The first poem comes from an exercise where we had to rhyme/ slant rhyme with the words on a piece of paper and then pass for the next person. After a few times around, we had to use all the words on the sheet to make a poem, here is my abstract creation...
Dream swimming
Pie in the sky
Defy the Shabbat
Trimming the tree
Dream swimming the sleep drought
Deus Machina was the shout
Drumming and jumping
The dance is the cry!
Deus Crapina has come
Deify the shallot!This next piece comes from an exercise where we had to pick out words that stuck out for us in each of our readings. For that day, our readings pulled from Catherine Keller's On the Mystery to Audre Lorde and a reflection from Neitzsche. It was rather ecclectic!
Collective
In our ordinary lives
The miracle occurs
The child is born
The woman suffers
Unfamiliar lives become
Pre-figured we expect the worl
simple, practical, perceiveable
But.
Spiritually dry
Organic reality steps in
Non logical
A fragmentary panorama
Frustration
Our mnemonic device of the sacred has stopped working
Open to the luminous darkness
Wake in the night to see the Etherial angel
Are we awake or still dreaming?
Put it on paper
create destroy transform.
The impossible happens
The genesis collective is yours
This next one comes from an exercise of imagining ourselves as an inanimate object. I still think this is my favorite of the week.
I am the coin in your pocket
Warmed by the body, held close against the skin.
On my own I am of small value,
Together we grow, we jingle, we jangle, we add together.
Taking on the scent of the coffee shop
Where I am spent. Faintness of espresso.
Touched to the lips for luck
Taste of the not-quite-something-ness lingers
Hints of chapstick washes over.
The grooves of my side rolled down your nose
I can feel your freckles.
Transferred from hand to hand, purchase to purchase
I am always. I will be always.
My power is not my value, my payment ability
My power is in the future imagination.
What will I buy tomorrow, 20 years from now?
On some future day, to be found
Cold on the sidewalk.
I will be picked up again and become
The coin in your pocket
Warmed by the body, held close against the skin.
This last one was very structured going in. We had to use a nesting rhyme at the end of each triplet and needed to write 5 triplets that told a story. I think this one out of all of them, is one that could be rewritten every day and get a new idea to come out. Feel free to try this exercise yourselves! If you don't know what a nesting rhyme is, you will soon as you continue to read.
Discord
When you and I become we, it is as one community
It is not alone, yet as one being, a unit
With lives to live and paths to tread, we are a knotted tie.
It is is hard and discordant, this process of consternation
Each side makes its case, over and against, stern
Making the many into one is rough, this making of a nation.
Over time we break and bond again, our paths are the passages
Toward truth. In and out of rightness we seek sages
When found, we find their infinite wisdom to sag.
The truth dripping form sugar coated lips, easy to swallow
But once there, hard to hold down. In failure, we wallow
The real truth that is real is that we must give space, allow
Between the now and the future, there is much we must restrain
Rules and laws, frustrating and confining, are only meant to train
So that we can learn to live, rolling justice down like rain
I'd love some feedback!
