Braved Ink

 By God's grace and for His glory!

 

So much great reading because of Braved Ink

Ah, who could bear the verbal noose
Cut loose by Someone Else’s scars
He grants Reason perfect excuse
...on His Hands we almost touch stars

Ah, could shoulder weight of ink
Or heed Intangible commands
But for a safeguard without chink
The Bastion of nail-scarred Hands

© Janet Martin

Of Uncaged Consonants...

 This was going to be fun four-liner rhyme about words 

(after seeing a prompt 'rhyme a reason you like to write' on FB)

but it turned into something like a hungry leopard freed from its cage

...chasing a herd of antelope😊

 Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words...

 ...little show-stealer didn't want just his sister in the picture so he made a MAD dash for it
when he saw the camera and pulled this funny face to top it all off😂

The word 'cherish' has become my mind-set for moments...

Words draw us in to worlds apart

A painter’s tray for ink-swirled art

They dash and drip and splash and pour

Into pictures not seen before

Where from the quill as from a brush

They spill, a panoramic rush

To thrill the gallery of thought

With scenes of what is or is not

They surge and seep and laugh and weep

And fill a thousand hills with sheep

Or startle us with the faint roar

Of what once was and is no more

…where all that is began with Word

Timeless abyss by language stirred

Creating in the darkness, Light

Composing that first day and night

…for all we think about and see

Began with God’s Words, ‘let there be’

Then still-life shore and surging tide

Stood gloriously side by side

The bud swaddled the naked tree

God awed earth with His poetry

The manifold folds of a flow’r

The ink-well dell, the mountain’s tow’r

…but alas, soon Perfection’s bliss

Was broken by the serpent’s hiss

As words of vile hatred gave voice

To mankind’s sacred law of choice

And thereby didst coldly deceive

With cunning words, Adam and Eve

Revealing with designing skill

How words work both for good and ill

Reminding us thus, words should be

Weighed well before we set them free

For who knows the full recompense

Of word’s infinite influence

Ah, what we write and what we say

…we all hold a grand painter’s tray

The colours that we choose to use

So varied in its hues and views

A stallion of cloven ink

Set free on fields of Feel and Think

To wreak havoc in human heart

To spill its ilk in sonant art

To cheer us on or crush us, oh

By a word-painted picture-show

For so much more is seen than heard

In the ripple-effect of Word

The lover of ink-woven things

Is never lonesome long; hope sings

In the courtyard of poetry

Knowing how much a word can be

If chosen carefully and then

Set free on yachts of acumen

A contagion of gross purport

Wafts in the wake of verbal sport

A smile, a kiss, a fist-a-cuff

Sometimes gentle and sometimes gruff

The matrix for a symphony

Melding bare fact with fantasy

…for we are creatures born to dream

And apt to get lost in a stream

Of stars felled while we stared a while

To where the air of words beguile

The one who seems drawn to the vaunt

Of what hides in unbridled font

Of ABC waiting to be

A storm upon an unformed sea

A diamond on the sand of time

A sparkle spilt in lilt and rhyme

Then snared to press upon a page

To preserve there from age to age

…for words always invite us in

To partake of love’s groan and grin

To touch the place where tears regale

The face when at last mere words fail

As we curl in the cozy nook

Between the covers of a book

And fantasize and empathize

In worlds cut down to whispered sighs

And make us feel, as feathers fall

We are not strangers after all

But, by the bond of word begin

To be like worldwide next of kin

© Janet Martin

 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, 

and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, 

for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.

Luke 6:45

Ah, Poem

Never know where you will take me

Never know where you will lead

Or what you will wake within me

Where syllables intercede

Never know what you will whisper

What reason your rites unfold

Whether you are miss or mister

Wild or bridled, young or old

Never know if you bring laughter

Or a melancholy dread

Sometimes before, sometimes after

Torn between my heart and head

Never know how you will greet me

Fist-a-cuff or tender kiss

when or where you wait to meet me

That’s the way a poem is

Will you be a landscape painter
Or a flower or a sigh/sky
Never know how you will answer
Is it hello or good-bye

© Janet Martin

We Are Who/What We Read...

 What/Who are you reading these days?

As I read this post by Dr. Alan K Snyder 

I was suddenly struck anew by how deeply we are influenced/affected by what we read!

 (or who we listen to, often reading/quoting what someone else wrote)

In Jesus' final prayer before He went to the cross He prayed,

 I have given them Your word and the world has hated them; 

for they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

I am not asking that You take them out of the world, 

but that You keep them from the evil one. 

 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

"Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth."

As You sent Me into the world, I have also sent them into the world.

For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth.

I am not asking on behalf of them alone,
but also on behalf of those who will believe in Me through their message,
that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You. 

May they also be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 

 John 17:14-21

No matter how many books we collect and read...

 ...if we miss God's book we've missed it all!

They say so much; these teeny twists of ink turned into jot

They arrange on a barren page the images of thought

To touch the reader of the written word with much to tell

And just as ‘we are what we eat’ thus, what we read as well

The Moral Law of right and wrong instills a hounding need

To find, for sake of peace of mind, The Truth; and so we read

But all the greatest authors with The Latest Modern Whim

Can never change The First and Final Word written by Him

Debates of truth and reason fill many a musty tome

The living soul creates a Whole/hole, nay, mammoth astrodome

For Truth is Absolute; and till doubt’s dispute is destroyed

Nothing, no matter what we read or write will fill its void

Ah, wishful thinking seeks colleagues, when nursed to dogged thirst

God’s Truth is not a pillow concerned about comfort first

His Word is undeterred; though wheedling nature of mere men

Will try to barter with His truth through think-twists from a pen

…for the imagination is a wondrous, wily Force

It fosters the creation of many a fine discourse

And if we are not well-versed in the Truth, then, me oh my

We might exchange it for a well-dressed stranger’s valid lie

Hail, to the theologians and scholars; how much you read

The college of the mind is such a large classroom to feed

Yet fathoms of ‘sound knowledge’ cannot rearrange the Truth

And facts are stubborn subjects in spite of progressive youth

If we dismiss The One who holds the keys of death and hell

We miss it all; for God’s Word is a never-ending well

Where, after we believe, then Truth will affirm theory

For nothing else we read exceeds Supreme Author-ity

‘Without faith it is impossible to please Holy God’

Without His Word ignorance feasts on many a feckless fraud

But through His Word the evidence of things we cannot see

Nurtures man’s mustard seed-sized faith to a deep-rooted tree

They say so much; these teeny twists of ink turned into jot

They quicken, with written homage, the aptitude of thought

To fill the theater of Think, with much, so much to tell

And just as ‘we are what we eat’ thus, what we read as well

© Janet Martin

 Matthew 12:3 He answered, “Haven’t you read...?

But Ah, Ink

Sometimes after a particularly draining day

 I need a good poem-purge before I tackle the tail-end of tasks 😊

You walk through rooms that talk cannot quite enter, but ah, ink

Can drown out frowning skeptics and the fear that of what They think

You put your arm around my sigh and draw me to that place

Where chaos and commitment and clemency interlace

You do not bid me hurry for the clock is running out

But like a patient teacher you encourage when I doubt

You listen while I pour out fondest joy and deepest woe

And never tell me halfway through, ‘excuse me, I must go’

You probe beneath the surface, go where none have gone before

And urge the poet onward till the surge rushes the shore

You bid her brave the waters that her voice would never dare

Until your ink-splurge fathers something akin to a prayer

© Janet Martin