Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Empowerment

“Don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. 
Unfold your own myth.” 

― Rumi

"Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, 
teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
 source

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?”

― Marianne Williamson, "A Course in Miracles"

From Wikipedia:  

"The term empowerment refers to measures designed to increase the degree of autonomy and self-determination in people and in communities in order to enable them to represent their interests in a responsible and self-determined way, acting on their own authority. It is the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one's life and claiming one's rights. Empowerment as action refers both to the process of self-empowerment and to professional support of people, which enables them to overcome their sense of powerlessness and lack of influence, and to recognize and use their resources.  

"To do work with power."

Source

Midweek Motif ~  Empowerment

I developed this empowerment motif because it's women's history month. While researching it, I discovered that most places in the world have initiatives for the empowerment of social groups such as people of color, youth, women, gender and sexual diversities, and the aging, the disabled, etc. Empowerment is also a huge goal for individuals. Of course, initiatives exist because of ongoing dis-empowerment.  We seek solutions.

Source  
(Forgive me for using this without permission.)

At what are you empowered?  

What has contributed most to your empowerment?  

Where would you like to see more (or less) empowerment?

Your Challenge:  Write a new and strong empowerment poem. (Though I focus on women below, you need not focus on women in your poem.)

won't you celebrate with me

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

Won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

They shut me up in Prose – (445)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

They shut me up in Prose –

As when a little Girl

They put me in the Closet –

Because they liked me “still”   –

Still! Could themself have peeped –

And seen my Brain – go round –

They might as wise have lodged a Bird

For Treason – in the Pound –

Himself has but to will

And easy as a Star

Look down upon Captivity –

And laugh – No more have I –

Phenomenal Woman

BY MAYA ANGELOU

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size   

But when I start to tell them,

They think I’m telling lies.

I say,

It’s in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,   

The stride of my step,   

The curl of my lips.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,   

That’s me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,   

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.   

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.   

I say,

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered   

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can’t touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them,   

They say they still can’t see.   

I say,

It’s in the arch of my back,   

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Now you understand

Just why my head’s not bowed.   

I don’t shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.   

When you see me passing,

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It’s in the click of my heels,   

The bend of my hair,   

the palm of my hand,   

The need for my care.   

’Cause I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.
͇͇͇

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 ~ Solitude.)

͇͇͇

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Starting Over

∞

"We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come."

Joseph Campbell

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning."

J. B. Priestly

"The beginning is always today."

Mary Shelley

∞


Midweek Motif ~ Starting Over

I hope your new year is going well!  You may be continuing your "normal," rather than starting over ~ but we all have experienced a re-starting, whether it be in writing a poem, singing a song, trying to sleep, taking up a career, or reforming a government.  Or maybe we just wished we could start something over again.

This prompt is also a response to Phillip Moffit's article "Starting Over" on his "Darma Wisdom" blog.  He speaks of the moment of drifting away in meditation (just start over) and losing focus on resolutions (just start over), among other things.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem in which you sing of starting over.  Or call it by its other names: reboot, renew, recommence, take two,  going back to the drawing board, etc.

 ∞

excerpt from

 Oh Great Spirit

BY DEENA METZGER

. . . . 

Restore the animals.

In the name of Raven. In the name of Wolf. In the name of Whale. In

the name of Elephant. In the name of Snake.

Forgive us. Have mercy. May the animals return. Not as a resurrection

but as living beings. Here. On earth. On this earth that is also theirs.

Oh Great Spirit. Heal the animals. Protect the animals. Restore the

animals.

Our lives will also be healed. Our souls will be protected. Our

spirits will be restored.

Oh Spirit of Raven. Oh Spirit of Wolf. Oh Spirit of Whale. Oh Spirit of

Elephant. Oh Spirit of Snake.

Teach us, again, how to live.

(Read the rest HERE)

∞

THE GUEST HOUSE
By Rumi
Translation by Coleman Barks

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 are 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 whatever comes.
Because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

∞

The Phoenix Again

by May Sarton

On the ashes of this nest
Love wove with deathly fire
The phoenix takes its rest
Forgetting all desire.

After the flame, a pause,
After the pain, rebirth.
Obeying nature’s laws
The phoenix goes to earth.

You cannot call it old
You cannot call it young.
No phoenix can be told,
This is the end of the song.

It struggles now alone
Against death and self-doubt,
But underneath the bone
The wings are pushing out.

