Saturday, June 2, 2012

Insatiable Appetite




Words feed the poem in me
For a little while
I am satisfied
But then,
As one starving
I attack them
With renewed hunger
For a poem
Is never
Completely
Filled

© Janet Martin

Friday, June 1, 2012

Invisible Alignment




When dim-lit eve turns up the dark
And rain, like tiny elfin-feet
Trips lightly on the onyx pane
That by noon’s light, frames bustling streets
…when this small day undaunted slips
Into a vault I cannot see
And Time exhales from ageless lips
Another little day for me
I pause, both grateful and afraid
For while Time gives it also steals
One hand conceals a two-edged blade
While with the other hand it heals
And I, with one hand holding fast
Allow the other to let go
As dim-lit eve turns up the dark
I hold love close, yet miss it so…

J~

On Writing...




Writing is  
Bittersweet frustration
A journey
Without a destination

To write is like climbing
A long, slow grade
But its summit is obscured in a mist
Curiosity
Keeps us pressing on
To a view that may not even exist

It is child’s freckles
And dimpled grin
A punch in the gut
Or under the chin

It’s a stroll
On periwinkle eve of June
Its hand to the pen
In a world out of tune

It is the hideout
Of phantom Muse
The lord to which
Thought pays its dues


© Janet





To Everything There is a Time...



Summer is a season of many loves for me...posts may be fewer.

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven. Eccles. 3:1

What is June?




What is June?
June is a ribbon of coral and gold
Brushing the skyline while it is still night
June is maiden so youthful and bold
Flouncing her ringlets in girlish delight
She shakes out her skirts and rampantly spills
Wild-flower gardens over hollow and hill

What is June?
June is a door standing slightly ajar
To glimmer of turquoise and sea-polished shores
She is the threshold we seek from afar
As winter and spring trip across earthen floors
The cry of the gull and the trill of the lark
The song of the robin while it is still dark

What is June?
She is hands outstretched, sweetly running over
With peony, lupine, with daisy and rose
She is a soul-mate, a beautiful lover
Stirring our passion and holding us close
In vast, emerald tides her melody sweeps
Out to the eyes of azure-blue deeps

What is June?
She is a year’s darling; the middle child
The gleaming gem twixt spring and fall
Composer, as her Muse runs wild
Of summer’s haunting madrigal
Whilst from her radiant fingertips
A little glimpse of Heaven slips

© Janet Martin





Thursday, May 31, 2012

Thursday Thoughts~


There is a war
Intense, hid from sight
It is the battle
Twixt wrong and right
Fear the day
Should its conflict cease
As numbed discernment
Brings an illusion of peace



There is a tug-of-war
In love’s two-toned beauty
The urge of desire
And dictation of duty


A long line of laundry
Is a testament
To a long line of love


No man can serve two masters
The servant makes his choice
No words are needed because action
Carries a definite voice



Dream, but only a little
It polishes the mundane
The line is fine twixt little and much
And to dream too much is vain

Dream, but only a little
Don’t let it mess with your head
Lest you stand and stare into the thin air
While someone else butters your bread


Hurry, hurry; don’t be late
Hell
And heaven
Do not wait


Spare change
Changes lives


On some days we…
…Live, laugh, love and play
On others we
…Weep, wish, work, pray


This must be my Muse’s queue
A list with many jobs to do


Never yet has darkness set in
Permanently

He who hath no shadows
Hath no light



Janet~

Why I Write...



I never can explain it quite
This need, it seems I have, to write…
But paper is a patient ear
No words are writ, it will not hear
It never assumes what is not
But simply listens to my thought
Here life's pleasures and sorrows spill
In whispers from a poet’s quill

I write to preserve moments past
Knowing ink’s measure will outlast
This transient, ephemeral shell
I write, for there is much to tell
But time is short and listeners rare
And spoken word is soon dead air
Thus I must write; a diary
Of thought engraved in poetry

I write because I love to read
To feel the passion mortal’s bleed
To thrill beneath their ageless thought
The mark of quill on parchment wrought
Of Tennyson, Longfellow, Frost
And countless throngs of voices lost
Had they not taken time to bare
With ink, the thoughts they longed to share

Tis no small thing to hold a pen
And spill heart-linings out to men
Of hope, of longing; these we summon
For mankind has this much in common
And with the written word we trace
The heartbeat of the human race
Manifested on a stage
In filament of ink and page

 
Tis no small thing; reaching to God
Seeking Him within my thought
Tis no small thing to contemplate
What to write; what to erase
…to paint in whispered ethereal art
Upon canvases of the heart
An earnest, resolute vocation
Generation to generation

…and so I write, not to become
A famous author, world-renowned
I write to touch the low-flung cloud
Or lonely souls lost in life’s crowd
I write; for it seems I cannot
Quell the vast ocean in my thought
And I am glad, so glad indeed
That others write, so I can read

© Janet Martin

My Homework for Writer's Unite is done!
Assignment: 200-300 words on Why I Write

Word Count;300 (phew!)

What are you doing? hubby asked a few nights ago when he called
I'm reading Treasure Valley, I replied. It was written in 1908 by Canadian author, Marian Keith.
Thank-you Marian,(although you were gone before I was born) for writing and sharing your beautiful, timeless perspective.

The Mind of a Poem




They tell me how I should write them
The rules to rhythm and rhyme
But they fall from my quill
By their own free will
Regardless of meter and time

They tell me how I should form them
Can I shape a river’s fray?
For a poet’s need
Is to sit down and bleed
Let the drops fall where they may

They tell me how I should mold them
But rules never could sway a poem
In the still of the night
As I sit here and write
Words have a mind of their own

© Janet Martin