A Poem & A Picture (Skeletal Beliefs)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Hard to believe this young poet is barely eighteen years old.

Skeletal Beliefs

by Miranda Krase

SILHOUTTE (1024x642)

This skeletal figure dances in the dark shadows of the night.

Trapped. Waiting for her partner,

She dances in hopes of his return,

Content to be waiting forevermore.

…And waiting she shall remain.

 

A faithful wife to a dead life,

A future now no more.

I don’t have the heart,

To look upon her brokenness,

Her empty face, same as mine.

 

An ever flowing river,

Comes from our skeleton eyes.

If only I could tell her the truth,

It won’t save her…

But could it save me?

A Poem & A Picture (On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

On Meeting Robert Hayden in a Dream

by Abdul Ali

Winter Daybreak

here among them   the dead   the others   the aliens

I see you without    coke bottle glasses   a wavy comb over

your nose buried inside a notebook  over-

 

flowing with strange sightings   men and women

without a homeland   a library to shelve histories

dreams   the names of rare flowers  fruits  baby names

 

exiled from their villages   learning to say hello

with accents thick   with nostalgia   for their purple planets

here UFO sightings aren’t so spectacular

 

border crossing is quintessentially american  universal

crowds gather in squalid ghettoes where every country is a city

every city is a verse  & every verse echoes “Those Winter Sundays”

 

where a New World opens up where all the martians are welcome

at the writing table with their fountain pens & swollen digits & you

 

whispering

 

what took so long?

A Poem & A Picture (Hungry Eyes)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

I said I would try to focus on unknown poets this year, and I will, after this digression.

Merle Haggard passed away yesterday, he was known as “the poet of the common man” but we called him the poor man’s poet. It’s no secret that I grew up poor, and now the fact that I thought the name of this song was My Mama’s Hungry Eyes, is no longer a secret. These lyrics always made me think of my own mother. They make me think of her now, no longer with hungry eyes… her and daddy, no longer struggling.

Rest in Peace & Happy Birthday Merle.  Say Hi to Mama & Daddy for me.

Merle Ronald Haggard (April 06, 1937 – April 06, 2016)

Six or seven years ago
Hard times
Better times

Hungry Eyes by Merle Haggard

A canvas-covered cabin in a crowded labor camp

Stand out in this memory I revived

‘Cause my daddy raised a family there, with two hard-working hands

And tried to feed my mama’s hungry eyes

He dreamed of something better, and my mama’s faith was strong

And us kids were just too young to realize

That another class of people put us somewhere just below

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

Mama never had the luxuries she wanted

But it wasn’t ’cause my daddy didn’t try

She only wanted things she really needed

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

I remember daddy praying for a better way of life

But I don’t recall a change of any size

Just a little loss of courage, as their age began to show

And more sadness in my mama’s hungry eyes

Mama never had the luxuries she wanted

But it wasn’t ’cause my daddy didn’t try

She only wanted things she really needed

One more reason for my mama’s hungry eyes

Oh, I still recall my mama’s hungry eyes

 

A Poem & A Picture (The Fountain of Youth)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

The Fountain of Youth

Photo and poem by Janna Hill

Moonlight on Water

The fountain of youth is a murky pond

Fed by deep springs of optimism

Where no one dares to swim

Doubting toes splash at the shoreline

Mouths turned down like fingernail moons

A nervous frog leaps, we run

Still, the ripple marks the flesh

 

 

 

 

 

A Poem & A Picture (Colorado)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

Poem by Carl Adamshick

My dream lives close to my lungs.
Sometimes I feel it as a pen
spilling ink in the dark purse
of my breathing. My body
lives here in Colorado,
in an apartment with a few plants.
I am what the experts refer to
as history, a small totality
making its way to the future.
In the evening, I inherit death
as an idea, as a subject I’ll be tested on.
Mid-afternoons, I take long walks.
I live by myself as the state lives
by itself in borders it had nothing
to do with. I, too, have a river.
If you ask, I’ll tell you all about the light.

A Poem & A Picture (Meditation for the Silence of Morning)

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Riverbank

Poem by Adam Clay

I wake myself imagining the shape

of the day and where I will find

myself within it. Language is not often

in that shape,

but sentences survive somehow

through the islands of dark matter,

the negative space often more important

than the positive.

Imagine finding you look at the world

completely different upon waking one day.

You do not know if this is permanent.

Anything can change, after all,

for how else would you find yourself

in this predicament or this opportunity

depending on the frame? A single thought

can make loneliness seem frighteningly new

We destroy the paths of rivers to make room for the sea.

A Poem & A Picture (Your Birdhouse)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

And we’re off…

Did you hear the gun? It is officially National Poetry Month.

This pretty ditty is by a woman known only as Ariella, I suppose. No last name or links were provided. 😦

Enjoy your weekend off and keep the suggestions coming.

 

Sparrows Invade (1024x641)

I Used to Be Your Birdhouse

Poem by Ariella

I  used to be your birdhouse.
I could coax you out from your seat in the treetops
from behind the camouflaging greens
and watch you edge out shyly with the wind ruffling your blush feathers.
You’d cling to me when the spring showers started falling
and I could keep you safe and dry, I could always do that.
I’d be there to hear your youthful songs, and I’d whisper back in a language just we knew
and then I’d hug you goodbye and watch you step precariously from my perch,
flapping in the wind, unsure, unaccustomed.
and  I’d be there for you the next day and the next
because I thought you’d still need me.
I never thought I’d see you, the point of a flying V
soaring with your head held high,
not even glancing down at
my tired wooden walls
and faded empty perch.