A Poem & A Picture

A Poem & A Picture (Being)

/ Janna Hill / Leave a comment

 

 

Being

by Ale Pena

Running in the Rain (1024x735)

Memory

is the feeling of cool, April rain

dancing in your hair; seemingly weightless.

Doubt

is the way shadows creep slowly in your eyes

when I ask you about belief.

Your retinas slowly expand,

slowly bloom like the firecrackers we watched explode

in a different season.

“Do you believe in God?” I asked.

You shake your head and

the droplets in your hair somehow fall, slip, break in light;

1000 rays of colors

being reflected,

condensed,

forgotten,

as you answered:

“Sometimes I think God is in everything.”

I touched your wrist then and

felt the tendons of life moving only by a miracle

that cannot be explained by Math and Science,

whose seemingly useless scratches on paper

cannot begin to comprehend

the feeling of

your heavy arm and your dense Being;

your pulse pumping through every crevice;

or how every vein in your body

forms a map of Existence.

The motion of your hand is a work of Art,

vibrant and alive; a Masterpiece,

Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

I then felt your spirit,

somehow thunderous,

somehow booming,

loud; pulsing through me.

Every nerve alive:

a Universe inside me; inside Us,

together: one.

Moving forward

is a heartfelt release shaking our very core.

You closed your eyes and exhaled.

In and out: the sound of your breathing body from the exhilaration of finding

truth and faith.

We sit in the God-rain and become free.

 

Ale Pena was 1st place winner of the 2014Teen Poetry Contest sponsored by inForney.com

A Poem & A Picture (Time Passes)

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Time Passes

Joy Ladin

Riddled

 

Time too is afraid of passing, is riddled with holes

through which time feels itself leaking.

Time sweats in the middle of the night

when all the other dimensions are sleeping.

Time has lost every picture of itself as a child.

Now time is old, leathery and slow.

Can’t sneak up on anyone anymore,

Can’t hide in the grass, can’t run, can’t catch.

Can’t figure out how not to trample

what it means to bless.

A Poem & A Picture (Thirst)

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Thirst

Laura Cronk

Petals and Teeth (1024x683)

Unclouded third eye and lush

red wings.  I’m pouring water

from cup to cup.

 

This is the water we are meant

to drink with the other animals.

There are daffodils by the water,

 

a road leading from the water

to the shining crown of the sun.

My white hospital gown—

 

off-the-rack and totally sane.

My foot unsteady, though,

heel held aloft, missing its stiletto.

 

Nine months sober emblazoned

on my flat chest in red

below girlish curls and mannish chin.

 

You can’t see my eyes.

You’ve never seen them.

 

A Poem & A Picture (Skeletal Beliefs)

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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 (Hungry Eyes)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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.