Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Food

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one"---Mother Teresa

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being."---Franz Kafka

"Animals are my friends.....and I don't eat my friends"---George Bernard Shaw

"Wine is bottled poetry"---Robert Louis Stevenson

source

Midweek Motif ~ Food

Today I want you to write about "Food" you like or even dislike.

You may deal with pure food items or recipes in your own way or spice it up with figures of speech, various poetic devices.

Have fun!

Here is some food for thought:

The Health-Food Diner

by Maya Angelou

The Health-Food Diner

No sprouted wheat and soya shoots

And Brussels in a cake,

Carrot straw and spinach raw,

(Today, I need a steak).

Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw

Or mushrooms creamed on toast,

Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,

(I'm dreaming of a roast).

Health-food folks around the world

Are thinned by anxious zeal,

They look for help in sea food kelp

(I count on breaded veal).

No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,

Zucchini by the ton,

Uncooked kale and bodies frail

Are sure to make me run

to

Loins of pork and chicken thighs

And standing rib, so prime,

Pork chops brown and fresh groundround

(I crave them all the time).

Irish stews and boiled corned beef

and hot dogs by the scores,

or any place that saves a space

For making carnivores.

Fame Is A Fickle Food

by Emily Dickinson

Fame is a fickle food

Upon a shifting plate

Whose table once a 

Guest but not

The second time is set

Whose crumbs the crows inspect

And with ironic caw

Flap past it to the Farmer's corn--

Men eat of it and die.

Sonnet 75

by William Shakespeare

So are you to my thoughts as food to life,

Or as sweet seasoned showers to the ground;

And for the peace of you I hold such strife

As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found:

Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon

Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;

Now counting best to be with you alone,

Then bettered that the world may see my pleasure;

Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,

And by and by clean starved for a look,

Possessing or pursuing no delight

Save what is had, or must from you be took.

      Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,

      Or gluttoning on all, or all away.

Oysters

by Seamus Heaney

Our shells clacked on the plate.

My tongue was a filling estuary.

My palate hung with starlight:

As I tasted the salty Pleiades

Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated,

They lay on their bed of ice:

Bivalves: the split bulb

And philandering sigh of ocean

Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to that coast

Through flowers and limestone

And there we were, toasting friendship,

Laying down a perfect memory

In the cool of thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,

The Romans hauled their oysters south to Roam:

I saw damp panniers disgorge

The frond-lipped, brine-stung

Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose

In the clear light, like poetry or freedom

Leaning in from sea. I ate the day

Deliberately, that its tang

Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

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 Mountain)

                                                   

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Energy, Vitality

�It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. 
It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.� 
? Susan Sontag

�If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms 

of energy, frequency and vibration.� 
? Nikola Tesla

�. . . I think love is that condition in the human spirit so profound, 
that it allows us to forgive, and it may be the energy 
which keeps the stars in the firmament,   I'm not sure. 
It may be the energy which keeps the blood 

running smoothly through our veins.� 

? Maya Angelou

Midweek Motif ~ Energy, Vitality

I'm thinking of the opposite of lethargy, when enthusiasm for living translates a certain possibility into physical expression.

Electricity can do that too.

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem about (and pumped full of) energy.

~~~

I Hear America Singing

BY WALT WHITMAN

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,

Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong,

The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,

The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work,

The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,

The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands,

The wood-cutter�s song, the ploughboy�s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,

The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,

Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,

The day what belongs to the day�at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,

Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

I, Too

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I�ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody�ll dare

Say to me,

�Eat in the kitchen,�

Then.

Besides,

They�ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed�

I, too, am America.

Excerpt from To a Skylark

BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

         Hail to thee, blithe Spirit!

                Bird thou never wert,

         That from Heaven, or near it,

                Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

         Higher still and higher

                From the earth thou springest

         Like a cloud of fire;

                The blue deep thou wingest,

And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation)

~~~

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 Colors. )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Survival

�All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. 
All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, 
to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.� 
? James Baldwin

film trailer:  http://www.poetryofresilience.com/

*** *** ***

�. . . and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid
So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive� 
? Audre Lorde, 
The Black Unicorn: Poems

Midweek Motif ~ Survival

Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Breaking the cycle of violence 

against women and girls.  Stopping violence altogether.

Today, I am thinking of the ones who 

don't survive.  Of the ones who do.

 Of surviving  huge violence and 

violence others might perceive 

as small.   I want to write,  but how 

to take one event and emotion

 from among so many that 

stuff up our mouths?  

Your challenge: Speak about survival so that others may listen.  Write a new poem because that is what we do. 

*** *** ***

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 Energy, as in Vitality)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Fire

source

Midweek Motif ~ Fire

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the single candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.": Gautama Buddha

"Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.": George Washington

"When one burns one's bridges, what a very nice fire it makes.": Dylan Thomas

Fire can both be a foe or a friend depending on the choice of looking at it. It warms us in our time of need, dispels darkness but also burns, consumes and devastates.

Kindling a fire may symbolize inspiration, regeneration.

Many cultures view fire as an emblem of wisdom and enlightenment.

It is a symbol of divinity, purity as well as damnation in many faiths around the world.

Fire has not lost its symbolic significance to modern man also. Freud saw fire as an aspect of the libido (sex drive) representing forbidden passions.

Mother Nature also uses fire both as an agent of destruction and regeneration. Many native plants in American west and south west and elsewhere around the world cannot germinate without the scorching heat of a wild fire.

Now, a couple of poems on today's theme Fire:

Fire and Ice

by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Phenomenal Woman

by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonders where my secret lies.

I am not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I am telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms,

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips,

I'm a woman

Phenomenally,

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honeybees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woman 

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

              (The rest is here)

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 ~ Gravity)