The video was uploaded to YouTube by tomasisms and is the work of Andrea Dorfman. The poem was written by Tanya Davis, poet, writer, musician. Thank you to Michael Yost (Michael’s Lair) for sharing this one with us.
Category: poem
Encounter with Te-Shan
cold winter winds
carry the voice of Te-Shan
intruding on my solitude
free yourself, he says ~
while working, work
while resting, rest
….buji*
the birch outside my window
waves her leaves in the wind
celebrating her emptiness,
free of all anxiety
*buji ~ free of anxiety (no mind in work, no work in mind; that is, not self-conscious)
Te-Shan was an eighth century Chinese Chen (Zen) Buddhist teacher and scholar of the Diamond Cutter Sutra (aphorism), known as Case #4 of the Pi-yen-lu koans (riddles). Case #4 is “Te-Shan carrying his bundle.” As the story goes, the Master Te-Shan left his monastery in the north of China and headed south to challenge some teaching that he deemed incorrect. He was dedicated in both his scholarship and his tradition. On his journey, he carried with him his treasured bundle, the Commentaries on the Diamond Cutter Sutra.
Along the way he met a merchant selling rice cakes by the side of the road. She was an old woman and we all know how dangerous old women can be. The old woman asked him what scriptures he carried that were so precious to him. When he told her the Diamond Cutter Sutra, she asked, “Doesn’t the sutra say ‘past mind cannot be held, present mind cannot be held, future mind cannot be held? Which mind is it that the Master would wish to revive?” The old woman’s pointed questioning left Te-Shan speechless.
Shamed and defeated by this uneducated old woman with her street wisdom, Te-Shan returned to his monastery. It is said that he was unable to resume his teaching and spent the next days immersed in meditation. He soon achieved enlightenment and, as a result, burned all his writing and books saying:
“To plumb the greatest depth of knowledge would be no more than a piece of hair lost in the vastness of the great Void. However important your experience of worldly things, it is nothing – it is even less than a single drop of water cast into the Void.”
The Diamond Sutra or the Vajra Cutter Perfection Wisdom Sutra emphasizes the Mahāyāna Buddhist practices of non-attachment and non-abiding.
© 2012, poem and story adaption, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Illustration ~ the frontispiece piece of the Diamond Sutra “the oldest known printed book in the world” via Wikipedia and in the public domain
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.” I am the poetry liaison and a member of the Core Team. Terri Stewart (Beguine Again) is in the lead position and the Beguine Again collabrative and The Bardo Group are coordinating a consolidation of the two groups.
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
Rules of the Game
The rules of the game
are set in stone.
You can read them
written on each slab
out there on the field.
The great game is summed up
in four numbers on one side,
and four on the other,
of a grooved hyphen.
Funny how those hyphens,
from end to end,
are the width of an N or M,
but a life may be wider
than a thousand thousand alphabets
or as narrow as an I.
You think of these things,
the unwritten,
the randomly ordered
string of letters,
of words, of stories,
of a life lived in
what seems like a hyphen,
a momentary there to here,
then to now,
once to once,
when you sit by a deathbed,
in front of a casket, or
at a graveside.
That’s where they post
the rules for all to see
and no one’s ever broken.
– Joseph Hesch
© 2014, All rights reserved
JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.
The Real Mrs. Beeton
Originally published by Second Light Live in ARTEMISpoetry and shared here with the permission of both publisher and poet.
Heaving her enormous bulk onto a bookshelf high
above my bed, then pushing until she was out of sight
took all my strength and it didn’t dislodge her from my mind.
But I rebelled against the weight of her disapproval,
shut myself away every morning in that small room
of my own, the room which is me, to let imagination
run wild as brambles and grasses in an untended garden,
coaxed visions into scribblings on paper until desk
and floor were littered, until unblinking as owl eyes,
words stared from my screen. Of course, the moment
I emerged I came face to face with her large a life
on the landing. For years this matron, large-bosomed
and with a voluminous knowledge gathered from decades
of managing a household, followed me around tutting
because I hadn’t blanched or basted, couldn’t pluck a duck.
She snorted at unruly children sliding down the stairs,
at dust rollicking along skirting boards, rounded on me
for failing to keep a properly stocked linen cupboard.
