Tag Archives: poetry

Read a Little Poetry Everyday

Posted on by under art, dVerse, dVerse Poetry Pub, poem, poetry

How?

How does she do it?
I ask myself.

I ask myself a thousand
timeS.
She is so talented.
Her poetry makes me Happy.
Then again,
so
do her lovely
drawings. Together tHEY make a LOV
ely work of art.

Even during wartime.
I can read her blog and be happy.
I
don’t
have

to be
sad. I can be happy
andGain
MORe happiness after reading her poetry.

There
ARE people
on theInternet
who
simply
seem
to
exude
goODness.

I
have
several
friends.
Poet
friends
who
do
that.

I wonder
IS
that not our mission?

Perhaps
it should be the mission
of each of us
to exude
goodness.

For then
goodness
would
aBound.

WAR
and petty
theFt
even
murDer
would
end.

We would
have
no
need
for
BuLLeTS
or
buLLshIT.

Inspired by Claudia – a truly inspirational poet and artist here upon the Internet. Her work shows us how we can “get together” and “be together” in this world.

Posted at dVerse.

Jack & Paggy

Posted on by under Animals, dogs, dVerse, family, pets, poetry

IMG_0047
A poem with two perspectives upon the same thing, from Mary at dVerse. In essence the the first perspective of this poem represents me. The second really represents David as he walks the dogs. However, I just speak from the first person. Jack is our black dog, getting old now, pushing 13. Patty – having become Paggy is still full of vim and vigor at about 5 years of age. They are each rescue dogs.

I open the door
downstairs
mid-day
Two furry noses
greet me in their
special way
Wet and wooly
they emit nothing
but love
Each snuggles under
a different hand
This is true
friendship
pure
Never would either
stray or
leave me
for another
It was always
love at first site
And it would
forever remain
that way

Yet on this
cold
and windy night
the snow
drifting but light
I would question
is my love
as deep and
as pure
as without question
as theirs
as I put on
his collar
and grapple with
leashes
reaching under
her belly
to fit her harness
knowing
that in a
minute
out there I
would be
struggling against
the wind and
the snow
My scarf
becoming
a frozen maul
as it scratches
my face
and scraping now
frozen skin
I ask myself
Is it really worth it
These two mutts
Why did I get
them
rescue them
why
They are nothing
but work
nothing
but trouble
Who wants to
be out in the
in the snow
on a night
like this
grappling with
two lunging
dogs
as they play
pulling
you this way
and that

Jack

IMG_0824

Oh Girlie

This Day In History

Posted on by under history, ode, remembrances, sorrow

Three haibun:

I had been at lunch in Third House. I finished my lunch early and I had stopped by Second House, popped into the lounge and sunk into a chair to watch TV. I had spent my sophomore year in Second House and always loved it. However, that day I was a senior of 17 years of age and I lived one more dorm down the street in First House. These old houses, three Queen Anne’s each painted a dull boarding school grey are gone today.

the wild geese above
flew in perfect formation
chaos left behind

The television had been left on. What was happening? Oh my God. The President has been shot. I was in an instant state of shock and awe. Oh my God, did I see this take place? I cannot remember. At that moment I could not even find the words to express what I was feeling. A light had gone out. But it wasn’t just dark or darker, it was chaos, a chaos of the mind, the heart and the soul and of course chaos on the black and white screen in front of me. It was something terrible and it began a run of dark history for the USA.

woodpecker knocking
high above in the maple
a chick all grown up

I ran back to the lunchroom where I shouted out the news. I do not remember another thing that afternoon. I do remember crying myself to sleep that night filled with such emptiness, dread and a sense of aloneness. Lately I have been reading a good deal about the Kennedy’s. Today I am reading: “The Patriarch” by David Nasaw. I will never believe that this assassination was the work of one lone Soviet sympathizer. I also know that the real answers will not be made public within my lifetime. I cannot think of that day without tears coming to my eyes.

shells upon the beach
autumn loneliness
creation of sand

Is this an “Ode”? Maybe, maybe not, None the less It is posted at d’Verse. So, as usual I write my haiku. Then I remember a bit late, kigo use. I rewrite. Then I remember that there must be a “punch.” So I rewrite. I worked to keep them each relevant.

