Did You?

Today’s prompt comes from One Single Impression. The prompt: the image you see and the word, “AVATAR”. Visit the One Single Impression to write along with this and other prompts.

Did You?

The light from the sunset

Compels me, saying

“Today is ending,

Did you spend it well?”

Did you love with enough

Tenderness and passion, did you

Speak what people needed to

Hear from you?

Did your hand

Stroke the shoulders that needed

To be stroked? Did you write?

Did you laugh? Did you share a

Glance with the one who

Longs to speak but hasn’t

Yet found the words?

Did you allow the space for the

Words to be born?

- Julie Jordan Scott

Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box. Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

Posted at 08:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Twelve and five/twelfths

Brought to you due to a prompt from "Sunday Scribblings"....

My waving hand, fingers taut in

The shape of “I love you”

The sign language phrase

The meaning deeply

In my bent fingers and

Palm as the van pulls

Away, my daughter

Tucked inside, against

The opposite window

Her face is trying so

Hard to stay molded in

The “I don’t care that

You stuck around to see

Me off, I am a seventh

Grader trying to look

Comfortable on the

Other side of Girlhood

But I know the wave

Is caught, gratefully

Wasn’t it just breakfast

When I held her on my

Shoulder, looking at the

Ground Owls’ last moments

Of play in the dawn and

I promised, “I will always

Be there for you, always.”

Together, the two of us.

We were alone, a team

No one else heard.

What she lacks in confidence

With her peers, she has made up for in

Passion: gallon buckets of conviction

Delight that oozes from her skin

And reminds me way too much…..

Because, let’s put it this way:

Being on fire causes scarring

That wouldn’t be there if

One stays only in chilly spots

But without it, she wouldn’t be…

Born and raised as a result of

Transformation and movement

And bending silver and bronzed

Pain beyond what straw or ribbon

Or paper or cotton could even think

They know how it feels

She knows. Even now.

My waving hand, fingers taut in

The shape of “I love you”

She’s tucked inside, against

The opposite window

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Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box. Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

Posted at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Saying Goodbye

This came from a prompt earlier in March. I don't know where it came from, but am always grateful for flowing poetry.

Spring break is about to begin.

I feel the separation beginning

Even before we take leave

I have yet to learn to trust

Confidence remains misty

Vapor covered mirror

I wipe it away to find only

More vapor I wipe it away

More vapor uncertainty

Who said delicious ambiguity?

It wasn’t I, or Him, or Us.

Text messages, simplistic

We both know what is

On its way, soon – perhaps

The last time we say good-bye

Posted at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Good Lord, deliver us! - A Cento of Julie Jordan Scott and Sir Philip Sidney

I thought I had lost this when I posted my other poem today, It Left for "Get Your Poem On" from ReadWritePoem.Org.

This poem just wouldn't die a graceful death!

It wasn't until I wove it together that I realized this is a dark poem. *shaking my head*... and I bet you will enjoy it in spirt of yourself!

= = = = = = =

Good Lord, deliver us! - A Cento of Julie Jordan Scott and Sir Philip Sidney

Good Lord, deliver us!

Be on the receiving end

All love is dead, infected

From time before when the group of you

Worth, as nought worth, rejected
Saw dust coats her skin

Intimacy is agreed upon

That Love is dead?

His death-bed, peacocks folly

Her misty blue. Sacred. “Thank you.”

The pain with saw dust, birthed in her head

Ring out your bells

Let mourning be spread

Because she remembers, too well

The incantations of focus, loved

Merged in the demand, “Amaze me.”

Intimacy is earned

Fill her hands with his familiar winding sheet

The cut to be so deep my body would

Be in his will, false seeming holy;

His movements, liturgy.

He flailed

Is that the way you took that knife

From such a female frenzy

From them that use men thus?

He became still, his brown eyes met then,

The harbinger of the rest of the process

They’ll choose YES! YES! YES!

With plague of deep disdain

So deftly hidden she bet he never

Hears how he sounds

“What is it you find so amusing, dear?

Shrivel as my blood drained from me.”

His sole executor blame

From so ungrateful fancy

He said, his words a prayer mockery

“You are not my Dear”

Sneering eyes unraveled foreplay

And sliced her in the back

So neatly

= = =

Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box. Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

Posted at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

"It Left": Poetic response to Get Your Poem On #119 from @readwritepoem

It took me a while, but yesterday I finally settled in and wrote a cento to fit the prompt from ReadWritePoem.org.

