Tags
What if
22 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Inspiration, Letting Go, Personal Legend, Poetry
in22 Friday Feb 2019
Posted Inspiration, Letting Go, Personal Legend, Poetry
inTags
01 Wednesday Aug 2018
Posted Exploration, Inspiration, Poetry, Taking Action
inMy voice goes silent as oft it does
I disappear from the landscape
Wrapped in a world of my own design
Tortured by voices that are my own
Your words are not enough
Not enough stay silent
Awakened by a message on the Radio
Contribute
Come out of the background
Emerge from the wood
Your camouflage not needed
Rise
For days I pondered
For what
For who
Stay silent
Let it die
Something changed yesterday
Arising from a hashtag
A movement born
The words of Tupac ringing in my ears
An evil geniuses invention
Flooding the street a $5 high
A gift for me to hear
Coming only
From another willing to share
I shall not stay silent
Benefiting no one
Emerging from night
Pulling aside the curtain
Light fills the room
The rest of the day
Engaged in play
600 words the rule
The limit
How much how many
Just one
a collection
A theme of expression
Of wrestling with this question
I buy no lottery tickets
Because I will never win
Yet life is not a lottery
Or perhaps it is
A lottery won a long time ago
Staying silent an option
I choose to abandon
My camaflouge not needed
My prize
Release from this cage
I put myself in
Embracing the light
The words of a mother flood my ears
A gift again from the radio
From one to another
We expand
That’s just the way it is,
Things will never be the same
30 Saturday Apr 2016
Posted ART, Inspiration, Poetry
inI spent the morning
wrapped in words Warm
Blanketed
In layers
Buried in feathers
Of birds
That once flew
Among
Friends
Climbing high
Into the sky
Buoyant
On the winds
With the window
Open
The world
Entered
Fresh
Alive
And sunny
Beckoning
And from there
I created
Mixed the ingredients
a stone milled
Bread
30 sec of Wild Compassion
And 14 sec of Somewhere in America
Listening I was moved
Also to write
Not just that which inspired
But of the pain I have been feeling
Of late
Freedom emerged
From my ears
Through my heart
And out onto the page
I mix in George Elliott Clarke and Shane Koycan
Poets from Canada bringing
Sweetness and crunch to this
Concoction
The recipe is not yet
Complete
The bread not yet in the oven
I am enjoying mixing the
Words and clips
Enjoying the aroma emerging
Reminding me of days gone by
When my step-mom used to make her bread in Apple Juice cans
Round and ribbed they would emerge
Yet still delicious
With peanut butter and jam
By Sunday Eve
It will be complete
A masterpiece
Who knows
But good enough to eat.
09 Saturday Apr 2016
Posted Poetry, Rant, Taking Action
inTags
This is not a poem more a rant – for a friend – to a friend who when I asked about getting authorizations from poets to use their voice, their words or videos in a montage for the opening of our breakout Session Poetry as a tool for Inquiry at a conference in May in San Francisco said to me ” whatever is fast and cheap”.
What ever is fast and cheap you say…
You are so funny –
this is not a fast thing – to do a video montage of 5 minutes may take me a lifetime as I move from inspiration to inspiration
As I move from the new to the old, from the young to the dead
From the slam poetry finals of one then two then three
As my brain and mind goes in a different direction as I remember the stylings of Shane Koyczan, the named Poet of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and his poem “We are more…
As I travel that highway somewhat reading and listening more to him and
Who in 2007 at Words Aloud- said “this is my voice,there are many like it but this is mine.”
Then I switch the Channel
To watching Harry Baker, World Gram Slam Poetry Champion Harry Baker do his world winning poem Paper People at a Ted X event
Then leaving that to follow Joe lead me into new waters deeper into places of discomfort
Into the world of academics
Into the world of those who call themselves poet and are – poets, writers, teachers, PhD’s, academics who inspire yet grade.
My first stop being
The African Canadian Metis Nova Scotian Poet Laureate of Canada George Elliot Clarke i read through an analysis of his writing style and see how awards he has won and how many books he has published and read his poem, The Emissaries, which was described as what he can do when allowing his understanding of imagery and emotion to create the poem, to become pure poetry, what Robert Frost meant by “poetry” when he called it what could not be translated into a different sound
And from which a stanza reads
a motel sign glares blood-red,
opposite a home of the freshly-dead.
the black body of a Bible,
lynched on the tree of a table,
is motionless as possible,
i would read it if I were able
(if it’s words were not birds of prey in a bomber-sky, olive and grey)
Fast and cheap you say as I go deeper into the caverns of why we write – to say the things that we can’t say aloud or may have always been afraid
Which leads me to remember that you write about why you love your daughter and hate your daughter, and write about things that are unfair
Then get back on track and think about Santiago, a poem on a different planet from me it seems, yet brings me back to
To the First Latino, son of an immigrant farmer, (who Trump intends to send packing), Poet Laureate of USA, Juan Felippe Herrera formerly Poet Laureate of California who invited his Grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Sampson, to his first reading at the US Congress Library because she invited him to the front of the class and sing a song “three blind mice” and told him he had a beautiful voice.
