Poet's Tea

 

You may feast

on information

Theory,

theology

scientific explanation

hypothesis,

philosophy

I prefer

to sup on sips

Of ink

teased into

poetry

I prefer

the art

Of heart-shaped

Hopes

and Nope’s sting

reconciled

By possibility

Still waiting,

for ink-oceans

to run

wild

© Janet Martin

Uncaging Oceans (or, Waiting on a Poem)

Let it steal your breath

Let it stir your soul

Let it sweep in sweet surprise

Like oceans that roll

Through shorelines of skin

Where no one can see

Glimmers glance and dance and spin

Into poetry

Let it lilt and waft

Soft as falling snow

Let it be a fist-a-cuff

Hold it, let it go

Let it beg and brood

Stubborn as can be

Until it beckons thought-blood

Into poetry

Let it lure and wink

Let it grip despair

With a tender twist of ink/think

Transform it to prayer

Let it take the lead

Do not rush its sea

Until caged oceans are freed

Into poetry

Let it wash the room

With a brush of sighs

Darling, none can haste the bloom

Till the bud complies

Till whispers withheld 

Yield their mystery

And the murmur of waves meld

Into poetry

Let it test the vest

Of faith's fortitude

Let it storm the mortal breast

Wild and unsubdued

Let it crash and burn

Suffer patiently

Sometimes dust and ash will turn

Into poetry

Let it scale the sky

Dangle from the moon

Tremble like a butterfly

Freed from its cocoon

Let it vex the vim

Of hope, poised to be

A shimmer of stars that brim

Into poetry

Let it move the earth

Though nobody hears

A poem is its own worth

Without thunderous cheers 

 Fan to flame its spark

Gentle as can be 

Until it bursts through dark

Into poetry

© Janet Martin

Because Actions Speak Louder Than Words...

Originally I entitled this poem

Sermon to Poets and Silver-tongued Scribes

but that felt a bit harsh 

and its connotation a bit off the mark

so I changed it😅

(all that to say, words ring hollow

without rubber-meets-road corroboration!)

Bit of satire to self today, as well as

all of us struggling with easier talked than walked!

Below, is a glimpse of the scenery of general muddled mayhem 

of many hours of mental workouts,

frustrated/vexed scribbles 

and mumbled prayer-stumble!!

Yet all of this can never take the place of

a single step to aid/accompany a fellow-traveler! 

(lest I/we forget)

My hope is that here and there a poem hits home 

like a hug that needs no explanation

and an act of kindness tendered in ink!

I’d take a stumbling sermon lived

Over a smooth rehearsal, talked

And if I had to choose a gift

I’d take mercy’s second mile, walked

I’d take the ink of honest toil

Over spouted theology

And if I had to choose love’s spoil

I’d take a friendly cup of tea

I’d take the smallest gentle deed

Above intent, pious and grand

And if I had to choose my need

I’d take an earnest helping hand

The pen, though mightier than sword

Is not a supple substitute

For living out God’s Holy Word

Until the branch is bent with fruit

Sermons are not misunderstood

When preached in meek obedience

Better than pulpits carved of wood

Are stepping stones of reverence

And in the thick and thin of cost

Midst love’s ado of This and That

Better a kindness-buoy tossed

Than a poetic lariat

The fine art of rhythm and rhyme

Can kindle senses with delight

But cannot take the place of Time

Spent on knees in the dead of night

And, lest words miss the sacred mark

Of pure religion undefiled

Better prayer’s closet in the dark

Than podiums where crowds go wild

© Janet Martin

1 John 3:18 ESV

Little children, let us not love in word or talk

but in deed and in truth.

Rekindled Delight

 

Across a landscape ethereal

And not yet tamed by time

To journeymen of syllable

Unfurls a world of rhyme

And stars that poets climb

Sometimes knowledge alone is cursed

And deaf to the wild sound

That plagues the lowly bard with thirst

For wisdom not yet found

And lyrics still unbound

How ephemeral is the gate

That swings softly ajar

To usher through glimmers that bait

Poems that not yet are

Save in one fallen star

…snared on a shimmer of surprise

To thwart the stinging bite

Of words cut down to arrow size

To spur the songsters flight

In rekindled delight

The bull's eye of a poet's heart

Weathers many-a-test

Long suffering is worth the art 

And hunger worth the quest

Of sorrow at its best

© Janet Martin

Of Real-Time Poetry (and learning to read it)

The end of the old year and the beginning of the new 

have seen very little sunshine in our area!

