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 ~ Truth (in honor of Gandhi's birthday)

^" . . .  and the truth will set you free.” 

 John 8:32 (NIV)

    

http://www.satyagrahafoundation.org/category/theory/page/2/

“Truth implies love, and firmness engenders force. I thus began to call the Indian movement satyagraha; that is to say, the force that is born of truth and love or nonviolence…. Satyagraha is soul-force pure and simple.” M. K. Gandhi

 “The use of satyagraha is based upon the immutable maxim that government of the people is possible only so long as they consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed.”

 M. K. Gandhi

☼

Midweek Motif ~ Truth 

(in honor of Gandhi's birthday)

Many call out the American President for being untruthful, but in Gandhi's use of the word "truth" all of us who don't insist on truth are at fault.  When we decide not to be governed by the lies and omissions, we will live our truth. Our resistance will be clear, public, and active.

Truth is not a timid word. 

Truth is not a weak path.

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem in which readers can experience truth in action.  

Gandhi picking salt during Salt Satyagraha to defy colonial law giving salt collection monopoly to the British.

Bapu - A True Satyagrahi
(A student project: Please identify the author if you can!)

Mahatma the enlightened one
Won a war without sword or gun
Born in Saurashtra, a small coastal town
Which because of him achieved world Renown
A gentle human with a rare philosophy
Left his imprint in the annals of History
He threw back the conquerors across the seas
By showing them the power of his inner peace
Ahimsa he followed and brought a bloodless revolution
Without him our country we couldn't call our Nation
His message to us is simple and clear
If we, ignore it, the price we pay is dear
Discriminate not on creed or caste
Stand united, be Indian first and last
Bapu, sometimes I dream if you were in our midst
Wouldn't you face up to the terrorists,
Wouldn't you convert him who smuggles and plunders
Wouldn't you set right our wayward leaders,
Wouldn't you today save my country
And restore it to its ultimate Glory???
Bapu, I dream, a dream, will my dream come true
Will you be born again
My country needs you.

“We Are Striking to Disrupt the System”

Daily News Digest  Democracy

Greta Thunberg

by Liz Brownlee

When the whole world is deaf
by greed and by choice,
how do you change things
with only your voice?
It’s hard to be noticed,
harder to be heard
but she stood up and spoke,
could not be deterred.
What made them listen?
What cut through their lies?
Not the pollution
or the fast melting ice,
not the experts or science,
not hunger or flood,
not the extinctions
our hands red with blood,
it was her steady gaze,
on our planet, alight,
her desperate calm,
her demand, make it right,
it’s what we’ll recall
of her fight for our youth,
her luminous words
her courage, her truth.
© Liz Brownlee

Tell All The Truth

By Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant,

Success in circuit lies,

Too bright for our infirm delight

The truth's superb surprise;

As lightning to the children eased

With explanation kind,

The truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind.

truth

By Gwendolyn Brooks

And if sun comes

How shall we greet him?

Shall we not dread him,

Shall we not fear him

After so lengthy a

Session with shade?

Though we have wept for him,

Though we have prayed

All through the night-years—

What if we wake one shimmering morning to

Hear the fierce hammering

Of his firm knuckles

Hard on the door?

Shall we not shudder?—

Shall we not flee

Into the shelter, the dear thick shelter

Of the familiar

Propitious haze?

Sweet is it, sweet is it

To sleep in the coolness

Of snug unawareness.

The dark hangs heavily

Over the eyes.

 

*****

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 ~ Everyday Living.)

*****

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Human

"Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here."

― Hailey Leithauser (See full poem below)

“I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels.” 

― Pearl S. Buck

source

 Midweek Motif ~ Human

I am human. I am only human.  
 I am sadly human.  Happily, I am human.
Hmm.

When you describe something as "human," 

what do you mean?  

(Click "What is a Human Being?" for a slideshow.)

Your Challenge: Write a new poem giving what is human its place in the natural world, the solar system, galaxy, and/or universe.

A Divine Image

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Cruelty has a Human Heart 

And Jealousy a Human Face 

Terror the Human Form Divine 

And Secrecy, the Human Dress 

The Human Dress, is forged Iron 

The Human Form, a fiery Forge. 

The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd 

The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

👫                          

The Guest House

by  Rumi 

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

👫

Arrhythmia

BY HAILEY LEITHAUSER

The heart of a bear is a cloud-shuttered

mountain. The heart of a mountain’s a kiln.

The white heart of a moth has nineteen white

chambers. The heart of a swan is a swan.

The heart of a wasp is a prick of plush.