Then the day I found out this paragon was Isabella Beeton,
a young woman who instead of devoting her life to home
and family like other Victorian wives, travelled by train
with her publisher husband to his London office, wrote
books fat with information, mostly magpied from other books,
about household management, became a money-spinner,
an authority for later generations. I also learnt she’d suffered
several miscarriages, bore two children who died in infancy,
two who survived, died herself after the second –
thanks to Mr Beeton’s syphilis. Yet for years books
in her name continued to appear. The matron’s ghost
still persists in my mind but what troubles me is Isabella.
For all the thousands of pages this woman produced
in her short life, the real Mrs Beeton didn’t leave
a single word about what she thought, felt, endured.
.
– Myra Schneider
© 2014, poem and poet’s portrait (below), Myra Schneider, All rights reserved, posted here with Myra’s permission; Mrs. Beeton’s photograph is in the public domain.
.
MYRA SCHNEIDER (Myra Schneider’s Poetry Website) ~ Myra’s long poems have been featured in Long Poem Magazine and Domestic Cherry. She co-edited with Dilys Wood, Parents, an anthology of poems by 114 women about their own parents. Myra started out writing fiction for children and teens. We first discovered Myra through her much-loved poem about an experience with cancer, The Red Dress, which she generously shared with readers here in our Perspectives on Cancer series in 2011.
Currently Myra lives in North London, but she grew up in Scotland and in other parts of England. She lives with her husband and they have one son. Myra tutors through Poetry School, London. Her schedule of poetry readings is HERE. A video of Myra’s interview at Poetry East in London is HERE. The sound leaves something to be desired, so ear-buds or earphones are helpful. Other videos are of poems: The Red Dress and Goulash. Myra’s Amazon UK page is HERE and US is HERE.
Myra’s eleventh poetry collection, The Door to Color, will launch this September by Enitharmon Press, UK at their gallery in London.
once upon a time we were
the things that were never said
still hibernate like some embryos
inside my voice.
the sounds that i never heard
are already perverted with ether
by the time they reach my hearing,
but everything can wait.
nine zero one.
the world doesn’t yet ask me to be alive,
the world doesn’t yet need my eyes searching,
raking through layers of light for the purpose of movement,
the world can still postpone the infusion of quotidian
which i can have,
acid,
next to the coffee cup.
the world is still far away,
at about the moment when it chose to be held in arms of sand,
not knowing other ways to protect its smallness –
and my words struggle between silence and burning,
hiding me yet from light,
protecting me yet from sand.
but too many things strive to enter my eyes all at once,
too many wasted lives flow their unlivingness
just a brick away,
and the wooden pillars of citadels feel their capillaries rotting.
“once upon a time we were”
but what if we weren’t?
what if the “once” is truer than what the story says?
once i believed that each of us
lives only in someone else’s dream,
and when that someone wakes up, we die,
and our life is suddenly cut by the blink of the eye of a random person –
and i wonder,
how many lives have i ended myself by waking up in the morning?
and how would it be to spend all our lives
searching for the one dreaming of us,
and then, in our last moments, to beg that one
to not wake up?
and why wouldn’t he wake up?
what dream so beautiful would we offer to him
so that he would sleep some more?
nine zero two.
the clock screams green at me
while at the tip of my foot the tango born in the evening
pulsates residually,
just like the dirty pearly taste of shadows
walked upon on the asphalt of a random street.
in tones of crème brulée
morning invades my senses, ignoring them,
and i open my eyes and end some more lives.
– Liliana Negoi
© 2014, All rights reserved
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romanian curcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows, Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. She is also the author of a novel, Solo-Chess, available for free reading HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
You who lights candles . . . Salam to you . . .
Bitter is this dawn that no longer comes
With the prayer of doves on rooftops
And your face
This treacherous sky above your head
The colour of lead and flame
These forests of stars smothered
In the blinding smoke
These banners ripping the air around you
Woven of cries
These fields of ruins and debris
Where you stand shivering
In the nudity of daylight
You, a lonely prophet in this besieged space
Who listens to the laments of stones
And writes his testament
With tears and blood
You, who lights candles
For the passing caravans of martyrs
And falls asleep with the night
Salam to you
. . . this poem . . . in my mind i wrote it for a friend in Gaza . . . i haven’t heard from him in weeks now . . .
– Imen Benyoub
© 2014, poem, All rights reserved; photograph courtesy of morgueFile
IMEN BENYOUB ~ is a multilingual, multi-talented writer, poet, and artist from Guelma, Algeria. Imen currently lives in East Jerusalem. She is a frequent guest here on The Bardo Group blog and with On the Plum Tree and Plum Tree Books Facebook page as well.
