Writing Without Paper

From All Threads, Connection

You'll find my poem, "Truth Be Told", inspired by the 15th prompt and a list of my poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Wednesday Wonder: 'Strandbeests'

Using plastic yellow tubes and lemonade bottles, Dutch kinetic sculptor Theo Jansen is "creating new forms of life" that need no food, understand where they are and can "detect" the presence of water, which is their enemy. They are creatures that "walk on the wind" and, Jansen says, he wants to populate Holland's beaches with "herds" of his self-propelling, ultimate self-surviving, "Strandbeests", including his Animaris Gubernare, Siamesis (2010), Umeris (2009), and Ordis (2007), among others, which he demonstrates in videos (also found on Vimeo) and explains here.

The creativity, ingenuity, and technical brilliance behind these creations astound.

Here's a short film of Jansen's Animaris Umerus at Scheveningen, Netherlands, in 2009:

Animaris Umerus from Alexander Schlichter on Vimeo.

Theo Jansen TED Talk (2007; 8:16 minutes):

Strandbeesten Documentary: Bio-Fiction Video from Synthetic Biology Science, Art, and Film Festival

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Not Knowing All Answers (Poem)

Not Knowing All Answers

You feed fear
and your virus spreads.
Zero days
without cure
leave your future full of holes.
What you do with it

is question
your relationship,
defend need
to puzzle
how you get along with loss,
beginning again,

you, alone.
Uncertainties take
sides. You have
to push to
feel your own opposing strength,
trust yourself to live

in dark light,
hold the paradox
of being
to become.
Contradictions favor not
knowing all answers.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
__________________________________

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here. Contributors of prompts are listed here.

This poem* is inspired by today's 29th prompt from entrepreneur Sean Ogle, creator of Location 180:

Overcoming Uncertainty

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down a major life goal you have yet to achieve or even begin to take action on. For each goal, write down three uncertainties (read: fears) you have relating to each goal. Break it down further, and write down three reasons for each uncertainty. When you have three reasons for your fear, you'll be able to start processing the change because you know where the fear stems from. Now you'll be able to make smaller changes that push you towards your larger goal. So begins the process of "trusting yourself."

* * *

* This poem is written in Shadorma form. Each of the inter-related stanzas comprises six lines following a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern.

I've used all of the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. My responses to prompts 16 - 28 are:

Alive in Every Sense

From All Threads, Connection

You'll find my poem for the 15th prompt, "Truth Be Told", and a list of poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Translator (Poem)

Pablo Picasso, Buste de Femme, 1943

Oil on Canvas

100.5 cm x 81 cm.

Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven

Translator

What of your eye, the one displaced

yet ever open to the light?

Or your mouth, flipped up on its side,

a crescent pointedly caressing

which words spilled before being stilled?

That other eye, the left one fixed

in place, vigilant,

how has it taken in the undefined

shadowing

of your every step back against the wall?

So much of the story to be

translated:

the question of facing the feeling for what

the ground gives up

in exhumations of Srebrenica,

what in their dust

stirred as you sifted the mangle of flak

and tufts

of hair, a priest's black habit,

the sole-less shoe

of the last and lone witness.

Tell me, do you not know

their names

and yours and every one on the list

checked off

imagine what it is
to be

more than marks on this page?

You relish your job of taking

statements

in a language we do not speak,

as foreign

as the calling card left you, by accident

so they said,

atop your baggage the day you arrived,

already a writer

who'd put pen to paper, healing.

No one's security's guaranteed,

you know,

yours least of all,

your mind turning over

the pictures

drawn in the fitful reds of sleep:

the children taking candies

from Mladic's hand

even as the men are disappearing.

______________________________

This poem is inspired not only by this image of Picasso's Buste de Femme, which, as this recent article relates, came to be the "first masterpiece to be exhibited in the Palestinian territories", but also by this moving Arts Fuse post, "Translating at the War-Crimes Tribunal in The Hague", by Ellen Elias-Bursac, visiting scholar at University of Massachusetts/Amherst.

