Thursday, December 15, 2011

MY CHRISTMAS PRAYER

by Dawn Pisturino


















May I never lose the Joy of Christmas,
Though my Tree of Life grows withered and rots,
Standing stark and gaunt in the cold winter light:
Please, Lord, may I never lose the Joy of Christmas.

May I never lose the Love of Christmas,
Though my heart grows feeble and weak,
Beating like a broken drum in my chest:
Please, Lord, may I never lose the Love of Christmas.

May I never lose the Meaning of Christmas,
Though the shadow of Death hovers over me,
Drawing farther away from the Circle of Life:
Please, Lord, may I never lose the Meaning of Christmas.

December 4, 1986

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!


You can also find me here:
Copyright 2011 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Friday, December 2, 2011

FIRST SNOW

by Dawn Pisturino















The first white snow of winter
Falls softly on the ground;
The world looks like a fairy land
With snowflakes all around;
The trees dress up like fairies
Dancing on the snow: --
Magic happens everywhere
The fairies dance, you know.

I love the first white winter storm,
The air is cold and frosty;
I stay indoors where it is warm,
But through the windows I can see
How suddenly the world turns white
And disappears beneath the snow;
The season changes overnight
From autumn's bright to winter's glow.

1985
Copyright 2011 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.




Saturday, November 19, 2011

Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Thanksgiving Prayer

GREETINGS TO THE NATURAL WORLD

THE PEOPLE

Today we have gathered and we see that the cycles of life continue. We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now, we bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as People.

Now our minds are one.

THE EARTH MOTHER

We are all thankful to our Mother, the Earth, for she gives us all that we need for life. She supports our feet as we walk about upon her. It gives us joy that she continues to care for us as she has from the beginning of time. To our Mother, we send greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

THE WATERS

We give thanks to all the Waters of the world for quenching our thirst and providing us with strength. Water is life. We know its power in many forms - waterfalls and rain, mists and streams, rivers and oceans. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the spirit of water.

Now our minds are one.

THE FISH

We turn our minds to all the Fish life in the water. They were instructed to cleanse and purify the water. They also give themselves to us as food. We are grateful that we can still find pure water. So, we turn now to the Fish and send our greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

THE PLANTS

Now we turn toward the vast fields of Plant life. As far as the eye can see, the Plants grow, working many wonders. They sustain many life forms. With our minds gathered together, we give thanks and look forward to seeing Plant life for many generations to come.

Now our minds are one.

THE FOOD PLANTS

With one mind, we turn to honor and thank all the Food Plants we harvest from the garden. Since the beginning of time, the grains, vegetables, beans and berries have helped the people survive. Many other living things draw strength from them too. We gather all the Food Plants together as one and send them a greeting and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

THE MEDICINE HERBS

Now we turn to all the Medicine herbs of the world. From the beginning, they were instructed to take away sickness. They are always waiting and ready to heal us. We are happy there are still among us those special few who remember how to use these plants for healing. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to the Medicines and to the keepers of the Medicines.

Now our minds are one.

THE ANIMALS

We gather our minds together to send greetings and thanks to all the Animal life in the world. They have many things to teach us as people. We see them near our homes and in the deep forests. We are glad they are still here and we hope that it will always be so.

Now our minds are one.

THE TREES

We now turn our thoughts to the Trees. The Earth has many families of Trees who have their own instructions and uses. Some provide us with shelter and shade, others with fruit, beauty and other useful things. Many peoples of the world use a Tree as a symbol of peace and strength. With one mind, we greet and thank the Tree life.

Now our minds are one.

THE BIRDS

We put our minds together as one and thank all the Birds who move and fly about over our heads. The Creator gave them beautiful songs. Each day they remind us to enjoy and appreciate life. The Eagle was chosen to be their leader. To all the Birds - from the smallest to the largest - we send our joyful greetings and thanks.

Now our minds are one.

THE FOUR WINDS

We are all thankful to the powers we know as the Four Winds. We hear their voices in the moving air as they refresh us and purify the air we breathe. They help to bring the change of seasons. From the four directions they come, bringing us messages and giving us strength. With one mind, we send our greetings and thanks to the Four Winds. 

Now our minds are one.

THE THUNDERERS

Now we turn to the west where our Grandfathers, the Thunder Beings, live. With lightning and thundering voices, they bring with them the water that renews life. We bring our minds together as one to send greetings and thanks to our Grandfathers, the Thunderers.

Now our minds are one.

THE SUN

We now send greetings and thanks to our eldest Brother, the Sun. Each day without fail he travels the sky from east to west, bringing the light of a new day. He is the source of all the fires of life. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Brother, the Sun.

