Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Temptation

     

“Knowing was a temptation. What you don’t know won’t tempt you.”— Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

SOURCE

“For me, temptation is life and I have a gargantuan appetite for everything.”— Felix Dennis

Midweek Motif ~ Temptation

Desiring something wrong or unwise is Temptation.

But isn’t it something extremely interesting and delightful once in a while? And powerful? How do you deal with it? Do you give in? Don’t you?

What tempts you most and seduces you to sin? 

Or how do you resist the temptation?

A couple of poems here:

The Temptation

by Charles Baudelaire

THE Demon, in my chamber high,
This morning came to visit me,
And, thinking he would find some fault,
He whispered: "I would know of thee

Among the many lovely things
That make the magic of her face,
Among the beauties, black and rose,
That make her body's charm and grace,

Which is most fair?" Thou didst reply
To the Abhorred, O soul of mine:
"No single beauty is the best
When she is all one flower divine.

When all things charm me I ignore
Which one alone brings most delight;
She shines before me like the dawn,
And she consoles me like the night.

The harmony is far too great,
That governs all her body fair,
For impotence to analyse
And say which note is sweetest there.

O mystic metamorphosis!
My senses into one sense flow--
Her voice makes perfume when she speaks,
Her breath is music faint and low!"

As By Fire

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sometimes I feel so passionate a yearning
    For spiritual perfection here below,
This vigorous frame with healthful fervour burning,
    Seems my determined foe.

So actively it makes a stern resistance,
    So cruelly sometimes it wages war
Against a wholly spiritual existence
    Which I am striving for.

It interrupts my soul's intense devotions,
    Some hope it strangles of divinest birth,
With a swift rush of violent emotions
    Which link me to the earth.

It is as if two mortal foes contended
    Within my bosom in a deadly strife,
One for the loftier aims for souls intended,
    One for the earthly life.

And yet I know this very war within me,
    Which brings out all my will-power and control,
This very conflict at the last shall win me
    The loved and longed-for goal.

The very fire which seems sometimes so cruel
    Is the white light, that shows me my own strength.
A furnace, fed by the divinest fuel,
    It may become at length.

Ah! when in the immortal ranks enlisted,
    I sometimes wonder if we shall not find
That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted,
    Our places are assigned.

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

              (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Writing Prose.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Morning Poem

“A monk sips morning tea,
it's quiet,
the chrysanthemum's flowering.”— Matsuo Basho

SOURCE

“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.”— Khalil Gibran

   Midweek Motif ~ Morning Poem

Capture the time in your lines when the day is new and you are out of your slumber.

Isn’t it always a good morning whether it’s bright, gray, cloudy or rainy? Or is it not?

A few lines from Langston Hughes:

Bad Morning

Here I sit
With my shoes mismated.
Lawdy-mercy!
I's frustrated! 

Today’s motif is Morning Poem. Let’s see where the morning takes you J

Morning Poem

by Mary Oliver

(here)

300

by Emily Dickinson

'Morning'—means 'Milking'—to the Farmer—
Dawn—to the Teneriffe—
Dice—to the Maid—
Morning means just Risk—to the Lover—
Just revelation—to the Beloved—

Epicures—date a Breakfast—by it—
Brides—an Apocalypse—
Worlds—a Flood—
Faint-going Lives—Their Lapse from Sighing—
Faith—The Experiment of Our Lord 

One O’Clock In The Morning

by Charles Baudelaire

Alone, at last! Not a sound to be heard but the rumbling of some belated and decrepit cabs. For a few hours 
we shall have silence, if not repose. At last the tyranny of the human face has disappeared, and I myself shall be the 
only cause of my sufferings.
At last, then, I am allowed to refresh myself in a bath of darkness! First of all, a double turn of the lock. It 
seems to me that this twist of the key will increase my solitude and fortify the barricades which at this instant 
separate me from the world.
Horrible life! Horrible town! Let us recapitulate the day: seen several men of letters, one of whom asked me 
whether one could go to Russia by a land route (no doubt he took Russia to be an island); disputed generously with the editor of a review, who, to each of my objections, replied: 'We represent the cause of decent people,' which 
implies that all the other newspapers are edited by scoundrels; greeted some twenty persons, with fifteen of whom I am not acquainted; distributed handshakes in the same proportion, and this without having taken the precaution of 
buying gloves; to kill time, during a shower, went to see an acrobat, who asked me to design for her the costume of a 
Venustra; paid court to the director of a theatre, who, while dismissing me, said to me: 'Perhaps you would do well to 
apply to Z------; he is the clumsiest, the stupidest and the most celebrated of my authors; together with him, perhaps, 
you would get somewhere. Go to see him, and after that we'll see;' boasted (why?) of several vile actions which I
have never committed, and faint-heartedly denied some other misdeeds which I accomplished with joy, an error of
bravado, an offence against human respect; refused a friend an easy service, and gave a written recommendation to a
perfect clown; oh, isn't that enough?
Discontented with everyone and discontented with myself, I would gladly redeem myself and elate myself a
little in the silence and solitude of night. Souls of those I have loved, souls of those I have sung, strengthen me,
support me, rid me of lies and the corrupting vapours of the world; and you, O Lord God, grant me the grace to
produce a few good verses, which shall prove to myself that I am not the lowest of men, that I am not inferior to
those whom I despise. 