Ellen Elias-Bursac at Amazon

* * *

I offer this poem for the One Shot Wednesday at One Stop Poetry, which each week invites poets to share, read, and comment on each other's work. Be sure to visit the site late Tuesday afternoon and every Wednesday for the many contributors' poems.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Alive in Every Sense (Poem)

Alive in Every Sense

It wasn't the gun
that could have saved us,

a shoulder-heaved blunderbluss
loaded and double-checked;

nor the fear in the gut struck
up before the sun's rise

as we careered down
from the jeep in South Africa's bush,

my heart's beat and yours
courting our ribs. It wasn't

the height of the dry savanna
grass I'd wished wouldn't crack

too loud in our ears as we played
follow-the-leader, ready to freeze

in place at the word expelled
in the moment we would not admit

our need to breathe.
To imagine yourself in the eyes

of the rhino, mostly blind, counting
on its own nose to pick us out:

that is to be alive in every sense
you will ever muster in awe.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
___________________________________

My visit to South Africa, though not recent, will forever be the trip I will not forget. To hike to the top of Table Mountain in Cape Town, to watch penguins tumble from the bushes to rush into the sea at the Cape of Good Hope, to travel through bush on safari, to emerge from your tent to see monkeys in trees, or walk through camp at night with armed guard because the animals are free to roam. . . those are experiences that recall to me my moments of being "alive-est".

* * *

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

This poem was inspired by the 28th prompt from writer and speaker Sam Davidson, author of Simplify Your Life:

Alive-est

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it's time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand.

* * *

I've used all of the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. My poems for prompts 16 -27 are:

You'll find my poem for prompt 15, "Truth Be Told", and a list of poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Monday Muse: MuckWorks

Several weeks ago I happened upon a site called MuckWorks, which produces chapbooks, pamphlets, and related ephemera of such writers as Elizabeth Alexander, Yona Harvey, and Terrance Hayes. The poetic "experiments", as MuckWorks' visionary Douglas Kearney calls them, are made available as free pdfs or mp3s downloadable from the site. It's worth taking a few moments to see what Kearney is doing in the self- or independent-publishing field, particularly with chapbooks.

Kearney is a poet, performer, and librettist (he's written four operas). His most recent chapbook, Quantum Spit, comprises seven 12" x 12" broadsides; released by Corollary Press in 2010, the hip-hop poem's special format includes a full-size record sleeve that Kearney designed, with each page doubling as a poster. His Fear, Some, his first full-length poetry collection, was published by Red Hen Press in 2006. His second, The Black Automaton, published by Fence Books in 2009 (also available on Amazon), was selected for the National Poetry Series and named a finalist for a 2010 Pen Center USA literary award.

A Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of a 2008 Whiting Writers' Award, Kearney has published poetry in nocturnes, MiPOesias, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, and other literary periodicals. He regularly performs his work at venues across the country. He teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.

An excellent interview with Kearney, in which the poet discusses the chapbooks he produces at MuckWorks, collaboration with other poets, and the future of chapbooks, can be found here. Another at laist, can be found here.

To download MuckWorks One, a 20-page color pdf featuring poems by Latasha N. Nevada Diggs, Brian Gilmore, Yona Harvey, National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, Douglas Kearney, Bao Phi, and Crystal Williams, go here.

Douglas Kearney Profile at CalArts

Douglas Kearney Profile and Poems at Spoken Word

Douglas Kearney Profile and Poems at From the Fishouse (Text + Audio)

Essays on Craft for Poetry Foundation's Harriet Blog

Cave Canem Reading by Kearney, 2007 (Video)

LA Lit Podcast With Kearney (Downloadable poems are available at the site to accompany Kearney's reading from Fear, Some.)

Sunday, June 26, 2011

From All Threads, Connection (Poem)

From All Threads, Connection

Use two hands
to make each helping
given fair.
Eye no thing
for yourself others balance
as need before want.

