Category dVerse Poetics

dVerse Poetics – Song of Songs

freyathewriter 37 Comments

This week in Poetics over at the dVerse Poets Pub, we are asked by our genial host Laura to step away from all that is distracting us, all that is bringing us down and be inspired by the poets whose thoughts turn to the mystical or spiritual. This is to mark Bhodi Day (8th December), when Siddharta Gautama achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha.

Please do hop over to dVerse, read the contributions and why not take part yourself?

Here is my offering, inspired by the line below:

My heart was split, and a flower appeared (Solomon)

I count them, not to accumulate the seeded wealth

but to honour your blessings, your beauty within.

For your lips are like the crimson thread

that connects each ruby-polished pearl nestled within

and I kiss them in awe, in delight, oh, in reverence.

My mouth lovingly caresses your shimmering jewels,

hesitant – and yet, and yet

I may not refrain from the glories within.

I am entranced by you, your eyes, your brow, your radiant skin,

your covering cannot shroud you, cannot conceal you from my gaze

I have split you open and your beauty is mine.

613 – I count them.

They are yours – and maybe, one day, mine.

This poem is also inspired by an extract from Song of Songs, which is also known as the Song of Solomon. In Jewish tradition, pomegranates are seen as a symbol of fertility and love (“Your lips are like a crimson thread; your mouth is lovely. Your brow behind your veil [gleams] like a pomegranate split open”). They are also associated with the 613 mitzvot (commandments), because they are said to have 613 seeds (in reality they don’t, sadly!).

dVerse – Poetics 427 – Incompatible

freyathewriter 17 Comments

I’m a little late to enter into the dVerse Poetics night (a whole day late!), but I’m not quite back in the swing of things yet. Our lovely host has invited us to write a poem using the word ‘folly’, in whatever way we prefer. I do enjoy it when words can have different meanings, as there will be even more variety to the entries!

Why not hope over and take a look, read some of the poems and maybe even take part yourself? In the meantime, here’s my entry, I hope you enjoy it!

*****

I was caught at a moment of weakness, sure,

cast adrift on a sea of detritus all of my own making,

so I had thought, so I had told myself, so I had flagellated myself with

the endless, barbed telling,

the recriminations encasing me in a mummy’s shroud of suffocation.

You, oh so clever, ever aware, ever searching for that one, weak point

swooped down, a bird of prey to my mouse-shrunken self

and plucked me away to dizzying, airless heights,

making me yours, entombing me in your inky black soulless centre.

Oh what folly, of mine, of yours, what utter, blind stupidity.

Since when does a creature of the earth ride well with Death?

Frozen in drowning fire – dVerse Poetics

freyathewriter 2 Comments

I pour myself into a paper cup and choke

on my viscous hair as it wraps

its grasping entrails around my throat.

 

I gaze upwards into the starlight of hell beneath my feet,

the bowels of the earth shining in the gloom

above my head.

 

The wonders of living are innumerable –

I observe this from my grave buried deep in the furnace.

The fiery ventricles of my frozen heart pound like a halting train

as I croak my last word at the moment of my birth.

 

I’m rusty at this poetry malarkey. I hope surrealism suits for a first venture back into dVerse for a while! Surrealism is the theme over here – do  join in!