~
ALICE WALKER (b. 1944), American activist and Pulitzer Prize winning author:
Not with a bang … but with a whimper.
Peace: It’s a decision.
Summer Dreams
Seasons for all themselves don’t mean
What they once did. I’ve not grown
Out of them, rather more into and a part
Of them with a deepening I’ve not had.
Not to be dramatic, only matter of fact.
A time when each season meant differences
In things needing to be done is done for me.
Those needings now need to be hired out
To those whose labor is not tenuous
But filled with stamina and a resilience
More nimble than my unsteady willingness
To mount a ladder and repair a rotted soffit.
I am not enfeebled by a long way yet. It’s just
My work’s more now a tooled thought inside.
I.
Autumn is my season of perfect cadences.
In it the heart and mind are at peace.
The slender line of equinox orchestrates
In harmony circumspect participation
Of the four elements that make us part of
An earth fully aware the year is growing late.
Each day a ballet full of import in the air.
Walking, my feet in step with my breathing.
The feel of the first chill-quicken’d bite
In my lungs, holds my concentration close
To what matters. – The wideness of the sky,
The attitudes of clouds, the ‘V’ of flocks flowing
Rather than just in flight, how trees enflamed
Allow a lone evergreen among them to be seen,
The moment, at sunset, when the countryside
Gives the day over to night in sighs
And all the secret names of things are revealed
Then quickly forgotten by the feel of a world
About to relax and make itself ready.
II.
Winter has become a year all its own.
It tastes on my tongue of a cello
Playing cascades of suites by Bach,
Continuing one after another without stop,
Each deep lowing expresses the joy
Of a universe still expanding in awe.
Yet, still I’m rooted firm to earth’s orbit,
Knowing it would be simple to only let go
And suddenly traveling at light’s speed,
Leave all fears behind, bound by gravity.
I think it’s what it must have been like
To be Einstein embraced in his reveries,
Questioning the knowns and doubts,
Accepting the unknown and finally,
Having no doubt about coming back,
Slipped the thin atmosphere surrounding
The world delicately drifting in space.
III.
Spring’s a flowery mutation all primed up;
A glandular mix of the sacred, the profane
And the pagan; Mardi gras madness—beads
Thrown out to bearing breasts with drunken ease;
Carnival gluttony stumbling into Lenten ash, and
Sacrifice. Ending lined up for the confessional
Ritual of Good Friday, still hungry yet, for more.
Yes, the rest’s more like a note left by winter,
The ground saturated with meltdown, into mud;
For me a season of cynics and sarcastic smiling.
When I was young in the sixties and it was all
For politics and sex, love bruising imaginations
Cut to the heart with the hot knife of living,
All caught up in the under currents of renewal
Expecting the world would change by our love.
Though, too, to be honest, my appreciation of
This season, is how it binds the rest with promise.
Always, some part of its fertile dance is woven
Into the cloth of days unfolding of what’s to be;
Always, with the thread of hopes to come.
IV.
Summer’s world is seen from the pitcher’s mound
Long before the crowd arrives. Slightly raised,
Closer to Home than any base, surrounded
By the green grass and raked red clay of possibility.
It is warm roundness and all light rolled out
Into lengths of days. An awakening of all there is;
Opens with clear fields of vision, mowed wind gusts
And dark thunder. A dry in your throat that is not
Thirst, but unquenchable anticipation.
Summer is body time – inside, outside, under
The fingernails dirty. It is Walt Whitman singing
America, while imagining the sweating bodies
Of young men, watching them swim naked,
Diving off a Brooklyn pier. It is a season
Demanding no quarter and giving none back
Except the secrets of Pleasure’s alchemy
Turning spun gold into the smell of memories.
It is a world of short close nights tipping
On a horizon’s infinity, gentle and tender. Full
Of all one can take from this earth if one chose
To leave it– more than, much more than that.
It is the season we first learn how dreams
Become the things they are, books opening,
Revealing every page at once; all the things
We can do and cannot do and can do them anyway.
Above all other importants. Above all else,
Summer dreams it is summer; it dreams itself.
What it is about, with a great consciousness
—All of its sinews, bones, muscles and blood in focus,
To see the object of all its exertions at night’s end
And the next day’s beginning; deep breaths filling
The heart, mind and soul with a pure, deep sleep;
The un-desperate, quiet sleep of summer dreams.