Spend words down
to what must be said
once to move
dulled to act.
Weave from all threads connection,
your homage to hope.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
_______________________

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

Today's poem* is inspired by the 27th prompt from world traveler and coach/entrepreneur Harley Schreiber:

Personal Recipe

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think about the type of person you'd NEVER want to be 5 years from now. Write out your own personal recipe to prevent this from happening and commit to following it. "Thought is the seed of action."

* * *

* This poem is written in Shadorma form; that is, each stanza comprises six lines following a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern.

I've used all of the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. Poems for prompts 16 - 26 are:

You'll find my poem for the 15th prompt, "Truth Be Told", and a list of poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Inside Out (Poem)

Adam Romanowicz, Converging

Inside Out

Tears in folds

glance steel-ribbed harbors

of light. You

plumb how deep

the heart tracks sorrow, inverts

your view inside out.

______________________

I offer this poem* for today's One Shoot Sunday Picture Prompt Challenge at One Stop Poetry, where you will find an interview with photographer Adam Romanowicz and images of his work, including the image above that inspired this poem. To see more of Romanowicz's photographs, visit 3scape Photos.

Go here to read Chris Galford's interview with Romanowicz and then scroll down for instructions on participating in today's event.

* This poem is written in Shadorma form, which requires six lines of no or no set rhyme that follow a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern.

Thought for the Day

Reading creates an imaginary context

which then becomes a place of rescue.

~ Sven Birkerts

____________________________

Sven Birkerts, editor of AGNI since 2002, is a literary critic and essayist. His books include, most recently, Reading Life: Books for the Ages (Graywolf Press, 2007), Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again (Graywolf, 2007), and The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (paperback, Faber & Faber, 2006; first published in 1994), the source of the quote above. A collection of essays, The Other Walk (Graywolf) will be published this September.

Albert Mohler, "The Fate of Reading in a Digital Age: A Conversation with Sven Birkerts", June 1, 2011

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Business Lessons (Poem)

Business Lessons

I'm in charge
and turning the place over

to you.
You're on your own

for the next 12 months
to 5 years.

Don't expect me
to check in. I'll be taking

everyone away — bottom rung
to top — leaving you

exactly what you need
to conduct your power

trip. You're not getting one thing
more than that Aeron chair

you like, broken in
as it is.

It will bring you full circle
if you can make

the necessary adjustments.
When you give it

a spin, your feet dangling,
your hands out,

consider what you'll have
to put down

to bring yourself
to a full stop,

what you'll want to close
up and close in

on for the best deal
of your life.

Track that carefully
on your whiteboard

in some private inner office
where you can hear

yourself think, say
your name out loud

and recite the honorifics
that follow you

no matter your place
on the ladder

you've been climbing
since you were old enough

to talk and walk
and get what you want

from a world that owes you
nothing more than a chance

to find out for yourself
that what absolutely matters

more than anything else,
is free, will cost you plenty

if you don't have it,
abuse it, fail to awaken

it in due time, won't share it,
withhold it, ignore it calling

out to you. Exercising it
regularly will keep it

in good working order.
No joke!

Your heart need never give
out, won't betray you,

and when the time comes
will bring you the ones who count

most and keep them running.
still running to you.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
________________________________

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

Today's poem is inspired by the 26th prompt from Sasha Dichter, Acumen Fund's business development director and a blogger on philanthropy, generosity, and social change:

Call to Arms

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

What if today, right now, no jokes at all, you were actually in charge, the boss, the Head Honcho. Write the "call to arms" note you're sending to everyone (staff, customers, suppliers, Board), charting the path ahead for the next 12 months and the next 5 years. Now take this manifesto, print it out somewhere you can see [it], preferably in big letters you can read from your chair.

You've just written your own job description. You know what you have to do. Go!

(Bonus: Send it to the CEO, with the title "The things we absolutely have to get right — nothing else matters.")

* * *

I've used all the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. Poems for prompts 16 - 25 are:

You'll find my poem for prompt 15, "Truth Be Told", and a list of poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

This week's Saturday Sharing introduces you to some recent finds in the world-wide web of blogs.