The heart of a skunk is a mink. The heart

of an owl is part blood and part chalice.

The fey mouse heart rides a dawdy dust-cart.

The heart of a kestrel hides a house wren

at nest. The heart of lark is a czar.

The heart of a scorpion is swidden

and spark. The heart of a shark is a gear.

Listen and tell, thrums the grave heart of humans.

Listen well love, for it’s pitch dark down here.

(Used with the poet's permission. First published in Poetry, October 2015)

👫

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

(Next week Sumana’s Motif will be ~ "When I think about myself.")

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Animals

A day to celebrate #animals all around the world!
#WorldAnimalDay    #animalwelfare

                    MISSION OF WORLD ANIMAL DAY
Building the celebration of World Animal Day unites the animal welfare movement, mobilising it into a global force to make the world a better place for all animals.  It's celebrated in different ways in every country, irrespective of nationality, religion, faith or political ideology.  

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged 

by the way its animals are treated.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

“The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.” 
― Alice Walker

“We have doomed the wolf not for what it is, but for what we deliberately and mistakenly perceive it to be –the mythologized epitome of a savage ruthless killer – which is, in reality, no more than a reflected image of ourself.” 
― Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

Noah's Ark (1846), a painting by Edward Hicks.

Midweek Motif  ~ Animals

What would you speak of--wild ones,

domestic ones, or both?  Move us, dear poets,

in a new poem with images and insights 
pertaining to animal(s).

(Let's leave insects for another time.)

🐻

 Direct Action Everywhere activists , photo by Pax Ahimsa Gethen

The Tyger

BY WILLIAM BLAKE

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 

On what wings dare he aspire? 

What the hand, dare seize the fire? 

And what shoulder, & what art, 

Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 

And when thy heart began to beat, 

What dread hand? & what dread feet? 

What the hammer? what the chain, 

In what furnace was thy brain? 

What the anvil? what dread grasp, 

Dare its deadly terrors clasp! 

When the stars threw down their spears 

And water'd heaven with their tears: 

Did he smile his work to see? 

Did he who made the Lamb make thee? 

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 

In the forests of the night: 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

🐱

The cat’s song

BY MARGE PIERCY

Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. 

My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says 

the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing 

milk from his mother’s forgotten breasts. 

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. 

I’ll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, 

to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. 

Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. 

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, 

says the cat, although I am more equal than you. 

Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? 

Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs? 

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. 

My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. 

My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings 

walking round and round your bed and into your face. 

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally 

as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. 

I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. 

Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word 

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg 

and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

From Mars & Her Children (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). 

First appeared in Matrix 28 (Spring 1989). Copyright © 1989, 1992 

by Marge Piercy and Middlemarsh, Inc. 

🐎

She Had Some Horses

      BY JOY HARJO

I. She Had Some Horses

She had some horses.

She had horses who were bodies of sand.

She had horses who were maps drawn of blood.

She had horses who were skins of ocean water.

She had horses who were the blue air of sky.

She had horses who were fur and teeth.

She had horses who were clay and would break.

She had horses who were splintered red cliff.

She had some horses.

She had horses with eyes of trains.

She had horses with full, brown thighs.

She had horses who laughed too much.

She had horses who threw rocks at glass houses.

She had horses who licked razor blades.

She had some horses.

She had horses who danced in their mothers' arms.

She had horses who thought they were the sun and their

bodies shone and burned like stars.

She had horses who waltzed nightly on the moon.

She had horses who were much too shy, and kept quiet

in stalls of their own making.

She had some horses.

She had horses who liked Creek Stomp Dance songs.

She had horses who cried in their beer.

She had horses who spit at male queens who made

them afraid of themselves.

She had horses who said they weren't afraid.

She had horses who lied.

She had horses who told the truth, who were stripped

bare of their tongues.

She had some horses.

She had horses who called themselves, "horse."

She had horses who called themselves, "spirit," and kept

their voices secret and to themselves.

She had horses who had no names.

She had horses who had books of names.

She had some horses.

She had horses who whispered in the dark, who were afraid to speak.

She had horses who screamed out of fear of the silence, who

carried knives to protect themselves from ghosts.

She had horses who waited for destruction.

She had horses who waited for resurrection.

She had some horses.

She had horses who got down on their knees for any saviour.

She had horses who thought their high price had saved them.

She had horses who tried to save her, who climbed in her

bed at night and prayed.

She had some horses.

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

These were the same horses.

. . . . 

(Part one excerpt from a five part poem; read the rest 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 ~ Autumn.)