Now our minds are one.

GRANDMOTHER MOON

We put our minds together and give thanks to our oldest grandmother, the Moon, who lights the night-time sky. She is the leader of women all over the world, and she governs the movement of the ocean tides. By her changing face we measure time, and it is the Moon who watches over the arrival of children here on Earth. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to our Grandmother, the Moon.

Now our minds are one.

THE STARS

We give thanks to the Stars who are spread across the sky like jewelry. We see them in the night, helping the Moon to light the darkness and bringing dew to the gardens and growing things. When we travel at night, they guide us home. With our minds gathered together as one, we send greetings and thanks to all the Stars.

Now our minds are one.

THE ENLIGHTENED TEACHERS

We gather our minds to greet and thank the Enlightened Teachers who have come to help throughout the ages. When we forget how to live in harmony, they remind us of the way we were instructed to live as people. With one mind, we send greetings and thanks to these caring Teachers.

Now our minds are one.

THE CREATOR

Now we turn our thoughts to the Creator, or Great Spirit, and send greetings and thanks for the gifts of Creation. Everything we need to live a good life is here on this Mother Earth. For all the love that is still around us, we gather our minds together as one and send our choicest words of greetings and thanks to the Creator.

Now our minds are one.

CLOSING WORDS

We have now arrived at the place where we end our words. Of all the things we have named, it was not our intention to leave anything out. If something was forgotten, we leave it to each individual to send such greetings and thanks in their own way.

NOW OUR MINDS ARE ONE.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

First People of America and Canada : Turtle Island.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

HALLOWEEN TREATS

by Various Poets
How happy am I when I crawl into bed --
A rattlesnake hisses a tune at my head,
A gay little centipede, all without fear,
Crawls over my pillow and into my ear.
Traditional

Do you ever think when a hearse goes by
That you may be the next to die?
An undertaker tall and thin
Digs a hole and puts you in.
All goes well for about a week,
And then the coffin  begins to leak.
The worms crawl in. The worms crawl out.
The worms play pinochle on your snout!
They use your bones for telephones
And call you up when you're not home.
Traditional
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg and howlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
Macbeth:IV.i.10-19; 35-38
William Shakespeare
The owl is abroad, the bat and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain;
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And the frog peeps out o' the fountain.
from The Masque of Queens
Ben Jonson

This stone commemorates his name.
This grave received his tiny frame.
He's food for worms. To be precise,
One worm, one mouthful, would suffice.
Immanuel Frances

Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
e.e. cummings
Under the wide and starry sky
Dig the grave and let me lie:
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:
Here he lies where he long'd to be;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.
Robert Louis Stevenson

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there;
He wasn't there again today --
I wish, I wish, he'd stay away.
Hughes Mearns

October turned my maple's leaves to gold;
The most are gone now; here and there one lingers.
Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold,
Like coins between a dying miser's fingers. 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.
Robert Louis Stevenson

Listen . . .
With faint dry sound,
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees
And fall.
Adelaide Crapsey

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling
The wind is passing thro'.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads
The wind is passing by.
Christina Rossetti




Tuesday, October 25, 2011

THE CONQUEROR WORM

Edgar Allan Poe

THE CONQUEROR WORM

Lo! 'tis a gala night
   Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
    In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theater, to see
    A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
    The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
    Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and thither fly --
    Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
    That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
    Invisible Woe!

That motley drama -- oh, be sure
    It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
    By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returneth in
    To the self-same spot,
And much of Madness, and more of Sin,
    And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
    A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
    The scenic solitude!
It writhes! -- it writhes! -- with mortal pangs
    The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
    In human gore imbued.

Out -- out are the lights -- out all!
    And, over each quivering form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
    Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
    Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy "Man,"
    And its hero the Conqueror Worm.
BIOGRAPHY: (1809-1849) A member of the Romantic Movement, Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor, and literary critic whose writings laid the ground work for future horror, mystery, detective, and science fiction writers. In 1835, he married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, who died a few years later from tuberculosis. Poe died mysteriously in Baltimore, Maryland in 1849. He is best known for his works of the macabre.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

THE WOODS

"The Woods" by Holly Spencer and Jason Smith

Poem by Holly Spencer 
                              
              

Illustration by Jason Smith

           
Copyright 2011. Holly Spencer and Jason Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

GHOSTS OF A LUNATIC ASYLUM

by Stephen Vincent Benet













Here, where men's eyes were empty and as bright
As the blank windows set in glaring brick,
When the wind strengthens from the sea -- and night
Drops like a fog and makes the breath come thick;
By the deserted paths, the vacant hills,
One may see figures, twisted shades and lean,
Like the mad shapes that crawl on Indian screen,
Or paunchy smears you find on prison walls.
Turn the knob gently! There's the Thumbless Man,
Still weaving glass and silk into a dream,
Although the wall shows through him -- and the Khan
Journeys Cathay beside a paper stream.
A Rabbit Woman chitters by the door --
-- Chilly the grave-smell comes from the turned sod --
Come -- lift the curtain -- and be cold before
The silence of the eight men who were God!