✦ Take a peek at attorney Kimberly Bender's blog the location; even if you're not a local, as I am, you'll be delighted by what you'll find, including Bender's recent post "Hidden Tunnels, Bugs, and Bigamy: A Strange and True D.C. Story".

✦ Indie publisher Fact-Simile produces handmade books and book-objects, as well as a twice-yearly large-format literary journal available online at no cost (in print, while supplies last). Of note are Fact-Simile's trading cards featuring writers. The cards for the 2011 12-writer series feature a poem.

Fact-Simile Blog

Subscription Information

✦ Toronto artist Sara Sniderhan showcases some of her work on her blog, Best of Sniderhan and talks shop at a second blog that keeps readers up to date on workshops, gallery openings, and other art-related matters. Sniderhan's a wonderful painter and is represented by Ingram Gallery.

✦ Northwest writer Jeannine Hall Gailey, whose second book She Returns to the Floating World will be published this fall by Kitsune Books, is offering a summer series of interviews with poets on Jeannine Blogs.

✦ Activist poet Joseph Ross, co-editor of Cut Loose the Body: An Anthology of Poems on Torture and Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib (American University, 2007), writes here about a wide range of literary events. Read some of his poetry here.

✦ Roderick MacIver, founder of Heron Dance, a nonprofit literary and art studio in Vermont, writes a daily illustrated e-journal, Reflections of a Wild Artist, that takes as its subjects "love, compassion, and beauty as central elements of a well-lived life". His Heron Dance Press publishes print and e-books, as well as notecards, calendars, and blank journals. To see MacIver's online gallery of beautiful original paintings, in watercolors and acrylics (some also are available as giclees), go here.

Selected Interviews (See, for example, the conversation with Joanna Macy.)

Heron Dance on FaceBook and Twitter

In the video below, MacIver talks about his inspiration for Reflections of a Wild Artist:

Friday, June 24, 2011

Taking Your Measurements (Poem)

Taking Your Measurements

Your nose may be ordinary
but don't compare it

to mine. I wear the only one
I've got my own way:

in its place, not high, never stuck
in your business, not some model

of how I could make it intrude
where it's not wanted.

Your eyes may be ordinary
but don't compare them

to mine. I'm Greek. Mine flash
in the darkness of drama

and keep their green
always on. I like to go

where others don't. I get
to look into my own soul.

Your mouth may be ordinary,
or heart-shaped, thin-lipped

or thick, but don't compare it
to mine. I need mine to speak

up when I witness what you turn
blind to, know when to keep it

closed when lashed by the tongue
you won't bite. Your ears may be

ordinary, stick out or lie close, maybe
pierced, or not, but don't compare

them to mine. I have to keep mine
in tune with the sounds in my head,

listen to how my own music gets
loud or grows soft, drowns

out that other voice only I know.
Now, are you ready? You can face this:

Compare and contrast x and y,
where both x and y are you.

Repeat till you find
what you're looking for.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
_________________________

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

Today's poem is inspired by the 25th prompt from consultant, trainer, educator, and best-selling author, Patti Digh, who also is an internationally renowned speaker on diversity, global business, and living intentionally:

Most Ordinary

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are out most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our "ordinary" because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others ("I'm not so good a writer as ____."), false expectations of ourselves ("I should be on the NYT best seller list or not write at all."), and false investments in a story ("It's all been written before, I shouldn't bother.").

What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story? List them. Each keep you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever and pick up your ordinary.

* * *

I've used all of the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. Poems for prompts 16 - 24 (beginning with most recent after today's post) are:

Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

You'll find my poem for the 15th prompt, "Truth Be Told", and a list of poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✭ The Vimeo channel of the New York Foundation for the Arts offers at least five dozen videos featuring artist interviews (Andres Serrano, Kate Gilmore), recorded panel discussions, process demonstrations, and other information for professional development and success (e.g., grant-writing esssentials, funding sources). NYFA's Website should not be overlooked for its Business of Art articles.

✭ Photographer, historian, and landscape architect Don Freeman has published Artists' Handmade Houses (Abrams) featuring images of 13 homes hand-crafted by American artists, including George Nakashima, Sam Maloof, Paolo Soleri, and Russel Wright. Text is by landscape architect and New York City planner Michael Owen Gotkin.