 Celebrating happiness in today's post! 

Hopefully, it will be like a splash of sunshine in spite of the weather!

The 7-day forecast coming up has yellow in it. yay!

I want to be impacted by the thunder of the clock

I want to be distracted by fallen leaves on the walk 

This is the day the Lord has made.

Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

Psalm 118:24

The hard-pressed quest for happiness can sometimes overlook

The day’s unbridled loveliness in Real Time’s poem-book

Of beauty borne on loved one’s voice, of gladness turned to prayer

Of cherishing the charge of choice with conscientious care

Of birthday boy, wild with pure joy of turning sweet, sweet six

Still unbothered by life’s employ of moment-metered tricks

And diehard quests for happiness where happiness runs free

In the strange font of noise and mess of Real Time poetry

Of little girl who tugs the hand of honored smiles run wild 

(Surely there is nothing so grand as hand-in-hand-with-child)

Where Real-Time poetry can mete no sweeter happiness

Than tugs and hugs and dancing feet and pretty princess dress

Time’s wizened ways, where yesterdays accumulate, become

A surreal haze charged with displays of Real-Time’s soldered Sum

Where change mingled with changelessness teaches us as we age

In hard-pressed quests for happiness, to treasure every page/stage

The changelessness of change adapts to every size and shape

And draws dreamland’s fantastic mats out from beneath rapt gape

Reminding us not to get caught up in fond fantasy

Lest we miss the momentous jot of Real-Time Poetry

The quest for happiness is like a thief that steals the show

While buds turn into leaf and hold turns into letting go

While happiness fills coffers with lyrics that spill and brim

When love becomes the author and when life becomes a hymn

Happiness makes the most of now and here’s imperfect ‘yes’

It takes in stride both smile and tear with humbled thankfulness

Not overcome with yearning for what simply cannot be

Happiness is in learning to read Real-time Poetry

I want to be impacted by the thunder of the clock

I want to be distracted by fallen leaves on the walk 

I wanted be dumfounded no matter which way I look

By poetry unbounded in life's Real-Time Poem Book

© Janet Martin

I learned the first song as a little girl at school!

Happiness is the Lord

Happy Days are Here Again

The Happiness of Having You

 

If You're Happy and You Know It

The Poet's Yoke

 

A waltz with words that waft and twirl across a ballroom floor

The laughter of a little girl drifting from worlds of yore

A sense of imminence immersed in steadfast, common care

Of workaday and bills to pay and suppers to prepare

A sentimental ballad slipping through matters of fact

The art of bearing verses while keeping façade intact

And balancing the beckoning of worlds in want of ink

With sensible responses like cleaning the kitchen sink

To siphon from life’s thrum the rolling of a sort of sea

Rife with glints of spent summer and tomorrow’s mystery

Requires tireless patience while panning for lilt and rhyme

(This is not for the faint of heart, the art stealing time)

The poet’s yoke is made of air yet weighs a whisper-ton

With lyrics waiting to be snared and tamed and poem-spun

From brooding skies and sparkling eyes, from goodbyes and hellos

Each day unfurls a paradise of poems to compose

The merchant laughs and stuffs the chaff of trade into his sack

The maiden blushes; hopes he looks while she is looking back

The traffic rushes, the rain hisses underneath each wheel

The poet smiles and gathers manna for another meal

The poet's yoke is lily-soft yet claws the cloak of souls

With merciless persistence because always death's bell tolls

And who knows when the pen may fall prey to its solemn chime 

As the poet turns to behold the Giver of the rhyme 

 

Oh, pray they serve with honor the onus of pen and page

Because the life of written word survives from age to age

And who knows who will pause to read the stuff of wrangled ink

Therefore, the yoke should weigh enough to make the poet think

© Janet Martin

Okay, that's all for today, folks!

Wow! and maybe this year!

 Depends how tomorrow goes!

