Writer’s Poem: Loneliness

Have you ever wished you could leave your loneliness behind and it would never catch up to you? I do understand, sometimes, it is one of those experiences which is part and parcel of life. But at times, loneliness stays for a longer time than it is wanted.

Loneliness is not spending the day all alone in your room. It creeps up on us and wraps it cold arms around us, regardless, if we are alone or in a crowd. No wonder, we sometimes wish we could leave it behind. Today’s poem by the phenomenal writer, Naomi Shihab Nye, touches on this same topic in a few lines. I hope you enjoy it.

The Rider by Naomi Shihab Nye
A boy told me
if he roller-skated fast enough
his loneliness couldn’t catch up to him,

the best reason I ever heard
for trying to be a champion.

What I wonder tonight
pedaling hard down King William Street
is if it translates to bicycles.

A victory! To leave your loneliness
panting behind you on some street corner
while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas,
pink petals that have never felt loneliness,
no matter how slowly they fell.

Writer’s Poem: The way it sometimes is

Have you ever seen a face in a crowd which reminds you of someone. Someone, a phantom whom you can’t put a name to but yet, you strongly believe you must have seen someone who looks like that before.

Today’s poem for Writer’s poem Wednesday tackles the same issue. It really is an interesting read (if I do say so myself). I first came across it being recited on Poetry Out Loud, and well, the reciter won the nationwide contest for that year. Hope you enjoy the poem.

The Way It Sometimes is by HENRY TAYLOR
At times it is like watching a face you have just met,
trying to decide who it reminds you of—
no one, surely, whom you ever hated or loved,
but yes, somebody, somebody. You watch the face

as it turns and nods, showing you, at certain angles,
a curve of the lips or a lift of the eyebrow
that is exactly right, and still the lost face
eludes you. Now this face is talking, and you hear

a sound in the voice, the accent on certain words—
yes! a phrase . . . you barely recall sitting outside,
by a pool or a campfire, remarking
a peculiar, recurring expression. Two syllables,

wasn’t it? Doorknob? Bathroom? Shawcross? What the hell
kind of word is shawcross? A name; not the right one.
A couple of syllables that could possibly be
a little like something you may once have heard.

So the talk drifts, and you drift, sneaking glances,
pounding your brain. Days later a face occurs to you,
and yes, there is a resemblance. That odd word, though,
or phrase, is gone. It must have been somebody else.

Yes, it’s like that, at times; something is, maybe;
and there are days when you can almost say what it is.

Writer’s Poem Wednesday: Be Kind!

Welcome to another Writer’s Poem Wednesday! This blog is still here because of every single one of you who reads it.

Last year, we got over 30,000 views and over 17,000 visitors! Thank you so much. I have been a lazy writer and recently and Unfortunately, it may last till the end of January. I do apologise for it, the muse is there, the words are in my head, but for some reason, I just dont want to sit and write or read. Has anyone gone through it too? 

Today’s poem is by a poet, whose writing reminds me of Nikki Giovanni. The poem talks about dealing with our fellow human beings with “kindness” in a subtle manner. She reflects, how wonderful this world would be if everyone treated the other as a father treats his child- with sensitivity. She is Naomi shihab Nye and  I hope you enjoy the poem 

Shoulders by Naomi Shihab Nye
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world’s most sensitive cargo
but he’s not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy’s dream
deep inside him.

We’re not going to be able
to live in this world
if we’re not willing to do what he’s doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling.

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. ♥️

Writer’s Quote: Robert Frost

How time flies. I remember posting the first writer’s quote/poem of 2017, Thoughtless cruelty by Charles Lamb, and now, we are heading into the last month of 2017. Only four more weeks left and whoops, we’ll be writing “2018” on our date stamps.

This week, I chose a poem by one of many’s favourite poet- Robert Frost, and I believe, the poem befits this time of the year.

My November Guest by Robert Frost
My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,
Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
She walked the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted gray
Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
And they are better for her praise.

When I read this poem, I understood “the guest” he referred to in the poem as a personification of the emotion he felt. But today, I came across an analysis which opened my eyes to another perspective. Here, the November guest was viewed as not just the personification of an inanimate thing, but as “a person herself”, which actually makes total sense.

It’s true, the saying- “we see what we look for and hear what we listen for”. There are many poems which give their sadness and sorrow, human characteristics; that was what I searched for in this poem and that was what I found. But I do agree now with the second analysis, “the November guest” might be a person.