Don Freeman Film - Book - Artists' Handmade Houses (You'll find 28 wonderful still-photos here.)

This superb trailer was produced for the book. Take eight minutes to view it, and be awed. Talk about inspiration!

✭ Seeing Maira Kalman's wonderful work in person is ideal but we're not all so lucky. Or maybe you've already seen her work on exhibit and now that you're back home need another fix of And the Pursuit of Happiness, yes, just one more time. Whichever category you're in, you might find to your liking these 12 months of Fridays of Maira Kalman online at The New York Times.

Kalman's current show "Maira Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World)" continues at The Jewish Museum in New York City through July 31. The exhibition includes a catalogue.

Here's WNET's brief interview with Kalman broadcast earlier this month and images of some of the distinctly Kalman work you'll see in the show:

Watch the full episode. See more SundayArts.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Photographs, drawings, collages, and encaustics created by Diane Bowie Zaitlin are on exhibit through September 4 at Saco Museum, Saco, Maine. The work in the show, "Point of Departure", reflects Zaitlin's inspirations and influences during her June 2010 residency at Great Spruce Head Island Artweek, Penobscot Bay.

✭ Superb oil painter Tracey Clarke shows "Birds" at her opening June 26 at the Fredericksburg (Virginia) Center for the Creative Arts. On view through July 30, with an opening reception scheduled for July 1, from 6:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., the exhibition reveals not only Clarke's excellence in technique and use of color but her deep love of animals.

Image Above at Left: Tracey Clarke, Red-Bellied Woodpecker, Oil on Panel, 5"x7", © Tracey Clarke

Tracey Clarke on FaceBook and Twitter

Tracey Clarke's Oil Painting Blog

Tracey Clarke on Etsy

An earlier post about Tracey is here.

✭ Chicago's McCormick Gallery is showing through August 13 "Saltillo Sarape: A Survey 1850-1920". A book on this northern Mexican textile tradition in weaving, by gallery owner Thomas McCormick and Mark Winter, accompanies the show; it features more than 100 color illustrations.

Textiles of the North American Southwest (This Smithsonian site provides a description and information on the makers, design, production, and use of Saltillo-style textiles.)

✭ You will find a mix of fascinating art, science, and technology in New York City, where the American Museum of Natural History is presenting through August 15 "Introducing Brain: The Inside Story", an exhibition that "combines Museum research focus on evolutionary history and the diversity of life with the recent explosion in technology that is giving scientists a deeper understanding of brain chemistry and function." The exhibition includes Spanish artist Daniel Canogar's immersive installation, Synaptic Passage, a walk-through "tunnel" of neurons; Devorah Sperber's After the Mona Lisa 8 (2010), which uses 1,482 large spools of threads and models, through a viewing sphere, how the brain translates visual information; a 6-foot-tall human figure used to highlight sense of touch; a multi-media video showing the functional areas of the brain that light up when a student auditions for Julliard; a "neuron gesture table" illustrating how brain cells connect and communicate; a deep-brain stimulation implant; and a "brain lounge" where visitors can view scans of a New York Knicks shooting guard. An array of exhibition-related slideshows and videos may be viewed here.

Below is a video of Canogar's Synaptic Passage:

AMHH on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr

✭ On view through July 4 at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art is "Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century". The special exhibition features 30 oil paintings and 30 works on paper in which the Romantic motif of the open window is present. Included are works by C.D. Friedrich, Adolph Menzel, C.W. Eckersberg, and Leon Cogniet. Loans comes from museums in Europe and the United States. An exhibition catalogue of the same title accompanies the show.

Exhibition Images

Caspar David Friedrich, Woman at the Window, 1822

Alte Nationalgalerie

Romanticism

Met Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Thursday, June 23, 2011

A Mirror's All It Takes (Poem)

A Mirror's All It Takes

Dress her in filigree
of gold threaded with silver

knots of blue, her hair a pinup
braid of petals twisted through.

