Paradox

We spend trillions

Deploying aircraft,

armies and artillery

Into a country

Goal-blast city to rubble heap

Death is an unfortunate

Cost of doing business

We look to the sky

Begging, weeping, asking why

God would allow earth-quakes,

Fires, hurricanes, floods

And all manner of devastation

As the death toll rises

And we deploy mercy missions

Janet Martin

inspired by a line in -Thoughts from the Woods by Robert F. Harrington

Beauty is Happiness

http://poetryblogroll.blogspot.com/2011/09/midnight-snack-004.html

Today I do not ask for the world

With a wishlist of selfish demands

I desire only life’s bare necessities

Your eyes, your lips, your hands

Life has many a beauty to boast

Some of them glorious and grand

But I’ve found nothing that moves me more

Than your eyes, your lips and your hands

A scalpel and blade, a suture, a tuck

Are not tools of beauty, my friend

If you seek it there then I wish you good luck

On a quest that will never end

Beauty is born of selfless love

It cannot be bought on demand

I’ve been beautiful beneath the touch

Of your eyes, your lips and your hands

Janet Martin

I realize as I penned the words ‘selfless love’

That is an oxymoron…

If it is directed to satisfy one’s selfishness it is not love:

On a Silent Dance-floor

The moon has climbed her lofty trail
above the timberline
It drapes its silver-tinted veil
across the darkened pine

The midnight wraps its sullen fist
around the hour of mirth
which slumbers now beneath the mist
Enshrouding climes of earth

The wind composes melodies
Soft, slow and sorrowful
Its lyric rouses memories
That time cannot annul

The river slides out to the skies
Its sultriness is gone
I wrap my arms around your sighs
I will not dance alone

Janet Martin

Barriers

There is a box
or is it a wall?
It has no locks
No form at all

We share things
a touch, a glance
sometimes we laugh
sometimes we dance

Behind our eyes
the truth implores
A vault of cries
without doors

There is a box
Or is it a lair
That guards those things
We never share?

J~.

You are not a Tree

Trees

shed their leaves

in tears of burnished amber- rust.

Summer is done.

Autumn grieves

then it fades

into the purple twilight dust.

You

are not a season

Or a tree, nor am I.

Thought cannot be taught

to drift

without reason

like a leaf beneath the sky

You

it seems,

are enmeshed in the fabric of my skin.

In my dreams

and thought you reside,

I breathe out

I breathe in

You

do not evaporate

as I exhale, slow and low

I will never

Need to wonder

Where you are

Or where you go

Someday

perhaps I’ll find

a surgeon skilled with the art

of severing you

from me

like a limb from a tree,

…without removing my heart

J~

Scattered Leaves?

…and there they lie beneath the tree

Parched echoes of what used to be

Sonnets of laughter and regret

Bleeding from summer’s silhouette

And life’s fair hour in the sun

Before minuscule dreams are done

As we reach for life’s deeper Truth

Unacknowledged in our youth

But now we see mortality

Like a small leaf upon a tree

Where soon its passion decks the sod

Like crumbled thrones of lesser gods

That cannot succor our great need

With filthy lucre of our greed

For all the greatness man achieves

Is nothing more than withered leaves

If we should fail to recognize

The Power cradling sea and skies

What is a man but shards of dust?

Driven by our foolish lust

Where nothing on this temporal earth

Holds credence of eternal worth

But we are loved and owned by He

Who forms each leaf upon the tree

And in each man a living soul

That nature’s law does not control

For then we would be nothing more

Than scattered leaves upon earth’s shore

Janet Martin

Poet's Quill

What power in these lines be

Which we call poetry

Moving through us like a silent sea

In waves of ecstasy

Or half-breaths of sweet sorrow thrill

The heart when night is still

As grief and passions spill

From a poet’s quill

J~

The Bum (a story, also a re-post)

He glared with disdain at the old tin can

held up with hope by a dirty old man

whose eyes were too shiny, his nose was too red,

telling a tale with words unsaid,

and the young man turned with a disgusted frown

staring the old man up and down,

Then he said, “I have better things to do

than to hand out my money to a bum like you.

There’s work out there, why don’t you get some

instead of sitting here like a dirty old bum?

I’ve worked hard for the money I have

and I’ve earned my right to the way I live

so I’m not about to throw my money away

to a guy who sits on the street all day.

You’ve made your choices, I’ve made mine

and I’m not gonna pay for your whiskey or wine.”

He spun on his heel, about to leave.

No drunk was going to ruin his Christmas Eve.

His sweetheart was waiting and man, was she sweet!

So why was he talking to this bum on the street?

In another few hours he’d be whisked away

‘neath a blanket of stars, by a horse and sleigh,

snuggled beneath shawls, a hot drink in hand

with sleigh-bells a-jingling. Oh, isn’t love grand?

He turned and began to walk away

but paused as he heard the old man say,

“I was a young pup once like you

and I guess I know why you feel like you do

but until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes

I beg to differ about ‘your right to choose’.

Sometimes you gotta take what you rather would not,

and you’d do anything to trade the hand ya’ got”

The old man’s voice grew a little hoarse

as he ran his fingers through hair long and coarse.

“Yes, I remember it all real well

I had dreams, held the world by the tail.

I loved a sweet lady and she loved me

an’ we were as happy as anyone could be.

Oh, the happiest day of my entire life

was the day that sweet lady became my wife,

and the second best days I ever had

were the three great times I became a dad.

With each new little baby’s birth

we added a corner to our ‘heaven on earth’.

Our days were numbered, but we didn’t know.

We were as happy as anyone here below

until one day an old drunk ended my life

when he killed my three babies and my wife.

So, before you talk choices like winnin’ and losin’,

That we become what we are by our own choosin’,

I’d like to ask you, have you lived alone

after your ‘heaven on earth’ was gone?

Have you sat in the darkness, your 'now ever-after'

listening to the silence echo your baby’s laughter,

and still hear the voices of your precious darlings

or close your eyes to still see them smiling?

Have you heard your wife’s voice calling you

to waken alone and cry all night through?

Then, in a desperate effort to make your thoughts end

have wine or whiskey become your best friend?

Have you gone to work where they locked the door

saying, ‘you don’t work here any more’?

You may call me a bum but before you do

would you like to walk a mile in my shoes?”

The young man was speechless, what more could he say

to this man who suffered more loss in one day

than most people suffer their whole life through?

Words seemed empty from this point of view.

This was no bum, but a lonely old soul

Who, under life’s sorrow simply lost control.

His teardrops fell as he stared at his feet

then he sat down beside the old man on the street.

“Forgive me” he wept to the dirty old man,

“Oh, please forgive me if you can.

For I am the bum, the most ignorant of fools.

What do I know about any of life’s rules?

I’d fill up your can twenty times if I could

but I really don’t think it would do any good.

Far better than money, for you I believe

would be somewhere to come home to this Christmas Eve”

So, there in the cold ‘neath the streetlamps glow

sat the young man with the old in the falling snow,

as the angels looked down from heaven above

Smiling at the pair in tender love

-a young man who would never, ever choose

To walk a mile in the old man’s shoes

Slowly they both arose to their feet

and arm in arm, they walked up the street

(last verse optional)

So before we call anyone a drunk or a bum,

Perhaps we should ask them from where they have come

instead of judging, lend them an ear

and we might be appalled at the stories we hear.

God, give mercy to the poor on the street.

Their stories are the tears that the angels weep.

Shine your love on them and show them the reason

we all may have hope this Christmas Season.

All Rights Reserved

Janet Martin

This poem was inspired by a tragic story on the news...
and spawned the poem below.

I've often wondered what became of that man, a jeweler whose wife and kids were killed by a drunk driver.

More Than Impressions

http://sundaywhirl.wordpress.com/

Occasionally, in this temple beneath strolling cloud

Away from the jostle and shove of the crowd

I worship, as night recedes in slow-motion.

It is no accident, this moment in time

Though darkness may clutch this temporal clime

Light can move through shadow, a soundless ocean

Dispelling the gloom beneath the sky

As the bustle and chat of passers-by

Consumes this tranquil breath upon the sod

I look up; the sacred silence is beginning to wane

Outside these walls, day must begin again…

To toil, to shop or play on this quest to death and God

Janet Martin

Thank-you Viv, for this delicious combination of words.

There are so many directions in which they could lead!

Ode to a Rainy Eve

The cold rain hastes the ending of a day
The dark pine moans within its weeping knell
The landscape dims in folds of cobalt-gray
Beneath the tolling of the evening bell

The absence of the lusty cricket choir
Magnifies the musky sense of gloom
Hovering o’er the garden’s silent bower
Heavy with the parting of its bloom

Now fades the sky-line in the gathering eve
And now the dark and daylight intertwine
Until the dark prevails; light slips beneath
The edge of dusk on the horizon line

The night lies dormant in this solitude
Save for the leaf clinging with muted breath
To sodden arm of birch or maple wood
Before it sleeps in cradles of the earth

The cold rain hastes the ending of the day
Profluent sonnet drifting o’er the lee
As remnant sighs of summer slip away
To grace the silent shores of memory


Janet Martin

This is another rain poem I posted recently...
The rain stirs my muse,
I love the rain:)