Poet's Whether/Weather Dilemma

Isn’t it terrible?!

I just said to myself, ‘Rats, the sun is shining’!

Why did I think that?

Because when it’s raining as it was earlier

I can write without being torn between two worlds!

Torn between green grass beneath my bare feet

Or words falling from fingertips

Torn between tasting the sun, warm and sweet

Or whisper of words on my lips

Torn between wind-song that washes aloft

Teasing the tree’s hoisted sails

Or Want still, supple, unshapen and soft

That only a poem unveils

Torn between taking the face of a flow’r

Between my hands to admire

Or turning my mind from the march of an hour

Intent on the vent of desire

Torn between inhaling rain-freshened air

Pouring an ‘all you can drink’

Or sitting stock-still on the edge of my chair

Imbibed by the meter of ink

© Janet Martin

 

Then You Will Fly

PAD Challenge day 15; For today’s prompt, write a prediction poem.

 For the sake of what might be...try!

(that's what I tell myself when fear-demons jeer, sneer and leer) 

Fear will paralyze the Poem

Close your eyes and feel the Light

Let the Author of ink-oceans

Fit the Fledgling for the flight

Trust a leap of faith to paper

Bear the dare to share the art

Sometimes the pen is a saber

Carving courage from the heart

Steal the breath of death’s bystander

Seal this tender touch of time

With the tempo of tamed banter

Into mementos of rhyme

Beauty begs for recognition  

Brush the bruises from your sigh

Brave the height of inhibition

To know what it is to fly

© Janet Martin

Rhythm and Time

She feels the keys of ABC’s to find the notes that fit the mood

Sometimes the song lilts, light as air; Sometimes it broods, slow and subdued

Dissonant resonance reverberates and jars, its art

Vexes the Maestro that is often torn between the head and heart

Darling, the days are dimming faster than they did when we were young

And oh, it seems our chores and dreams dissolve like snow upon the tongue

As doggerel and dirge enmesh, and wow, how have we come so far

And oh my love, is that a tear or did the heavens lend a star

And tell me when we reach the part where the melody loses time

Let’s make a pact to keep intact the tender rhythm of the rhyme  

© Janet Martin

I’m listening to Victoria feel out the keys on the piano while learning a new song…

and it struck me how both musician and writer ‘feel’ the keys!

Sweet Madness

 It seems it's always been like this; when life's must-do Marching Orders goes into over-drive 

so does the pl-e-ease-poem-me machine😝

 I snagged the draft of this one yesterday morning on the shoulder of the road while running errands!

One might think it sweet and easy

To endure a Poet’s heart

But the world can drive Her crazy

With its showcase full of art

One might think it pure procedure

To bleed words that others read

Or to buckle beneath whispers

Begging for ink-jot to breathe

Time weaves footprints hard to follow

Silence can be such a flirt

Hunger, like a heart-shaped hollow

Needing more than fine dessert

Fields may seem bean-leaf a-flutter

She sees yellow butterflies

Brooks never stream with just water

Beware of the night wind's sighs

Far more poetry than paper

Far more touch-and taste than Time

Far-off stares don’t show the caper

Of a Thought tangled in rhyme

One might think it mere mechanics

To arrange plain ABC’s

These semantics by romantics

Simply verse-formalities

One might think it nothing special

To be half-a-poem clad

But a world of poem-petals

Can drive poets sweetly mad

© Janet Martin

Poetic Peregrination...

PAD Challenge day 25: For today’s prompt, pick an intriguing and/or seldom-used word, make it the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 

Be Careful what you pray for. 

It might just lead you on a poetic peregrination
 

( Re-sharing to new readers what I shared almost four years ago on Nov. 12, 2014)

 ...in case you wonder  'does she suffer from a case of poetic insanity?!'

here is my permission slip😉

I really felt a need to know if writing poetry was Time well spent 

and was it really what God  wanted of me or simply something I chose.

On my knees I begged God to please, please

 somehow, reveal His will/blessing regarding this!

 (full story here)

After praying and deciding to wait to write again until I sensed His 'yes'

 I picked up a book on my night-table, purchased the week before at a Thrift Store;

a compilation of poetry and prose by many authors.

I flipped through wondering where to start so I chose The Preface (not something I normally did)

This was the first line I read; it felt like God stood in the room holding the book open to this page!!!

 Here is the full page...(click on image to enlarge)

 ...so then and there I vowed to be faithful to The Call for as long as He provides 'ink for the quill'

There are evenings when I am CERTAIN the well is parched

but then He flings out a fresh misty-marmalade morning full of 

...poetry waiting to be written! 

By the grace of God for His Glory, (some days better than others)

 hopefully we all go with this in mind...

...As good stewards of the manifold grace of God, each of you should use  

whatever gift he has received to serve one another. 

 If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God.

 If anyone serves, he should serve with the strength God supplies, 

so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, 

to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever. 

Amen.…

1 Pet.4:10-11 

Permission thus, to all of us

To give the Best We Can

Not to glorify Self

But to serve God

and fellowman

Permission to enjoy the view

Be it in sun or shade

One thing we have in common

is this day

The Lord has made

Each high and low of 'yes' and 'no'

in Erst-while's entourage

Is but the grace whereby

you-I 

commit to His 'Because'

The Giver of our live-laugh-love

In due season will ask

If, with the gifts He granted,

Were we

Faithful to the task?  

Janet Martin~

The Poet's Blessing/Curse

 Sometimes when fear almost gets the best of me

When it comes to posting poetry

I look at books of 'hearts pieces' bared

And I thank the poets who wrote them, then shared

The poet by a whisper stirred

Endures the stormy swell

Roused by a constant flow of word

And pictures they could spell

The poet hears a melody

It takes her heart by storm

Where ink and authorship must plea

Its essence into form

The poet carves from quiet air

The image of a place

That transports us from here to there

And only thought can trace

© Janet Martin