– Mr. K.A. Brace
Excerpt from: To Travel Without a Map: Poems; Mr. K. A. Brace, 9781493643004: Amazon.com: Books
© 2014, poem, portrait (below) and bookcover art, K.A. Brace, All rights reserved; flower photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
K.A. BRACE (The Mirror Obscura) ~ With this work we introduce a new guest poet. K.B. (as he is popularly know among bloggers) is 61, lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his three dogs and four cats. He is a graduate of The State University of New York at Buffalo where he received both a Bachelor and Masters of Arts degree in English. While at the University he worked with Mac Hammond and Irving Feldman and was winner of The Arthur Axlerod Award for Poetry. After graduating he entered the hospitality industry and did not write for the next 35 years during which time he never considered himself not a poet stating that “a poet is one who has written a poem and may never write another.” Coinciding with his turning 60 he suddenly began writing again and is in the midst of finishing his eighth collection of poetry. He works assiduously for at least 10-12 hours 7 days a week at his writing. To Travel Without a Map is his first publication of a book length collection. His style is eclectic and his interest in modern myths and the tiny filaments of our humanity that connects us to one another are the centerpieces of his work. His poems are always surprising both in their crafting and their messages. He considers himself a ‘readers’ poet.
To Travel Without a Map: Poems; Mr. K. A. Brace, 9781493643004: Amazon.com: Books
all aboard the jasmine train
metallic trails carry along them
the afterlife scent
of knowledge and will
no need to pull the emergency brake –
we’re all just
a splendid soup of souls
from which sometimes drops
creep within the spoon of god
and he feeds the earth with us
sanctity overdue –
once in a while
(or more than once in a while)
expired souls
find their way by accident
on the shelves of reality,
and we blame god because
we forgot to read the labels
and we hurt…
but in the end
the thorns on which we prick our fingers
could be nothing else but
the pins and needles from god’s palm…
© 2014 Liliana Negoi; “all aboard the jasmine train” is included in Liliana’s latest poetry collection, “cream of wordflakes”, available for free reading HERE
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romanian curcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows, Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. She is also the author of a novel, Solo-Chess, available for free reading HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
swallowed whole
“I suspect there will never be a requiem for a dream, simply because it will destroy us before we have the opportunity to mourn its passing.” Hubert Sibley, Jr., Requiem for a Dream
we of the blue work-a-day Mondays,
stale “Pastor says” Sundays
and Veterans’ Day at the mall
where manufactured dreams are sold
they’ve fitted us with iron lungs
the muscle we use is not our own
our scripts are poorly written
our poems stillborn, our music silenced
by Madison Avenue, by financiers
and politicians, some teachers,
some preachers too
and entertainment news …
like carnival barkers, they hawk their wares
material addictions, stoked jingoism …
……for this …
we barter our minds, betray our souls
……Chumped!
we are swallowed whole.
© 2010, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; Illustration courtesy of Frits Ahlefeldt, Public Domain Pictures.net
caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time
a bountiful dawn breaks along the beach,
the salty air rousing me out of bed to a
good morning dressed in silken pale, in soft
pastels, like violet and peach and the seduction
of a blue-green ocean that sighs with its ebb tides
and with its surge, it roars on slivered winds ~
between the whiles, how pleasant this tender verge,
softly caressed by a white-lighted wrinkle in time*
.
* A nod to Madeleine L’Engle
© 2012, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; photo by Caliliver and generously released into the public domain.
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity and to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
Shadow of a Heartbeat
You ask me where these come from,
and I can’t say with certainty,
because there is nothing certain
about our days. Sometimes
the shadow of a heartbeat,
the sound of a color,
the taste of the darkness,
the touch of solitude,
they come to you from
over your horizon.
And horizons know
no direction. There’s
no east or north in you,
no sud or oeste.
There’s only ever-moving circles
surrounding you,
encouraging you
to sense the inspirational It
between yourself and
the infinite, to tell its truth
as you will know it.
We’ve not stumbled upon
one another yet. This is
just another page
in the journal we’ll share
when we finally do.
– Joe Hesch
© 2014, All rights reserved
JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.