I chose the cento form – a poem created from other poems. I chose a poem written by Sir Phillip Stanley, an English renaissance poet, whose work I happened upon while making some art trading cards. I got this particular poetry collection at a used book sale and while these poems are not ones I would sit and devour all at once like I devour Mary Oliver or Denise Levertov, their beautiful yet succinct, savory language works remarkably well in collage and visual art.

My eyes happened upon Stanley’s poem with the lines, “God, help us” and “female frenzy” and “love is dead” – I knew I was onto something.

Alas, this morning when I came to blog it and add it to the list at RWP, it had disappeared… which reminded me of the very theme for the poems we were to write this week – poems reflecting “Let’s Get it On”. One of the markers of the end of relationships is when “getting it on” literally gets up and leaves.

This short poem, written in mourning of the other poem and “getting it on” is the response to this week’s wistful meanderings through words and intimacy’s graveyard.

IT LEFT

It left --

Escaped from

Its place on

The kitchen

Table

My poem

The cento

Sir Philip

Stanley wrote

With me

Yesterday

I smiled

Shyly into

Its surprising

Combinations

And this

Morning

Just like that

Untended it

Vanishes

Stays unfound

So I am left

With the poignant

Recollection

Of what was

Posted at 05:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Surprise Villanelle on #WordfulWednesday

Wordful Wednesday is a project of SevenClownCircus.

Join in the fun every week there -

Poem #1 - Surprise Bridge (Villanelle)

Barbed wire thinks it keeps me out

I lean over the ledge to see her face

Crumbling concrete with side-stepped grout

Up higher I peek and restrain a shout

Balance comes when I keep a slow pace

Barbed wire thinks it keeps me out

Mouth wide big teeth never pout

Yet another sunset I hasten to chase

Crumbling concrete with side-stepped grout

Muddy water blinds me from rainbow trout

My stomach growls arguing against grace

Barbed wire thinks it keeps me out

This road is untraveled by the vain and the lout

Wide open valleys, rolling hills so much space

Crumbling concrete with side-stepped grout

Surprise villanelle sings its accented shout

Impossible to keep the sunset light off my face

Crumbling concrete with side-stepped grout
Barbed wire thinks it keeps me out

= = =

Poem #2 – Non Metrical

Barbed wire to keep me out

The river, it calls me, they all call me

Rivers, over stones, this one muddy

I wonder if it is from the icy frozen

Source, taking the ground I can’t see

By surprise, is that it?

This road, so quiet. I can walk down the middle

Set my camera many feet away and set the timer

Run and wait and I am still right there, perfect

Shot, even if I am “a spec, just a spec”

That is what I would rather show up as right now

Is that a surprise, is that it?

===

Wordful Wednesday is a project of SevenClownCircus. Check out the fun using the link below....

Posted at 06:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Songwriters - (for Carry On Tuesday)

Today’s poem comes from another Carry on Tuesday prompt. I loved this one for several reasons, but primarily the drumbeat that won’t go away is “I want to be in another musical… soon, please!”

Tonight Emma (my twelve-year-old) and I are going to sing at karaoke, which I love and commit to completely and… yes. Well, the poem says it all

Prompt: The Poet and his Song by Paul Laurence Dunbar

“A song is but a little thing, And yet what joy it is to sing!”

Songwriters

Songwriters, you appreciate

The squareness of my shoulders

The opening of my throat

The allowing of the breath and

Sound and wonder of your

Creation to soar through me

And back out to you,

Yes?

Enjoy, beyond joy, simply joy?

My ears, hear differently

The emotional tug in my belly

I take your words your notes

I scoop my feet off the floor

And find myself floating

Tumbling becoming a wild haired

Knock kneed adolescent

Nodding, crying while laughing

Connected to every other

Singer who makes sounds with

Your words and with delight

Says YES to this feeling

This hope

This moment

Songwriters

your song is not

a little thing. It is a joy AND a

joy to sing....

Posted at 08:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

#3WW - Not Anymore

Today's word offerings from 3WW are:

Weary, Shard, Pulse

Not Anymore

Easter egg pink sits in the

Horizon basket as I watch her

Walk toward her shiny red car

Her head bowed though not weary

Steps matching the slow pulse

Of the sunrise

She knows and I know as I watch

There won’t be many more mornings

Like this one

Next year her sunrise breakfast plate

Will be served by someone with a hairnet

Who doesn’t know her exact desires

Who didn’t hear her sing before she

Could talk who doesn’t know her

Tiniest fears and wildest hopes

My smiling word burst of “Have

A great day!” is tempered by

The shard of sadness, resting

And slowly turning inside my chest

My baby, not a baby

anymore

===

Perhaps you would like to write along with 3WW, too?

Check it out and write your poem, prose or essay from the prompting here.

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Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box. Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

Posted at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)