Tag Archives: Poetry

How to Say Babylon A Memoir Safiya Sinclair
Weekend Write-Off, Writing

A Word That Leapt Aflame in My Mind

“I sounded the lines out aloud, feeling the rhymes growing delicious on my tongue.  Later I went to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica and looked up William Blake. I couldn’t believe it.  He died nearly 170 years before me, but his words grew a thriving forest in my head. A thought, I understood it then, and its incendiary mind, could outlive itself. A well-made word could outspan carbon, and bone, and halved uranium.  Until now, I imagined the world divided in two halves: the world of the spiritual, of my parents: Jah and levity, vibrations, energies, and chakras.  And then, there was a world of things I could measure and understand, visible and knowable.  Now, I felt there was another world just out of reach.  A gossamer wing flashed against the bedroom window.  I took out my journal and wrote my first lines of poetry in vines of cursive.  Wings in the sunlight, wings against my dress.  I pulled wing after luminous wing from my mouth. Watching them flutter alive with each word, my hands a vibrant garden. The poem was called ‘The Butterfly,’ the first to pull itself from the soft veil between all worlds, a seam to slip through to any place, any time. I knew then that as long as I had a word that leapt aflame in my mind, I would always be living in an age of wonder.”
from How to Say Babylon: A Memoir by Safiya Sinclair

Standard
Hand writing on a notebook
Writing

Am Writing

When one is task oriented and working to deadlines,
the work becomes scripted and static.

Sure there are moments that shine,

but they're in the initial spark of the idea
or reserved for the intro or concluding paragraph.

Never in the middle, in the meat of the piece.

When one is free to write for writing sake, 
the work becomes invisible
         or even ceases to exist.

When creativity has no bounds

it often flies away.
Standard
humpback whale moss on branch
Living, Uncategorized

Beautiful and Terrifying

Outside

moss consumes everything.

Entire branches swallowed down and in.

To extract takes an unearthing you didn’t even know was needed

until the last.bite.left crunched underfoot.

At night

whales swam overhead, a beautiful and terrifying snow globe effect

as tidal waves stacked up on the periphery,

walls of water threatening your wooden stance.

There is beauty and potentiality

in design

intention

in terror.

You just have to keep the forces of nature at bay.

Standard
Image by Csillagvirág from Pixabay
Living, Survival, Technology

Deluged

In nature
I wonder how many streams
is too many streams

Excepting flood stage
what is the maximum
confluence
of streams

Because 
we humans
are not smarter
than nature

and yet

we try to support
multiple inputs,
audio video sensual,
all at once

It is no wonder 
our consciousness 
shuts down
zones out
is washed away
Standard
Photo by Sonny Sixteen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/dry-broken-branch-on-the-ground-11522978/
Poetry, Survival

Inertia

Low pressure

in the atmosphere and in an indeterminate one of four tires

13 miles till empty

Critically low levels of battery life

The evidence amasses in the case against energy

A body at rest tends to stay at rest

in these days of the tail end of winter,

the cold strung out to a sparse thread of frost,

the wind a constant movement that won’t blow it away

Weak sun filters through a constant cast

Broken branches brittle and gray

join at intersecting angles

skeletal shapes the only thing of interest on the ground

And yet no where near alive

Standard
Photo by Paul Bulai on Unsplash
Mental Illness, Survival

What no one ever tells you

about your worst bout with whatever mental illness you’ve had

is you’ll put yourself back there

every. other. time. you struggle

forever.

Every time

you get oh so tired

or life’s bitter edge rubs sharp against you

or you just can’t crawl deep enough into the corner of the couch –

You will think,

here it comes again

it’s back

I’m falling down the rabbit hole once more.

And then, a flicker at the edge of your consciousness.

It’s midafternoon; you haven’t taken your meds

The sun hasn’t shone in days

A deep mood does not mean a depressive down swing.

But the feeling is so unsettlingly familiar

it sets off alarm bells

of a flame that once fueled an inferno

Standard
Living, Poetry, Weekend Write-Off

Ode-o-meter

Measure distance covered in the length of a song

Imagine geographic area given the musicians to roam

Number songs down before destination done

Hit corner by time clock hits the next minute

Shave time off ETA

Not late until start time elapses

Envision window into where you are

Just how close, closer,

            every inch, every minute, every mile

Pray for a well-played EP

Standard
Perspective, Poetry

The Word

Clerestory

comes to mind

from the white light

spilling down

onto my bed.

A canonical,

conical

shaft from above.

From its singular point of origin,

w i d e n i n g

to envelope me in its illumination.

Just sit

and

Be still.

Breathe in the light.

Standard