Tropical thoughts
It’s summertime here in the South, and the weather puts one in mind of the tropics; the steamy humidity, warm summer sun combine to promise that you’ll need another shower as soon as you dare to step foot outside. Many years ago (2006), I was lucky enough to be able to visit the Big Island of Kona, Hawaii for a couple of weeks. You hear stories, of course, of the beauty, but nothing compares to the reality. It truly is a tropical paradise. The native people are very eco-conscious and generally helpful, friendly people. They have a deep respect for the Earth and their simple ways of life were incredibly appealing to me. It’s terribly expensive to live there, since the economy is tourist-driven, but if I ever had the money, this is where I would retire and happily spend the rest of my life.
I got to snorkel with Green Sea Turtles…
and see plenty of Yellow Tangs and Needle-nosed Knifefish (which floated right below the surface of the water in schools) — Both are types of reef fish.
I also got to see some amazing waterfalls (although it was raining like a monsoon when I went to see them) This is Akaka Falls…
One of my favorite pictures from the trip is from Pololu Valley. You could see the mountains, the coast and the rainforest vegetation all in one shot…
There were some wonderful examples of island art, from hammered tin gates…
to the carved, wooden Ki’i statues in various places all over the island. These statues are usually meant as guardians to protect and watch over certain sites. This one is from “Place of Refuge”…
To my great delight, there were even dragons!
And Buddha was there, too!
It was such an inspiring trip, I couldn’t help but write a poem to help me remember the experience. If you ever have the chance, I hope you will go! It was an enriching journey for the artistic spirit and the soul of anyone who appreciates nature. 🙂
~ Kona ~
Muted moonbeams drift through vaporous clouds,
While gecko songs mesh with the soft click of palms.
Awash in the gentle susurration of waves’ persuasion,
The island breezes encourage me to let go…relax.
No pressure here, no hustle and hurry,
No scamper and scurry,
On “island time”.
Simply hang loose and flow.
The scent of exotic, tropical orchids,
Mixed with the lush green of giant, verdant ferns.
The bright flicker of numerous birds in the brush,
Calls from long-forgotten conchs and steady drums…
All convince me that I,
Have finally found my way home,
To Eden.
~ C.L.R. ~ © 2006
((Someday, I’ll get back there and once more find that kind of peace and serenity.))
About dragonkatet Regarding the blog name, Dragon’s Dreams ~ The name comes from my love-affairs with both Dragons and Dreams (capital Ds). It’s another extension of who I am, a facet for expression; a place and way to reach other like-minded, creative individuals. I post a lot of poetry and images that fascinate or move me, because that’s my favorite way to view the world. I post about things important to me and the world in which we live, try to champion extra important political, societal and environmental issues, etc. Sometimes I wax philosophical, because it’s also a place where I always seem to learn about myself, too, by interacting with some of the brightest minds, souls and hearts out there. It’s all about ‘connection(s)’ and I don’t mean “net-working” with people for personal gain, but rather, the expansion of the 4 L’s: Light, Love, Laughter, Learning.
BARDO NEWS: Blessings on Ramadan; “Begin Again” blog expands its writer base and gets funding; artfully eco-friendly . . ….
BEST WISHES to our Moslem contributors, readers and friends all over the globe on this: the first day of Ramadan. ~ During this month, 1.6 million Muslims – or 23% of the world population according to Pew Research Religion and Public Life Project – observe a strict fast if they are of an age and healthy enough to do so. The fast extends each day from sunrise to sunset. The month-long fasting ends with a feasting celebration, Eid al-Fitr (the breaking of the fast), which falls on 28 July this year.
Britain’s David Cameron has this to say:
Kul ‘am wa enta bi-khair!
May everyday find you in good health!
CELEBRATING POET, NOVELIST, ESSAYIST and EDUCATOR, KAZIM ALI ~ who was born in the UK, is from an Indian Islamic household, and was educated at State University of New York (SUNY) and at New York University. Currently he lives in Oregon.
Of his most recent poetry collection, The Fortieth Day, the Library Journal review says that Ali …
“continues his task of creating a rejuvenated language that longs to be liberated from the weight of daily routine and the power of dogmatic usage . . . writing in the tradition of Wallace Stevens, Ali is clearly a poet of ideas and symbols, yet his words remain living entities within the texture of the poem.”
Of his essay collection, Fasting for Ramadan, Notes on Spiritual Practice, Tupelo Press states …
“Kazim Ali’s searching descriptions of the Ramadan sensibility and its arduous but liberating annual rite of communal fasting is sure to be a revelation to many readers — intellectually illuminating and aesthetically exhilarating.
