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Rabu, 16 Mei 2018

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Happiness

THREE THINGS HAPPY PEOPLE DO By Chanda Temple

(Image by Emergency Brake via Flickr/Creative Commons.)

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
― Robert Frost

“What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry & June

“The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the deal.”
― C.S. Lewis

source

Midweek Motif ~ Happiness

Happiness is a balm. Some say that kindness amplifies it for giver and receiver. I've been surprised to learn this year that happiness helps when caring for friends and family in crisis.

Happiness!

Your Challenge: In a new poem, describe an instant and/or duration of happiness.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

A Birthday by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

“i thank You God for most this amazing”

by e.e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Source

Happiness by Louise Gluck

A man and a woman lie on a white bed.
It is morning. I think
Soon they will waken.
On the bedside table is a vase
of lilies; sunlight
pools in their throats.
I watch him turn to her
as though to speak her name
but silently, deep in her mouth--
At the window ledge,
once, twice,
a bird calls.
And then she stirs; her body
fills with his breath.

I open my eyes; you are watching me.
Almost over this room
the sun is gliding.
Look at your face, you say,
holding your own close to me
to make a mirror.
How calm you are. And the burning wheel
passes gently over us.

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

(Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ A Tribute Poem.)

Rabu, 25 Oktober 2017

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Journey

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” — Lao Tzu

SOURCE

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”__ Anna Quindlin, How Reading Changed My Life

Midweek Motif ~ Journey

Not a single atom in this universe is without a journey. Everything around you including yourself is a wayfarer. Each moment is a journey enriching us with experience.

Share with us those invaluable moments about your tour, trek, voyage, safari, pilgrimage or you might even recount your inner journey.

Even if you are a stay-at-home kind you might open your eyes to the exciting, adventurous, arduous and even traumatic journeys that are taking place all around us and write on any one of them.

A few poems for you:

Up-Hill

by Christina Rosetti

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?

Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?

From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?

A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?

You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?

Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?

They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?

Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?

Yea, beds for all who come.

The Addict

by Anne Sexton

Sleepmonger,

deathmonger,

with capsules in my palms each night,

eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles

I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.

I'm the queen of this condition.

I'm an expert on making the trip

and now they say I'm an addict.

Now they ask why.

WHY!

Don't they know that I promised to die!

I'm keeping in practice.

I'm merely staying in shape.

The pills are a mother, but better,

every color and as good as sour balls.

I'm on a diet from death.

Yes, I admit

it has gotten to be a bit of a habit-

blows eight at a time, socked in the eye,

hauled away by the pink, the orange,

the green and the white goodnights.

I'm becoming something of a chemical

mixture.

that's it!

My supply

of tablets

has got to last for years and years.

I like them more than I like me.

It's a kind of marriage.

It's a kind of war where I plant bombs inside

of myself.

Yes

I try

to kill myself in small amounts,

an innocuous occupation.

Actually I'm hung up on it.

But remember I don't make too much noise.

And frankly no one has to lug me out

and I don't stand there in my winding sheet.

I'm a little buttercup in my yellow nightie

eating my eight loaves in a row

and in a certain order as in

the laying on of hands

or the black sacrament.

It's a ceremony

but like any other sport

it's full of rules.

It's like a musical tennis match where

my mouth keeps catching the ball.

Then I lie on; my altar

elevated by the eight chemical kisses.

What a lay me down this is

with two pink, two orange,

two green, two white goodnights.

Fee-fi-fo-fum-

Now I'm borrowed.

Now I'm numb.

Provisions

by Margaret Atwood

What should we have taken

with us? We never could decide

on that; or what to wear,

or at what time of

year we should make the journey

So here we are in thin

raincoats and rubber boots

On the disastrous ice, the wind rising

Nothing in our pockets

But a pencil stub, two oranges

Four Toronto streetcar tickets

and an elastic band holding a bundle

of small white filing cards

printed with important facts.

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 ~ Saints

Rabu, 22 Mac 2017

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Mirror

“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror or the painter?” — Pablo Picasso

“All things that pass / Are wisdom’s looking glass.” — Christina Rossetti

“You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.”—George Bernard Shaw

“There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, ‘That person I see is a savage monster;’ instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.” — Noam Chomsky

Midweek Motif ~Mirror

A Mirror reflects. Does it tell us who we are?

Does it show appearance or reality?

What do you see or want to see when you look in the mirror?

What else do you think might work as a mirror too?

Mirror is our motif today. You might also write your lines from the perspective of a mirror.

Mirror

by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

The Other Side Of A Mirror

by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

I sat before my glass one day,

And conjured up a vision bare,

Unlike the aspects glad and gay,

That erst were found reflected there -

The vision of a woman, wild

With more than womanly despair.

Her hair stood back on either side

A face bereft of loveliness.

It had no envy now to hide

What once no man on earth could guess.

It formed the thorny aureole

Of hard, unsanctified distress.

Her lips were open - not a sound

Came though the parted lines of red,

Whate'er it was, the hideous wound

In silence and secret bled.

No sigh relieved her speechless woe,

She had no voice to speak her dread.

And in her lurid eyes there shone

The dying flame of life's desire,

Made mad because its hope was gone,

And kindled at the leaping fire

Of jealousy and fierce revenge,

And strength that could not change nor tire.

Shade of a shadow in the glass,

O set the crystal surface free!

Pass - as the fairer visions pass -

Nor ever more return, to be

The ghost of a distracted hour,

That heard me whisper: - 'I am she!'

Mirror, Mirror

by Spike Milligan

A young spring-tender girl

combed her joyous hair

'You are very ugly' said the mirror.

But,

on her lips hung

a smile of dove-secret loveliness,

for only that morning had not

the blind boy said,

'You are beautiful’?

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 ~ Gender)

Rabu, 29 Jun 2016

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Birthday(s)

Traditional English birthday greeting

Is that a birthday? 'tis, alas! too clear;

'Tis but the funeral of the former year.
~Alexander Pope, To Mrs. M. B, line 9.

“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
― William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

“I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth. ”
― Ovid, Metamorphoses

A one-year-old girl playing with her birthday balloons in Khulna, Bangladesh

Midweek Motif ~ Birthday(s)

It is either your birthday

or your un-birthday.

And someone else's as well.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem giving yourself or someone else a birthday gift on a specific birthday.

(Or remember one already given/received.)

A BIRTHDAY
by: Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

The Author Reflects on His 35th Birthday

For K.R. On Her Sixtieth Birthday

by Richard Wilbur

Blow out the candles of your cake.

They will not leave you in the dark,
Who round with grace this dusky arc
Of the grand tour which souls must take.

You who have sounded William Blake,
And the still pool, to Plato's mark,
Blow out the candles of your cake.
They will not leave you in the dark.

Yet, for your friends' benighted sake,
Detain your upward-flying spark;
Get us that wish, though like the lark
You whet your wings till dawn shall break:
Blow out the candles of your cake.

###

Please share your new poem with Mr. Linky below and visit others

in the spirit of the community.

(Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be ~ Compromise )

Poets United