Robert Frost is one with many famous poems. Which of his other poems come to mind?

Writer’s Quote: W.B Yeats

Have you read a poem which makes you smile. Simple and straightforward, devoid of complexities or dramatic punches. Well, you are about to.

For this week’s writer’s Quote/Poem Wednesday,  I chose to share a poem by William Butler Yeats, which is different from his usual poetic style. And being the great poet that he is, W.B Yeats nailed this short melodious poem.

I hope you enjoy it

Where my books go by W.B Yeats
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight,
Till they come where your sad, sad heart is,
And sing to you in the night,
Beyond where the waters are moving,
Storm-darken’d or starry bright.

This (I know)-

I may not know,
The first poem Shakespeare wrote,
Or the last of Sexton,
Before she passed away;
But I do know being,
Gripped by reading,
Wanting to Die;
And learning the news,
Of Anne Sexton’s death,
Didn’t come as a surprise.

I may not know,
The exact number Dickinson penned,
Or the meters she uses in writing,
But I do remember reading,
“I am nobody”,
And I thought to myself,
She must be writing about me,
For the words she conveyed,
Hit all the right nerves.

I may not know styles,
Or decipher much metaphors,
But I do know,
To decipher,
The beatings of my heart;
The rhythm of my soul,
Which says- more poetry.
And this- I do know,
When the pen is in my hand,
It feels like home.

Facebook page: Words of a random

Writer’s Quote: Walt Whitman

Another Wednesday is upon us, and for this week’s edition of writer’s Quote/ Poem Wednesday, I’ll be sharing a very famous poem, one which I know a lot of you would be familiar with. 3 tips- it’s an elegy for a past American president, it was featured in a movie and the author is a male.

Time’s up, high five if you guessed it right. This week’s poem is “O captain, my captain by Walt Whitman”. It was an elegy (a mourning poem) written by Walt Whitman after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and its also been featured in the movie- dead poets society.

O captain, my captain by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Writer’s Quote: Charles Bukowski

Oh the days I’ve felt the same way as Charles Bukowski described in his quote, and sometimes, climbing out of bed is the easy part. Knowing a deadline is looming close with zero inspiration to write has a way of dampening even a good day. But then, how many times have we said we couldn’t and we did.

Charles Bukowski was a poet and writer. He wrote short stories, columns for magazines and poetry. According to Wikipedia, he wrote thousands of poetry during his lifetime, many of which were still being published after he passed away on March 9, 1994. He is one of those writers who “say things as they are”. From reading his works, you get this raw honesty and the picture that, this is one man who does not sugar coat his words.

The above quote is in honor of those days when we feel like the ground should hole up, swallow our horrible drafts and replace them with masterpieces; its for the mornings of deadlines when we race to defeat the clock; its for Moments in time when we thought we couldn’t and we did triumphantly.

Below is one of the first poems of Charles Bukowski I came across:

The flesh covers the bone
And they put a mind
In there and
Sometimes a soul,
And the women break
Vases against walls
And the men drink too
Much
And nobody finds the
One
But they keep
Looking
Crawling in and out
Of beds.
Flesh covers
The bone and the
Flesh searches
For more than
Flesh.

There’s no chance
At all;
We are all trapped
By a singular
Fate.

Nobody ever finds
The one.

The city dumps fill
The junkyards fill
The madhouses fill
The hospitals fill
The graveyards fill

Nothing else
Fills.
-Alone With Everybody (C. Bukowski)

This post is in response to Writer’s Quote Wednesday hosted by SilverThreading where we share “writer’s quotes” which inspire us. If you’d love to participate and share your quote, just click on the highlighted link above.

Writer’s Quote: Langston Hughes

February 1st marks the beginning of a month, we the singles like to overlook because of a certain event happening on the 14th. But, it is also the day poet and social activist Langston Hughes was born. If you are looking for a poem with sass, rhyme, humor and meaning all bound together, then Langston’s poem is the go to. He is one of those authors whose poems I could binge on. Langston Hughes wrote about slavery and racism at a time when it was prevalent in the society and speaking up against them was risky, yet he dared. Just like the quote above, he used his gift of writing to urge the world towards change.

On May 22, 1967, Hughes died in New York City from complications after abdominal surgery related to prostrate cancer, at the age of 65 (acc to Wikipedia). Below, is another piece of his.

“The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people

Beautiful, also, is the sun.
Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.”
             -“My People” in The Crisis (October 1923)

The above post is in response to writer’s quote Wednesday hosted by Silver Threading