Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Fear

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“Do one thing every day that scares you.” 

― Eleanor Roosevelt

“We are so scared of being  judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.” 
― Erica Jong, Seducing the Demon

“Fear is the mind-killer. 
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
 I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. ” 
― Frank Herbert, Dune

View through the Glass Floor of the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada.

Midweek Motif ~ Fear

I had many days without fear as a child and fewer days during my work-for-income years.  Then, I developed a philosophy about fear and how I should welcome it as a guest and hear what it had to say.  Hearing did not mean heeding, of course. Fear now is more social than personal, as I try to prevent the new US of A President DT from Ruining Everything. 

Enough.  Let's get personal.

When is fear helpful, harmful, present, banished?  How do you know what to do with fear?

YOUR CHALLENGE:  In a new poem, unfold a truth you've learned about fear.

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Fear of Happiness

Related Poem Content Details

BY A. E. STALLINGS

Looking back, it’s something I’ve always had:

As a kid, it was a glass-floored elevator

I crouched at the bottom of, my eyes squinched tight,

Or staircase whose gaps I was afraid I’d slip through,

Though someone always said I’d be all right—

Just don’t look down or See, it’s not so bad

(The nothing rising underfoot). Then later

The high-dive at the pool, the tree-house perch,

Ferris wheels, balconies, cliffs, a penthouse view,

The merest thought of airplanes. You can call

It a fear of heights, a horror of the deep;

But it isn’t the unfathomable fall

That makes me giddy, makes my stomach lurch,

It’s that the ledge itself invents the leap.

Touched By An Angel

By Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage

exiles from delight

live coiled in shells of loneliness

until love leaves its high holy temple

and comes into our sight

to liberate us into life.

Love arrives 

and in its train come ecstasies

old memories of pleasure

ancient histories of pain.

Yet if we are bold,

love strikes away the chains of fear

from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity 

In the flush of love's light

we dare be brave

And suddenly we see

that love costs all we are

and will ever be.

Yet it is only love

which sets us free.

Batty

By Shel Silverstein

The baby bat

Screamed out in fright,

'Turn on the dark,

I'm afraid of the light. 

Child, Child
by Sara Teasdale

Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man,
Never fear though it break your heart -
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well
Though love be heaven or love be hell.

Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel -
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.

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 Woman's Day: Be Bold For Change)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

Leslie Hunter's Figures in conversation, Étaples, 1914

“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.” 
― Evelyn Waugh

“And once again, only the Small Things were said. 
The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.” 
― Arundhati Roy

 He Comes for Conversation

"Among the Igbo the art of conversation is regarded 

very highly, and proverbs are the palm-oil 

with which words are eaten.”      

-- Chinua Achebe

"The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty

observations, has a romance of its own." 

--Virginia Woolf 

Midweek Motif ~ Conversation

The thing about conversation 
is that no one can do it alone.

I prefer one-on-one, but have had some stunning group conversations.

How about you?

Your Challenge: Write a new poem with conversation in it OR about conversation(s).

   

The Dangling Conversation

The Little Boy and the Old Man

by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’

Said the little old man, ‘I do that too.’

The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’

‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.

Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’

The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’

‘But worse of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems

Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

‘I know what you mean,’ said the old man.
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Excerpt from The Mango

by Mary Oliver

. . . 

After salmon and salads,

mangoes for everyone appeared on blue plates,

each one cut in half and scored

and shoved forward from its rind, like an orange flower,

cubist and juicy.

When I began to eat

things happened.

All through the sweetness I heard voices,

men and women talking about something—

another country, and trouble.

It wasn’t my language, but I understood enough.

Jungles, and death. The ships

leaving the harbors, their holds

filled with mangoes.

Children, brushing the flies away

from their hot faces

as they worked in the fields.

Men, and guns.

The voices all ran together

so that I tasted them in the taste of the mango,

a sharp gravel in the flesh.

Later, in the kitchen, I saw the stones

like torn-out tongues

embedded in the honeyed centers.

They were talking among themselves—

family news,

a few lines of a song

(Read the rest HERE)

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Excerpt from Telephone Conversation

by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location

Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived

Off premises. Nothing remained

But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,

"I hate a wasted journey—I am African."

Silence. Silenced transmission of

Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,

Lipstick coated, long gold rolled

Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.

"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT

OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench

Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.

Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered

Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed

By ill-mannered silence, surrender

Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.

Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--

"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.

"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"

Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light

Impersonality.

 . . . .

(Read the rest HERE.)

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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 ~ Neutrality / Objectivity )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Weird

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Midweek Motif ~ Weird

"We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weidness-- and call it love-- true love."---Robert Fullghum, True Love

"Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted"---Martin Luther King

"It's weird not to be weird"---John Lenon

Some people always think outside the box, and are recognized as being different, unique or even weird by the rest of the world.Such 'weirdness' is very important, inspiring and joyful to them.

May be we all have our own little quirks that sometimes make us visualize the commonplace world crossing the boundary of ordinary in a moment of transformation.

Wear that weird vision and write a poem. It may be about a place, person, dream, path, mood, habit, incident, fear or anything you might attach weirdness to.

A few poems to inspire you:

Weird Bird

by Shel Silverstein

Birds are flyin' south for winter.

Here's the Weird-Bird headin' north,

Wings a-flappin', beak a-chatterin',

Cold head bobbin' back 'n' forth.

He says, "It's not that I like ice

Or freezin' winds and snowy ground.

It's just sometimes it's kind of nice

To be the only bird in town."

Fork

by Charles Simic

This strange thing must have crept

Right out of hell.

It resembles a bird's foot

Worn around the cannibal's neck.

As you hold it in your hand,

As you stab with it into a piece of meat,

It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:

Its head which like your fist

Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

Discord in Childhood

by D. H. Lawrence

Outside the house an ash-tree hung its terrible whips,

And at night when the wind arose, the lash of the tree

Shrieked and slashed the wind, as a ship's

Weird rigging in a storm shrieks hideously.

Within the house two voices arose in anger, a slender lash

Whistling delirious rage, and the dreadful sound

Of a thick lash booming and bruising, until it drowned

The other voice in a silence of blood, 'neath the noise of the ash.

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

                               (Next week Susan's Midweek will be ~ Saint / Saintliness)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Happy Birthday

Colored lanterns at the Lotus Lantern
Festival in Seoul, South Korea,
celebrating the anniversary
of the Buddha's birthday

“So what if nobody came?
I’ll have all the ice cream and tea,
And I’ll laugh with myself,
And I’ll dance with myself,
And I’ll sing, “Happy Birthday to me!”
 ― Shel Silverstein

“Rocket ships
are exciting
but so are roses
on a birthday.” 
― Leonard Nimoy, Come Be With Me

Midweek Motif ~ Happy Birthday

Everyone and everything I know of has a birthday.  Today I ask you to celebrate a specific birth in honor of Spring which officially begins tomorrow, March 20th on the vernal Equinox.   Choose someone or thing you want to think about; choose yourself or someone you love; or choose a day you gave birth to a baby or to an idea.   Consider making your poem a birthday song.

[I THANK YOU GOD FOR MOST THIS AMAZING]

                                      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)

See also:

Cheerios by Billy Collins,  A Birthday by Christina Rossetti, and Morning Song by Sylvia Plath.

(Next week's Midweek Motif will be on speaking more than one language.)

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