Kitchen Table Poetry

:: home :: {jennifer}

I've been feeling quite homesick since I've moved to Madison -- a friend forwarded this quote to me today and I thought it was definitely the universe trying to tell me something.  

It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, 

so that when I've gone and come back, 

I'll find it at home.   

~ Rumi

 

A Poem Written by my Dear Friend Charlie published in The Poet's Domain {KR }

Cry

I have never forgotten what you arms feel like

I think this would be easier if I could

Imagine never being a part of love

A part of your circle or inner passion and desire

But with the distance comes a greater yearning

A fire with a flame that refuses to be quieted

In my solitude I reflect on every moment

I am at the core of your beating

I am at the center of your screaming

I dance within the rhythm of love

In the distance I sing

A lone she-wolf cry

A woman's mournful call for her mate to

come home

And I stay up and circle the moon until it is 

way too late

Charlie Palumbo

has spent many hours writing poetry

and journaling to keep her mind calm. She finds writing to be the 

perfect meditation. She has always loved writing, art, and music.

Charlie enjoys sharing her words because she believes that someone may need them. She is mother,

veteran, wife, poet, and friend. "I truly feel blessed on a daily basis, and I am thankful for the voice I

have been given."

Choose Something Like a Star {Kristin} from The Poet's Domain

 

The Black Hole

by Dawn Bailiff

Rules of nature that confine and bind

when all I want is to be friends.

The caged bird sings inside my broken ribs,

ripping through the fat

that I have earned...

the fat that now protects me

from the stares of men.

Painful flashback:

those stares once led to Heaven...once...

when I believed.

Now, without the strength to climb,

I am forced to fly,

revealing my scabby wings for all to see.

Yet, that is how God made me.

 

Indeed, my wings spread easily now,

that the middle years have weakened my 

resolve 

to be grounded.

Better to be a broken bird

than a sprightly snake.

It is too difficult to gain respect

with your face slithering in the dirt...

no matter how good you feel.

These hand-me-down wings do not quite fit:

I am again a little girl, trying....

trying on her mother's shoes,

but, at least, wings make high heels redundant. 

The Stolen Camera {misty}

 

Since the camera was stolen,

everything is a photograph – 

pink bloom against white stucco,

serious face of the potato chip man

leaning over his cart.

In the square, gypsies with brilliant skirts

twirl among palm trees.

I reach for the camera, to hand it to you,

but it is gone, stolen by a thief

who knows nothing of lenses.

Are you thinking of the camera?

I ask you once,

and you nod.

You will not mention it.

Two days ago you caught

the shrivelled saint who kissed your hand,

the twins of Bougainvillea laughing

in their windowsill.

Your camera had careful eyes,

and now the pictures are stolen inside it,

babies who will never be born.

How would I feel if they stole my pens?

My lips would go on making words,

when I crossed the dappled street,

words everywhere, steps

or yellow leaves.

Today we pass the monastery silently.

maybe we are soaking up light,

brief angles of sun on stone.

Maybe tonight when we sleep

all we have seen will arrange itself

inside us, quick trails of stars,

and we will wake glowing,

the world in our eyes.

Popayan, Colombia

~ Naomi Shihab Nye, from Words Under the Words

From my garden to you, John, 5/10/2010

 

Praying

It doesn’t have to be 

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

--Mary Oliver 

Praying mp3

entrance lk : 5.06.10

Download 20100505 183526

(the above link is me reading to you...)

Entrance

Dana Gioia

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,
Out of the room that lets you feel secure.
Infinity is open to your sight.
Whoever you are.
With eyes that have forgotten how to see
From viewing things already too well-known,
Lift up into the dark a huge, black tree
And put it in the heavens: tall, alone.
And you have made the world and all you see.
It ripens like the words still in your mouth.
And when at last you comprehend its truth,
Then close your eyes and gently set it free.

and how could I leave out this video {kristin}

Numbers lk : 5.04.10

Numbers

I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition--
add two cups of milk and stir--
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.

And multiplication's school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.

Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else's
garden now.

There's an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.

And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.

Three boys beyond their mothers' call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn't anywhere you look.

by Mary Cornish

Tech Notes:  Sent from my iPhone using the blog's post-by-email email address.  Here's the how-to: Log in, go to the blog, go to Settings in the top toolbar, choose Post by Email from the left.   Add the address to your iPhone contacts.  If you are a lazy typist like me, use the page to send yourself an email- be sure to change the "Send Email" address to your email address, then open the email up on your iPhone.  Add the address to your Contacts by touching the address in the "From: " box of the email.