“Fasting for Ramadan is structured as a chronicle of daily meditations, during two cycles of the 30-day rite of daytime abstinence required by Ramadan for purgation and prayer. Estranged in certain ways from his family’s cultural traditions when he was younger, Ali has in recent years re-embraced the Ramadan ritual, and brings to this rediscovery an extraordinary delicacy of reflection, a powerfully inquiring mind, and the linguistic precision and ardor of a superb poet.”
Ali’s poem Ramadan is from his collection, The Fortieth Day.
You wanted to be so hungry, you would break into branches,
and have to choose between the starving month’s
nineteenth, twenty-first, and twenty-third evenings.
The liturgy begins to echo itself and why does it matter?
If the ground-water is too scarce one can stretch nets
into the air and harvest the fog.
Hunger opens you to illiteracy,
thirst makes clear the starving pattern,
the thick night is so quiet, the spinning spider pauses,
the angel stops whispering for a moment—
The secret night could already be over,
you will have to listen very carefully—
You are never going to know which night’s mouth is sacredly reciting
and which night’s recitation is secretly mere wind—
– Kazim Ali
“Ramadan” except from The Fortieth Day. © 2008 by Kazim Ali, posted here under fair use
“Poetry is the smallest way – it is a small, small way, but it is a way indeed – that the individual body can express its own personhood and value in the face of faceless systems.” Kazim Ali
TERRI STEWART REPORTS on the expansion of Begin Again, the blog she started and hosts ~ “First news, welcome Bruce Chittick to the team of writers! Woot!! He will bring an awesome perspective to Sundays and inspiration. I can’t wait to get to know his writing. I experience him to be a thoughtful, gracious, inclusive kind of guy. His first post went live on the 22nd!
“And, in other exciting news, we got some funding. The United Methodist Church, in an expansive move towards trying new things (although we aren’t exactly NEW) has decided to fund my position at BeguineAgain.com AND all the technology for the next year and a half. This gives me & us time to build a class & subscription base to move towards an independent funding mechanism. This is awesome on so many counts. They know what we have been publishing and are willing to sit in that tension. Amazeballs! And it also lets the pressure off of me regarding all the work I am doing to create alternate funding mechanisms for my own family’s subsistence. Whew. Chaplaincy pays like zero. It is being billed as an online spiritual community. Very vague.
” … I can’t wait to try some of the new technology that will be available now that I can upgrade us to WordPress pro!”
ARTFULLY ECO-FRIENDLY
Dutch Nature Artist, PAULA KUITENBROUWER (Mindful Drawing) ~ a long-standing member of The Bardo Group and a contributor to the blog has sent out a call to all of us – team members, bloggers and friends – to initiate discussions of how and why we are living and working in an eco-conscious ways and how we can use our art and our blogs to encourage environmentally sound practices. Paula shares on her Guilt-Free Art Page …
“My original drawings are drawn on acid free paper. In the process of making acid free paper fewer corrosive chemicals are used, which makes acid free paper significantly environmentally friendlier than normal paper.
“For packing my fine art cards and reproductions, I use biodegradable plastic. I like my art work to be as environmentally friendly as possible and I select my products carefully. My paint-brushes are synthetic without animal hair.”
Other eco-friendly living practices that might be shared would include the ways in which we order our lives to enable no-or-minimal use of cars, mindful shopping (buying only what we need and buying from bulk containers rather than packaged items, buying locally produced food and other products), using biodegradable cleaning products and reusable shopping bags. Yes! All this and how about telling us about your advocacy efforts?
We invite you share your thoughts on this in the comments section here, on your own blogs (then leave us a link under any current post so that we can publicize it in the next Bardo News) or as submissions to The Bardo Group blog this month. (If you are not a core-team member, please email us at bardogroup@gmail.com.)
Coming up:
-
Next Sunday Terri resumes her Sunday Sacred Space in the Body series.
-
Another fine piece from Imen Benyoub on Music, Language of the Soul, date TBA
-
Victoria’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday, July 23
-
Celebrations for the 50th Anniversary U.S. Wilderness Act in September, hosted by Priscilla Galasso …
-
100,000 Poets (and writers, musicians, artists) for Change interview with the founder, TBA (yes! 😦 We are late delivering this. Apologies!)