With much love, 

Janet

Wishing for us all, for 2023

 a fresh awareness of God

and a deeper reverence for Him,

 from whom all blessings flow

The Joyous Bells of Poem-time

 

Well, what have we to lose, my dear

Save, a silver shimmer of time

To pause upon parchment veneer

And drink a bit of ink-spun rhyme

And then to find within the swell

Of consonant and vowel lease

Something akin to Yuletide’s bell

Ringing with hope and joy and peace

Well, what have we to gain, my friend

To tame time’s unrelenting zeal

Enough to feel the warp and wend

Of pirouettes in pink and teal

But a fine merge with ink and page

And a renewed awareness of

What matters most from age to age

As would-be longing turns to love

Well, what have we in common but

The constant Thus of live and learn

Where in this grin-and-groan gamut

Wisdom is a crown we must earn

And oft, amidst hard knocks and such

We turn to seek the soft reply

Where once a bard took time to touch

The page with ink wrung from a sigh

Well, what have we to do but look

And listen where lost worlds/words live on

Between the covers of a book

Waiting for us to hap upon

Then, what have we to lose my dear

Save minutes that clock towers chime

While we dance to the songs we hear

In joyous bells of Poem-time

© Janet Martin

By Tender Means of Poetry (or, To My Gentle Reader)

So sorry, sweet little birdies, but filling the feeders needs to wait!

A sudden day off due to wild weather has opened the rather rare (ice-embossed)

window of opportunity to 'wax poetic' 😅💓

This book, rescued from the garbage bin by a truly caring friend

 who dropped it off at my door last week, 

Stole my heart with the first page!...

and inspired today's poem 'to my gentle reader'...

Of that which kindly comes to be

By tender means of poetry

To cheer us gently on, dear friend

Upon life’s careworn twist and bend

Where face to face we may not meet

To trace the bond of friendships sweet

I thank God for love’s ink-wrought font

To gently bind the wounds of want

And keep each other company

By tender means of poetry

To know, though we are far apart

The timeless tug of heart to heart

To share the very sacred touch

Of tears and smiles and prayers and such

And help us realize anew

The preciousness of me-and-you

And to gladden regions of thought

With refreshed awareness of God

To make us feel like family

By tender means of poetry

To tune us to the creature cry

Of hope; to hold love’s candle high

Where often dreams do not come true

And carefully laid plans fall through

To teach us to not cling too fast

-ly to what soon augments the past

To remind us, through lilt of rhyme

What does not change, in spite of time

And taste life’s sweet comradery

By tender means of poetry

To catch midst winter’s frigid fling

A sense of everlasting spring

To find a plot where tulips grow

To brighten thought while wild winds blow

To rouse an unexpected thrill

Where pages birth a bloom-tossed hill

And suddenly we bow the head

And thank God for the bit o' bread

Through that which kindly comes to be

By tender means of poetry

© Janet Martin

Quest of the Poet

Last week as I walked through a parking lot this leaf landed at my feet.

so, I picked it up...

It inspired the first stanza of this poem.

To pick up fallen leaves and press them into summertime

To woo from echo-sheaves, a few mementos, into rhyme

To enrich Ordinary with the wealthiness of less

Where lyrics of God’s glory author hope and happiness

To siphon from life’s ups and downs, keepsakes of common ground

To mend and dazzle heart shaped cups with treasures that confound

To showcase living’s simple joys with meek and thankful awe

To marvel at the patient poise of nature’s steadfast law

To thwart the sting and blight of biting words with beauty’s kiss

Life is too short to slight the sweep of so much we might miss

To cheer the wage of weariness with wonder to behold

Tendered to page through tears and tests of longing etched with gold

To leave unpenned the vile and vulgar, the boorish and base

But rather, weave a sense of smiles and friendship in its place

To hoist with holy feeling, love’s banners unfurled in font

And be a voice of healing in a broken world of want

To meet each other, heart to heart, through art of ink-finesse

Though ever face to face apart, together nonetheless

To find a diamond in the ruffled feathers of a thought

To bind the weathered wounds of love with blue forget-me-not

To will the jot and tittle of Becoming into bloom

And spill a little sunshine to a shadow-darkened room

To cast a glim of gladness into sadness that must be

And melt away brute madness with the torch of poetry

To lavish parchment pallor with the splendor of mid-June

And whisper to full color gray November’s afternoon

To coax a spark from embers of a dying place in time

And turn what one remembers into legacies of rhyme

© Janet Martin

Yesterday we woke to winter's wonderland!

Today the sun is doing its best to make it disappear

...before the next forecasted flurry!

Warriors of Poetry

 

My, my but life/love can be a hard-fought Poem!

Sometimes the empty page mocks the Poet

where frontline/first line footage thunders

like an unanswered prayer!

Each morning is like an empty page

waiting the Poem of Today.