Photo notes: onboard camera+ AutoAdjust+FotoMuse+PhotoGene 

oh, let's have more Leonard.... lk : 5.2.10

Oh, Kristin reminded me of Leonard Cohen's fine musical poetry...

Here is Leonard singing Hallelujah...

no where near as pretty as Rufus, whom I think wonderful, but Leonard is Leonard... so let's have some more!

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin 
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in 
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love 

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone 
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon 
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on 
Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long 
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born 
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn 
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn 
Dance me to the end of love 

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin 
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in 
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love 
Dance me to the end of love

Now, there is of course, the fine print.  Wikipedia has this to say:

Though structured as a love song, the song was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. In an interview, Cohen said of the song:

'Dance Me to the End Of Love' ... it's curious how songs begin because the origin of the song, every song, has a kind of grain or seed that somebody hands you or the world hands you and that's why the process is so mysterious about writing a song. But that came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet 

was pressed into performance while this horror was going on, those were the people whose fate was this horror also. And they would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being killed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty there of being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation. But, it is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved, so that the song -- it's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity.

In 1996, Welcome Books released a book called Dance Me to the End of Love, as part of its "Art & Poetry" series; the book featured the lyrics of the song alongside paintings by Henri Matisse.  

Music as Poetry {Kristin}

shedding skin {misty}

 

pulling out of the old scarred skin

(old rough thing i don't need now

i strip off 

slip out of

leave behind) 

i slough off deadscales

flick skinflakes to the ground

shedding toughness

peeling layers down

to vulnerable stuff

and i'm blinking off old eyelids

for a new way of seeing

by the rocks i rub against 

i'm going to be tender again

~ harryette mullen

...this suits me so well right now...my mantra for the next three days. [jennifer]

“Whatever the present moment 

contains, accept it 

as if you had chosen it.” 

~Eckhart Tolle (via The Mindfulist)

lk : 4.29.10

   

What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon

Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.

Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?

Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world wants us to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass.
No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.

And I suppose sometime I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.

Mary Oliver

 
 

kay ryan reads

to me this morning, and i sit and listen.  xox katie

(posted by MB, this is kind of funny)

iPoem

by George Bilgere

Someone's taken a bite
from my laptop's glowing apple,
the damaged fruit of our disobedience,
of which we must constantly be reminded.

There's the fatal crescent,
the dark smile
of Eve, who never dreamed of a laptop,
who, in fact, didn't even have clothes,
or anything else for that matter,

which was probably the nicest thing
about the Garden, I'm thinking,
as I sit here in the café
with my expensive computer,
afraid to get up even for a minute
in order to go to the bathroom
because someone might steal it

in this fallen world she invented
with a single bite
of an apple nobody, and I mean
nobody,
was going to tell her not to eat.

Up {Jennifer}

   

 “The Spring Wind does not distinguish between high and low, it reaches everywhere. And the flowers and branches of plants and trees, themselves grow longer and shorter.”

— excerpt from The Sutra of Complete Enlightenment

I took this shot during the week over my lunch hour.  I absolutely love flowering crab trees, or any flowering trees for that matter.  When I saw these trees I pulled over and ventured in to the park a little ways in order to lay on my back and look up...it's such a unique vantage point when you're laying on the ground and looking toward the sky.  I want to do this throughout the Summer to get a different perspective on new things that I see while living in a new city.  

oh, e.e. you always know what to say... {misty}

  

 i could have posted "peonies"  by mary oliver, but i love this e.e. cummings poem too much today.  perhaps i should have fallen for some roses instead of these peonies... regardless, here is my offering.  

 {i am loving this site, (thank you, lk for putting it together)  i come here when i need a break from my deadlines/chores/life... i hope we all continue to share more and more.} sharing m

lk : 4.23.10 lately I have been lost

 
 

lk : 4.23.10 poetry

“And it was at that age …
poetry arrived in search of me.
I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone.
There I was without a face,
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way with names, my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense, pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and suddenly I saw
the heavens unfastened and open, planets,
palpitating plantations, shadow perforated,
riddled with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry void,
likeness, image of mystery,
felt myself a pure part of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke loose on the wind.”
— Pablo Neruda

Another poem by Sally Atkins {Kristin}

What the Artist Taught Me

(For Those Who Now Know) 

When you can make art, you must,

When you can't you read

And watch TV.

Art goes with fine chocolate,

Champagne, and Wagner.

Art seeps into all your crevices

Like a low, soft river

Or crashes through your blood

Like whitewater.

Art is alive.

It grabs you at night, keeps you

Working until dawn,

In the morning keeps you

Looking, looking

Seeing with your whole body,

Keeps you open like flowers,

Bursting like seed pods,

Keeps you speaking aloud

The truth you did not know

You knew.