-
100,000 Poets for Change event, September 27, hosted by Liz Rice-Sosne (Raven Spirit)
… and many more goodies from our Core Team, readers and guests. This month’s guests will include:
Poet K.A. Brace (The Mirror Obscura) and Jewelry-Maker, Writer, Photographer Isadora (Inside the Mind of Isadora)
bardogroup@gmail.com
In the spirit of peace, love and community,
THE BARDO GROUP
Blind Alley
- Copyright 2013 Marsha Berry
Its weight upon her back constrained her breath
and data from a million miles of type
had taken toll of her own inspiration,
drowned beneath the heft of corporate hype.
The pavement and its passengers, detached.
She felt like ailing bug on dying tree.
This morning, as she trudged this weary path,
those slabs were like lead shoes, deprived of glee.
The wall that once reflected all her joy
had cast, as tall as anyone could say,
its shadow, smothering independent thought.
A blinding light then blew it all away.
[This was another poem prompted by a photograph. Ekphrasis wins the day again! It was Marsha Berry, another member of the GRPG*, who posted this and it was followed by a variety of poetic responses. This was mine and it carries with it that common thread of philosophical thought, which occupies me often. This is that we must work hard to ensure we retain our insight, a closeness to our conscious and our convictions, lest we lose it all in favour of allowing others to implant another form of consciousness in our minds, by however insidious a process, that is either corporate (the companies for whom we work), commercial (the companies from whom we buy things to stock our material lives) or political (the PR that the political establishment puts out to woo us for our votes). This poem, I think, rather relates to the first of those three. Or, perish the thought, does that rucksack carry something more destructive? Whichever way this poem is interpreted, I hope it causes the reader to stop and think ]
Poem: © 2013 John Anstie. Image: © 2013 Marsha Berry (the Poet) and Marsha Berry (the academic)
* GRPG – The Grass Roots Poetry Group
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. John has been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).
*****
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising“. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.
* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.
Our Sighs Ride the Ebb-tides of Eternity …
On May 28, our group for people with life-threatening illnesses celebrated the lives of those who have already passed on. I was unable to attend the memorial service due to bronchitis, but I celebrate them, two of my family, and this wonderful group here today.
Our group is composed of people from several different religious traditions and is hosted by our local Insight Meditation Center. The group was founded and is run by a Buddhist chaplain who has been very kind and is a stalwart friend to each of us.
I no longer attend meetings. By some surely unearned grace, I am now considered “chronic and stable” and I’ve grown to the point that the news of death no longer disturbs me. The major take-away for me from this experience is that the only difference between having a medically predicted expiration date and not knowing when our time will come is that with a diagnosis, we no longer fall into those moments of denial. That’s a huge gift. Huge! The result is that we become present in each moment.
Today, is my loving celebration of: Ann, Deborah, Dick, Ernie, Hilda, Mary, Parvathy, Robert, Mary Kate, Steve, Victor and to family lost in recent years: my former husband, Kirby (the most decent man I’ve ever known), and my cousin, Christopher, with whom I grew-up and who was like a brother …
Each moment and every person is precious and beautiful and the only thing that really matters is how much we have loved and been loved and that – as survivors – we continue to live in the service of our families and those in need. In the end it would seem that’s the best way to honor the family and friends whose memory we treasure .
Eternity flowed deftly through the last eight years
enfolding in her stream eleven with whom we
contemplated Knowledge and Mortality
Looking back, we ponder amazed at love among friends,
……….it blossoms fragrant, as gentle
……….as a dewy rose among thorns and thistles
We thrash and crawl and climb
……….puzzling
……….over the sea and fire that stalks us
Our hearts, cupped in one another’s hands
……….like castanets, beat in unison
Our measured moments grave lines in phantom fears,
……….they float like storm clouds above us
In words of jade, we speak elegies and encomiums
Our smiles mask our sorrows and yearning
Our laughter is love grown wild
We see each other in a thousand shapes and dreams
……….and in nameless names
Our sighs ride the ebb tides of Eternity
…..Another moment:
…..and even the sun will die
…..but our lotus song will echo on ….
……….We have lived! We have loved!
© 2014, poem and photograph (yellow roses traditionally symbolize friendship), Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity, to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another – no matter our tribe – in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
This, These, This
In the dark, ceiling-staring
into the nightly abyss,
I became not-alone.
Twilight dreams before sleep
projected a life of never be,
but would never leave
in the soft dawnlight glow
behind my hooded eyes.
