Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

10/16 is World Food Day. 

 “There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
― Hippocrates 

Midweek Motif ~ The Food We Eat

What is your Recipe for a Healthy Life?  
What foods do you eat (or wish you were eating)??  

Go to the links above to read about World Food Day.  Or simply answer the question(s) literally or conceptually ~ with luscious details, of course ~ in a brand new poem.  I hope you find the quotes, poems and illustrations inspiring!

"Eat in company, and cook at home.  It's good for your health."

This Is Just To Say

By William Carlos Williams

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

Sliced fruit

Cutting greens

By Lucille Clifton

curling them around

i hold their bodies in obscene embrace

thinking of everything but kinship.

collards and kale

strain against each strange other

away from my kissmaking hand and

the iron bedpot.

the pot is black,

the cutting board is black,

my hand,

and just for a minute

the greens roll black under the knife,

and the kitchen twists dark on its spine

and I taste in my natural appetite

the bond of live things everywhere.

Kale (left) and Collard Greens (right)

I Ask My Grandmother If We Can Make Lahmajoun (excerpt)

By Gregory Djanikian

. . . .   

we sprinkle the flour on the kitchen table   

and it is snowing on Ararat   

we sprinkle the flour and the memory   

of winter is in our eyes   

we roll the dough out   

into small circles   

pale moons over   

every empty village   

Kevork is standing on a chair   

and singing   

O my Armenian girl

my spirit longs to be nearer

Nevrig is warming the oven   

and a dry desert breeze   

is skimming over the rooftops   

toward the sea   

we are spreading the lahma

on the ajoun with our fingers   

whispering into it the histories   

of those who have none 
. . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)
 

Lahmajoun,Turkish and Armenian

Eating Fried Chicken

By Linh Dinh
 

I hate to admit this, brother, but there are times

When I’m eating fried chicken

When I think about nothing else but eating fried chicken,

When I utterly forget about my family, honor and country,

The various blood debts you owe me,

My past humiliations and my future crimes—

Everything, in short, but the crispy skin on my fried chicken.

But I’m not altogether evil, there are also times

When I will refuse to lick or swallow anything

That’s not generally available to mankind.

(Which is, when you think about it, absolutely nothing at all.)

And no doubt that’s why apples can cause riots,

And meat brings humiliation,

And each gasp of air

Will fill one’s lungs with gun powder and smoke.

Fried Chicken

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 ~ Forgiveness.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Psyche / Soul

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss (1793) by Antonio Canova

". . .  the heart of the star as opposed to the shape of a star, let us say — exists in a mysterious, unmapped zone: not unconscious, not subconscious, but cautious." 
~ Mary Oliver

“The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.”  
~ May Sarton

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Midweek Motif ~ Psyche / Soul

          Since Sumana made the last Midweek Motif  "poetry about the body," I thought poetry about psyche and soul logically followed: psychology and spirituality.   Are mind and soul synonymous?  Do either exist without body?

          Psyche is also the name of Cupid's love in Greek Mythology ~ a myth which is a very dramatic story on the order of "The Beauty and the Beast."

Your Challenge:  In today's new poem, turn your attention to themes of consciousness and unconsciousness, to soul or to Psyche herself.

The structure of the souls of plants, animals, and humans, 
according to Aristotle.

Psyche in Somerville

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

I am angry with X, with Y, with Z,

for not being you.

Enthusiasms jump at me,

wagging and barking. Go away.

Go home.

I am angry with my eyes for not seeing you,

they smart and ache and see the snow,

an insistent brilliance.

If I were Psyche how could I not

bring the lamp to our bedside?

I would have known in advance

all the travails my gazing

would bring, more than Psyche

ever imagined,

and even so, how could I not have raised

the amber flame to see

the human person I knew

was to be revealed.

She did not even know! She dreaded

a beast and discovered

a god. But I

know, and hunger

to witness again the form

of mortal love itself.
. . . . 
(Read the rest HERE.)

Eagle Bringing cup to Psyche, 
by Benjamin West, American, 1738–1820

Mind ? Body

BY GREGORY DJANIKIAN

How do they survive, riven   

as they are, the one undoing   

the other's desire?   