Words, Words, Words

Posted on by under Haiku, The Imaginary Gardeh With Real Toads, words

With a nod to Yousei Hime who truly had an influence upon my haiku writing last winter … no, it was the winter before, when I was not able to do a whole lot else. I learned to truly enjoy one line haiku. So these four haiku are for the prompt at The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads . Kind of stupidly I wrote the haiku incorporating words from the list before I paid attention to kigo … something that I now must do. The wordlist is from Patricia McGoldrick whose blog can be found here. Her word list from which poems were meant to be written follows the 4 haiku. Thank you Patricia for your prompt and hard work.

I am adding these words 1:57 PM 10/03/13, sort of for accuracy, I guess. 1,2, and 4 are haiku because their subjects are related to nature. 3 really is a senryu because it is like a haiku in form but as it is about human beings it is called a senryu.

with the death of weeds – wildflowers spring to life

snow laden cherry tree branches – shelter a chickadee

share sake and borrow laughter – to quench your tears

leaves turning color – make a painted fall fence

Patricia’s Word List

Neighbor / Neighbours

Fences

Handshake

Barbecue Potluck

Borrow

Return

Garden

Weeds

Trees

Snow

Weather

Laughter

Tears

Children

Parents

Birth

Death

Teenagers

Stoop

Deck

HIV/AIDS

Posted on by under literary allusion, poetry, Robert Frost

I have been there upon “The Road Not Taken” most of my life. And perhaps I should say it began with meeting Robert Frost when I was about 15 and then ended with turning my life around through many acts of traveling those roads that few others will take. Those roads have always been exceptionally rewarding. Too many fear the road not taken. Their lives meanwhile stifle. Oh, I always feared that road, but I also always plunged right in holding my nose so as not to drown. So not quite knowing if I am doing the right thing regarding the poetry prompt, I shall use for my allusion Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. C.K. Williams often uses two lines repeated to create his poetry. It is a form I enjoy.

The Oxygen Concentrator

One evening I got a frantic call from Chicago, the boss said
The drivers had refused oxygen delivery to an AIDS patient

It was 1986 HIV/AIDS was “a road not taken” by many
But I could not refuse this fork in the road

I was incensed by the refusal of care to anyone
Everyone who is ill deserves proper care

I carried the heavy equipment
Barely managing it up the steep stairs

I knocked upon the door was greeted by a frantic mother
Horrified that no one would come to the aid of her son

No one would touch him no one seemed to care
What is this world made of I thought to myself

I had heard the stories and I understood
The need for impeccable and sanitary care

I went to the bedroom to greet her son
He was under a tent clutching tissues sobbing

I opened the tent removing the sides
I administered the equipment and gave my instructions

I provided education
I spoke of sanitary habits and their necessity

When done I sat upon his bed and we had a long hug
I feared nothing knowing that the contact allayed his fears

His fears were lessened for someone cared
I knew at that moment what my future held

Days later I became immersed in the world of AIDS/HIV
I would do this for thirteen years with a few off for burnout

This aspect of my career gave me significant reward
It was nothing less that a career of love

Robert Frost died in 1963. He was the first poet whom I have ever met. He sat down next to me on the tail gate of our dark green station wagon once the horse trailer had been unhitched and started speaking to me. It was a hot Vermont August day in 1961 and we were rooting around in boxes for bottles of water for ourselves after a long ride on the horses. We found nothing but warm soda. Yuck! I was so thirsty. Robert Frost has many famous poems however, where I hail from “The Road Not Taken” is perhaps his most famous and the poem that inspired me today.

I was introduced to C.K. Williams in 2008 when I came to university to finish my masters degree. I am very fond of his work and I love his manner of writing two lines together. I had been assured that I was up to date on all of my credits in 1998 when I had finished them. By 2008 when I returned to do my thesis that had changed and I was required to take 9 more. I chose to take them all in Creative Writing. What fun that was!

