Posted By

Embodiment

 

On the mat, they say
Use your earth energy
Flow like water
Light as air
Bright, bright fiery motion.

Every beginner hears it.
Minds fill with images,
Bodies practice rote strength,
Spirits amuse themselves
While the minds and bodies
Go their separate ways
Trying to integrate.

The path from beginner to master
Is earthy. Grit in the teeth, in the eyes.
Pressed against the ground,
Staying down an extra second for the rest,
Gasping. Walking the woods alone, carrying
Weapons, blistered, unseen, sweating.
Scrabbling up a slope on all fours,
Bowing in to a distant mountain top,
Listening to her silence and steadiness
Transform an asinine thought into
Embodiment.

Immersed in the ocean,
Survival demands the
End of ideas about water.
The work of
Breathing
Floating
Diving
Rolling
Exorcises thoughts.
The body is flotsam in the flow.
Only alignment is life.
To think is to thrash and tire,
To tumble then crash,
Breathless on the bloody sand.

On the mat, those little puffs of air thought are
Toddlers blowing on birthday cakes.
Standing in sirocco,
Lifting off my feet
Watching bits of the roof fly away
Finding I can’t lift my own arm,
Much less that weapon, until I
Surrender to air,
Move within motion,
Slice with the gusts

Don’t get me started on fire.
That little blowtorch in your head is
Barely a spark.
Sunshine is fire.
Sunshine is life:
Free for all, no
Judgement or evaluation.
When that fire suffuses my body
My smile can stop a bus.

Body, mind, and soul together
Conduct these energies.
A master on the mat
Feels the mountain under her feet
Borrows slow inexorable motion as she
Slides between the waves of attacking motion
Turns a tornado behind him, into which he and his attack
Vanish while they
Laugh together
Happily polishing their spirits.

Read more

Posted By

Souvenir


Our guide walked briskly, her feet
acquainted with the rocky
trails, while ours stumbled over
the uneven dirt. She took us
beyond the jumping cholla,
their spines straining to tear
our shirts, and knelt briefly
before the skeletal remains
of a Joshua tree. When the heat
had parched enough empathy
into our pale backs, she led us to
a makeshift altar in the shadows
of boulders—a pair of shoes with missing
soles, a dusty lizard curled up
on top of a black t-shirt, and a backpack,
impossibly small, with a faded cartoon
donkey embroidered on the front pouch.  
There are stories better left here—yet
further on, she plucked a blue hair
comb with broken teeth and cracked
rhinestones from the rocks, and cradled
it in her palm like an offering.

 

Read more

Posted By

The Sound

The wind breathed fire

into the hollowness.

 

You whimpered

as water dripped

off the side of the swaying earth.

 

A rhythmic sound.

Read more

Posted By

Hour 1: Making Money

Hi all, here's my hour 1 poem. I don't know how many people outside the UK have heard this on their news channels, but we had a big fire in a tower block in London recently, when the exterior cladding turned out not to be fire resistant. In the weeks following it appears that there are a lot of tower blocks that have the same unsafe cladding.

In the air section, the SOx are sulphur Oxides, NOx are nitrogen oxides and VOC are volatile organic compounds, all the stuff that pollutes the air.

Giles

Making Money

Arms sheathed in starry
sleeves of shimmering silver
she waves the downpour
onto philosopher's red sulphur,
transmuting drops into coins of gold
that slip through fingers
as fleating as a dream.

Firey industry forging the means
to speed out of sight,
faster than sound,
rocketing up the sides
of ill-clad towers
returning residents to the ground.

Inhaling the air of city streets
rich with invisible acronyms
nutritionally empty,
poetically dense,
NOx and SOx, and Vocs
ozone depleting substances
knocks and socks drip off a chemist's tongue.

Pity the earth,
bearer of all
as she watches her fading capital
as those whose dreams
exceed her resource.

\

Read more

Posted By

I Bet

You see my precious heart, and loving personality that captured your mind and love you over time after time. I bet you see my sadness, happiness, and realness beyond any x-ray eyes searching for appreciation. I bet you see me honest and loyal yet, with gifted qualities you can cherish but, you don’t because of YOU…I bet.

Poem by: JGOMEZ

Read more

Posted By

Come Together

Best friends walk along the sea,
If they continue long enough, they will arrive at the start.
But can they make it? For it has been 11 days since their arrival,
And none know how they ended up on such vacant land,
With trees as the iris, a mysterious chest its pupil.

Oh, they shall make it.
Such vacant land is no match,
For they are true and humble in their abilities.

Arms raised, her brown spiraling hair, messy and mobile,
Indicative of the gusts she brings forth to the coconut tree,
And they all run over, collecting those that fell into small piles,
Cracking them on knees and rocks, gulping its sweet water.

It is not enough, and they walk to the sea with their coconut halves,
Filling them with salty water, placing them on the ground all together as one,
So she, with the short, blonde hair that sparkles like champagne glasses,
Can dance around the bowls of life giving juice, making it pure and clean,
And they drink and drink until smiles cross their faces.

They walk on until hunger is too much,
And he, with the dark skin like leather takes to the forest,
Bringing back berries and a rabbit to roast.
And he, with hair like orange embers, blows and brings fire to life,
Where they all crouch with their drooling mouths,
Until they devour the succulent meat like animals.

They complete their circle,
Feeling comfortable with their perimeter,
And to the forest they go and go until they reach that pupil,
Gasping at the stone chest before them,
And they all try to open it, one at a time, for there must be magic inside,
But they fail.

Until they all try together,
She gusts,
She dances,
He watches and listens,
He blows,
And the top slowly opens.

Read more

Posted By

With fire

I love thee

Conspire

For wealthy

Retire

Be healthy

And while

We beat feet

Entirely

Hell free

And tires

Which pop me

Can’t tire

My bellfree

It’s funny

And healthy

I missed my

First hour

Of poetry

😅

@KateJannuzzi

 

Read more

Posted By

Hour one – Earth Wind and Fire

Here I sit  upon the earth, humble homeland of my birth.

Awed by forces old as time, the fire that warms and gathers friends or when pushed by wind has disastrous ends.

Necessary evils that are instrumental, the basis of all, so elemental.

Read more

Posted By

Poem #1

I said already,
Staring quietly at the sun,
‘Raising my own adaptation of otters
A procession that incalculably owns up to
Its relationships
And whether down the Brixton lanes
Or Oregon, or on the border of Nairobi
Or over Walt Witma’s graves
It will provide
It won’t abide
This is my employment plan’
‘But sir’
‘But do not strain it like a cloth map
Testing coffee
I just wouldn’t advise it.’

I don’t say in public spaces
More
For such impoliteness draws the tanks
The thinking and the military,
And the angelic choirs of unethical naive loyalists
Who know no better but the nice side of the perpetual tragedy
But I whisper it here
Who searches for the material in metaphor
And finds one when in truth
Its no metaphor
But nonsense
Yes, the absurdity of dignity
The treasure of disreputable comraderie
And the sumptuous curvatures of insanity
Derived and contented to be derived
They will lead a procession
Just as original as I succeed in being
Just as representative too
And it will be so simple
And so nice
And it won’t be for the record
It will be unobservable
Proud as raking

Let’s not measure
The storms in the teacups of each other’s lives
Windspeed like a cliff dive
Five point seven
Richter’s dead
And every angle is at eleven
And protractors fail
We come together
To reform our god-forsaken pact

Read more
1 … 2,305 2,306 2,307 2,308 2,309 … 3,063