Category Archives: Spirituality

May 1, 2016

Shi Sai Sunday – A Look Back in Re-Verse – 1 May 2016

By Kat Myrman

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Happy May! It is Sunday time to look back as I do each week in a Shi Sai poem (a new form I coined yesterday that explains the odd collection of lines you see below…each one a favorite taken from this past week’s previous poems). I’m liking the new look of my Sunday post title. 🙂

It has been a busy week, complicated by a few days of being down, thanks to the generosity of my coworkers who love to share and who insist on coming to work when they are sick! That is certainly not me. When I am sick I like to crawl under my covers in a darkened room and sleep until whatever it is that I have has passed.

At any rate, I am relieved and quite excited to have completed my daily poem and new poetry form challenge to myself for the month of April. (I had no idea that it was a thing when I decided to give it a go…so I didn’t link to any similar challenges.I wasn’t being antisocial…just oblivious.)

I like today’s Shi Sai (Re-Verse). The week was indeed quite magical. There were several new poetry forms to learn, close-ups photos of flowers, celebrating the freedom flight of my garden faerie, and a successful google search for the mystery writer who first penned the word of the day on Friday. Not to mention, on a side note in cubicle world, I cracked the equation codes for an elaborate spreadsheet my boss asked me to develop…Haha! Bet you didn’t think this right-brained dreamer had it in her did you? That said, my first love will always be words. My relationship with numbers is, let us say….complicated!

And as the week came to a close…a rant. It was good to get the words and feelings out of my head so they wouldn’t fester there and cause me to do or say something I might regret…but I am generally a positive person. I try to live my life simply, respecting and having compassion for others. Life is too short for ugly. So the line for the poem below could only be the one I chose. Grace is new every morning after all. And I still hope.

Simple pseudo-handles work just fine.
waxing poetic perfection in words
graced in amaranthine blush
There once was a faerie held captive in clay,
if I were a faerie…it might look something like this!
as you looked away, blushing
when she was young and flowers bloomed… 
Sleep on waves of red velvet
birdsong, wind-tossed forest whispers…
turn to ash aching for warmth
souls revealed line by beautiful line
The truth is just a breath away.

~kat 1 May 2016

9 Comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in Digital Art & Photos, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Shi Sai, Spirituality, Week in Review

April 30, 2016

Faithless

By Kat Myrman

Social media is a wonderful way to connect with family and friends. But it’s also a place where it’s easy to throw out topics you wouldn’t dare bring up at Thankgiving dinner or in mixed company…not as in male-female, but in the political polar opposites so many of us find ourselves. Differing views, honest debate and discussion, are enlightening…But the climate of nastiness is too much.

I’ve gotten good at biting my tongue (it’s a wonder I still have a tongue!) but I find sometimes I just need to get the junk out of my head. So…I write. Tonight’s poem is one of those rants. My heart grieves over what we are becoming.

Woe to all the frenzied faithless
Wide-eyed, gulping baseless lies
Called to act in fear and hatred
Marching to faux battle cries.

Woe to all the masses blinded
Trusting in only what they’re fed
By charlatans, as they’re reminded
All Hope is gone, their God is dead.

Woe to all the haughty righteous
Building walls to hide their children
Claiming charity, their soulless
Lives beholden to greedy men.

Woe to hippocrates and fools
Who seek their heaven here on earth
Excluding outcasts, changing rules
Ensuring that their rights come first.

Woe to the people who’ve lost their way
Who’ve fallen to idolatry
The truth is just a breath away
For ears to hear and eyes to see.

kat ~ 30 April 2016

13 Comments   |  tags: | posted in Challenges and Writing Prompts, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Social Issues, Spirituality

April 22, 2016

Echoes of my Neighborhood

By Kat Myrman

This odd little place is in my neighborhood just a few blocks from my house.. I wrote about the St. Therese statue earlier this week Here are a few more  photos…

  

    
    
    
    
    
    
   
This photo montage is in response to Jacqueline’s (a cooking pot and twisted tales) call for echoes of our neighborhoods.  

7 Comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Essays, Random Thoughts and Musings, Spirituality

April 19, 2016

April Poetry Month – A Poem a Day #20

By Kat Myrman

I have a busy day tomorrow so I’m posting poetry month, day 20 a day early. The Minute Poem is a rhyming verse form consisting of 12 lines of 60 syllables written in strict iambic meter. The poem is formatted into 3 stanzas of 8,4,4,4; 8,4,4,4; 8,4,4,4 syllables. The rhyme scheme is as follows: aabb, ccdd, eeff.

While on my way to work this morning a strange storefront caught my eye, in particular the statue in the window. I knew I needed to stop by on my way home to explore it a bit more.

It is a strange, verging on creepy, little place. A small sign on a side window says it’s a Catholic museum. The statues and relics contained within share the space with lawn chairs, debris and dust.

I couldn’t help feeling a bit nostalgic, remembering the unfailing devotion of my grandmother who attended Novena Masses every morning and taught me to believe in the mystical and miraculous.

Odd as it all was, I felt blessed by those memories of my childhood and embraced in grace.

Even there behind a pane of glass, surrounded by piles of junk and buried under layers of dust…even there, miracles are possible.

Here then is my Minute Poem…

NOTE: I had mistaken the identity of this lovely “lady”. She is, in fact Saint Therese of Lisieux. So…to be accurate, I have tweaked the poem. It doesn’t change the meter or the mystical quality. A rose by another name is still sweet. ❤

  

Storefront Saint 

Hail fair Lady full of woe
no votive’s glow
to warm your feet
here on Fifth Street.

As weary travelers pass by
none catch your eye
lacking vision
for apparitions.

Strange Storefront Saint Therese, you wait
bestowing grace
upon the few
who notice you.

~kat – 20 April 2016

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Digital Art & Photos, Essays, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Spirituality

April 10, 2016

April Poetry Month-A Word a Day #10

By Kat Myrman

Happy Sunday and Happy 10th day of Poetry Month. Today’s poetry form is a perfect blend of left and right brain…the poem itself, a blend of elements, seasons, earth and sky. It is the perfect poetic storm…at least in my own mind! And you will recognize an old friend, my fairy tree lady.

Because she was so near an oak tree when I first noticed her, I assumed that she was an oak sapling. But this spring I discovered she is, in fact, a dogwood tree!

Serendipitous! Don’t you think? What better form could there be, but the Fibonacci…expanding cyclically into infinity! The whole idea of it makes me smile!

A Fibonacci Poem is a 6-line poem that follows the Fibonacci sequence for syllable count per line. It is expandable if you are mathematically inclined…alas, I am not. So I will stick to the basic form. But for those who want to give the expanded version a try, I’ve included the equation sequence to give you a start! The standard version syllable sequence is 1-1-2-3-5-8. The expanded version is calculated as such:
0+1=1
1+1=2
1+2=3
2+3=5
3+5=8
5+8=13
8+13=21
13+21=34
and so on and so forth…to infinity and beyond

Here then is my take:

 

Photo Credit: Kat Myrman 2016


The Dogwood Lady

She
whose
bare limbs
weathered winter,
now adorns herself in
a flowing gown of dogwood blooms.

kat ~ 10 April 2016

7 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Digital Art & Photos, Essays, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings, Spirituality