Tell the body to outrun   

the mind, and the mind smirks,   

whispering too loudly 

this way   this way,   

blocking all the exits.   

And the body, luxurious   

sensualist by pool side or in bed,   

doesn't it hear the mind's   

impatient machinery ticking 

it's time   it's time? 

. . . . 

(Read the rest here.)

Greek letter 'psi', a symbol for psychology

A Dialogue between the Soul and the Body

BY ANDREW MARVELL

SOUL 

O who shall, from this dungeon, raise 

A soul enslav’d so many ways? 

With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands 

In feet, and manacled in hands; 

Here blinded with an eye, and there 

Deaf with the drumming of an ear; 

A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains 

Of nerves, and arteries, and veins; 

Tortur’d, besides each other part, 

In a vain head, and double heart. 

BODY 

O who shall me deliver whole 

From bonds of this tyrannic soul? 

Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so 

That mine own precipice I go; 

And warms and moves this needless frame, 

(A fever could but do the same) 

And, wanting where its spite to try, 

Has made me live to let me die. 

A body that could never rest, 

Since this ill spirit it possest. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest of this amazing poem HERE.)

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 ~ Weapon.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Citizenship

It may be laid down, as a primary position . . . that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it... 

― George Washington

“As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State 'What does it matter to me?' the State may be given up for lost.” 

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

"If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident" 

― Charles de Montesquie

World Citizen badge

Midweek Motif ~ Citizenship

What is its purpose and its rituals?  Is it in the taxes we pay or the flags we fly?  Is it in the ideals we hold standing side by side?  Is it in our borders and who is in or out?  Just what is citizenship all about?  

Where and how are we each citizens?

(The recent Federal Tax Day in the USA 
raised these questions for me.)  

Your Challenge: Write a new poem that answers one or all of these questions with images of citizenship.

Poems:

Immigrant Picnic

BY GREGORY DJANIKIAN

It's the Fourth of July, the flags

are painting the town,

the plastic forks and knives

are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,

I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,

I've got a hat shaped   

like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure

and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"

and then, "Hamburger, sure,   

what's the big difference,"   

as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,   

slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,

uncap the condiments. The paper napkins   

are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,   

"like a chicken with its head loose."

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

If in America

BY ED BOK LEE

Hmong Hunter Charged with 6 Murders

Is Said to Be a Shaman —new york times

If a tree falls in a forest,

does it make a sound?

If a rifle fires a shot in the woods,

whose body first hits the ground?

If a group of angry hunters

surrounds, curses at, and accosts you

for wandering onto their land

If you apologize for being lost,

inform you saw no posted signs, swallow

their chinks this and gooks taking over that;

are walking away over mud and fallen leaves when a loud

crack far behind you kicks up black earth

If your father was conscripted to fight

on the side of the United States

for the cia during the war in Vietnam

If he, your mother, you—the oldest son—

and all your younger siblings were later abandoned

in the hills of Laos as targets for genocide by the Viet Cong

If after five years in a Thai refugee camp,

you come to this land as a teen, a casualty

of history and time, then receive three years

of training to become a sharpshooter

in the u.s. military

If you spent your adolescence watching blacks,

Asians, Latinos, and whites watching one

another watch each other for weakness and flaws

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

from The People, Yes

BY CARL SANDBURG

Lincoln?

He was a mystery in smoke and flags

Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,

Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,

Yes to the hopes of government

Of the people by the people for the people,

No to debauchery of the public mind,

No to personal malice nursed and fed,

Yes to the Constitution when a help,

No to the Constitution when a hindrance

Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions,

Each man fated to answer for himself:

Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind

Must I choose for my own sustaining light

To bring me beyond the present wilderness?

       Lincoln? Was he a poet?

       And did he write verses?

“I have not willingly planted a thorn

       in any man’s bosom.”

I shall do nothing through malice: what

       I deal with is too vast for malice.”

Death was in the air.

So was birth.

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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 ~ Home)

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