Wild Words: Ferociously Nourishing Poetry

burgundy and oak

4/28/2024

Photo by Christian Lue

as a boy
i heard the muses
Calliope and Melpomene
whispering
their voices bubbling up
from the thick
burgundy carpet
in my grandfather’s
living room

we told Homeric tales
with plastic figurines
exploring caverns
beneath an oak end-table
the darkness
beneath the sofa
was an unknowable
otherworld
beside which we waged wars
with marbles
and matchbox cars

that small temple
of burgundy and oak
is lost to me now
yet in quiet moments
of forgetting myself
i still feel
my muses near
silently brushing my cheek
like scarves of raw silk
reminding me
to awaken back
into more innocent ways
of understanding

and so
under a cool
spring moon
i press my ear
to the earth
soft and yielding
after a generous April rain
and listen
to remember

- Dimitri Papadopoulos

Become the Wind

4/21/2024

What if we built
an altar to change?
Dedicated ourselves
to the idea,
bowed down to that which
is not steadfast.
Perhaps there would be
an empty bowl in the middle
that might break
at any moment.

Perhaps in the center
there is only a shard
that we must learn
to worship.
We don't come to this altar
begging, we come
to be reminded
there is nothing
to beg for.

We are happy.
We are devastated.
We are whole.
We are broken.
It rains.
It clears.
All at the same time.

Or maybe in the center
there is a mirror
which reflects only what it,
not necessarily
what is wanted.

An altar where we come
to meet truth,
to bow down to it.
To open the window
of the heart
and accept
that there is no choice
but to be changed.

- Penny Hackett-Evans

You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book

4/14/2024

Art by Jeya Chamanisme
www.artbygaia.com

Just get up from your desk
and open the window,
keep silent until you hear three
sounds you've never heard before,
run your tongue around your mouth,
smell the air.
I tell you what, put down this book
and do this one thing now:
let your hands drift out and touch,
then drift again;
run your fingers
over rough wood, then let them fall
against your own soft skin. I met a woman once
who told me to touch her jumper,
Expensive, she said. It bobbled
under my hand so she told me
I wasn't feeling it right,
and for too long I believed her
because she said quality spoke.
I didn't see how beautiful
the world is
with its only wish
that I belong,
and how my touch,
my smell, hearing, sight,
so different from hers
is the only one that matters.

- Sarah Salway

Listen

4/7/2024

Night Bloom
Painting by Duy Huynh

Listen.
I want to tell you something. This morning
is bright after all the steady rain, and every iris,
peony, rose, opens its mouth, rejoicing. I want to say,
wake up, open your eyes, there's a snow-covered road
ahead, a field of blankness, a sheet of paper, an empty screen.
Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies,
tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song.
I can't tell you what prayer is, but I can take the breath
of the meadow into my mouth, and I can release it for the leaves'
green need. I want to tell you your life is a blue coal, a slice
of orange in the mouth, cut hay in the nostrils. The cardinals'
red song dances in your blood. Look, every month the moon
blossoms into a peony, then shrinks to a sliver of garlic.
And then it blooms again.

- Barbara Crooker

burgundy and oak

Become the Wind

You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book

Listen

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burgundy and oak

Become the Wind

You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book

Listen

Archives

Categories

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