Let’s see you write about that. (or whatever comes up …)

(are you new to throw-down thursday? go here to get the scoops on how we play.)

(and yeah, those strawberries were amazing.)

Anyway … if this is your first time visiting Throw-down Thursday, you can read about what it is, and why we do it, or you can just dive in w/out needing specific guidelines. (because there aren’t many anyway.) Check out the prompt below, then throw-down some words in the comments, in your journal, on your blog, on the FB page. Write from personal experience, create a bit of fiction … whatever comes up.  Doesn’t really matter. Cause the more you write, the more you see.

One night a man was crying “Allah, Allah!”
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said:
“So … I have heard you calling out, but have you ever gotten any response?”
The man had no answer for that.

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”

“This longing you express is the return message.”

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

What are your Love Dogs?

National Poetry Month is drawing to a close (sigh) … but I hope you’ve enjoyed splashing around in the poetry waters with me.

How ’bout splashing in this one today? One of my favorites by Persian poet/mystic Hafiz …

…

I’m sharing a few of my own, starting with the first poem that really grabbed me as a kid: the delicious Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle Received from a Friend Called Felicity, and a choice selection by Rumi, and the former Rhode Island Poet Laurate Lisa Starr.

Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle
Received from a Friend Called Felicity
By John Tobias

During that summer
When unicorns were still possible;
When the purpose of knees
Was to be skinned;
When shiny horse chestnuts

(Hollowed out
Fitted with straws
Crammed with tobacco
Stolen from butts
In family ashtrays)

Were puffed in green lizard silence
While straddling thick branches
Far above and away
From the softening effects
Of civilization;

During that summer–
Which may never have been at all;
But which has become more real
Than the one that was–
Watermelons ruled.

Thick, pink, imperial slices
Melting frigidly on sun-parched tongues
Dribbling from chins;
Leaving the best part,
The black bullet seeds,
To be spit out in rapid fire
Against the wall
Against the wind
Against each other;

And when the ammunition was spent,
There was always another bite:
It was a summer of limitless bites,
Of hungers quickly felt
And quickly forgotten
With the next careless gorging.

The bites are fewer now.
Each one is savored lingeringly,
Swallowed reluctantly.

But in a jar put up by Felicity,
The summer which maybe never was
Has been captured and preserved.
And when we unscrew the lid
And slice off a piece
And let it linger on our tongue:
Unicorns become possible again.
And then there is this, by Rumi (which many may recognize from an oft quoted line within it …):

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened.  Don’t open the door to the study

and begin reading.  Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

And finally, this one, by the wonderful poet Lisa Starr – a friend of a friend who I got to meet a few years back at the wonderful Dodge Poetry Festival – called Because.

Lately she’s been falling in love everywhere—
at the market, in the pharmacy, always in the cafeteria
sliding her tray over the metal rails,
last week with the hands of the attendant at a gas station.
It’s not right, she knows, but still, she can’t help it.
Sometimes it happens all day long.

Yesterday at the campus it was everything again—
The way the postmaster, on lunch break, went whistling past,
or how the frisbee players sing the quad.
The way some students stay after class, that usually gets her.
Cashiers, people who sing at stop lights—all fair game.
Cab drivers—forget it.

With ice cream scoopers, with their little paper hats,
it is often love at first sight,
and she will never forget the boy at the sandwich shop—
the way he said “miss, would you like anything to drink?”
to the 80-year-old woman in front of her,
then when it was her turn said “Ma’am” instead.

Later today, blessed by all this loving
she will make some tea and play a violin concerto
for her dog who is deaf.
She will play the music as loud as it will go
because she can, and because somehow, he’ll hear it
and he will stand on the porch of the fine yellow house,
glowing.

She will be all choked up
because the lawn chairs
have never been this white before
and because, tired ears flapping
in a soft Autumn breeze,
the old dog will bark back his joy.

Now … how ’bout you throw-down a few lines about what these may bring up … or about your favorite poem.  Or whatever you like.

If you’re not into poetry, it might be because you don’t actually know poetry.

Could be that the passion, juice and soulfulness of poetry was sucked out of you when you were in school (like it almost did to the kids at the beginning of dead poets society; remember that scene?) … or were you raised on sappy rhyming ditties, and that shut you down for anything remotely poetry related. If that’s the case, I hope you’ll give it another chance.

In my thinking, poetry is the word-version of a great wine, a walk by the ocean, holding a baby, the early morning light, and a cuddle on the couch with your sweetie.

The lyrics to songs that inspire and move you? Poetry. Those profound and thoughtful quotes you’re always “liking” on Facebook? Variations on a theme of poetry. (y’see … it’s actually possible that you like poetry, but you just don’t think you do.)

I hope you’ll get to know poetry again (or better. or for the first time.) this month. I’ll be posting poems, and videos of poets reading/reciting poems all month long on the Facebook page, and I’ll also invite you to try out your own poetry in some of the weekly “throw-downs” on the blog.

In the meantime, sink in with this wonderful poem – Love After Love by Derek Walcott – that demonstrates the magic of what poetry can do. (to hear it recited by the equally wonderful poet david whyte, look in on the FB page)

 ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~        ~

Love After Love
Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

I have been dreaming a lot of paths. If I do this, then ___ ? when I do this, what? … what about? … what if I hadn’t? … why didn’t I? … should I/shouldn’t I? I simmer and simmer, and go back and forth. I replay steps, I wonder and wander. I dream of leaping. I dream of leaping now instead of later, even though I know I need to wait a while longer. I do my best in given circumstances, but sometimes I wind up looking at the result thinking: nope, you should have done this or that.

I had one of those experiences this week. I should have known better (i did know better), but I made the choice. And there I go, learning the same lesson again for the third (or is it the fourth … or fifth?) time. (i hope i don’t have to learn this one again.)

And so I plod along, going bit by bit. I make mistakes and I try to forgive myself. Most of the time I can. I see the work I do impacting other people and I practically squeal with delight. I say “thank you/more please” several times a day; it’s so easy cause there’s so much.

Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky that the path unfolds so lusciously in spite of all my fuck-ups and missteps. I can still get cranky and stuck in the muck, but then I’ll look out the kitchen window as Ash makes coffee – the birds dancing around the bird-feeder with the backyard still gray, but starting to show signs of the impending spring – and I think: I’m the luckiest girl ever.

Life is far from perfect. I fuck up, I fall down, I do things that aren’t always good for me. But I keep writing; I keep walking; the path is mine; I’m on the right road.