1918

BIO: Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943) won a Pulitzer Prize in 1929 for his book-length poem, John Brown's Body.


Monday, October 10, 2011

THE HAUNTED HOUSE

by Thomas Hood
Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!

Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!

But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The narrow home of the departed mortal,
Ne'er looked so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall,
With its deserted portal!

The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding sheet the maggot slept
At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps has old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.

As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider's tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.

O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.

Howbeit, the door I pushed -- or so I dreamed --
Which slowly, slowly gaped, the hinges creaking
With such a rusty eloquence, it seemed
That Time himself was speaking.

But Time was dumb within that mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners
That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners.

Those tattered flags, that with the opened door,
Seemed the old wave of battle to remember,
While fallen fragments danced upon the floor
Like dead leaves in December.

The startled bats flew out, bird after bird,
The screech-owl overheard began to flutter,
And seemed to mock the cry that she had heard
Some dying victim utter!

A shriek that echoed from the joisted roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aloof
It ceased its tale of murther!

Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,
The banner shuddered, and the ragged streamer,
All things the horrid tenor of the sound
Acknowledged with a tremor.

The antlers where the helmet hung, and belt,
Stirred as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The bloodhound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbld frame,
And through its many gaps of destitution
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.

The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.

The subtle spider, that, from overhead,
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran with a nimble terror.

The very stains and fractures on the wall,
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.

Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the bloody hand shone out
So ominously vivid.

Some key to that inscrutable appeal
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver,
And every thrilling nerve and fiber feel
So ague-like a shiver.

For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!

Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,
But through one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
"That chamber is the ghostly!"

Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous, -- no web, no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.

The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.

One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,
Embroidered on the curtain.

BIO:  Thomas Hood (1799-1845) was a British humorist and poet.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

TO THE BAT

by Ann Radcliffe














From haunt of man, from day's obtrusive glare,
Thou shroud'st thee in the ruin's ivy'd tow'r,
Or in some shadowy glen's romantic bow'r,
Where wizard forms their mystic charms prepare,
Where Horror lurks, and ever-boding Care!
But, at the sweet and silent ev'ning hour,
When clos'd in sleep is ev'ry languid flow'r,
Thou lov'st to sport upon the twilight air,
Mocking the eye, that would thy course pursue,
In many a wanton round, elastic, gay,
Thou flitt'st athwart the pensive wand'rer's way,
As his lone footsteps print the mountain-dew.
From Indian isles thou com'st, with Summer's car,
Twilight thy love -- thy guide her beaming star!

From The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794.



SONNET

Now the bat circles on the breeze of eve,
That creeps, in shudd'ring sits, along the wave,
And trembles 'mid the woods, and through the cave
Whose lonely sighs the wanderer deceive;
For oft, when melancholy charms his mind,
He thinks the Spirit of the rock he hears,
Nor listens, but with sweetly-thrilling fears,
To the low, mystic murmurs of the wind!
Now the bat circles, and the twilight dew
Falls silent round, and, o'er the mountain-cliff,
The gleaming wave and far-discover'd skiff,
Spreads the grey veil of soft, harmonious hue.
So falls o'er Grief the dew of pity's tear
Dimming her lonely visions of despair.

From The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794


                      --Oft I hear,
Upon the silence of the midnight air,
Celestial voices swell in holy chorus
That bears the soul to heaven!

From The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794


TO AUTUMN

Sweet Autumn! how the melancholy grace
Steals on my heart, as through these shades I wind!
Sooth'd by thy breathing sigh, I fondly trace
Each lonely image of the pensive mind!
Lov'd scenes, lov'd friends -- long lost! around me rise,
And wake the melting thought, the tender tear!
That tear, that thought, which more than mirth I prize --
Sweet as the gradual tint that paints thy year!

Thy farewell smile, with fond regret, I view,
Thy beaming lights, soft gliding o'er the woods;
Thy distant landscape, touch'd with yellow hue,
While falls the lengthen'd gleam; thy winding floods,
Now veil'd in shade, save where the skiff's white sails
Swell to the breeze, and catch thy streaming ray.
But now, e'en now! -- the partial vision fails,
And the wave smiles, as sweeps the cloud away!
Emblem of life! -- Thus checquer'd is its plan,
Thus joy succeeds to grief -- thus smiles the varied man!

