Writer’s Poems of 2017

As promised, I compiled a list of all the writer’s poems I posted in 2017. It totals about 42 poems.

This year, I tried to share with you guys the poems which touched me, and stayed with me. Poems which made my heart tug and my brain work. Poems which reminded me why I fell in love poetry with the first place. The list comprises of authors ranging from the old school poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to 21st century poets such as Carmen Gimenez and Joan Murray. Here’s the list below:

 

1) Thoughtless cruelty by Charles Lamb
2) How frail the heart must be by Sylvia Plath
3) Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
4) Personal by Tony Hoagland
5) Mother To Son by Langston Hughes
6) Mother’s Smile by Michael Burch
7) To March By Emily Dickinson
8) Do not go gentle into that good night By Dylan Thomas
9) Silence by Billy Collins
10) In Flanders fields By John McRae

11) Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar
12) I’m a fool to love you by Cornelius Eady
13) For the young who want to by Marge Piercy 
14) Cartoon Physics, part 1 by Nick Flynn
15) The little white hearse by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
16) In The park by Gwen Harwood )
17) Love Is a Dog from Hell by Charles Bukowski
18) O captain, my captain by Walt Whitman
19) Alone by Maya Angelou
20) Stop all clocks by W. H. Auden

21) Not by Erin Hanson
22) Bleeding Heart BY Carmen Giménez Smith
23) Domestic Situation by Ernest Hilbert
24) To the young who want to die By Gwendolyn Brooks
25) Her Head by Joan Murray
26) Dear Reader by Rita Mae Reese
27) I, too by Langston Hughes
28) The mother by Gwendolyn Brooks
29) The Mothering Blackness by Maya Angelou
30) The Nail by C.K Williams

31) Annals of the closet by Katie Queen
32) I am! by John Clare
33) Middle Age by Pat Schneider
34) I walked a mile with pleasure by Robert Browning Hamilton
35) The art of losing by Elizabeth Bishop
36) Soul unraveled: Rising from the ashes
37) Where my books go by W.B Yeats
38) My November Guest by Robert Frost
39) Mrs. Caldera’s House of Things By Gregory Djanikian
40) Words by Anne Sexton
41) Waving goodbye by Gerald Stern
42) The Ballad of reading gaol by Oscar Wilde.

Thank you to everyone who visited every Wednesday to read, like, comment and share. I really appreciate you giving me the listening ears to hopefully not bore you with my favorite poems. ♥️

Somewhere in Africa

Somewhere in Africa,
A dark skinned child
Lay on clay soil, laughing away
The earth’s worries.
His mother, braiding cornrows
On his sister’s 4C hair,
Discussing the business
Of the neighbour’s daughter,
Who is conveniently
Absent from their midst.

A man, assembles his
Remote tools into a barrow:
Hoe, spade, cutlass.
The ridges are made,
Seeds sown,
He stares at his empty land,
Nothing’s growing.
The sun is out,
The cloud’s at bay,
A prayer escapes from his lips,
Lord, please let there be rain.

They have food for their stomachs
Only for a meal,
A day.

A man steps upon clay soil,
To the sound of a child’s laughter:
Water glistens upon his skin,
His stomach churns;
But two hands are outstretched
Towards him.
He smiles:
Picking up the laughing reason
Why everything is all worth it.

The above image is courtesy of British Ecological Society

Mental Health Friday #3

The effect of stigma on an individual’s acceptance of a diagnosis is something I find extremely important. As I noted in my last mental health Friday post, my first diagnosis came at the age of five.

At first glance, one might find it easy to stand in judgment of a mother that turns away the opinion of an expert. However, in my case, I was most likely one of the first children diagnosed with Early Onset Bipolar Disorder and at that time (1974), the term Manic Depressive was still prevalent. I can only try to imagine what the “label” would mean to my mother at that time. Something to the effect of her daughter being crazy, stupid, and/or dangerous. To look at her daughter, she knew those things were not true, but had she had a realistic view of what the disorder meant, she may not have so hurriedly pushed it aside.

the books I read, and later the internet, gave the worst case scenario as they do with most illnesses

At the age of 23, and receiving the diagnosis as an adult, I made an effort to educate myself. What I found to be the problem in seeing this in myself was that the books I read, and later the internet, gave the worst case scenario as they do with most illnesses. These things were not the case for me and so I turned it away myself, based on my oddly extreme ideas on what the diagnosis meant.

Writer’s Quote: Oscar Wilde

I think most people have heard of Oscar Wilde. Although I am not familiar with a lot of his poems, I have come across his quotes multiple times which I have to admit, are interesting and intriguing.

Following the quote above, I have no idea what the “it” he is referring to is, but I would go out on a limb and say “heartbreak” or any of its synonyms. Nevertheless, I will say this. Most of us have experienced heartbreak, most of us will experience heartbreak. I believe it is important to us to remind ourselves, No one should have the power to turn us into something we are not proud of. We deserve better.

The poem below contains only a few verses from the original poem. I am not exaggerating when I say, the original poem is really long poem. The following lines talk about human nature and I think you would love it. Enjoy.

