Showing posts with label pen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pen. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

A Place Without Time...



This Poet returned to the Land of Time with a jolt when she happened to look at the clock...

Wh-a-a-a-at?!! Whe-e-e-e-re?!! oh. my!
 

Since first it versed in poet’s yen
There is no time inside a pen
No curse of tick-by-tock demand
For she with Poem in her hand

The dance of word-romance… surreal
There is no time that time can steal
It holds no rod, it bears no chains
For she with Poem in her veins

For she with Poem in her heart
There is a world, a world apart
…apart from time where rhyme and yen
Ally within the poet’s pen

© Janet Martin

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Consummate Charmer

PAD Challenge day 19: For today’s prompt, write a thing poem. 

You are not much to look at
And yet, you stir in me 
Passion, allure, 
You hold a world
Of Possibility
Of flowered slope
Of hunger
Hope,
Of dreamer's paradise
How is it, you, 
Common and plain
Flirts with I-want-you-eyes 
And I, completely willing
Cannot 
Fight your straight-laced charm
But 
Like a lonely woman
I grasp your pro-offered arm
...and then we dance
A strange romance
For you follow my lead
Where I, 
A poet,
You, 
A pen
In consummate  
Rhyme,
Bleed

~Janet Martin





Tuesday, February 24, 2015

A Most Genial Companion



 It was a quick supper with few dishes, leaving a large, dark, wind-wild-stormy evening to fill...

You come, my love and keep me company
When winter’s early eve is cold and dark
By musing’s hearth your touch ignites a spark
To kiss the waning light with poetry
The human heart is prone to want, and oh
The want of what is not can rend the air
In spite of what we hold, in spite of prayer
Sometimes silence can probe our longings so
But then you come to me and mediate
In poetry what Time cannot abate

A melody caught on night’s raging storm
Is not deterred where Old Man Winter roars
How is it that Time moves through walls and doors
To taunt touch without filigree or form?
And when it seems that everyone has gone
And when the night seems far too dark or deep
And sight would swear that I am all alone
Ah, still you come to dance away the hour
And plant upon the dark a poem-flow’r

Time’s tempest seems to stir the heart of us
And winter-dusk, though brusque captures your eyes
Then let the frigate of day-dreams capsize
And let the ocean in the sky adjust
Its colors to the clock; the cold is kind
-er with the comfort of your kiss to charm
The lips that murmur where the dark is warm
With almost-poems and in them I find
Though often you are overlooked by men
You are a most genial comrade, my pen

© Janet Martin

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Wonder of Pen and Ink





We are not chained to seasons, love
Though sprig is stripped of virile bud
Still we can walk where petals spill
Into the ambling brook at will
And we can ramble where the brook
Winds through a fern-embellished nook
Or green into a meadow laughs
Where skies scrawl azure autographs
And we can take our shoes off while
The wind is menacing and vile
And board a frigate undeterred
As pen and ink spill into word
And seal upon a humble page
Its summer though snow-barons rage
And rattle at the window-pane
Ah, soft we hear the silk of rain
Slip from the drowsing August tree
In whispers of a memory
Roused by the simple nod and wink
Through wonder of a pen and ink

© Janet Martin

Last night I read the poem The Tuft of Flowers by Robert Frost and I laughed to realize I could lean over the summer-brook bank or amble through a dewy field 'before the sun' even while the old early winter howled at my window... (don't you just love the last line in this poem?)


The Tuft of Flowers

I went to turn the grass once after one
Who mowed it in the dew before the sun.

The dew was gone that made his blade so keen
Before I came to view the levelled scene.

I looked for him behind an isle of trees;
I listened for his whetstone on the breeze.

But he had gone his way, the grass all mown,
And I must be, as he had been,—alone,

As all must be,' I said within my heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'

But as I said it, swift there passed me by
On noiseless wing a 'wildered butterfly,

Seeking with memories grown dim o'er night
Some resting flower of yesterday's delight.

And once I marked his flight go round and round,
As where some flower lay withering on the ground.

And then he flew as far as eye could see,
And then on tremulous wing came back to me.

I thought of questions that have no reply,
And would have turned to toss the grass to dry;

But he turned first, and led my eye to look
At a tall tuft of flowers beside a brook,

A leaping tongue of bloom the scythe had spared
Beside a reedy brook the scythe had bared.

I left my place to know them by their name,
Finding them butterfly weed when I came.

The mower in the dew had loved them thus,
By leaving them to flourish, not for us,

Nor yet to draw one thought of ours to him.
But from sheer morning gladness at the brim.

The butterfly and I had lit upon,
Nevertheless, a message from the dawn,

That made me hear the wakening birds around,
And hear his long scythe whispering to the ground,

And feel a spirit kindred to my own;
So that henceforth I worked no more alone;

But glad with him, I worked as with his aid,
And weary, sought at noon with him the shade;

And dreaming, as it were, held brotherly speech
With one whose thought I had not hoped to reach.

Men work together,' I told him from the heart,
Whether they work together or apart.'


Saturday, November 8, 2014

Rendezvous with a Pen





PAD Challenge day 8: write a blind poem

I do not know where you will go
I follow you with my eyes closed
I chase the ripple of your sigh
Then trace the laughter in your eye
This touch-taste-trusting rendezvous
Is like feeling my way with you
Through murky ink, for who can tell
What you may make me think or spell?

Tremor of fear, dread and delight
Course through senses not bound by sight
Fearless scavenger of the heart
You dare to tear its walls apart
Without apology you rend
Where propriety oft pretends
You ravage through to truth exposed
I follow you with my eyes closed

Futile to beguile you with lies
For you can see behind closed eyes
The paradise of ignorance
Blushes as you rush through my glance
To move the hand that grips the quill
That shapes the bidding of your will
I do not know where you will lead
And so I follow, blind with need

© Janet Martin

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Gargantuan Gate





Ah, daring, unbarring of thought
Its gate a quiescent quill
Sparring with all that yet is not
Gargantuan want and will

How can one extricate
Or trace thought’s phantom form
Or usher through this meager gate
The impact of its storm

The bard bent on intent
Of compositions where
The music of the mind is rent
With footnotes of despair

…is like a beggar, oft
Bartering with the rain
Where bits of babble drift aloft
Like notes in a refrain

We grapple with a sea
Amorphous anthems spill
Where art of reining in its plea
To fit inside a quill

…draws us into the night
To dare to bare its weight
Twenty-four-seven appetite
Barred by a meager gate

© Janet Martin

My sister-in-law told me she is at her boss's beck and call twenty-four seven. I wanted to tell her 'me too!'...but I didn't;)