Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Faith-factor





PAD Challenge day 22: write a pessimist poem. Write an optimist poem

Like children
We press our faces to hope’s window
In eager expectation

But darkness
Fills the air with raindrops
And no explanation

One by one
The faces in the window disappear
Save where

They linger
Knowing hope remains as long
As there are children
...and prayer

© Janet Martin


Ink Tug 'o War





PAD challenge day 22: write a pessimist poem. write an optimist poem

…and I would fling this pen aside
The taunt of word that keens the air
Wrangles twixt yearning and despair
To spill their will in verbose tide

The blood of thought runs wild and blue
A recompense of cloven ink
As what I taste and touch and think
Desecrates a page or two

What merit is this? Bliss and bane
Rival on throbbing battlefields
…its aftermath of groaning yields
The offspring of a poet’s pain

And yet the unwritten implores
Within the pen; miniscule rod
To tender to meek parchment, God-
Whispers of Home and heart-shaped doors

…and I would fling this pen aside
Save for a graven thought or two
This life is not a rendezvous
With fate; nor Time a dead-end tide

 
© Janet Martin

Two-for-two Tuesday...Picking Pussy-willows

Twirl, little girl, Dance, darling one...the bubble breaks and you are grown

PAD Challenge day 22:Write an optimist poem. Write a pessimist poem.



We pick pussy-willows
Thirteen and I
And marvel at how blue the sky
Sweeps past those plumes we cannot reach
Her chatter blooms, and I beseech
The mock of clock; its tick and tock
Stealing what I can never hold
And all the while
With seasoned smile
It knows that I am getting old
And cannot keep
The tearless weeping
Of an hour from the air
Or evade heaven’s wand
That graces youth
With laugh-line kisses where
Love, loss and longing keen a sigh
Striking Time’s timbrel; lullaby
And mornings meld
Escape withheld

Where she and I
For one brief spark
Pick pussy-willows
Ere the dark
Consumes the sky
The silver sheaf
Of pussy-willows
Turned to leaf

© Janet Martin

 


Monday, April 21, 2014

When Daylight Wakes in Honeyed Sighs...



 Day began beneath breath-taking beauty...

When daylight wakes in honeyed sighs
To ease the drape from sleeping skies
We pause, twixt leap and kneeling torn
Beneath the beauty of the morn
Before we seize the hem of grace
To face the tide of human race

Against the backdrop of its breadth
We tread our little path of earth
Of dream and dance, of moan and groan
Of disappointment’s stepping-stone
Where carnal clay and Divine meet
As fainting fear and faith compete

Dusk blushes, hushed, gentle and still
Familiar with every hill
It touches soft each croft and crest
All earth becomes a cradled nest
Blanketed blue and here we are
Held by the Keeper of each star

© Janet Martin

...before blushing away to gray and blue.

 





Retrospect...



 

Retrospect drives truth-pangs through the heart
Today we love; tomorrow we may part
First’s are life-hallmarks; charted and prized
‘Lasts’ slip by, easily unrecognized

Retrospect strums soul-strings tenderly
Calling to moments tossed, lost to time’s sea
‘Now’ fills my palm urging me from my thought
Lest I miss ‘the something’ this morsel besought

Retrospect trembles in visions aloft
Double-edged grace; inexorable waft
Startling the drifter to reality
How quickly an hour fades to history

© Janet Martin

Salome passed away early on Saturday morning.(for the past year she was in a long-term care facility due to increased care needs) Everyone's favorite aunt is finally with Jesus. Death brings retrospect...She will be laid to rest tomorrow morning.No more Down's Syndrome, no more Alzheimer, and all Jesus and her momma and papa!

Beautiful Basics



Today's PAD challenge; write a back to basics poem

Creek-song winds lazy, like honey-gold dream
Locust whines high in bronze willow-limb tent
August noon, hazy, sultry-sweet requiem
Trickles to vaults of each summer soon spent

Childhood sprawls endless beneath bare brown feet
Mother calls ‘dinner’, baby spills his milk
Farmer is whistling in dusk’s dying heat
Moments fill archives with silver-soft silk

Screen door slams twenty or more times a day
Heaven splays fretwork of shadow on grass
Where on its dappled quilt innocence plays
Not knowing yet how swift youth’s summers pass

Mother taps stove-pipe and calls, ‘rise and shine’
Oatmeal to water; breakfast in an hour
We splash through dawn calling co’ boss’ ‘milking-time’
Bessie is slow, her tail flings brawny shower

Creek-song winds lazy into the sunset
Childhood and motherhood soon coalesce
Oatmeal to water, sonny spills his milk
Mother recalls simple basics; life’s best

© Janet Martin




Back to the Basics of Love


My sisters and I ,way back when; sigh...those days were as 'basic' as could be! Childhood...days of long, slow-cooked oatmeal breakfasts and forever-afternoons.


