottava Rima challenge at Poetic Asides

(12 Aug 2018) I've just removed first and last lines, which were banal and unnecessary, so it's no longer a proper Ottava Rima; maybe I could label it a truncated one.

(Oct. 2018) Also linked to Poets United's Poetry Pantry #423