I lie there thinking of
the living, the dead
and the one beneath
those covers who was neither.
With one more sigh,
t’was then I saw them,
short strings of expression
rising from my body,
five knots in the first,
seven on the next.
They repeated over and over,
a rope ladder I climbed
past soft women,
and hard worlds,
elevating my spirit
and body to a near-waking
breath and breath
exhalations of unrhyming song.
The blood-rush in my ears,
wave upon wave, sounded like
“Wish, which, wish,.”
To which I replied,
“This, these, this.”
© 2014, poem, Joseph Hesch, All rights reserved
JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.
Midnigh Morvening
[A flight of fanciful imagination … by the power of a single word]
A couple of years ago, I wrote a very silly poem! It came to me one day as a result of a word that I used whilst having a conversation, as usual, with a close bunch of Twitter friends (or should that be a Twittersation!). The word, “morvening”, came out of my head, and I decided it would enable me to greet Jacquie Dick and Joe Hesch in the morning of New York and Albany at the same time and with the same word as greeting Marsha Berry in Melbourne’s evening, thus paying deference to their geography. Following a tweet from Jacquie with the suggestion that it sounded “sweetly medieval”, my imagination took flight and a poem was born! Thanks to Jacquie and the rest of the GRPG (Grass Roots Poetry Group) for playing along with my eccentricity, as they all did for some time by using the word themselves, as our common daily greeting.
It is always worthwhile taking an opportunity to say thank you to those particular friends, with whom I have been ‘close’ since 2011. I owe a lot to the GRPG, not least because of these sometimes silly, but always funny exchanges we shared initially on Twitter, in less than 140 characters (and later elsewhere), as we headed toward the publication of our anthology*. As diverse a group as you could imagine, I owe them a lot, because I somehow learned much from all of them; in fact I think they all learned from each other, in their own prticular ways. The experience added value to my prosodic life, that’s for sure.
Anyway, here’s my neologistic contribution to the literary world …
The light it was a brightening
on winter’s dawning day
it was the midnigh morvening
that showed us all the way
and how the beasties of the norn
did plague the Gothan bride,
but facing fiery teeth with Day
the Night stood by her side.
He stood e’er long with triptych scroll
and spake out loud and clear
“behold the midnigh morvening
and be ye of good cheer”
For all the trolls and beasts of nigh
will e’er be gone be’soon
the magic of the morvening
‘ll be written in the rune
And so ’twas wrote on old tryptych,
on every sleepless bed,
that on the midnigh morvening
the Night and Day are wed.
© 2012 John Anstie
[Poem first published on 19 February, 2012]
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. John has been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).
*****
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising“. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.
* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.
A Madwoman, A Madonna, A Medusa
What’s it to me? …
A knotted and nasty old poet of introverted time
wearing five-dollar sweats
dressing in black on black,
silver earrings tinkling softly in the winter breeze
What’s it to me? …
A Madwoman, A Madonna, A Medusa
Traipsing neighborhood streets, city parks, country lanes
Nibbling on sharp yellow cheese and glossy red apples
Sitting down on some wayward curb to sigh in wonder at
noisy birds, children, wizened old men, whiskered grandmothers
Dogs walking their humans by the side of the road
Feral cats scratching a living of pigeon stuffed with stale bread
Muttering, muttering, whispering, watching, writing
Writing long poems and short about what it was to be us
through clocked days trapped in pointless, punctilious youth
Enjoying now the wild, gnarly randomness of life
and the music of our dusty blue souls jingling as we walk …
What’s it to me? What’s it to this so lately untamable me?
© 2013, poem and photographs, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved; “Medusa” is in the public domain
JAMIE DEDES (The Poet by Day)~I am a medically retired (disabled) elder and the mother of married son who is very dear. I started blogging shortly after I retired as a way to maintain my sanity, to stay connected to the arts and the artful despite being mostly homebound. My Facebook pages are: Jamie Dedes (Arts and Humanities) and Simply Living, Living Simply.
With the help and support of talented bloggers and readers, I founded and host The Bardo Group because I feel that blogging offers a means to see one another – no matter our tribe – in our simple humanity, as brothers and sisters and not as “other.”
“Good work, like good talk or any other form of worthwhile human relationship, depends upon being able to assume an extended shared world.” Stefan Collini (b. 1947), English Literary Critic and Professor of English Literature at Cambridge
The BeZine 