Placed at Into The Bardo relating to “Allusion.” It is also placed at dVerse as a subject not to discuss.

Laura Star Rain

Posted on by under friends, old friends, peace, poem, poetry, spiritual

Sometimes I believe that there is an energy, or that there are some sort of threads in the universe that bring persons together in love even if for just moments. I wrote this poem for/about a woman within a fairly loose group of quite fine artists to which I belong, several years ago. She … her icon simply inspired the poem. We have never met. We were not even close. But circumstances made us close in a strange manner, but close none the less, perhaps as artists together. I never showed her this. Her Name is Laura mercer and she is on Facebook. We are connected and I am Liz Rice-Sosne on Facebook. I shall now for I have always felt that it WAS her. Initially I did this with all different sized fonts and letters dark and not so dark along with symbols. I cannot seem to do this here upon WP.

Laura Star Rain

She has dark moments …
She is one

… toying with her flames. Turning the knobs

This way and that … that way and this….off then on……………..

Colors.

She is all about

color. She must have it.

It … fuels her.

Long flowing
Strokes of sensuous color … watery … rain from stars.

Snails in a galactic state of oceanity

Permutations of ??quarks?? born near

Water hamlets …

Badland flat rocks … for salamanders to dance upon.

Here is one of her whimsical and lovely paintings the sort of which inspired me.

1234709_10201612657539692_521913731_n

Posted with glee and delight at Poetry Pantry # 164 over at Poets United.

Your Life Path Number is 7

Posted on by under autobiography, dVerse Poetry Pub, Haibun

I have been alone much of my life. I am a natural loner. Perhaps that is why I never dated. I always blamed my “not dating” on my parent’s behavior. But maybe it was just me, and their behavior assisted me in becoming who I was meant to be. Surely my first marriage one of extraordinary abuse left me terribly alone. Then after my divorce I chose to be celibate for 5 years, a spiritual decision. At 28 as a woman of the 60s that was not only unusual it was damned near insane. I was very lucky throughout this period for guys actually took no for an answer and befriended me. Then I met a man to whom I was NOT attracted! And I might add he was definitely NOT attracted to me at all. We became the very best of friends over a period of two years, eventually seeing each other every day and every night just as friends. He too was a bit of a loner. We have now been married nearly 31 years after a two year friendship and a 3 month dating period and living together for 2 years.

neath the waterfall
a lone wet moth surviving
one’s lifes path fulfilled

Loving placed at dVerse

100 Weeks – Thank You

Posted on by under Haibun

Haibun
Love and caring such expansive emotions, such big emotions that I know that they can fill up anything – any void. Love grows all over the pains of a small child sprawled upon the floor after a fall, fixing all that feels broken. The deep loneliness of an elderly man slumped over his wheelchair re-dreaming his war in England in “43” will evaporate with the caring touch of his nurse or neighbor. The poetic words of so many here work wonders in me. 100 hundred weeks of writing! One hundred weeks of sharing words and thoughts with other poets. Powerful words tapping into hearts and minds across the ethers though our USB ports.

full blossoms – quench the thirst of many hummingbirds

Shared with love at Open Link Night dVerse Poets Pub, a very special place to be.

The Poetry of War – Writing It.

Posted on by under war

Why and how can a woman who has never endured combat and never been in military service to her country possibly write poetry about war, and be impassioned with doing so? Another question may be how can she do this with any authenticity? And here in lies the need to describe an experience that I in 2005. The experience has transformed my life. It was an experience filled with extraordinary joy and extreme pain. It definitely looked as though I was having a mental breakdown and it took unimaginable strength to hang on to my sanity. But I did so with a strategy. I will share the results of this experience before I attempt to share the experience. Following are many of the results.

