Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Scream

   

“Everybody has a story…..and a scream.” — Rachel Roberts

SOURCE

“When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help,’ you just scream. — John Lennon

     Midweek Motif ~ Scream

In his diary in an entry headed "Nice 22 January 1892", Edvard Munch wrote:

“I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

            

He later described his inspiration for the image:

One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.”

Have you ever come to that point when you wanted to scream at you or at the world or have you ever come across anyone, anything, screaming?

So let us see, write, read and hear some screaming today J

Lightening

by Matsuo Basho

Lightening-

The heron’s cry

Stabs the darkness

To A Daughter Leaving Home

by Linda Pastan

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye. 

 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 ~ Colour / Color)

                                          

                                                                       

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Dark Moon, New Moon

🌑

Source

“In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.” 

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life. . . 

"From untruth lead us to Truth.
From darkness lead us to Light.
From death lead us to Immortality.
Om Peace, Peace, Peace."

--Vedic prayer from Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

“A new moon teaches gradualness

and deliberation and how one gives birth

to oneself slowly. Patience with small details

makes perfect a large work, like the universe.”
― Jalaluddin Rumi

“Sometimes, they say, the moon is so busy with the new souls of the world that it disappears from the sky. That is why we have moonless nights. But in the end, the moon always returns, as do we all.”  ― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

🌑

Midweek Motif ~ 

Dark Moon, New Moon

           Says:

"Historically and pragmatically speaking, The Dark Moon refers to the period of time when the moon exhibits zero illumination, while the New Moon starts the very first day that the moon appears in the night sky as a slim sliver of light. By this reasoning, the Dark Moon is a one day event, while the New Moon lasts approximately 7 days as a Waxing Crescent, right up until the First Quarter of illumination."

I think we're talking about that mysterious turn around time here. Maybe there is a moment's emptiness before the waxing begins, a moment without the reflected light of the sun. It feels dark, but often has the most stars we ever see.

Your Challenge: In your new poem, paint a picture with images you know in this Dark-New Moon.

Source, Source, from Dream Work

🌑

Fragment, Source
by RUPERT BROOKE

I strayed about the deck, an hour, to-night
Under a cloudy moonless sky; and peeped
In at the windows, watched my friends at table,
Or playing cards, or standing in the doorway,
Or coming out into the darkness. Still
No one could see me.

I would have thought of them
—Heedless, within a week of battle—in pity,
Pride in their strength and in the weight and firmness
And link’d beauty of bodies, and pity that
This gay machine of splendour ’ld soon be broken,
thought little of, pashed, scattered. …

Only, always,
I could but see them—against the lamplight—pass
Like coloured shadows, thinner than filmy glass,
Slight bubbles, fainter than the wave’s faint light,
That broke to phosphorus out in the night,
Perishing things and strange ghosts—soon to die
to other ghosts—this one, or that, or I.

🌑

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?

by LINDA PASTAN

Isn't the moon dark too, 

most of the time? 

And doesn't the white page 

seem unfinished 

without the dark stain 

of alphabets? 

When God demanded light, 

he didn't banish darkness. 

Instead he invented 

ebony and crows 

and that small mole 

on your left cheekbone. 

Or did you mean to ask 

"Why are you sad so often?" 

Ask the moon. 

Ask what it has witnessed.

🌑

Michael Kamen's symphonic poem "The New Moon in the Old Moon's arms, 

inspired by the history of the Native American Anasazi people. 

🌑

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

(Next Midweek Motif will be Sumana's prompt ~ Journey.)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Cherry Blossoms

photo by Totomai

What a strange thing!

to be alive

beneath cherry blossoms.

― Kobayashi Issa, Poems

In the cherry blossom's shade

there's no such thing

as a stranger.

― Kobayashi Issa

Everyone feels grief

when cherry blossoms scatter.

Might they then be tears–

those drops of moisture falling

in the gentle rains of spring? 

–Otomo no Juronushi

photo by Totomai

Midweek Motif ~ Cherry Blossoms

Cherry blossoms mean springtime and cherries in summer, yum!  They also stand in for clouds, impermanence, beauty and sadness and more.  We can travel on their petals. Today we have been blessed with amazing photos of the blossoms by Totomai Martinez who featured them in his blog last Friday: Sakura.  There you will find his recommendations for Cherry blossom contemplation (Hanami) in Japan.  The poems above are in the Japanese poetic forms of haiku and tanka.

photo by Totomai

Your Challenge:  Build a poem with Cherry blossoms as your central image or recurring motif.  If you use a photograph, be sure to credit the photographer.

photo by Totomai

April Inventory

BY W. D. SNODGRASS

The green catalpa tree has turned

All white; the cherry blooms once more.   

In one whole year I haven’t learned   

A blessed thing they pay you for.   

The blossoms snow down in my hair;   

The trees and I will soon be bare.

. . . .  

(read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation)

Misreading Housman

BY LINDA PASTAN

On this first day of spring, snow

covers the fruit trees, mingling improbably   

with the new blossoms like identical twins   

brought up in different hemispheres.   

It is not what Housman meant

when he wrote of the cherry

hung with snow, though he also knew   

how death can mistake the seasons,

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundatiuon)

For those who are new to Poets United: 

Post your Cherry Blossom poem on your site, and then link it here.



Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 



If you use a picture include its link.  



Please leave a comment here and visit and comment on our poems.






(Our next Midweek Motif is "enlightenment.")












Oh, yes!  Today is the first day of National Poetry Month in the USA, Canada and a few other countries.  Good luck to all of you who are accepting a challenge to write a poem a day during April.  I am going to try with help from prompts at Poetic Asides, NaPoWriMo, Magaly Guerrero  and Imaginary Garden with Real Toads.  We'd love to know if you are attempting the challenge.  Please share links to the sites you are using for prompts and community during the challenge. Thanks!  ~Susan for Poets United

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