The Ballad of reading gaol by Oscar Wilde

Yet Each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,

The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!
Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old,

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.

Would you like to see a compilation of all the Writers poems I’ve shared this year? Just a list with all the authors and poem titles. Let me know in the comments and I’d share the list this sunday.

 

Over a cup of coffee-

Ever wondered what it would feel like,
to voice our affect over
A mug of coffee:
You and I and all the others.
To ignore the rule that sadness,
should be dwelt with in silence;
Have a laugh over our pain which
Has a name.

Ever considered the possibility:
That our silence is a fuel which brews
It, and speaking- the water which can
Quell it. If only for a bit:
This pain which has a name.

I don’t know about you, but
My coffee is brewing,
The sun is set to rise,
My mood has no compass yet.
What you say?
Let’s talk about it?
This thing which turns us
Into shadows of our former
Personas…

Flash Fiction: The ingenious idea

We were tasked with writing a 2000 word essay on any topic of our choice relating to history, and I had the perfect topic- Dinosaurs: Myth or reality.

It was a no brainer really. There’s a newly opened dinosaur museum only a few blocks from my home, so I wouldn’t have to walk much or spend transport fare. Plus, rumor has it that the museum guide is a “talker”, and I figured he would be more than willing to offer up information for my paper. It was only a few days to the submission deadline, this had to work.

I slung my backpack and headed for the museum. I got to the main gate, cleared and casually strolled into the museum hall only to find a bunch of youngsters who looked like my classmates.

“You lot are a bunch of lazies!” I yelled into the laughing group. Apparently I wasn’t the only one with the “lazy ingenious” idea after all.

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word count: 157 words. This story is in response to Flash Fiction for aspiring writers photo prompt challenge hosted by Priceless Joy. Thank you for this week’s picture @Yinglan

Mornings-

Wake up.
Feel the warmth of the sun
Reflecting upon your golden skin,
feel it’s love bathing every inch
of your body. Absorb it-
the love the universe
Is pouring onto 
you.

Let it seep
Through the pores of your skin,
Through your bloodstream straight
To your heart, to your brain which
Needs a jog, a reminder that you
Are needed, you are loved,
Your presence on the
earth is a necessity.
Stay…

Mental Health Friday #25

Today’s story was sent in by Ian, touching briefly about his experience in Psych ward and there after,

It’s been a looong time since I was in hospital, the last time. Since then, thanks to government cuts, they’ve closed the psych ward where I had become so regular, I think that I could have earned airmiles from it. That makes me feel weird thinking about that. Places where we were, parts of our lives that no one knows about.

Sometimes I jokingly talk about my time “on ward” in small, self-deprecating anecdotes.
‘I didn’t get to take a phone inside, in my day’ or ‘If I had said that on the ward, they would drug me up’.

No one gets the humour.

There are still some songs that I cannot listen to, even after all of these years. Not that I don’t love them – but because they come balled up with feelings that I know I might not be able to slow down once they start rolling.

Psychosis, Manic Depression, Major Depression, Borderline, Morbid Ideation – these are terms that sometimes crop up on the radio, and every time they talk about them, it makes me want to groan. The people they talk about are either axe-murderers of somehow brilliantly gifted celebrities. I am neither.

Madness did not give me special insights into the world, it did not make me violent, and it did not make me quirky-and-brilliant(TM). It just made me broken, and stuck.

I still take medication, sometimes – although none of it ever seems to work. I take it as a precaution rather than a cure. God don’t let me become like that again, I pray.

And after it all, after my twenties thrown away – literally in the loony bin – where am I now? Am I better? Healed? I’m still stumbling and wondering what happened.

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If you’d love to contribute and share your story on Mental health Friday, I’ld love to have you. Let’s join hands to talk about Mental illness and blur out the stigma associated with it. You can contact me on My email address: mykahani@yahoo.com

Beneath the surface-

Some scars are tapered to our skins as a reminder, of the battles we’ve conquered and a reminder of a future we do not want to recreate.

Some scars hide in the depth of our memories. Sitting, bidding their time and awaiting that one little thing called a trigger, which would birth them into existence again.

And then there are those scars, ambling between our frontal cortex and amygdala. Always there in our thoughts, present. Awakening a daily battle of conquest and defeat (of which victory is not a daily occurrence).

Some scars are revealed, many are hidden, but everyone inevitably houses one.

And if we look beneath the surface, we’ll find that most people are just as scarred as (if not more scarred than) we are….
—-Be Kind

Writer’s Quote: waving goodbye

Welcome to another writer’s quote/poem Wednesday where I share some of my favourite quotes and poems. Today’s choice is a poem by Gerald Stern and I hope you like it.

Waving goodbye by Gerald Stern
I wanted to know what it was like before we
had voices and before we had bare fingers and before we
had minds to move us through our actions
and tears to help us over our feelings,
so I drove my daughter through the snow to meet her friend
and filled her car with suitcases and hugged her
as an animal would, pressing my forehead against her,
walking in circles, moaning, touching her cheek,
and turned my head after them as an animal would,
watching helplessly as they drove over the ruts,
her smiling face and her small hand just visible
over the giant pillows and coat hangers
as they made their turn into the empty highway.