First daylight's swift splash of sunrise has yielded\to just plain Rain Splash!

What will Ink and Quill spill today?

There is much more than meets the page

Of ink-blood left to spill

Surrender, facing center stage

Wears so much rebel still

Between the brute force of desire

And Wonder’s work-day frame

Smolder the embers of a fire

Font yet must fan to flame

Duty and beauty spar and meld

Like diamond-dazzled dust

While angst of prayer-answers withheld

Mold scaffoldings of trust

Sometimes a rhyme’s futility

Mocks the poet at war

With the very same enemy

That Eve did not ignore

My, my, the bloom of love can smart

The thorn that holds the rose

Can rip a hole right through the heart

With what God only knows

The fancy footwork of farewell

Kicks at the pricks; where verse

Is not enough to quench or quell

The blessing (or the curse)

Where age old agonies persist

And ink cannot assuage

The oceanic weight of mist

Waiting to spill to page

…as so much more than we can see

Roars through frontlines of air

While warriors of poetry

Must choose which hues to snare

© Janet Martin

Psalm 51:10

Create in me a clean heart, O God; 

and renew a right spirit within me.

Blink-Ink or Weight/Gate of Imminence

This poem wanted to keep rolling, like waves toward a shore

because often we blink; and what once was will be no more

Where Time's persistent tolling is a very fine-tuned gong

and no one knows how near or far we are to its So Long...

Today a grieving family is laying their precious nine-year old boy to rest🙏💔

What we think would have been Best must rest in the hands

of the Giver and Taker of life/time; Blessed be the name of the Lord.

It drives deep in the heart once more

this sacred reality poured from Job's lips in ancient days...

And he said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, 

And naked shall I return there.

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;

Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Job 1:21

Not one of us knows how soon what we have been given will be taken!

or when our book of life will be eternally bound as its last thread is severed.

Let's not take blink-ink for granted.

We blink it seems and night burns pink along earth’s eastward edge

The brink of a new day turns molten gold with mercy’s pledge

Unfurling, like an ocean we can sense but cannot see

Time’s weight of imminence rushing shores of eternity

…where tears, so many tears convey depths of both joy and grief

Of longing and fulfillment, apprehension and relief

Where years like a four-season barge traverse Time’s surf of air

And where no care or charge is too large to fit into prayer

Where oft the unexpected perplexes dreams dearly held

God’s patient purpose vexes man as Plan’s framework is felled

Where Time never stands still but forges on, through high and low

Where break of day soon spills into dusk’s gorgeous afterglow

…and then, we blink; the east burns pink, star-dazzle disappears

The brink of yesterday linked to the gray of yester-years

The green of youth at the mercy of truth’s unflinching stride

Its uncouth education borne on morn-to-morning tide

And nobody is exempt from forums of Much to Learn

We blink; and feast upon leased crumbs of summer’s sudden turn

While thoroughfares beyond our touch hinge to a new threshold

We blink; already dawn has shed its blush of pink and gold…

Where we (all poets in a sense) splash through ink-wells refilled

We rush the gates of imminence with ways and means, God-willed

Where verse on verse, we bless or curse, filled page soon strewn behind

Where blink on blink the ink dries in a book that God will bind

© Janet Martin

The Sands of Time are Sinking

Trove of Glimmers

 For the sake of the reader and a long must-do task list I must reel in the poetic rush this poem kindled...

She writes to relive, nay, preserve, the sparkle of the splash

Where soon the arms of Must will curve around childhood’s fleet dash...

She writes to ponder in her heart the faithfulness of God

To share the beauty of His art in sky... and sea... and sod...

She writes to feel the warp and wage where past and future merge

She braves the barrenness of page for the rush of the verge

She dredges deeps of heart and soul for a poem to snare

Like a fisherman born to troll phantom oceans of air

She writes to relive, nay, preserve, the sparkle of the splash

Where soon the arms of Must will curve around childhood’s fleet dash

Where, what in the moment may seem a very staying sum

Soon wafts like fragments of a dream she suddenly woke from

She writes to linger on the brink where dusk’s plum shadows sprawl

To paint with nothing but black ink, the wonder/thunder of it all

Where the drumroll of wanderlust ignores the shores of Time

She writes, to salvage from plumbed dust a memento of rhyme

She writes to garner from a trove of glimmers Bygone-blurred

The pleasantries of life and love immortalized in word

She writes to run her fingers through ethereal echo-fray

Where far to soon the dark runs blue and blush with break of day

She writes to wring from ragged ruin the raw rub of regret

To secure a sense of Still June when long its sun has set

She writes to keep at fingertips awareness of a toll

From which the garb of seasons slips to leave only Her soul

She writes to ponder in her heart the faithfulness of God

To share the beauty of His art in sky and sea and sod

To sift life’s gift with poetry, then share its happiness

To leave behind a legacy of mindful thankfulness

© Janet Martin

A Poem Needs Nothing

 Not all poems need paper...

