Happy Moonday! Its just past the full wolf or purge moon, which this year happens to be one of the biggest and brightest of the year.
This marks week 5 of the Moonday Experiment, designed to help me, and whoever else wants to play, to take a little time out on Mondays to celebrate the moon by doing something creative and/or wild despite the dominant culture's referendum on Monday wildness.
Personal update on the experiment: Lots of exciting creativity seems to be seeping into my life from all sorts of places. This is making me happy. Something is shifting...
Today is also my very dear friend Eve's birthday and so my Moonday offering this week is a poem about Eve the first in honor of both of them.
From Applesauce for Eve by Marge Piercy
You are indeed the mother of invention,
the first scientist. Your name means
life: finite, dynamic, swimming against
the current of time, tasting, testing,
eating knowledge like any other nutrient.
We are all the children of your bright hunger.
We are all products of that first experiment,
for if death was the worm in that apple,
the seeds were freedom and the flowering of choice.
I would love it (actually, I'm squeezing my eyes shut, crossing my fingers tightly, and holding my breath) if you would share a poem, either one of your own or another one that you like, links to artwork, stories, songs, dances... any art--in the broadest sense of the word-- that you want to share or that inspires you. May your day and night be peppered with unbridled laughter, wise foolishness, and unexpected delights.
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5 comments:
My browser homepage http://www.continuummontage.com/ - I haven't taken any continuum classes yet, just love the colors, texture and vibrancy of the image. Inspires me to smile and remember to move each time I open a new browser.
Vision of You-
written by my younger brother when he was in high school, I memorized it and share it now and then, he likes that.
One fine day in the month of May
when the sun was out and the children at play
I came across a flower, budding anew,
in my mind this flower gave a vision of you.
So soft and so gentle in the afternoon breeze
catching a glance with the slightest of ease
So beautiful it was it captured my heart
just as you did from the very start.
This vision of spring and beauty, tenderness of a young man's heart, is hopeful to me tonight.
Tonight I went to a yoga class at my friend's studio, and loved letting the colors of her art work fall upon my eyes and massage visions of work and other responsibilities away from my mind and heart.
Now, while I'm at home I will also continue to imagine the luscious and vibrant greens that I visited so often this last week in California, I'm hoping it will bring the warmth to me! I might do a little painting too...your moonday experiment has helped me to be more mindful of this today> thank you.
Ann, thanks for sharing your brother's sweet poem of spring. It feels hopeful to me tonight, too.
It reminds me a bit of a poem by Joyce Kilmer that I memorized in grade school--
Four ducks on a pond,
A grass bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing.
What a little thing
to remember for years
to remember with tears.
A friend of mine's brother set it to music. Thinking of it now makes me feel hopeful for the renewal of spring tinged with the bitersweetness of remembering being that age, when spring felt so long.
Thanks for sharing that website Sandi. It reminds me to move too.
Hi Kate and everyone
I was inspired to take the 30 Day Poetry Challenge - i.e. to write a poem every day for a month. So far, 3 days, 3 poems. I thought it would be terrifying, and actually it's giving me more joy than anything has in ages.
I've promised I'd share some of the journey - so here are a few poems
Hereafter, maybe I'll post a poem "pick of the week" from the week previous every Monday
(sorry, posting as a comment messes up the formatting a bit - it breaks the lines in all the wrong places, but oh well)
First, a poem about why I hate poetry:
I read poems the way people eat chocolates
I poke the centers
Then close my eyes
And surrender
to the fragile sweetness
of the moment
I love words
The way they taste in the mouth
The ripples that they make in the air.
Sometimes the looks that pass between our eyes are poems.
And silence itself a poem
I know by heart.
Between the lines of every poem Silence shimmers.
I hate poems
Like fancy, shiny Christmas wrapping covering a big, empty box
I hate modern poems
Hymns to the Universe I couldn't distinguish from my shopping list
I hate poets:
little pencils trying to be gods.
But most of all, I hate words
They are traitors to what we feel.
Writing poems is so frustrating - I wonder why we keep doing it?
Why do poets keep hunting the Infinite
And failing
And trying again
Like a cat that finds herself soaked in a puddle of water
Trying to touch
with her her own two paws
The shining, transcendent mystery of the moon.
Day 1 poem
"Sufi Family Reunion"
(inspired by the Sufi poetry reading I went to with Kate)
We share a bowl of poems
Passing them out like cookies.
Yesterday we were strangers
But huddled in a circle
Warming the dark with our words
We became a makeshift family.
Look! You can see our resemblance
The same twinkle in every eye.
The whole gang is here
The Cop – his first poetry reading
recites red faced and gleeful
the words a marine wrote home to his father:
“I fight for the freedom of the people who hate me.”
The Grandfather growls his verse
in a thorny staccato
His voice like the sticky keys
of an old typewriter
Revealing only one painful
joyful
word at a time.
The Mother hides behind a cushion
And doesn't want to read.
But we coax her, and slowly
the cushion slides away from her halo of curls.
The Teenager reads the lyrics of his favorite metal song.
Who knew there was so much love behind the screaming?
The Fairy Child, with tiger lilies
woven into her hair
Recites a poem she made up herself:
In it a child asks the question:
“What happens to the snow when it melts?”
“It becomes water,” an old man replies
“No,” says the child.
“It becomes spring.”
“How old are you, dear?” asks a grown-up.
And the wise child squirms on the carpet
Her lilies falling into her eyes.
“Write the poem down,” cautions an adult, “catch it before it flies.”
The Fairy Child jumps and clasps her hands around the poem
Capturing it like a lightening bug
Before it disappears into the dark.
If Hafiz were alive today
I think he would come to our party.
I think he would slip in, silent as a cat
While someone was reading
And lay himself down in the middle of our circle
Love-drunk, with an oatmeal cookie in each hand
Winking at everyone.
Poem Day 2
"In Starbucks":
The homeless man takes dictation from God
on a paper napkin.
He leaves the napkin on the counter.
The waitress picks it up
and throws it away.
The line of people parts for him
For the wake of his stench
as he passes, muttering
Trying to catch our eyes.
But we will not look.
He makes our auras itch uncomfortably
And we stare into our cups of coffee
Pretending we're alone.
- Ruth Vincent
Ruth, these are all medicine poems. Thank you so much for sharing them. Please share as many as you like. More, more! I think Hafiz was there... just gorgeous.
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