Tag: poem

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Open Write September Day 5

Barb Edler of Iowa is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the final day of our September Open Write. She encourages us to celebrate our writing group through poetry of any form today. You can read her full prompt here and read the poems of others. On the heels of a celebration of the Labor Day launch of our books Words that Mend and 90 Ways of Community earlier this week, I can’t think of a better way to write today than in thanksgiving and heartfelt gratitude for a group of writers who make a difference in how we live and how we think.

If you don’t have a writing group, I encourage you to find one ~ and you can use this one as a great model for a face to face group in your own corner of the world after spending a few hours looking back at the prompts and the feedback. Get the books, read them, and feel the deep need to fix places you never knew were broken. Too many of us have lost our footing and found ourselves floundering and then discovered the power of writing and what it can do. Today is a day to celebrate the power of the pen and the ways it connects us with others. Anna Roseboro said it best at our celebration: if poetry can do this for us, imagine what it can do for our students. We all need poetry and writing in our lives.

Photo by Thirdman on Pexels.com

Belonging

we step from shadows

into glowing candlelight

from our scars

we discover soothing balm

from mourning and grief

into reassurance there is

reason to go on

we come from loneliness

to take a hand of belonging

from disconnectedness

to welcoming acceptance

we leave our fears

step into the fold of peace

we leave disappointments

find spiritual hope

we feel our hearts

pulled at the words

someone else’s

shadows

scars

mourning

grief

loneliness

disconnectedness

fears

disappointments

are our own moments

our own memories

and we know

we know

we know

this is no ordinary

writing group

these are

our lifelines

our people

our friends

our family

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Open Write September Day 4

Our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the September Open Write is Larin of Oklahoma. She inspires us to write “I Thought You Should Know” poems in any form of our choice. You can read her full prompt here, along with the poems of others.

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers at Slice of Life

To the Craftsman in Kentucky Who Made the Secretariat

I thought you should know

this piece has been in my family

since 1966, and we won’t give it up~

it sits in the dining room by the table

here in the heat of Georgia

with a fake plant on top since I

can’t keep real ones alive

like the matriarchs did

and I only wish I could rewind

time through all its days and

relive some of the simplest

moments next to it

through the years

as hash browns fried,

cinnamon toast browned,

bacon sizzled,

teaspoons swirled in steaming mugs

and family talked

~ really talked ~

in those hours like they’d have forever

only they didn’t

and we don’t

which is why, Craftsman, your

work of art is safe with us

turning back the years

in ghostly oak

memories

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Open Write September Day 3 – Decades of Music Poetry

Today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the third day of the September Open Write, Tammi Belko of Ohio is our host. She inspires us to write music of the decade poems by creating new original poetry from borrowed lines of favorite songs, mashed up like a Cento poem all from lyrics. You can read her full prompt here.

Photo by Anni Roenkae on Pexels.com

When the Moon is in the Seventh House

do you…..YOU….

feel like I do?

would you like to swing on a star,

carry moonbeams home in a jar?

could I have this dance

for the rest of my life?

if it all fell to pieces tomorrow

would you still be mine?

where have all the

cowboys gone?

where have all the flowers gone?

are you going to San Francisco?

do you want to know a secret?

do you promise not to tell?

{{this is the dawning of the

age of Aquarius}}

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Open Write September Day 2

Dave Wooley is our host for Day 2 of the September Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com, inviting us to write poems today about mirrors. Come write with us or read our poems.

Join us today for our book launch party, too! September 22, 2024 – we are having an Online Publication Party to celebrate this bounteous time in our poetry community. Please join us for a live event on Zoom/YouTube at 12 PM PST/2 PM CST/3PM EST and bring friends with you…we are going to celebrate! 

Mirrors

mirrors
of life
in art

Picasso
exhibit
in Nashville
with my
daughter

we sat
admiring
wondering
taking it
all in

then my
birthday~
she sent
blank journals
with
Picasso art
covers
fronts and backs

mirrors

mirrors
of life
these words

conversations
with Fran
we chatted
on writing
on family
on pens
and pencils

then a
Ticonderoga
Noir
Holographic
Hexagon
flat sections

mirrors

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Dogfight

Boo’s head from the back, with his ear and head sustaining bites in a fight he picked


Boo Picks Fights He Can’t Win Haiku

at pickup they told

us our dogs got in a fight

we both looked at Boo ~

Boo Radley caused it

guilty ~ with a bleeding ear

(both brothers smiling)

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Conversation with Maxine Overheard in a Motel Lobby off I-16 in South Georgia

Background: We are traveling on weekends these days to see my father and help with some household tasks, so we are spending some time in hotels and motels on the road. Sometimes I just like to eavesdrop and take notes about how life happens for other people – which is what I did on Saturday morning as we sipped coffee in the lobby. There’s nothing quite like a little slice of cultural conversation, overheard, to get the mind racing about what life is like in other corners of the world.

“they finally found him in Statesboro in CCU

after he went into Metter and they transported

him to Statesboro then to Augusta who sent him

back and he was lost, nobody knew where

he was at but he was at a dadgum good hospital

in Augusta and either he checked hisself out

or somebody came and picked him up and

took him back to Statesboro…..

I cried all

night because I messed up my baby’s hair

and it looked like a lawnmower done ran

over it and all the kids teased him in school

but the vet showed me how to hold the

clippers and I did it just like that…..

I called Betty Joyce, Maxine, and you do not

understand sometimes I have to talk to her

and I told her I can’t deal with her actin like

a two year old like she done this morning….

now Barri in Laundry don’t want that job

so I better not hear her complainin one more

time cause it’s done been offered but she

says she don’t want lobby…

there’s three types of tacos up there and I

got off the phone with Ashley and asked Mama

if she wants to share a plate of three tacos

but Mama said them tacos won’t be very big

and she got hers with beef and I got mine with

pickles in those torTILLa shells, and we shared

them but she ate two and I ate one and she was

upset so Denise called and asked her if she wanted

to go sit over there at her house and I told her

regardless of her knee surgery she weren’t going

because her grandkids are coming and Denise has

Covid and she’s actin funny. All this crap I

got going on and my Mama’s gon’ talk to

me this way. Her husband left last night

and where’s he at now? Nobody knows.

I was still hungry so I told Ashley I wanted

some rice and beans because my tacos

showed up without pickles and onions

so she brought those out to the house

and added some pork and pineapple and

it was so good, Maxine. Mama got a piece

of pineapple in her taco and I thought she

was ‘gon flip her lid and she started

actin up again…..

And so a couple comes up to check in

off Cartwright and wants a room at 7:54 a.m.

and the clerk tells them if they stay around

here they have to live over 50 miles away

to check in and the man said it was

more comfortable though

{my mind

was racing at this point, there was

no sleep about to happen, and the

botch-haircutter went back to

weaving a web of life so intricate

and vernacularly cultural that I

had images of a web with the

word TERRIFIC over a

smiling Wilbur as I thought

of that rude goose and Templeton}…..

And I busted her out in front of

her husband at the ballpark

cause she’s been here but

not with him – she’s been here

and she looked at him and me

and when I hinted I’d seen her

recently she looked stupid and said

she ain’t seen me in probably

never.”