Hello, lovely ones. Yesterday, I posted a poem a day early to make room for today’s post. As some of you know, I host a literary podcast with my friend, Niles, called La Literati. We feature established authors, as well as up and coming writers.
Tomorrow, at 2 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, we will be celebrating the work of three talented WordPress bloggers. Information is below.
We plan to make this a regular part of our show. If you are interested in participating in the future, please get in touch via my contact information listed on this site. We would love to hear from you.
About the writers:
Geetha-
Geetha Balvannanathan Prodhom is an Indian writer born within a multicultural family and raised between India, Tunisia, Europe and the Middle East. She writes poetry in English, French and Arabic and has published a collection of French poems in 2011 with another collection of poetry in English to be published in 2016. A fervent admirer of the Japanese art of Tanka and Haiku since 2010 and writing her own Haikus in English, French and Italian since 2014, she also writes short novels in English and in French on the themes of human feelings and interaction. She is currently working on a manuscript in English depicting the varied life she has led. Her blog is:
Deb-
Debra (D.S.) Levy is a writer of short stories, flash fiction, and essays. She’s had work published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Columbia, Little Fiction, The Pinch, and others. Although she’s never considered herself a “poet,” she believes that whatever she’s writing has always begun with a poet’s concerns — concision, compression, sound, and the desire to capture moments of being. Since blogging at C-Dog & Company, she has begun (shyly) to share some of her free verse. You can find her
blog here:
Christian-
Christian Marc is a writer and blogger born in New Jersey, who lived in L.A., but is currently moving to Seattle. He is a two time recipient of the Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. He blogs at:
http:complainingisanartform.com/
You can also find my friend and cohort’s blog here:
Tonight I feel more alone than the moon
overthrown by the clouds.
I take solace in the rain, the sway of the trees
being shaken out like a well loved blanket by the wind.
I know you are out there under the horizon. We’re on the same Earth.
The moon plays peekaboo with you too.
I understand how time zones float like helium balloons across the globe.
But the sky and this poem know how much I want you here.
I want to look at you
and mark how time changes you,
as it changes us.
I want to love you up close.
It’s true as you say, distance doesn’t define love, we do.
We always find each other. I look up at the sky,
just in time to see the moon sneak through the clouds.
It whispers to me in sibilance.
For a moment you come closer. Comforted by the knowledge of you,
I speak to you in trees and air.
The gray eyes of the night translates my love diction,
as the Milky Way pours itself over two lovers
swept up on a star yet to be named.
Years from now when I read of your passing, I won’t imagine you in some abstract place. I want to picture you where you were the happiest- by the stream, where the ocean is never far, with book in hand, countless chapters, and no one to interrupt you.
Relaxing under a cerulean sky, blue-winged birds soaring.
The years, an heir to what was, golden, swinging light
as a breeze on an olive branch. The sky opening in their final valediction.
The sunlight dusting your hair, the fringe of grass.
The water from the stream flowing upward against the backdrop
of an eternal, carefree day.
The wisp of yourself pouring into the syntax in front of you. Words open again and again. Never taking back what they promise.
A thousand words to sustain you. Peace hemmed cover to endless cover.
Paused on the footnote of the page, you look up. Freedom in your gaze. Liberation in the moment. How still you are. How content. The words happening here. You look back down: your finger in the book. Your heart still, attuned to the glimmering of the stone.
The precipice attained.
Because if you are a human being,
you should try it at least once in your life,
assuming you’re already in that delinquent minority
of people who actually give a damn.
In which case it is imperative that you deny your nature.
Pay no mind to the wounded, those hurting, those living
in poverty, those abused and degraded
Your conscience might try to entice you
into fighting these wars.
Don’t be tempted to be a regime of change.
Be the most pathetic of apathetic.
Be an emphatic sack of nothing.
Become fish like with your feelings.
Let summer revolve solely around you.
Become Dionysius favorite daughter.
Affix yourself to a incubus of
laissez-faire.
Don’t have eyes that see and are able
to to derive a lesson from a flaw.
Don’t have ears that are able
to discern a cry for help
from a sports match on TV.
Don’t let your skin be alive with compassion.
Don’t feel sick in the bones
for all the horror in the world.
Let your indifference be museum quality.
Mona Lisa with a bottle of gin
and a party dress on.
Let your own selfishness uproot your veins.
Parade down the street and cheer yourself on,
while a homeless man begs for money or change.
This is how you do it. You have no time
for extreme emotions. No truths. No news.
Drink your tea, and steep yourself
into a stupor.
Sleep for years without a map.
Waste your life drooling and snoring.
The planet will spin on.
Who needs to feel the sun, the rain?
Dream toward less.
You can wake up when you’re dead.
Just don’t expect anybody
to look for you in the dark.
Don’t be surprised if your left stunned,
spinning, alone.
This is just one of the ways it could go,
if you take my advice.
I hope you can tell me another.
I translate myself in poetry,
often getting lost
in the fog of my mind.
Always looking for reason
in my narrative arc.
Here I roar and rage
all I want.
My words often drip
with disdain, despair.
The story loosely based
on my life.
Some truths are
too sacred to share.
Some truths belong
solely to me.
I try to decipher
what I’m really after.
Notebooks of fire,
letters stumbling around.
The margins full
of heart lines,
trying to capture
the red hours.
My pen sits up straight
and listens to the
commands of my interior
world
Language spills out simply,
but with fervor.
I create something
that is mine.
Fangled trees and damaged grass.
My cameo of grit and grace.
I give you my light, my dark,
my counter winds.
The oracles of desire.
I give then to you
before they burn away.
before they become a valediction.
My gilded fragments
of a life in blue,
suffused with question marks.
Because I am scarred .
I find comfort in the broken ones
The flowers out of season.
The dark mornings.
The delinquent library books.
The residue that slips through.
The ones not half full but fully
shattered. The ones scarred by
bramble.
I fall toward them with open arms .
For those who are lonely, those
wandering city streets, lost.
I pack kindness in a carry on with
imperfections. The bag so full
it’s spilling over.
The challenge of life, making everything fit.
My back aches for all I tote. There
are exits all around me. The gift shop is giving away apathy.
But I’ve purchase humanity’s ticket and I’m not going back.
Realizing life is more than chiffon pie and summer afternoons.
Knowing it isn’t the sky that matters but how we fly through it.
Navigating with a fractured flight map of scars,
counter winds and all.
The shadow of my dead
grandfather cast itself
in my dreams some
nights.
I see his silhouette
walking down a deserted road.
I follow him for hours. Every
time I quicken my pace to
catch up, he quicken his
faster
There’s always a
ending but never a beginning.
Time refuses to fold back
Translucence wanders endlessly.
Papa’s the light darting through
my eyes.
I wonder if the dead remember?
Maybe in my dream I’m
looking for a clue that they
haven’t forgotten us,
that’s there truly is a spiral staircase to a better place.
Papa keeps moving
The bones stay quiet.
The ash refuses to speak
The moon gives me the dead eye.
What a thing to be so close
but hear no words
The night dissolves.
A squawk of a crow wakes me
My sadness steals the sun.
For now my question
remains unanswered.
This guy. This video. Check it out. It’s transformative. Be sure to follow. If you love language, literature, culture, and guys named Joseph, you won’t be disappointed
