Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Reminder To Me or Tangled Work of Art or Strings Attached


PAD Challenge 21: Here is Robert Lee Brewer's Prompt for Today

For today's prompt, take the phrase "(blank) Me," 
replace the blank with a word or phrase, 
make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem.
 

How pure the banter of the breeze
That skims the rippled brook...


How precious, child's boots caked with mud...



How beautiful is joy, how bright
Its happiness, unmatched
But remember, the sheer delight
Of joy has strings attached

How pure the banter of the breeze
That skims the rippled brook
And plucks joy’s strings in melodies
Not written in a book

How lovely is the laughing child
How darling and how dear
How sweet the street where dreams run wild
Before Doors interfere

How precious, child's boots caked with mud
After heads bow with grief
Beside a grave, where Mortal Bud
Is restored to Time's Chief 

For strings of joy both bind and rend
Oh, how they tug and throb
As sorrow sears the tender end
And keens the soul to God

How frayed, joy’s strings, through letting go
How stained with salty tears
How stretched by high five and low blow
How seasoned with the years

How priceless then, joy’s sacred strings
(Though tangled works of art)
For from the loom of sorrow wings
A humbly, thankful heart

© Janet Martin

You Will Forget Me (when I'm gone)



PAD Challenge21: Here is Robert Lee Brewer's Prompt for Today

For today's prompt, take the phrase "(blank) Me," 
replace the blank with a word or phrase, 
make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then, write your poem. 
Possible titles include: "Tell Me," "Forgive Me," and/or "You've Got to Believe Me." 
Of course, feel free to bend the rules 
and have a title like "Home Sweet Ho(me)" or "Pick a The(me)."

Okay, so I acknowledge,
my homespun scribblings will never grace the Literary World's Center Stage,
but it's still important to remember,
'that fields of ink may live from age to age'

These volumes below are living proof !

 





These few pages above are just a glimpse of 
this volume packed with ancient masterpieces,
as powerful/relevant today as the day they were penned!

My name will fade from thoughts and lips when I am dead and gone
The echo-world of 'us' will slip as Time’s Corp marches on
The bulk of my possessions and the things that I held dear
Will pass through hands; for we are all just brief sojourners here
All bound to be forgot, as generations disappear

Thus, here’s to poetry; its sea of passion undeterred
For though the poet may be gone, long lives the written word

The hand that held the pen, long after it returns to dust
May cheer some future fellowman, may buoy failing trust
May remind him or her though we are centuries apart
Time never really could deter the matters of the heart
Where love is our utter need and longing is its dart

Then write, dear poet, write; but bear in mind the grit of ink
Though we are gone a poem might live longer than we think

My name will fade like morning mist beneath the glaring sun
Soon all the faces that I kissed will to death’s tryst succumb
Who knows who waits to turn the leaves of Poet’s printed jot
What thread of influence will weave through some far future thought
Or who will glean the remnant sheaves of harvests, long forgot

Therefore, dear poet, as we plant the pastures of the page
Let’s not forget that fields of ink may live from age to age

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Unfailing Love

 PAD Challenge day 20;

For this Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a love poem and/or...
Write an anti-love poem.


(I share this song repeatedly because I love it)

Love in blood-veiled glory, bowed
Did not fall or fail
Gave His life, though, loud the crowd
Mocked and scorned Hope’s Grail

Love in utter Mercy groaned
It is finished, then
With his dying breath atoned
Fallen sons of men

Love in glorious triumph rose
Scorned death's lowly tomb
For no burial could enclose
Resurrection’s Bloom

Love in kind compassion waits
To rend Yonder Veil
Too many outside the gates
Where love did not fail

© Janet Martin

2 Peter 3:9

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness.
 Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, 
but everyone to come to repentance.

Love Is A Tangle of Bed-sheets...

 PAD Challenge day 20;

For this Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a love poem and/or...
Write an anti-love poem.