Catch how your light falls
on her mass of red unfading bloom.

Let lie on her bared shoulders a willow
branch cape in whose depths she courts

your inner vision. Fix her to walk
with staff of rowan wood, a property

so magical no reason can betray
its power to harbor knowledge yet

untaught. Picture her in your mirror
just so then plumb what fortune may

be yours at risk to hearing what's unasked.

She will repeat not once what comes
to mind unbidden: Know the question

to find the answer. Follow outcomes
from taking your different paths. See

where the ball lands before it hits.
Chase it, or not.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
__________________________

I've included in this poem some of the colors, such as blue, and trees, such as willow and rowan, that myth holds out as symbols of intuition. Some think of intuition as a mysterious sixth sense with which we all are born; others are adamant it is a skill we can learn, reasoning it to be our innate ability to draw objectively on all our experiences, observations, perceptions, and stored information to enable us to make decisions. I liken intuition to looking in the mirror; depending on how you stand and in what kind of light, you might see your image reflected multiple times, each reflection representing another layer of you (intellect, emotions, beliefs, fears, instincts, etc.) on which to draw to live the life you want.

* * *

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

This poem is inspired by the 24th prompt from author and teacher Susan Piver:

Intuition

The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you could picture your intuition as a person, what would he or she look like? If you sat down together for diner, what is the first thing he or she would tell you?

* * *

I've used all of the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. My responses to prompts 16 - 23 are:

Taking a Meeting

Hungry, Full, and Fed

Choosing What's Inside

The Seventh Day

Alternatives

Dreaming

Looking Elsewhere

Pressing It

You'll find my response to prompt 15, "Truth Be Told", and a list of my poems for prompts 1 - 14 here.

Louie, Three-Wheeling (Poem)

Louie, Three-Wheeling

You ride three
wheels we remember
needing, too.
One to take
us forward, a second not
to fall far behind

the third less
a spare than ballast
to manage,
keep even,
show off with pride. You, wanting
words, throw us a smile.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
_____________________________

I wrote this poem* after watching on the Being blog this 8:13-minute documentary about Louie Evans, a Bostonian who rides a three-wheeler (less generously called a tricycle) all about the city streets for the sheer love of it. Nobody, it seems, knows Louie better than the guys at Back Bay Bicycles who keep Louie's bike repaired. I found this short film to be deeply touching.

I offer this poem for the Challenge to Write Poetry with Books & Culture, which appears at the end of this article by Marcus Goodyear, "Writing Poems in Your Own Backyard". Marcus, author of the poetry collection Barbies at Communion, is senior editor at The High Calling and Christianity Today's Faith in the Workplace.

Anyone may participate in this challenge to write in community. Entries must be posted on the Books & Culture FaceBook wall by July 1. Marcus gives his word that he'll read every entry, leave a comment if possible, and, together with colleague John Wilson, will select one or more poems to feature in next month's column. A selection may appear also in Every Day Poems.

* * * * *

* Both stanzas of this poem are written in Shadorma form, which requires six lines following a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern.

Books & Culture on FaceBook

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Taking a Meeting (Poem)

Taking a Meeting

I want you
to get in touch now.
I'll ask once
before you
reply, urge you do over
this one chance to meet

you again
on your own ground. Check
how your heart
beats itself
to get its daily rhythm
right. Pull out the words

not spoken
the last time you could
imagine
you taking
a meeting to connect one
self with the other.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
______________________________

Nothing may be so important as periodically checking in with oneself.

* * *

I'm participating in the Domino Project's #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

This poem* is inspired by the 23rd prompt from social media entrepreneur David Spinks:

Courage to Connect

Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emits a breath every moment. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Who is one person that you'vebeen dying to connect with but just haven't had the courage to reach out to? First, reflect on why you want to get in touch with him. then, reach out and set up a meeting.

* * *

This poem is written in Shadorma form, which requires stanzas of six lines of no or not set rhyme following a 3-5-3-3-7-5 syllabic pattern.

I've used all the #Trust30 prompts as inspiration for new poems. My responses to prompts 16-22 are: