THE LAST TEXT
I love dance because I truly believe it is poetry in motion. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for dancers. Please watch this powerful video where dancers bring to life a very real threat to our safety every time we get in a car. These young dancers put to motion what words do to warn us. Keep in mind that texting and driving are as deadly as being drunk or high while trying to drive. BE SAFE!
Today’s selection is from my favorite poem that I read when I was in high school; The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I had to post a video because this poem is best when read out loud. Enjoy your Sunday…Love your life!!!
Salad Anniversary -A book about Haiku
Your left hand,
exploring my fingers one by one-
maybe this is love
Secretly I try on your jacket,
drinking in your smell,
and strike a pose like James Dean
Remembering your joke,
I giggle out loud
In the middles of a crowd
Ring after ring tell me you’re out-
I listen fondly,
Grateful for any clue
Admonished to stop writing of romance-
What’s poetry, then?
Just another way to get a man?
-Machi Tawara copyright 1989
POET QUOTES
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way.”
Pablo Neruda
“A dream deferred is a dream denied.”
Langston Hughes
“Soul meets soul on lovers’ lips.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
Edgar Allan Poe
“Words have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality”
Edgar Allan Poe
“Be of love (a little) more careful than of anything.”
E E cummings
“Happy are those who dare courageously to defend what they love.”
Ovid
“A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.”
Robert Frost
A Competition Asked for a 2 line Rhyme with the most romantic first line but least romantic second line:
This is the winning poem.
My darling,my lover,my beautiful wife
Marrying you screwed up my life.
I see your face when I am dreaming
That’s why I always wake up screaming
Kind,intelligent,loving and hot
This describes everything you are not.
I thought that I could love no other—
That Is until I met your brother.
Roses are red,violets are blue,sugar is sweet and so are you
But those roses are wiliting,the violets are dead, the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.
I want to feel your sweet embrace
But don’t take that paper bag off your face.
I love your smile, your face and your eyes—
Damn, I’m good at telling lies!
My love,you take my breath away.
What have you stepped in to smell this way?
My feelings for you no words can tell,
Except maybe,”Go to hell”
What inspired this amorous rhyme?
Two parts tequila, one part lime
http://www.indiabroadband.net/jokes-humor/19660-funniest-poem-ever.html
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars,
and the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.”
The night wind whirls in the sky and sings.
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
On nights like this, I held her in my arms.
I kissed her so many times under the infinite sky.
She loved me, sometimes I loved her.
How could I not have loved her large, still eyes?
I can write the saddest poem of all tonight.
To think I don’t have her. To feel that I’ve lost her.
To hear the immense night, more immense without her.
And the poem falls to the soul as dew to grass.
What does it matter that my love couldn’t keep her.
The night is full of stars and she is not with me.
That’s all. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul is lost without her.
As if to bring her near, my eyes search for her.
My heart searches for her and she is not with me.
The same night that whitens the same trees.
We, we who were, we are the same no longer.
I no longer love her, true, but how much I loved her.
My voice searched the wind to touch her ear.
Someone else’s. She will be someone else’s. As she once
belonged to my kisses.
Her voice, her light body. Her infinite eyes.
I no longer love her, true, but perhaps I love her.
Love is so short and oblivion so long.
Because on nights like this I held her in my arms,
my soul is lost without her.
Although this may be the last pain she causes me,
and this may be the last poem I write for her.
Today’s poem comes from my 12 year old daughter. She has taken an interest in song writing . This is a song she performed at a local coffee house recently. She also submitted this piece at a local teen poetry contest and she came in as a finalist.
You’re Not Alone
She paints a pretty picture
But this story has a twist-
Her paintbrush is razor,
And the canvas is her wrist.
Her mother died a year ago,
Depressed and alone.
She wants to die
Bitter and cold.
She dances in the moonlight,
She’s the black swan of the night-
She leaps, prances, twirls, and dances
But she cannot stop the fight.
Your skin isn’t paper, so don’t cut it,
Life isn’t a movie so don’t end it.
Your face is so pretty, why do you hide it?
You have a beautiful soul, but you want to kill it.
Just know you’re not alone.
Stay strong
You are living one big lie
But in the end you will be alright.
by Raquel Brincat copyright 2012
Today I will share the world’s shortest poem by Ogden Nash (1902-1971).
Fleas
Adam
Had ‘em.
Embrace the pre-dawn for there is always beauty in the darkest hour before sunup.Look at the black hour of your life as a sign that pain ends as soon as the sun peaks over the horizon. Fathom the pitchy dark. Feel it’s intensity. Know it’ll soon be daylight when the sun dazzles and washes all your fears with a staggering brilliance. Don’t run when it’s dismal. Sit still and allow yourself to feel what you feel without any fear. Don’t numb yourself during your bleakest hour; explore your thoughts and give them a voice. Just because it’s black as ink doesn’t mean you’re dead. Remember plants and all living things grow in unlit times. No illumination doesn’t mean you’re lost. Just be still and wait for the dawn of your most radiant days; knowing they lay up ahead just within your reach. Use hope and trust as your guiding stars. Set your compass pointing it towards love. Because love never fails you in the dark. Love is your North Star pointing you towards a resplendent future.
EVA SANTIAGO copyright 2013
Do you ever feel small and that what you do seems insignificant? I sure do from time to time. I started The Henderson Poets, a group that meets on Tuesday evenings at The Coffee House close to my home. We are small in number but that does not matter one iota to me. People from all walks of life show up. Some times 15 or more people show up, other times it’s less. But I keep plugging on and do you know why? Because I believe what I’m doing matters! We live in a society where everyone is always number crunching. We measure success by the number of books we sold or the numbers in our bank account and even our number of friends on Facebook. Did you ever stop to consider that small is the new big? What if me showing up at the Coffee House every Tuesday night is just to touch one other soul?
A few weeks ago I invited a very nice man to join us. He said he writes poetry but he had never shared before. Last night he came and shared poems he wrote during what seems to have been a traumatic divorce. He moved all of us because as he read, he wept openly. Dear readers, that is why I LOVE what I do. I believe poetry is meant to be performed live. A dear friend of mine said to me upon our first meeting,” Our words are our life.” How true that is! How amazing it is and an honor to have the chance to give other poets a platform from which they can come and bare their souls to us. We all benefit when a soul reaches out to touch us with their light.
So next time you think what you do is not important consider that maybe your presence in some one’s life might be the one thing that is keeping that person alive. The work you do no matter how menial in your eyes, maybe some one else’s miracle and moment of joy. Take your eyes off the numbers and value what you do because really, you’re the only one capable of doing what you do. What you do and who you are is irreplaceable..think on that!
-EVA SANTIAGO copyright 2012