💕

Love is a tangle of bed-sheets
To launder
Love is a naked undoing
Of hearts
Love is the bliss of a kiss
That might wander
Love is exploring its
Less private parts
Like ears to listen when the story
Gets longer
Like eyes to glisten with kind
Sympathy
Like arms to let go with and thereby
Grow stronger
Like feet to walk miles that nobody
Will see
Love is the truth that is proven
With action
Love tells the proof without saying
A thing
Love is not pretty when stripped of
Distraction
Love is a servant, not enthroned like
A king
Love is life’s very imperfect
Perfection
Love is the stuff heroes are
Made of
Love never leads us in the wrong
Direction
No wonder the greatest of these
Is love

Oh, pity the poor, poor creature 
of dust
Who never learns the difference between love 
and lust

© Janet Martin

Ink-Casanova



For this Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a love poem and/or...
Write an anti-love poem.

An intangible tempest
How innocent your stance
While teasing me with glimpses
Where unpenned poems dance

Your brooding predilection
Makes me the perfect prey
Your eyes full of suggestion
My sighs full of ‘you may’

My, but you are a heart-throb
Of possibility
How silver-blue your lures bob
On streams of dream-and-see

Darling, you turn a woman
To Hunger’s Masterpiece
You rouse in Her a poem
That begs for sweet release

No, I have never seen you
But every now and then
The page is our ballroom
Dear lover in my pen

© Janet Martin

Keeping the Courage...

 Jesus, Strong and Kind



Dear Jesus, fill our hearts with You
Not fear for fates as yet, unfurled
Your precious promises are true
Greater are You than all the world

Oh Lord, fix faith and hope and love
In Who we know but cannot see
Help us to raise our eyes above
Decay’s glove of mortality...

...to You, eternal, kind and true
Dear Jesus, fill our hearts with You
Amen

© Janet Martin

Love Is A Shawl with Holes




For this Two-for-Tuesday prompt:
Write a love poem and/or...
Write an anti-love poem.


Love is far more 
than daisy-lore
of love me-love-me-not
It runs us through 
with bronze and blue
that weathered years allot 
Love is the stuff
of fist-a-cuff
and kiss me sweet and slow
The grit and grin
through thick and thin
of hold and letting go
A tango, dear
of smile and tear
A ballad, dissonant
It's tea-and-toast'
Making the most
of each precious moment
It is a hug
a push-and-tug
together, not apart
A sacred pact
twixt faith and fact
not for the faint of heart
It's what-a-mess
and happiness
mysteriously entwined
It is a vow
of curtsy-bow
with Other first in mind
A breath of spring,
The weathering
of winter's wildest storm
But best of all
Love is a shawl
with holes, yet keeps us warm

Janet Martin

What If Only Sunny Weather...


Whether its gray skylines or headlines
remember, the sun/Son is always near



Up and up the sun is climbing
Though the dawn is dark and gray
The Creator’s perfect Timing
Will drive brooding clouds away

What we see is but a little
We cannot behold the sum
While we are still in the middle
Of what is yet to become

So, when morning skies are bleary
And horizons bleak and gray
Keep the faith, when day is dreary
The sun is not far away

Imagine if on that morning
When we meet HIM face to face
We had never known the yearning
For a better time and place

Take a moment to consider
When we reach life’s solemn end
What if Jesus is a stranger
Not a Comforter and Friend

What if only sunny weather
Blinded faith's eyes to the Day
When time's ever-thinning tether
Breaks its ties and falls away

Up and up we all are climbing
Though for now clouds may prevail
Faith trusts in the perfect timing
Of a Son that does not fail

© Janet Martin



2 Peter 1:3


His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life
through our knowledge of him
who called us by his own glory and goodness....

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith virtue;
and to virtue, knowledge;

and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control,
perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness;

For if you possess these qualities and continue to grow in them,
they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive
in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, brothers, strive to make your calling and election sure.
For if you practice these things you will never stumble,

We live in an age of greatest educated ignorance ever,
as Higher Education Institutions disregard God...
Here Paul is urging believers to increase
their Higher Education in
the only knowledge that can make us wise;
the knowledge of Lord Jesus Christ...


If indeed they have escaped the corruption of the world
through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
only to be entangled and overcome by it again,
their final condition is worse than it was at first.


But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity.
Amen.