Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Awesome Gallery










With all the work and worry of this hurry-hurry place
We sometimes miss the whisper-soft kisses of daily grace
The world is like a wonderland of grand and common gifts
Waiting to be unwrapped by eyes and fumbling fingertips

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ cites the phrase
Then pray that we learn to behold with eyes-wide-open gaze
The colors of the world unfurl Masterpiece works of heart
To soothe strict toil and duty with the beauty of God’s art

The earth and the fullness thereof open its gates; no charge
To all, as we witness firsthand Originals At Large
Of leaf etched on a canvas that we cannot touch with hands
Of raindrop-dappled dances on four-season-fold grandstands

Love lavishes Time’s bittersweet with startling commonness
It scatters beneath hurried feet the miracle of ‘yes
Where work and worry of this hurry-hurry place runs through
An awesome gallery of artwork, free to me and you

© Janet Martin

Wishing you a day of Awesome in unexpected places!

A Rare Undertaking

Today's Final Prompt: Write a last chance poem.

(This poem may be read as one or as six poem-lets)



Within the grin and growl of Time…of tumbles and slow-dances
We skin its scope of grief and hope and first and final chances

The air is rife with life’s delights and knife-like circumstances
The morning like a rose unfolds in blue and gold romances

Though we are old-er than we were and not so bold and daring
The firsts and lasts of love and life still overflow our bearing

Life’s firsts are often named, earmarked and widely celebrated
Its lasts intangible; heart-tugs, subtle and understated

What if today was the last day that we would share our laughter
What, through farewell’s tears would we say to cheer us ever after?

Each day is a first-final dance; what a rare undertaking
As feet move to the music of memories-in-the-making

© Janet Martin

(Thoughts and prayers with those in Tennessee and surrounding areas 
as they deal with wild-fire and other tornado aftermath.
One survivor worded it perfectly
'We can rebuild but we cannot replace'. )

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Slow Dance With November Blue





For today’s prompt, we’re once again doing two-for-Tuesday prompt. So pick one, combine both prompts into one poem, or write two (or more) different poems. Here are the prompts:
  • Write a love poem. A poem about love, people who are in love, attempting to woo, or some other lovely spin on the subject. Or…
  • Write an anti-love poem. I know that for every lover there’s an equally powerful hater.


I love you; how you woo me with your blue November eyes
You stoke the hunger in my soul with leafless lullabies
There is no other lover quite as intimate as you
The wander-land of summer swept into November blue

I’ll miss you; for you kiss the countryside with mottled hues
Your painter’s tray is mostly gray and bronze and browns and blues
With here and there a sudden splash of hallelujah-green
To tease earth’s waning colors with echoes of seventeen

I love you; poet’s soulmate and maestro of early dusk
Your baton slips across the tips of stripped trees, blue and brusque
The song you play a melody of passion’s aftermath
A brittle leaf tap-dances on your frozen garden path

I love how gray becomes you on a rainy afternoon
No, you were never made for flowered frocks of May and June
But for lands after harvest and hands folded into prayer
For slow dancers that do not feel the need to rush somewhere

November blue, I’ll miss you; love's farewell is pleasure's pain
You weave such tender sweetness to your ‘til-we-meet-again’
The touch of you, slow, solemn; like somehow you’ll miss me too
Oh, troubadour of autumn, fare thee well and I love you


© Janet Martin

A Little More Love





For today’s prompt, we’re once again doing two-for-Tuesday prompt. So pick one, combine both prompts into one poem, or write two (or more) different poems. Here are the prompts:
  • Write a love poem. A poem about love, people who are in love, attempting to woo, or some other lovely spin on the subject. Or…
  • Write an anti-love poem. I know that for every lover there’s an equally powerful hater.


We are all broken... promises and self-serving ruses
And hearts full of cunning and stuttered excuses
We all need love; not the hug and run kind
But love that won’t hold us then leave us behind

We’re all mistaken, misunderstood misters and misses
We all need try-try- again’s cuddles and kisses
Why don’t we try, you and I, ‘ere Time softly shuts its door
To strive to love one another just a little bit more

We all need love; the heart without, is a hungry pauper
We all need someone with which to share our care and laughter
What a pity that we can’t seem to find a way to prove
What would happen if we all gave just a little more love

© Janet Martin


Like an Art-show

  

The backdrop of 
life's day-to-day
Is a slideshow; 
Blush-blue-gold-gray
...that slips away
Hello,adieu
The sky a tray
Of untamed hue 
Where we look up
Paint-brush in hand
To dapple art
Upon time's sand

Beneath bowers
Of tinted air
We paint flowers
On winter's chair


 Janet Martin


Where Not All Poems Spill In Ink...



 Today's page is rain-thrummed gray...
but we may still spill songs to it
Happy second-last day of November!

And snuffed window-scapes ‘neath its tide
Grows pale; the grail that pours today
Refurbishes the countryside
Where we, wide-eyed artists, attend
Its poetry as yet, unpenned

Today is like a page that waits
To wear what madrigals we spill
Before dusk’s lowering of gates
Obliterates the moor and hill
When by the fireside we sit
To read poems as yet, un-writ

How vague seems unshaped poetry  
We dip into a sea of thought
Where what we think no one can see
Becomes the sum of actions wrought
And what we surmised was not much
Is immortalized by our touch

We are all authors of a kind
No one is insignificant
The poetry we leave behind
Is like a self-signed testament
Where not all poems spill in ink
Yet spell far more than we may think

© Janet Martin