poetry

What sound does your heart make when you enter a room?
Is it pinched tight like a bud, or ready to bloom?

Is it a singular sound, high pitched and shrill,
that transmits stress against your will?

Is it a layered tapestry of sound,
where an abundance of different notes abound?

Is it buried too deep and low to hear?
Beneath the surface of a hard veneer?

We enter a room to find a match,
A heart to which we may attach.

So pay close attention to your heart’s broadcast,
If the notes feel old, you’ll repeat the past.

The song of your heart will synchronize,
To the beat of another’s,
Don’t compromise.

Pay attention, be diligent, delightful and wise,
Listen to the hearts of others,
You will be surprised.

On any given day I can come up with 3 or 4 topics to write about.
That doesn’t mean that they will ever amount to anything, and they may never see the light of day, but they are light-bulbs over my head, just the same.

Once in a while a piece will start to display iambic pentameter, and the words will fall into rhyme…so obviously THAT one will be a poem.

It never ceases to amaze me that a poem can fall out of little old 21st century me!
Poets in my mind are wild eyed, chain smoking, anti-social, angst ridden, recluses, that live in 17th century Paris or 1950’s Greenwich Village.
I am none of those things.
I’m white bread, Wonder bread really, what prose can Wonder bread write?

When poetry was given as an assignment in school, I would lobby for my parents to pick up our family and move to somewhere where the teachers were kinder, and realized their student’s limitations.
I’m sure I just over intellectualized everything I wrote, because that was my nature.

And as everyone knows, poetry doesn’t originate in your intellect!
As a matter of fact, your brain has no business, poking its nose into it!
Intellect does not compose good poetry. Intellect composes the essay you write to get into MIT, not poetry.
For that, you need to get to the heart, or better yet, the soul.

Age has helped me there. When you turn 50 you get your AARP card AND, if you’ve worked hard, and asked God really nice, a more direct route to your soul.
You won’t have to walk anymore dark alleys, or navigate a river of tears to get there.
You already have my friends, so…you’re welcome! 

The only thing God, or Source, or the Muse requires is that we share any and all
soul derived art or writing or whatever, with the world.
If you get stingy with your soul gift, it can get revoked. I don’t mean immediately, but the Universe runs a tight ship.
If you don’t suck up your courage and show at least one other person the freakin’
Haiku that you woke up and wrote, well…all bets are off!

That’s why I post a poem when I write it, on this blog.
I just close my eyes and push “post”.
It’s not my USUAL style of writing, (as if I have a “style”, ha!)
But what I’m finding out is I can be quite schizophrenic in my writing styles.
There are a bunch of voices,inmates,trying to break out of the asylum to be heard.
So I’ve decided: Who am I to deny them their long overdue freedom?

Have at it, you wild eyed poet part of me!!
Write your crazy, sometimes really poignant poems!
You know I’ll post them, because you, my creative new friend, I would miss you if you left.

A Master is the one who walks through the chaos and knows the answer.
A Master is the only one awake in the dream.
He is the silent sentinel.
He is solid as stone,
and flexible as willow.
He carries the key to every door.

A Master holds the secret, like the ace in a winning hand of cards,
but shows no expression.
A Master yells his message into the raging winds.
A Master stays cool in the heat of battle,
and warm under the iciest gaze.

A Master is the one who shall forevermore be called friend by his enemies.
A Master cries like a child at the death of innocence.
A Master is the one who walks thru fire to show the way.
A Master only sighs at night when the earth is still and it feels like rain.

• I wrote this when I first started writing about a year and a half ago.
  I think it’s worth re-posting.
  Xox Janet

Wherever you are, I am there.
Mistake not, a baby’s cry, as a sign of my absence,
nor the prisoners face, clinging to the bars.
Weep not at the outstretched beggar’s hand,
or the wounded soldier’s sigh.
I am there.

Fear not.
For the evil that you witness,
in nature and in man,
does not convey my abandon.

For as sure as the spring follows the frost of winter,
and the sun chases the darkness of the night,
I am there.

In your most private moments, I sit beside you.
In your grief, on your shoulders I rest my hands.
I touch your head as you kneel in prayer,
as you walk in solitude, your hand I hold.

I am the witness of your life,
and when you take your last breath,
wherever you are,
I am there.