Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Home

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"The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home"----Confucius

"Everyday is a journey and the journey itself is home"----Matsuo Basho

"Home is the nicest word there is"----Laura Ingalls Wilder

"How does it feel?
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?"----Bob Dylan

                                                         

                                        Midweek Motif ~ Home

A home is a full stop to being a nomadic. And add to that a little safety, comfort, freedom, a space to be. Especially for a creative mind "A room of one's own" is a must.

The saying home is where the heart is extends the meaning of home beyond the four walls. One may feel at home where ever they are or with whoever they are.

Creating a sense of home in our lines is our aim today.

A couple of poems to inspire you:

He told a homely tale

by Emily Dickinson

He told a homely tale
And spotted it with tears--
Upon his infant face was set
The Cicatrice of years--

All crumpled was the cheek
No other kiss had known
Than flake of snow, divided with
The Redbreast of the barn--

If Mother--in the Grave--
Or Father-- on the Sea--
Or Father in the Firmament--
Or Brethren, had he--

If Commonwealth below,
Or Commonwealth above
Have missed a Barefoot Citizen--
I've ransomed it--alive--

Home thoughts

by Carl Sandburg

THE SEA rocks have a green moss.
The pine rocks have red berries.
I have memories of you.

Speak to me of how you miss me.
Tell me the hours go long and slow.

Speak to me of the drag on your heart.
The iron drag of the long days.

I know hours empty as a beggar's tin cup on a rainy day, empty as a soldier's sleeve with an arm lost.

Speak to me ...


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community
                         (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be Organic)
                                                                       

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Citizenship

It may be laid down, as a primary position . . . that every citizen who enjoys the protection of a free government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it... 

? George Washington

�As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State 'What does it matter to me?' the State may be given up for lost.� 

? Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

"If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident" 

? Charles de Montesquie

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Midweek Motif ~ Citizenship

What is its purpose and its rituals?  Is it in the taxes we pay or the flags we fly?  Is it in the ideals we hold standing side by side?  Is it in our borders and who is in or out?  Just what is citizenship all about?  

Where and how are we each citizens?

(The recent Federal Tax Day in the USA 
raised these questions for me.)  

Your Challenge: Write a new poem that answers one or all of these questions with images of citizenship.

Poems:

Immigrant Picnic

BY GREGORY DJANIKIAN

It's the Fourth of July, the flags

are painting the town,

the plastic forks and knives

are laid out like a parade.

And I'm grilling, I've got my apron,

I've got potato salad, macaroni, relish,

I've got a hat shaped   

like the state of Pennsylvania.

I ask my father what's his pleasure

and he says, "Hot dog, medium rare,"

and then, "Hamburger, sure,   

what's the big difference,"   

as if he's really asking.

I put on hamburgers and hot dogs,   

slice up the sour pickles and Bermudas,

uncap the condiments. The paper napkins   

are fluttering away like lost messages.

"You're running around," my mother says,   

"like a chicken with its head loose."

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

If in America

BY ED BOK LEE

Hmong Hunter Charged with 6 Murders

Is Said to Be a Shaman �new york times

If a tree falls in a forest,

does it make a sound?

If a rifle fires a shot in the woods,

whose body first hits the ground?

If a group of angry hunters

surrounds, curses at, and accosts you

for wandering onto their land

If you apologize for being lost,

inform you saw no posted signs, swallow

their chinks this and gooks taking over that;

are walking away over mud and fallen leaves when a loud

crack far behind you kicks up black earth

If your father was conscripted to fight

on the side of the United States

for the cia during the war in Vietnam

If he, your mother, you�the oldest son�

and all your younger siblings were later abandoned

in the hills of Laos as targets for genocide by the Viet Cong

If after five years in a Thai refugee camp,

you come to this land as a teen, a casualty

of history and time, then receive three years

of training to become a sharpshooter

in the u.s. military

If you spent your adolescence watching blacks,

Asians, Latinos, and whites watching one

another watch each other for weakness and flaws

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

from The People, Yes

BY CARL SANDBURG

Lincoln?

He was a mystery in smoke and flags

Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,

Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,

Yes to the hopes of government

Of the people by the people for the people,

No to debauchery of the public mind,

No to personal malice nursed and fed,

Yes to the Constitution when a help,

No to the Constitution when a hindrance

Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions,

Each man fated to answer for himself:

Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind

Must I choose for my own sustaining light

To bring me beyond the present wilderness?

       Lincoln? Was he a poet?

       And did he write verses?

�I have not willingly planted a thorn

       in any man�s bosom.�

I shall do nothing through malice: what

       I deal with is too vast for malice.�

Death was in the air.

So was birth.

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Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others 

in the spirit of the community.

 (Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be ~ Home)

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Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Inanimate & The Non-Human

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Midweek Motif ~ The Inanimate & The Non-Human

"The place of the worst barbarism is that modern forest that makes use of us, this forest of chimneys and bayonets, machines and weapons, of strange inanimate beasts that feed on human flesh."---Amadeo Bordiga

"K2 is not some malevolent being, lurking there above the Baltoro, waiting to get us. It's just there. It's indifferent. It's an inanimate mountain made of rock, ice and snow. The "savageness" is what we project onto it, as if we blame the peak for our own misadventures on it."---Ed Viesturs

"We are all collateral damage for someone's beautiful ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of onslaught."---Benjamin Alire Saenz

"We cannot justify treating any sentient nonhuman as our property, as a resource, as a thing that we can use and kill for our purposes."---Gary L. Francione



For today's theme use the inanimate or the non-human as your subject. Build up an emotional connection with it.

You may give a fresh look to something very ordinary and uninspiring.

You may also write about something you care about, depend on or even afraid of.

Your poem may either be objective or from the perspective of your subject.

Let's check out the following poems:

Mirror

by Sylvia Plath

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But if it flickers,
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

A Bird Came Down The Walk

by Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk -
he did not know I saw -
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass -
And then he hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass -

He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad -
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head -

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home -

Than oars divide the ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.

                             (Next week Susan's Midweek Motif will be Marriage)