Tag Archives: blackout poem

September 16, 2019

Monday with the Muse

By Kat Myrman

quiet

i know quiet

i know quiet
no wind
breathing lightly
twilight to tranquility
the slow languorous
hum of silk on sand
the tremor
the tremble
of words that hide

~kat

A Blackout Poem inspired by the poem below:

I Know It Will Be Quiet When You Come
Joseph Auslander – 1897 – 1965

I know it will be quiet when you come:
No wind; the water breathing steadily;
A light like ghost of silver on the sea;
And the surf dreamily fingering his drum.
Twilight will drift in large and leave me numb
With nearness to the last tranquility;
And then the slow and languorous tyranny
Of orange moon, pale night, and cricket hum.

And suddenly there will be twist of tide,
A rustling as of thin silk on the sand,
The tremor of a presence at my side,
The tremble of a hand upon my hand:
And pulses sharp with pain, and fires fanned,
And words that stumble into stars and hide.

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

August 19, 2019

Monday with the Muse

By Kat Myrman
bend in the road

photo courtesy of shrutikhanna at Pixabay.com

the bend in the road

at the bend where
the roadside devours
the dust of summer
we carry with us days
to hold in our hands;
to live as if death
were impossible

~kat

A Blackout poem inspired by today’s poem of the day at PoetryFoundation.org by Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms”.

From Blossoms
BY LI-YOUNG LEE

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we  devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee, “From Blossoms” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., http://www.boaeditions.org. Source: Rose (BOA Editions Ltd., 1986)

12 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Blackout Poetry, Challenges and Writing Prompts, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

July 22, 2019

Monday with the Muse

By Kat Myrman

turning

turning and turning,
things fall apart,
anarchy is loosed
upon the tide,
and everywhere
innocence
full of passion,
is coming with
a gaze blank and
pitiless, its slow
shadow vexed by
a beast, its hour
come, at last

~kat

A Blackout Poem inspired by the poem, The Second Coming with Yeats as seen below.

The Second Coming
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Blackout Poetry, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

June 24, 2019

unbearable – Monday with the Muse

By Kat Myrman

neon

unbearable

looking at the unbearable
i imagine a neon sign
i feel the weight
of air, the presence
of light under
my skin
like gold
beneath
black…

~kat

A blackout poem inspired by the poem, “At the Beach” by Elizabeth Alexander below:

At the Beach
BY ELIZABETH ALEXANDER

Looking at the photograph is somehow not
unbearable: My friends, two dead, one low
on T-cells, his white T-shirt an X-ray
screen for the virus, which I imagine
as a single, swimming paisley, a sardine
with serrated fins and a neon spine.

I’m on a train, thinking about my friends
and watching two women talk in sign language.
I feel the energy and heft their talk
generates, the weight of their words in the air
the same heft as your presence in this picture,
boys, the volume of late summer air at the beach.

Did you tea-dance that day? Write poems
in the sunlight? Vamp with strangers? There is
sun under your skin like the gold Sula
found beneath Ajax’s black. I calibrate
the weight of your beautiful bones, the weight
of your elbow, Melvin,
on Darrell’s brown shoulder.

“At the Beach” by Elizabeth Alexander. From Body of Life, published by Tia Chucha Press. Copyright 1996 Elizabeth Alexander. Used by permission of the author.
Source: Body of Life (Tia Chucha, 1996)

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Blackout Poetry, Challenges and Writing Prompts, Digital Art & Photos, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

June 10, 2019

Whispering from the Muse

By Kat Myrman

left wanting

left wanting…

for the flowers,
just being was
enough…to be sweet,
to be part of the clay,
and before clay,
being earth, and
before earth, nothing

but then
the flowers
wished very hard
to grow wings
and for
something
to sing

~kat

 

A Blackout Poem inspired by the poem below:

The Origin of Birds
By Nicole Callihan

For hours, the flowers were enough.
Before the flowers, Adam had been enough.
Before Adam, just being a rib was enough.
Just being inside Adam’s body, near his heart, enough.
Enough to be so near his heart, enough
to feel that sweet steady rhythm, enough
to be a part of something bigger was enough.
And before the rib, being clay was enough.
And before clay, just being earth was enough.
And before earth, being nothing was enough.
But then enough was no longer enough.
The flowers bowed their heads, as if to say, enough,
and so Eve, surrounded by peonies, and alone enough,
wished very hard for something, and the wish was enough
to make the pinecone grow wings; the wish was enough
to point to the sky, say bird, and wait for something to sing.

6 Comments   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Blackout Poetry, Challenges and Writing Prompts, Digital Art & Photos, Poetry, Random Thoughts and Musings

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