And one cold starry night
Whatever your belief
The phoenix will take flight
Over the seas of grief

To sing her thrilling song
To stars and waves and sky
For neither old nor young
The phoenix does not die. 

A phoenix (in a book of legendary creatures by FJ Bertuch)

∞

Find more inspiration at NPR's Starting Over:

A series of profiles of people who, by choice or circumstance, 

reinvented or transformed themselves.

∞

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

      (Our next Midweek Motif will be Sumana's ~ 

Life: Paradox And / Or Balance )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Prayer

The sacred Mount Kailash in Tibet.
From Bild:Kailash Tibet.jpg; photo taken by Heringf. 

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.” 

― Sylvia Plath

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” 

― Meister Eckhart

“You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” ― Kahill Gibran

“I prayed for freedom for twenty years, but received no answer 

until I prayed with my legs.” ― Frederick Douglass

"I believe some people-- lots of people-- pray through the witness of their lives, through the work they do, the friendships they have, the love they offer people and receive from people. Since when are words the only acceptable form of prayer?” ― Dorothy Day

"There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”― Rumi

source

Midweek Motif ~ Prayer

Thousands of poems say they are prayers, and hundreds of books exist about prayer.  Still more poems and prose are prayer-like without saying so ~ Walt Whitman's and Mary Oliver's poems, for example. 

So what can we add?  Poems about our experience-based knowledge?  Mystic moments?  Silence? Rejection? Love?  

What haven't you said?  

What bears repeating?

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem in which the narrator observes prayer or reveals some truth about prayer.

Praying Hands by Albrecht Dürer

I happened to be Standing
by Mary Oliver

"I don't know where prayers go,
     or what they do.
Do cats pray, while they sleep
     half-asleep in the sun?
Does the opossum pray as it
     crosses the street?
The sunflowers? The old black oak
     growing older every year?" 

far memory

BY LUCILLE CLIFTON

a poem in seven parts

1

convent

my knees recall the pockets

worn into the stone floor,

my hands, tracing against

the wall their original name, remember

the cold brush of brick, and the smell

of the brick powdery and wet

and the light finding its way in

through the high bars.

and also the sisters singing

at matins, their sweet music

the voice of the universe at peace

and the candles their light the light

at the beginning of creation

and the wonderful simplicity of prayer

smooth along the wooden beads

and certainly attended.

2

someone inside me remembers

that my knees must be hidden away

that my hair must be shorn

so that vanity will not test me

that my fingers are places of prayer

and are holy that my body is promised

to something more certain

than myself

. . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

The Ballad of Reading Gaol

BY OSCAR WILDE

I 

He did not wear his scarlet coat, 

For blood and wine are red, 

And blood and wine were on his hands 

When they found him with the dead, 

The poor dead woman whom he loved, 

And murdered in her bed. 

He walked amongst the Trial Men 

In a suit of shabby gray; 

A cricket cap was on his head, 

And his step seemed light and gay; 

But I never saw a man who looked 

So wistfully at the day. 

I never saw a man who looked 

With such a wistful eye 

Upon that little tent of blue 

Which prisoners call the sky, 

And at every drifting cloud that went 

With sails of silver by. 

I walked, with other souls in pain, 

Within another ring, 

And was wondering if the man had done 

A great or little thing, 

When a voice behind me whispered low, 

"That fellow's got to swing." 

Dear Christ! the very prison walls 

Suddenly seemed to reel, 

And the sky above my head became 

Like a casque of scorching steel; 

And, though I was a soul in pain, 

My pain I could not feel. 

I only knew what hunted thought 

Quickened his step, and why 

He looked upon the garish day 

With such a wistful eye; 

The man had killed the thing he loved, 

And so he had to die. 

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, 

By each let this be heard, 

Some do it with a bitter look, 

Some with a flattering word, 

The coward does it with a kiss, 

The brave man with a sword! 

Some kill their love when they are young, 

And some when they are old; 

Some strangle with the hands of Lust, 

Some with the hands of Gold: 

The kindest use a knife, because 

The dead so soon grow cold. 

Some love too little, some too long, 

Some sell, and others buy; 

Some do the deed with many tears, 

And some without a sigh: 

For each man kills the thing he loves, 

Yet each man does not die. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Norman Rockwell, Golden Rule, 1961.
Source
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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 ~ Morning Poem.)