1) I acquired a knowledge that: “we are all one” while in China the spring after my experience. As a result I spontaneously addressed a Chinese workers protest on a Saturday night by running up to the participating seated workers. They looked hopeless. This group was protesting the torturous and bloody treatment endured by a number of employees. I went from one end of this group of about two hundred to the other end. As I did so I clapped my hands loudly while yelling “yes, yes.” Now this was a crazy thing to do in China – but it was NOT something I thought about. They, the workers, in turn got up and started clapping. Smiles came upon their faces and we each knew that indeed “we were as one.”

2) I learned to fly a 1947 Luscombe 8 tail-dragger at 60 years of age.

3) 5 different Vietnam Veterans who had seen combat chose to share their burden of war with me anonymously. Please understand veterans of war do not speak of their experiences to anyone but another veteran if at all. These veterans just came to me like a magnet.

4) I acquired a deep and abiding love for veterans of war. Whereas in the past I had thought of the veteran 3 time s a year.

5) I volunteered for 2 years at the VA.

6) I express my appreciation to veterans when I see them.

7) I made a spontaneous decision to give up my fear of heights and did so as I stood with my feet on the edge of a 2600 ft drop (no fence or railing) at Machu Picchu in 2007.

8) I came to a deep understanding of the love my father had for me (which had seemed to disappear when I was only 6-8 years old). After this experience I was bathed in his love and came to understand that it seemed to disappear as a result of WWII Combat PTSD. He was dead when I had this experience.

9) I discovered my mother’s WWII scrapbooks from the time that she had lived in London as an American employee of the OWI during the bombings. Yes, her personality too was shaped by war and very likely by Combat PTSD. I say combat because to endure bombing and have no ability to retaliate – well that is the worst kind of combat to endure isn’t it? My mother was not nice to her children. And that is a kind manner in which to explain her mothering.

Because the spiritual experience that I had was so complicated I shall simply relate the bare bones of it. As is my way I put out there; “OK what next? What do you wish me to do?” I soon found myself looking for my father’s WWII history in a number of places on line, especially in a WWII forum. I met a Vietnam Veteran there, a B-52 pilot. He too was looking for his father’s WWII history. He assisted me in my search. Then I wanted to know about his own war experiences. I was persistent. He was hesitant. I persisted and he in a halting manner shared some of his experience. This sent me into a tailspin of contemplation quite literally. I was unable to eat (trust me I never stop eating) and the need to walk, walk, walk (I don’t exercise) took up most of my time. I lost a good bit of weight. I set myself up with an energy worker to keep me grounded and a personal trainer to help me do the same. At the end of this I went to someone who “sees.” She was only slightly helpful. This is key, I experienced this Vietnam Veterans “pain” associated with his war. That was the hell of this experience. I went on to do what I always do which is decipher things for my self. Now this happened in 2005 and the last thing that I learned from this experience, I learned in 2011. I went on to study war. After the experience itself was over, I came to understand that this was a shamanic initiation. I have studied and practiced shamanic healing experiences for many years. Please understand this is not a religion. I know much more than the average person about shamanism. Throughout my spiritual path beginning at 15, I have like many, asked for a “teacher.” The answer has always been “no.” I have always had to do everything in life on my own. That statement sounds like “poor me.” It is quite the opposite and is evidence of significant personal strength. Throughout the experience I practiced certain shamanic rituals to help me deal me with the emotional pain and confusion that I was experiencing at the time. I came to understand (feel) that war is the most addicting of all addictions. I also fully understand why it is so. I have a Christian background intermingled with indigenous spirituality, a smathering of Hindu, Unitarianism, Jewish Theology, Buddhism and what ever other languages God created and gave to the world’s different cultures so that they could each grow spiritually and communicate with the creator.

I have written this as an explanation or prelude to my writing a collection of “War Poetry.” I am going to attempt at some point create a separate page here upon my blog for those poems. I wish to have them published. Today I have been newly inspired or mused by “The Headlines of War.” Now I realize that I need to widen that inspiration to simply “The Headlines.” Thank you for taking the time to read my words. I have a great appreciation for your time. Below is the first poem of war that I wrote after my experience. There is shall we say “language” in the poem that might offend.

bombers_b52_0008

Photo Credit Use of Boeing-owned photos posted from their web site are licensed for private, non-commercial use only.