PAD Challenge day 21: write a 'back to basic' poem



Let’s get back to the basics of love
Slip out of haste’s sterilized gloves
And re-familiarize our touch
With words like ‘long’ and ‘slow’ and such

Distraction fits in pockets now
A world at restless finger-tips
Robbing romancers of a long, slow
Afternoon intent on eyes and lips

Perhaps, if I were two by two
And on my forehead was a screen
You’d touch me like you used to do
Instead of only ‘in-between’

Darling, lets get back to love’s bare facts
Seems these days way too much distracts
…the devil laughs in dings and beeps
Technology gathers its sheep

Love craves long, blue-eyed afternoons
Of slow-dances to paradise
Before we sacrificed heart-tunes
To curs-ed gadgets pocket-size

We trip over love-miracles
And God-granted ability
Of have-hold, live-laugh, touch and taste
Forgetting to just, simply. Be.

© Janet Martin

 For the most part hubby and I are still pretty old-fashioned, but I look at the next generation (yep, middle-age proof in its full glory;) and worry about how relationships will survive this gadget-age...

Exalt, Exalt the One






Exalt, exalt the One
Dominion left His throne
A robe of flesh to don
A death of thieves to bear
Exalt, exalt the name
Of He who bore our shame
The Son of God: He came
Hope’s stronghold to prepare

Exalt, exalt I AM
For He became a Lamb
No blood of bull or ram
Could cleanse or justify
Exalt then oh, exalt
Atonement without fault
Jesus poured out his All
God’s wrath to satisfy

Exalt, exalt Him then
Jesus saves sons of men
Once and for all He came
Death’s valley to pass through
Come, lay sin’s idols down
Beneath Love’s thorny crown
Redemption’s spotless gown
Waits there for me and you

© Janet Martin


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Ephemeral Quaff







This ephemeral quaff
Of moments keens a thirst
For the Intangible, aloft
Like thought’s unwritten verse

A madrigal of want
In spite of work and prayer
Rouses within a hellish taunt
Of venomous despair

Desire cannot change
The free-fall of an hour
And none of us can rearrange
A clock’s incessant pow’r

…and who of us can boast
A lump-sum afternoon?
Tick-tock, tick-tock, Time’s uttermost
Is forged in moment-swoon

…and ever as we gulp
We drain its ether bowl
Until the final Curtain-call
That strips body from soul

Fear-stunned, yet fearless I
Beseech Mercy’s veiled face
Faith is not feckless frippery
But trusting God for grace

© Janet Martin

Easter Song



  
Praise He who is not dead
He is the King of kings
Come, offer up your fear and dread
Where Love transcends all things

Death conquers death, as Life
Breaks forth in ageless laud
Earth’s sepulchers of stone could not
Constrain the Lamb of God

Grief turns to joyful song
Come; see what He has said,
Why do you seek the Living One
Among these mortal dead’?

I AM. I AM. I AM.
His love would not withhold
From sinners lost, a Perfect Lamb
As Prophets long foretold

Yet thorn and scorn and foe
And Death could never claim
The Victory; Jesus arose
Ah, sing that sacred Name

For Death has conquered death
The veil twixt man and Priest
Is rend in two; He bids us come
To taste the marriage feast

Praise Him; He is alive
Jesus, Jesus receive
His love will rescue and forgive
All those who will believe


© Janet Martin

 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures...
1 Cor. 15:3-5 

Wishing each of you a  Blessed Easter Day.




Saturday, April 19, 2014

Green



PAD Challenge day 19: choose a color for your poem title

We press through life’s marketplaces
Winter cold and summer heat
Holding hands and kissing faces
Arabesque of bittersweet

We fill baskets with life-moments
 Amethyst and baby’s breath
For we cannot see the fulcrum
Pivoting twixt life and death

…as we dash through fields of flowers
To a skyline out of reach
Save to sundry sweep of hours
Washing over brawny beach

We embrace, knowing tomorrow
Bids us suffer parting’s pain
Yet we cannot quench with sorrow
Love; and so we love again

Asking nothing of God’s favor
But perhaps, if He would deem
Here and there a little picnic
On our own wee patch o’ green

© Janet Martin