From The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794
BIO: Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), known as the Mistress of the Gothic Novel, wove an effective blend of psychological fear and poetry into her stories, profoundly affecting the writings of Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters.  


Friday, October 7, 2011

LIZZIE BORDEN

by A.L. Bixby

There's no evidence of guilt,
Lizzie Borden,
That should make your spirit wilt,
Lizzie Borden;
Many do not think that you
Chopped your father's head in two,
It's so hard a thing to do,
Lizzie Borden.
You have borne up under all,
Lizzie Borden.
With a mighty show of gall,
Lizzie Borden.
But because your nerve is stout
Does not prove beyond a doubt
That you knocked the old folks out,
Lizzie Borden.

Published during Lizzie Borden's 1893 trial

Alleged murder weapon

Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks.
And when she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Traditional Nursery Rhyme

Lizzie Borden Fan


LIZZIE BORDEN LIMERICKS
by Dawn Pisturino

Lizzie Borden (1)

When Lizzie got awfully mad,
She hacked up her stepmom and dad.
The ax at her feet, she giggled and bleat,
"Why am I so terribly bad!"

September 26, 2011

Lizzie Borden (2)

When Lizzie got awfully mad,
She hacked up her stepmom and Dad.
Amazed by the mess, she had to confess:
"What a rip-roaring party we had!"

September 27, 2011

More Lizzie Borden Folklore

The big question: Did she or didn't she? This question has puzzled police and researchers for more than 100 years! The ax murders of Lizzie's stepmother and father on August 4, 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts have been dubbed the perfect unsolved murder.



Copyright 2011 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

HALLOWEEN

by Ariel Pisturino

The ghosts are out doing their tricks.
The werewolf is howling.
The bats are scowling,
The goblins creeping,
The witches at their brew,
The cats meowing.
The pumpkins are glowing.
It's a HALLOWEEN NIGHT! for you.

                                                      Age 9 years
                        Published in Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans, 1994

Don't Cry for Me

You know I'm dying,
No one's crying,
They aren't even trying,
But now I'm flying,
To another world,
Away from you.

I am gone,
But all is done,
And I have won,
To fly away,
With my wings.

I am here,
It is clear,
One last tear.

Don't look back,
But now I lack,
Time,
Life,
But I'm still here,
It is all clear.

Age 13 years
Published in Chasing the Wind Anthology, 1997

ME

I fly through the air
On God's hand of Truth;
I fly like an eagle
On the hand of God,
For He has touched me
And made me wise;
For I can see hatred
In people's hearts,
I can see love too.
The people who have hatred
In their hearts,
They have not been kissed
By the wind of God.

I play on the beach
While God's light
Shines upon me,
While I dance,
In the moonlight,
The clouds race by;
The moon watches me
Like a big watchman
While I fall asleep
In the cool sand
And dream dreams
Of the truth.

Age 13 years
Published in A Treasury of Famous Poems, 1997

image
BIO:  A graduate of the University of Southern California, Ariel Pisturino holds a Master's Degree in Vocal Music. She has performed with the Long Beach Opera, The Repertory Opera Company of Pomona, Martinez Opera, and the Pacific Opera Project. She can be found at www.arielpisturino.com.
"Don Giovanni" Rehearsal clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP8FcFQXusY

Copyright 2011 Ariel Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.




Monday, October 3, 2011

Halloween in a Suburb

by H.P. Lovecraft
Halloween in a Suburb

The steeples are white in the wild moonlight,
And the trees have a silver glare;
Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly,
And the harpies of upper air,
That flutter and laugh and stare.

For the village dead to the moon outspread
Never shone in the sunset's gleam,
But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep
Where the rivers of madness stream
Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.

A chill wind weaves thro' the rows of sheaves
In the meadows that shimmer pale,
And comes to twine where the headstones shine
And the ghouls of the churchyard wail
For harvests that fly and fail.

Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change
That tore from the past its own
Can quicken this hour, when a spectral pow'r
Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne
And looses the vast unknown.

So here again stretch the vale and plain
That moons long-forgotten saw,
And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray,
Sprung out of the tomb's black maw
To shake all the world with awe.

And all that the morn shall greet forlorn,
The ugliness and the pest
Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick,
Shall someday be with the rest,
And brood with the shades unblest.

Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark,
And the leprous spires ascend;
For new and old alike in the fold
Of horror and death are penn'd,
For the hounds of time to rend.






