Laura at dVerse provided lists of word-threesomes to choose from to write a sequence of three poems. Sun, moon, earth jumped out at me and the Oracle seemed the right place to go to construct verse using those three words.
1
ask the sun
if dusk feels as full
as the dawn
2
ask the moon
if dark is as deep
as always
3
ask the earth
if between grows roots
with seedsong
a misted bridge forms
across the water–
our voices dance
as if they were winged
across the water
we float airborne
touching the sky
our voices dance
uncontained
scattering the light
as if we were winged
needing no reason
playing with life itself
For dVerse, where Lisa asks us to play. Also inspired by the photo, above, by Terri Webster Schrandt, provided by Colleen for this week’s Tanka Tuesday. I’ve written another trimeric poem.
Of course I always notice the birds.
I’m waiting for the robins to begin my morning–the cardinal, the flicker, the mockingbird. Then I will be certain spring has arrived. But the crows are back, as opinionated as always, and the crowds of blue jays and sparrows never left. A mourning dove croons from a nearby roof outside my kitchen window as the sun rises.
I habitually tune out the sirens, garbage trucks, helicopters, low-flying planes, motorcycles, cars and buses, construction—all the normal background noise of city living.
But the air itself has gotten louder lately. Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I can barely hear myself think over its whisper-hum. My head is completely emptied of dreams; I am conscious only of my body in bed, surrounded by a constant movement murmuring in my ears.
Daylight does not mute the stormy sounds that show up suddenly and randomly, demanding attention, interrupting thought. The nonstop intersection of voices, layered in a language I don’t understand, drowns out all other discourse.
It reminds me of the ocean–unbroken, all-encompassing, alive. A presence much larger than my own. To be inside of it is perhaps all the translation, the guidance, that is necessary.
on the street dogs bark–
the sky darkens—lights turn on–
I breathe in, then out
I’m a little late with Sherry’s prompt from last week at earthweal of Soundscapes–I’m squeezing it in at the last minute for the weekend open link. I’ve also used some of this week’s random word generator oracle words, which you can find here.
All art is from the archives.
This week’s words from the Random Word Generator Oracle. As always, feel free to use them as you wish.
Even though paint, tint and grey do not exist in the Oracle tiles, those were words that I kept seeing this morning. After I figured out how to make them, the rest of the words fell into place.
When I was looking for art, I came across the above drawing, misfiled among some old collages. It seemed just right, and I went looking for the right folder, which contains a series of landscapes I did inspired by some landscapes I had seen by Georg Baselitz, which had black lines and spare use of color. The one above is colored pencil on an ink marker drawing I did as one of my original black and white ideas. That uncolored drawing is below.
Later on I painted the landscape without black lines, in gouache (the top landscape). I thought this sequence, backwards, contained the feeling in the Oracle’s words today.
the black-tinted shadow
of sleep
paints an ache
swimming through the whisper
of stilled sunlight
a grey language lies
beneath the early sky
as a raw mist plays
with the bare bones of time
you say less and less
Armies To Be Disbanded, All Weapons Destroyed
Yesterday the earth’s nations signed an agreement to end armed conflict between any and all of its peoples. There was dancing in the streets as all over the world people joined hands in unity and sang about love trains and peace trains and harmony echoing through the land and into every human heart.
Handmade signs spoke in multiple languages waving above the crowds: “People Have The Power!”, “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”, “War Is Not The Answer”, “We Are All Human”, “Nothing Funny Bout Peace!”, “Study War No More”, “Get Together”, “We CAN Change the World!”, and the simple and ubiquitous “Imagine”.
The assembly spoke in a single voice as the papers were signed: Amen.
Selma’s W3 Prompt this week was to “Write a ‘prose poem’ in the form of a news article you wish would come out tomorrow”. Yoko Ono took out ads in the NY Times on John’s birthday for a number of years promoting an end to war, and a few years ago when I was doing my “headline haiku” series on altered pages from the newspaper I used some of them for my art. So it seemed a natural subject to choose for my news story.
…with thanks for words of inspiration to Martha and the Vandellas, The O’Jays, Cat Stevens, Nanci Griffith, Patti Smith, Phil Ochs, Marvin Gaye, Anti-Flag, Nick Lowe, Pete Seeger, The Youngbloods, Crosby Stills and Nash, and John Lennon
I pause on the edge of dark, on the edge of light, my direction halted by uncertainty. Between is a narrow ledge, a threshold balanced on an abyss. Am I coming or going? The end is also the beginning and all my questions are merely maps without roads.
I have become abstracted by an imagined journey in which seeking transforms into finding. In which the visions that ripple my consciousness turn out to be real. But what if matter is as transient as thought?
half-awake, spirit
splits, expands—crescent-mirrored
into cosmic tides
Frank at dVerse asks us to write a haibun referring to the Mezza Luna, the half or crescent moon. When I was looking for art for the post, I came across the collage at the top, which I used for another of Frank’s moon prompts a year ago.
I am always photographing the moon, so I had plenty of photos to choose from as well. The mirror effect in the first photo is caused by the window through which I shot the photo.
Jane’s having trouble with the random word website, so I generated this week’s words, above. Help yourself !
Another enigmatic message from the Oracle. But she always wants us to remember to let others know that they are not alone.
let time make a world
out of stars
listen as if wings
were opening to receive
the music of skyrivers
dreaming through your heart
fill each song
with between and always
here–
take my hand
The music
of your tongue is sweet,
flattering–
yet I re
main unmoved, quite resistant
to the tiresome songs
you string with
vague glittering charm.
A flashy
pointlessness
can be pleasant, amusing–
but rapidly fades
into the
redundancy of
easily
forgotten
old news.—May I direct you
this way, to the door?
Colleen provided the above painting, Portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent, as an ekphrastic prompt this week for Tanka Tuesday. Bjorn’s prompt at dVerse to use an AI tool had me consulting the Random Word Generator–I realized Jane had not posted one this week, so I generated the words below to choose from.
It led me in a direction I would not have thought of on my own, which is the point I think.
As to the collage–as you may have read in a previous post, I’m in the process of archiving all of my art–50+ years of it. This has led to quite a few surprises. It seems I did a group of abstract door collages in 1983–who knew? Not me, that’s for sure. The colors of this one work well with Sargent’s painting I think.
K. 