B-52s

I remember them.
Large black fins
in 67 & 8.
We’d drive to Kadena,
park the truck
watch them circle
like sharks
behind the security fence.
All we saw were black
shark fins … taxiing for take off,
B-52s lined up for Vietnam.
The NVA called them
Whispering Death.
Three years…860,000 pounds
of carpet bombing.
Rolling Thunder
coming out of U-Tapao,
Anderson and Guam.
They came in threes … Arc Light!
Coming from the 9th, the
22nd, the 91st, 99th, the 306th, the 454th, and
the 461st, they flew at 50,000 ft,
subsonic speeds, refueled in mid air,
carried 70,000 pounds of mixed ordnance.
Known with affection as BUFFS
Big Ugly Fat Fuckers
Operation Linebacker.
Ten, twelve hours in the sky
peeing in a sleeve,
freezing or scorched while
flying towards hell.
Clear left, limbs seen hanging
clear right, friends literally falling from the sky.
Then, the Christmas Bombings, SAMs brought them down
U-Tapao lost two in mid-air
One in each cell…one on final…the entire crew lost.

This is posted at dVerse Poets Meeting The Bar: The Unfathomable.

feel it

Posted on by under poetry

Yesterday was such a joyful day for me, my was heart full all day. I am so lucky, so blessed by others, others who truly care and go out of their way to let you know. They take the time to step outside of themselves and express care for you. Is there anything more important than caring for others and being able to express that caring?

I have not always felt deeply. I had to get out of my own hell to do that. But I was apparently quite determined to get out of that hell (long ago) and to feel deeply. Feeling deeply is about others, it is not about you. Feeling deeply is the capacity to feel the pain of others and then (because you care) to act upon it.

I have run into wonderful people, artists and poets who have the capacity to feel deeply, as expressed clearly in their work. In many ways their collective caring is a testament to man/womankind. Our prompt today at deVerse Poets “Poetics.” was from Brian and SueAnn. SueAnn’s art is very moving, it is filled with joy. Brian’s work is moving as you all know. The prompt today comes from him and it is to chose one of SueAnn’s paintings. I chose the one below that I find to be exquisite. However, I read Brian’s poem before doing any writing on the prompt – SO – this is kind of a mixed or double prompt of Brian’s poem and SueAnn’s art. We are at deVerse Poets today, Through The Artist’s Lense with wonderful artwork to choose from all created by SueAnn at SueAnn’s Journey. Please visit her work it is a real joy and will bring you joy.

one more step along the way to anywhere
each step today a giant step for mankind

thank you john glen i am not really stealing your words
you noticed didn’t you that I said anywhere not nowhere

there is such power in words
after reading today the terrible words the ugly words

of brians poem words that made me grit my teeth
but good and true words real art of depth

words and art words are art words that make you feel
art that makes you feel like sueanns art gave me a wow feeling

i am going to switch the subject here a bit
dont skip a beat just follow what i say

feeling is the most important thing that you can do
i say that like an ultimatum and i mean it

i call it feeling deeply something we are taught not to do
we are taught the opposite which is not to feel at all

some feel but it is not enough you must feel deeply
feeling deeply is what many artists and poets do

you know when you read their poems or see their paintings
you know because they evoke within pain or joy or ecstasy

feeling deeply is what we each wish to do
but yeah but it takes willingness vulnerability

feeling deeply will give you empathy and deepen your work
whether with a computer a brush or paint or quill

you can go anywhere when you feel deeply
if you have allowed yourself to feel deeply

it doesn’t hurt again for you have gone somewhere with another
in their pain out of your own step by step with them

holding a strangers hand holding their pain
you no longer have any and you are free

you are free your words are free your paintings are free
your work comes from your soul now

now it will touch the world and reach hearts
now it will make a difference its a good thing

martha stewart i am not stealing your words either
so feel feel deeply touch the heart of another

it lightens the load for you for the other
really its nothing but a baby step each day

one more step along the way to somewhere
each step you take today a giant step for mankind because you feel it