 

Dance shoes need feet to find the ballroom

Peonies need ants to be tickled to bloom

The rain needs a cloud and the sun needs the sky

Love needs God first, and then you and I

Hope needs an anchor, a needle needs thread

A bike needs a rider like a hat needs a head

A book needs a reader before it can speak

We need each other like a kiss needs a cheek

A poem needs nothing but courage to drink

Where laughter and tears spill in heart and soul ink

© Janet Martin

A Word to Poets (and People In General... )

Whoosh! and another week/month bites the dust!

Farewell April Showers and blizzards!

On a bright note, farm-dust is starting to fly in some areas!

Oh, isn't that wonderful?!!

Even if it smells like manure?!😅

Wishing one and all a weekend full of wonder!

Psalm 69:30
I will praise God's name in song and exalt Him with thanksgiving.

Sometimes what means the most in love and life’s strife and lament

Are simple things; a smile, a word of kind encouragement

A grumble never uttered, and an insult never said

Instead of discontent, a compliment, a prayer-bowed head

Sometimes what we need most where heartache’s bitter brunt must be

Where troubles test and dreams are vexed with stiff reality

Are not poetic platitudes or eloquent cliches

But just a hug to tug at heart-strings full of knots and frays

Sometimes what matters most to give is not nickel-and-dime

But the often apology-defended gift of time

Where what we need is not the creed of some best-seller book

But rather the less stressful counsel of a babbling brook

What waits to be will wait to be; enough with now and here

Where moments fall like stars or like the sparkle of a tear

Where you and I in love and life’s commitments of lament

Should strive to give what we all need; time and encouragement

Sometimes workaday weariness can wear our wonder thin

And holes into the soles of shoes somewhere beneath our skin

Sometimes life’s need and noise pleads us to fold want’s weathered wings

And count life’s wealth of simple joys until we feel like kings

Sometimes poetry snared in script is not equipped with ears 

Sometimes a rhyme takes too much time and ink and paper gears 

Sometimes what means the most is not something that prose defines  

But someone who is close enough to read between the lines

💔💞

© Janet Martin

Psalm 34:3

Glorify the LORD with me; let us exalt his name together.

Poem-Power

 Todays poem-a-day challenge is to write a power poem...

I would be remiss to ignore this; Poem Power💖

I bemoaned the fact the other day that I have more poem books

full of breath-taking poetry than I have life left to read them all,

(unless that was all I did) 

which would leave too many other beautiful loves unattended to💗💖💕

I'm reveling in Edith Holden's beautiful books these days...

A true treasure chest of art, prose and poetry!

Poem-power

It plants a pretty garden where a blank page used to be

A bit of unkempt ink can tango with a memory

And turn what would be nothing but a thought into an ache

That turns into a poem that turns into a keepsake

Its seeps through creases where other ink pieces do not fit

It turns a body inside out yet doesn’t show a bit

It sparkles like a diamond on the backdrop of a sigh

A patchwork quilt of afternoons that dangle from the sky

A poem moans like breakers on the shoreline of the heart

It gathers scattered shells and melds them into works of art

A wisp of you and I entwined through twist and tug of rhyme

Becomes a token that withstands unspoken tests of time

The power of a poem wields a wild and wondrous force

Of cheek to cheek slow-dancing, of love’s touchless intercourse

Where centuries and worlds apart still kindred spirits meet

To trace the fault-lines of a heart with kisses bittersweet

It sweeps soft as a feather across paper ballroom floors

A tender ink-stained tether woven by lost troubadours

Who set the stage for we who race to chase through far-flung gates

A lure tossed into pure unsullied deeps of what yet waits

A poem-memento is unlike any other prize

It scales the heights of passion for the freefall of goodbyes

It flirts with hurt if but to taste the salty sting of years

In wounds beneath the skin that Poem washes with its tears

© Janet Martin

a few more poem treasure-trunks