“Happiness. Simple as a glass of chocolate or tortuous as the heart.
Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
Bitter. Sweet. Alive.”
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
“Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.”
![]() |
From The Spruce: American Bittersweet Plants vs. Invasive Oriental Vines By DAVID BEAULIEU, Updated 10/17/17(Very Interesting Reading about 3 types of bittersweet!) |
Midweek Motif ~ Bittersweet
I met the beautiful bittersweet in shades of orange on an oak tree while on a walk with my grandmother. I gasped! She said (perhaps erroneously), that it was a parasite, living on the life-blood of another. I found the word parasite to be negative, and wondered at how something so pretty could have an ugly side. Well, there you have it (! ) both noun and adjective: Bittersweet.
Your Challenge: Write a brand new poem with a bittersweet mood and theme.
![]() |
Celastrus orbiculatus Oriental Bittersweet 🍂 |
How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander
the halls of the skull with the fluorescents
softly flickering. It rests on the head
like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel
and awkward as soon as one stops to look.
That pile of fallen leaves drifting from
the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,
to the grooves in that man’s voice
as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves
of books with moonlit opossums
and Chevrolets easing down the roads
of one’s bones. And now it plucks a single
tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet
itself is a swarm, a pulse with no
indigenous form, the brain’s lunar halo.
Our compacted galaxy, its constellations
trembling like flies caught in a spider web,
until we die, and then the flies
buzz away—while another accidental
coherence counts to three to pass the time
or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine
strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped
in the brain’s gray pool. How it folds itself
like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds
a fraying map from the pocket of the day.
Buried Love
by
I have come to bury Love Beneath a tree, In the forest tall and black Where none can see. I shall put no flowers at his head, Nor stone at his feet, For the mouth I loved so much Was bittersweet. I shall go no more to his grave, For the woods are cold. I shall gather as much of joy As my hands can hold. I shall stay all day in the sun Where the wide winds blow, -- But oh, I shall cry at night When none will know.
Bittersweet - Jalaluddin Rumi Poem read by Madonna - Lyrics
💮Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below andvisit others in the spirit of the community—(Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be Vanity / Narcissus. )