In a Sequestered Providence Churchyard
Where Once Poe Walked

Eternal brood the shadows on this ground,
Dreaming of centuries that have gone before;
Great elms rise solemnly by slab and mound,
Arch'd high above a hidden world of yore.
Round all the scene a light of memory plays,
And dead leaves whisper of departed days,
Longing for sights and sounds that are no more.

Lonely and sad, a spectre glides along
Aisles where of old his living footsteps fell;
No common glance discerns him, tho' his song
Peals down thro' time with a myserious spell:
Only the few who sorcery's secret know
Espy amidst these tombs the shade of Poe.











BIO:  H.P Lovecraft (1890 - 1937) wrote horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He is best known for crafting "weird fiction" or "cosmic horror." He believed that life cannot be understood by the human mind and that the universe is largely unfriendly to human beings. He has had a profound influence on modern horror authors, including Stephen King. His Cthulhu Mythos and fictional grimoire, the Necronomicon, have endured to become classics of American horror. 


Tuesday, September 27, 2011

SEPARATION

by Dawn Pisturino
Across the void of outer space
I reach for you
Calling your name
But emptiness answers
Cold and black
Stars stare icily
The old moon glows
And all the wonders of the universe
Should be ours forever
But our spirits soar to opposite ends
And all is hopelessly lost

Written for Stephen, June 13, 1988
Published in "American Poetry Anthology," 1988
Copyright 2011 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.

Saturday, September 17, 2011

STONE MEMORIES

by Holly Spencer

Summer sun, cotton white clouds
A walk down the avenues of
stone. Names like stories written
upon the tablet of time.
When moonlight glows
the haunting sonant’s hang
mid-air, songs of the dances of life.
Memories like stone-
fading with the travel of time.
Tributes that struggle to remain
etched in time of stone.  
September 10, 2011
copyright©hollyspencer2011
"I wrote this yesterday when I got home from Coopersville to get Lucky her flea medicine. I drove down Main Street to see shops closed...can't get enough business. On down the road and at the last minute pulled into Polkton Twp Cemetery where Harry Spencer is buried with 'brother' John, the mystery brother. Harry's stone is flat to the ground and half buried. This poem came to mind on the way home. Harry brother of Medad. Sincerely, Holly"

Lovely poem, Holly. Thanks for sharing!
 

Thursday, September 1, 2011

ALLI NAJEEBAT

BY OLANIHUN OPEYEMI JOE





ALLI NAJEEBAT (Resquiescant In Pace)
We tread same path
For she loved math...

When the news reached my ears
It took years ere it spread
And when it did, no tears
Only some rude shock, hot, red.

What stole your lil soul
Make me feel so old
Whatever stilled your heaving chest
Has roused in me a great unrest
What killed my little girl
Must have come with some spell
Should have taken me instead
Ought to spare your pretty head...
But time is different
And mine is lenient.

She was so young
Smart and strong,
She loved math
I teach that...

As for poems
She write them
With her eyes
Lucid and bright
-typical African-
In my heart...

Now, I've lost my rhythm and rhyme
A muse departed, I weep inside...

My pain non can comprehend
-For I've lost a faithful friend-
Not the pain of a hunter
For his assegai
Not that of a farmer
For his ruined Oryza
Its that of a rabbi
Whose's lost his rahki...
The pain of a teacher.

For We tread the same path
As she loved poems cum math.


CHURCH OF THE POOR

Yesterday, in the night
I stood by her door
And watched her her plight
The church the poor...

Wrinkled. women worn with years
Speckled. men, fewer, aged likewise
Softened, repentant
Burdened, expectant
Sit side by side
List' to the preacher's
Interpreter
Rapt... In non-perfunctory genuflection.

Tattered, tired, tried
A pure gold, She Cried
To God, this ghetto church
For poverty so much.




TWINS (A SONNET)

Dedicated to the Adeyeye twins on this occasion of their birthday.

MOTHER;
"What are these 'not so heavy' I carry
Feeding both on both my gland mammary?
Double bundle I just must clutch so tight
When I walk here, there I have to bear
Them, a perch on my arm, strapped to my rear".

A VOICE;
"Its a whole grain of cowpea as splint
That crisp cowrie shell in halves is split".

The total cola, bilabial, bitter
So incomplete one without the other
Just like the couplets in lyrical ballad
Journey nectared of butterfly ala'd.

They're gifts gifted not only the rich beings
But those in penury also have twins.

Copywrite 2011 Olanihun Peyemi Joe
Ibadan, Nigeria


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