And who said
“When people ask – what is poetry Juan Felippe – It is freedom. That is what it is. That’s what everybody has. And when you use your own voice, your own personal voice, freely, the real you, then we’re all united”
Fast you say and cheap –
As I explore roads and voices that I have never ventured on
When i need to face myself and the voice inside that says – too accomplished, too smart for you – who do you think you are to say that you too are a poet
Fast and cheap you say
As I move from inspiration to inspiration
Wondering how many roads saying yes will lead
As I read about Bombs in Brussels and the death of a 46 year old man who was former Mayor of Toronto who became a laughing stock of the late night talk shows, when it is not so funny now … Because addiction ain’t funny – and l life is short and unfair
Fast cheap and easy not easy – you did not say that
And it is nobody’s fault but my own as I should be applying for a job or preparing for an interview or going to the gym or making my lunch
As I move from inspiration to inspiration
This rant ends now and yet I am sure you can see that when you got me on the phone last year and asked me that silly question – “would you play with me?” that you opened new worlds of language and words that I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams
That my words – mine would be published in a Conference for Global book – yet of course it would have to be about Fear Rising which it does for me daily and yet when I read it I see that it is not what defines me
Fast and cheap she says
As I reach and say mine and
As she tosses me the ball
Run with it, go
Over obstacles, invented
Imagined, through mud
So thick and hills steep with rocks jagged cutting my feet into shards
Shall I run lightly
Or move quietly
Or blindly move forward
Like the Titanic
In these dangerous waters
Fast and cheap you say
As I look at my watch and see
3 hours later
Still not 30 seconds on a 5 minute montage.
09 Saturday Apr 2016
Posted ART, Personal Legend, Poetry
inTags
Claiming to be a poet
I see
Is daunting
When we
Consider
That there are those
Who ply that trade
Who write themselves
Clear
Of noise
Of fog
Who share themselves
Boldly
From mountain
From gutter
I like a child
Emerging
See
That
All around
Are poets that inspire
In words
that delight
The question
shall be
When facing an never ending
Library of poems
Shall I put down my pen
To say
Not me
Or shall I too choose
To honor
Inside
To honor
This voice
As it spills out of me
Onto page after page
To dam it up
Cruel
Like my mother
Constipated
In pain
Knowing that
Only
In allowing
Will growth occur
From seed
To sprout
I rise
From nothing to beauty
From below
To the sky above
Watch me soar
I am the poet
Of my life
I am the writer
Of my soul
06 Saturday Feb 2016
Posted Poetry
in06 Saturday Feb 2016
Posted Inspiration, Poetry
in06 Saturday Feb 2016
When I see this, I think yes,
All the things we can say.
All the actions we take
Matter every single day.
We can stand from this place
We can raise the roof
We can stand in this place
And speak our truth
I am in such awe
When I hear not a song
But words from these three
They’re young, bold and strong
Not just for show
Not just to stand on this stage
Not for glory or praise
Yet to start a fresh page
I encourage you to
take some time today
To not just skip on by
Just listen and pray
Be grateful for those
Who rise use their voice
Knowing that can be you
Of course that’s your choice
31 Saturday Oct 2015
Posted ART, Exploration, Forgiveness, Inspiration, Poetry
inTags
Wanting to understand
Listening to the words
Not knowing
Understanding the pain
Understanding the loss
I just listen to the wind
It moves through me like the breath of God
It moves over me like an artists brush
It runs through my hair
Flows through my soul
And leaves with a whisper
Like she never visited at all
Just beyond….there is love
Alone with my thoughts
It is love that graces me
That moves me
Causing feelings to rise
To emerge wanting to pass through
Getting caught in my throat
Why do I hang on so
Allow to rise
It’s okay
Time
heals
That
which is broken within
October 31, 2015 ( that which flowed through listening to Alcatraz by Hey Rosetta)
11 Friday Sep 2015
Posted ART, Exploration, Inspiration, love, Nature, Poetry
innow…I can hear the waves as they crash rhythmically on the shore
now…a plane flies high overhead
now…the wind gently blows in my face
now… the only light I see is the light from my screen
now…I can taste the salty air
now…darkness envelopes me as the wind dances around my external mirror
now… I am feeling sleepy
now…I am moving my foot up and down
I can feel my breath going in and out
And I can feel God as he slowly makes his expression known through me
Now I am going to stop this
Close my eyes and take it all in
Gordon Martin (Sept 10, 2015)