Category: Poetry

The Problem…

July 22, 2020

This seat on the couch – I am mixing up the morning to see what comes of different postures. Provoking a new strand of this thread of Willing-by-Ink on dead trees. The surface texture broken on the plain expanse of cream-colored paper – a lined, effortful intent.

And there it is again, tension in the upper back and neck. Relief happens with a shoulder hunch and neck revolution, accompanied by a slight crinkling when tendons flex. The stretch is THERE… right in the middle of my upper back.

Realizing success in perseverance, in the effort of continuing the flow of inspiration, an overcoming of the inertia of decades. No regrets, but why did I not take up this from of art before? Was I betting on the lottery of slothful indulgence to pay off in the end?

The problem, the Buddha said, is that you think you have time.

Photo by Michele Montserrat

Spiritual Memoir – June 9

What is written on my inner walls?

Arabic writing, its beauty indecipherable
so I call to a Guide who knows how to read it.
After a time, the letters become tongues of fire.

I tell the Guide what I see
and she tells me to look again –
On the wall, a portal now, opening onto a great sea
stormy, with crashing waves.
I taste salt that drenches face and hands.

Now words of water
form and pool on the walls. I begin
to understand even less,
but there is still the cool prickling of the water
on my skin.

I tell the Guide what I see and she laughs
and hands me a towel.
As I dry off, I see the walls are transparent now
and the whole World is laid out
a shimmering net of pearls at my feet.

Welcome Home
appears on the walls.



**NOTE: The featured image of a conservatory/pergola/gazebo copyright is unknown. Please contact me if you are the creator, I would love to give you credit and see more of your beautiful photography!

Healing Circles for Writing

The latest from the class I’m taking with Wendy Brown-Baez.

Where does serenity come from?
The still center not one single breath away from
where your knees are bent
along the edge of the chair.

Where does serenity come from?
Sinking into the sound of the June-soft air
as it brings the soft hand of car tires
on the cooling pavement.

Where does serenity come from?
Showing up in the middle of the storm
where clarity moves as
remembering to stay firm,
mindful of where the floor reaches up
to bear the weight of your feet.

Where does serenity come from?
Turning the corner
in a long, long, long struggle to stay with your purpose
no matter what.

Where does serenity come from?
A gritty, laughing dance
knowing this muddy radish you just ate
has given you the wisdom
of just precisely how to be thorough
in harvesting the garden.

WLYA – 11 for 11!

Feelin’ all sassy and limber today, a good bit of work done. It’s been a busy week or so, and I’m really pleased with how well the Write Like You’re Alive 31/31 creativity challenge is going. Today, I finished up editing some draft pieces from last week, finalized three pieces from this week, and I’m completely up to date with the sprint.

Also, taking risks and being more vulnerable in my work – one aubade I feel comfortable showing, and several edgy, funny ones too, if I do say so myself.

Can’t share any here yet, but I’ll probably find time to do something more substantive and stand-alone, to post here on my blog. This writing stuff is addictive!

Daybreak_by_Parrish_(1922)

Repost – Poetry Lab #1 — CALIATH

FIRST, A QUEST. The image above, if carefully examined, displays three differently animated levels distinguishable by their relation to velocity and, by consequence, Time. This animation device has been used to display certain feelings in a much clearer way: her face is animated carefully and slowly, every frame is fluid, to inspire serenity and […]

via Poetry Lab #1 — CALIATH

Beauty – Iteration 18

First beauty – architectural blueprint for Prince’s Paisley Park complex.

Second beauty – Annie Lennox on the radio, singing “Would I Lie to You?”

Third beauty – blessed coolness: overcast, breeze, birdsong like crazy.

Next beauty – two well-dressed women; dark eyes, mouths speaking sweetness. A wonderful perfume.

Next beauty – my mood, buoyant, peaceful. The body at ease.

Penultimate beauty – I will not give up, no matter what the cost,

 

 

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Mimosa – Cover Image by David Bradford Kane, Self image by Michele Montserrat

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Federico Garciá Lorca

“…never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.”

Today is the birthdate of playwright and poet Federico Garciá Lorca, born in1898 in Fuente Vaqueros, near Granada in Spain. Check out the link below to read more about him on Poets dot Org.

There’s also a relatively new translation of Lorca’s work – Poet in Spain – that was published last fall by Knopf.”

“Riveting . . . Lorca’s poems from Spain are a poetry of dreams and journeys and glimpses from balconies, of sunbaked meadows and realms of erotic yearning . . . Arvio is a supple translator, and she has delivered a personal book . . . [Her] rich and gripping retranslation of ‘Blood Wedding’ [is] of a piece with Lorca’s blood-warm verse.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Federico on Poets.org

In 1936, García Lorca was staying at Callejones de García, his country home, at the outbreak of the Civil War. He was arrested by Franquist soldiers, and on August 19, after a few days in jail, soldiers took García Lorca to “visit” his brother-in-law, Manuel Fernandez Montesinos, the Socialist ex-mayor of Granada whom the soldiers had murdered and dragged through the streets. When they arrived at the cemetery, the soldiers forced García Lorca from the car. They struck him with the butts of their rifles and riddled his body with bullets. His books were burned in Granada’s Plaza del Carmen and were soon banned from Franco’s Spain.

“Verde que te quiero verde”

Featured image illustration by Natalie Matthews-Ramo. Photos by Thinkstock, Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images.