Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Marriage

Marriage is memory, marriage is time. ~ Joan Didion

�The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude . . . . �  ? Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

�In itself, homosexuality is as limiting as heterosexuality: the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation.� 
? Simone de Beauvoir

Midweek Motif ~ Marriage

Love and marriage

Love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage . . . .

And then what happens??

Your Challenge: Marry your truths about marriage to a story in a new poem.  Enjoy!

Here's some more inspiration:

The Ache of Marriage

BY DENISE LEVERTOV

The ache of marriage:

thigh and tongue, beloved,   

are heavy with it,   

it throbs in the teeth

We look for communion

and are turned away, beloved,   

each and each

It is leviathan and we   

in its belly

looking for joy, some joy   

not to be known outside it

two by two in the ark of   

the ache of it.

Denise Levertov, �The Ache of Marriage� from Poems 1960-1967. 

Copyright � 1966 by Denise Levertov.  New Directions Publishing Corporation.

Raking

BY TANIA ROCHELLE

Anna Bell and Lane, eighty,

make small leaf piles in the heat,

each pile a great joint effort,

like fifty years of marriage,

sharing chores a rusty dance.

In my own yard, the stacks

are big as children, who scatter them,

dodge and limbo the poke

of my rake. We�re lucky,

young and straight-boned.

And I feel sorry for the couple,

bent like parentheses

around their brittle little lawn.

I like feeling sorry for them,

the tenderness of it, but only

for a moment: John glides in

like a paper airplane, takes

the children for the weekend,

and I remember,

they�re the lucky ones�

shriveled Anna Bell, loving

her crooked Lane.

Used with the poet's permission.

 Reprinted from The Poetry Foundatiom.

From Karaoke Funeral, Snake Nation Press, 2003. 

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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 martyrdom / witness. )

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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 ~ Mercy

(. . . because this song insisted on being included.)

�The world will give you that once in awhile, a brief timeout; 

the boxing bell rings and you go to your corner, 

where somebody dabs mercy on your beat-up life.� 
? Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.

? William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

http://izquotes.com/quote/326102

Midweek Motif ~ Mercy

St. Francis in his famous prayer-poem said "where there is injury let me sow pardon."  

Do we, can we, should we?  

If I had the power to be merciful on a grand scale, I would take in cities of refugees and make sure people who worked all their lives were financially secure to retire and . . . .  I would be the mouse taking the thorn out of the lion's paw.   If only.

Your Challenge: Write a new poem on 

an experience of mercy.  

(Would you believe I wrote this prompt and the next one 
before the attacks in Baghdad and Paris?  
Walk in safety, Poets United, and 
as for words?  Don't hold back.)

http://izquotes.com/quote/206082

Excerpt from Time as Memory as Story by  SIMON J. ORTIZ

                        Let�s say it�s half a century later.

                        Let�s say it�s never too late.

                        Let�s say Skull Valley.

                        Let�s say.

                        Let�s say it�s half a century later.

                        Let�s say it�s never too late.

                        Let�s say Skull Valley.

                        Let�s say.

Time has no mercy. It�s there. It stays still or it moves.

And you�re there with it. Staying still or moving with it.

I think it moves. And we move with it. And keep moving.

Eleven years old and soon to be in fifth grade. That�s time.

Boys� time. Who knows what time it is but them. Eternally.

No one knows time better than they. Always and forever.

Our family. Mama, me, Angie, Gilbert, Earl, Louise.

Kids. Daddy working in Skull Valley for . . .

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

(This song insisted on being included, too.)

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

in the spirit of the community.

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(Next week, November 25th, is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.  Find Information HERE and many other places including Wikipedia.  I just read about Sheroes, a cafe near the Taj Mahal run by victims of acid attacks. Let's make the theme, the next Midweek Motif SURVIVAL.     Thanks, Susan)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Gravity

�Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.�
? Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

"In a poem the excitement has to maintain itself.

I am governed by the pull of the sentence as

the pull of a fabric is governed by gravity."
?Marianne Moore

But the strong base and building of my love
Is as the very centre of the earth,
Drawing all things to 't.
� William Shakespeare

Midweek Motif ~ Gravity

"Gravity is the force that attracts two bodies toward each other, the force that causes apples to fall toward the ground and the planets to orbit the sun. The more massive an object is, the stronger its gravitational pull."

source
(Today is Apple Day in Great Britain.)

Gravity is also seriousness, solemnity and dignity.

Your Challenge:  

Write a new poem 

with lots of gravity in it.

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Height Is the Distance Down

BY MARY BARNARD

What�s geography? What difference what mountain   

it is? In the intimacy of this altitude   

its discolored snowfields overhang half the world.

On a knife rim edge-up into whirlpools of sky,   

feet are no anchor. Gravity sucks at the mind   

spinning the blood-weighted body head downward.

The mountain that had become a known profile   

on the day�s horizon is a gesture of earth   

     . . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

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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 ~ Animation)