Morning

by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The mist has left the greening plain,
The dew-drops shine like fairy rain,
The coquette rose awakes again
Her lovely self adorning.

The Wind is hiding in the trees,
A sighing, soothing, laughing tease,
Until the rose says "Kiss me, please,"
'Tis morning, 'tis morning.

With staff in hand and careless-free,
The wanderer fares right jauntily,
For towns and houses are, thinks he,
For scorning, for scorning.
My soul is swift upon the wing,
And in its deeps a song I bring;
Come, Love, and we together sing,
"'Tis morning, 'tis morning." 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community—

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Surprise!)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Movement

      “The world is always in movement” — V.S. Naipaul

SOURCE

“I do not believe in political movements. I believe in personal movement, that movement of the soul when a man who looks at himself is so ashamed that he tries to make some sort of change – within himself, not on the outside.”— Joseph Brodsky

      Midweek Motif ~ Movement

I was listening to a Bengali song the other day when suddenly I heard the voice of the words in a different note I was not familiar in my childhood. I was aware and amazed how the song writer had captivated a ‘movement’ all around him. In the song the focus is mainly on a plant, engrossed in the bliss of life merrily singing of its motion. It’s a Tagore song. Here is a translation which I did:

River dear, in a fit of frenzy you rush at will

I, a dazed magnolia, insomniac, sit fragrance-filled

Ever quiescent, I keep my deep treading concealed

In each sprouting leaf and flower trail my path reveals

River dear, motion-thrilled you wildly race

Losing yourself in course endless   

Ineffable is my rhythm; a life’s stir towards light

The sky knows its bliss as do the silent stars of the night

Movement is a layered word to me; both its noun and verb forms. What picture does it create in your mind when you see the word?

To me the word immediately sketches the image of physiological posture of pain and suffering of ageing. Then on second thought it becomes a voice of that organized effort to bring about or resist changes in the society.

Let’s see how the word speaks to you.

Souls’ Festival

by Matsuo Basho

souls’ festival

today also there is smoke

from the crematory

The City In The Sea

by Edgar Allan Poe

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne

In a strange city lying alone

Far down within the dim West

Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best

Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines and palaces and towers

(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)

Resemble nothing that is ours.

Around by lifting winds forgot

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

         

No rays from the holy heaven come down

On the long night-time of that town;

But light from out the lurid sea

Streams up the turrets silently-

Gleams up the pinnacles far and free-

Up domes- up spires- up kingly halls-

Up fanes- up Babylon-like walls-

Up shadowy long-forgotten bowers

Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers-

Up many and many a marvellous shrine

Whose wreathed friezes intertwine

The viol the violet and the vine.

Resignedly beneath the sky

The melancholy waters lie.

So blend the turrets and shadows there

That all seem pendulous in air

While from a proud tower in the town

Death looks gigantically down.

                                 (The rest is here)

The Owls

by Charles Baudelaire

UNDER the overhanging yews, 

The dark owls sit in solemn state, 

Like stranger gods; by twos and twos 

Their red eyes gleam.

 They meditate.

 

Motionless thus they sit and dream 

Until that melancholy hour 

When, with the sun's last fading gleam, 

The nightly shades assume their power.

 

From their still attitude the wise 

Will learn with terror to despise 

All tumult, movement, and unrest; 

For he who follows every shade, 

Carries the memory in his breast, 

Of each unhappy journey made.

Please share your new poem below and visit others in the spirit of the community --


        (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be - Masks)