Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Unity

http://www.unityproject.net/

 �We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business;

we are each other's magnitude and bond.�

? Gwendolyn Brooks

�Pit race against race, religion against religion,

prejudice against prejudice. Divide and conquer!

We must not let that happen here.�

? Eleanor Roosevelt

�I felt knowledge and the unity of the world

circulate in me like my own blood.�

? Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

 "Unity" Sculpture at Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Midweek Motif ~ Unity

Is there anything that doesn't work better with Unity?

As a principle of design, unity: "occurs when all of
the elements of a piece combine to make a balanced,

harmonious, complete whole. Unity is another of those

hard-to-describe art terms but, when it's present,

your eye and brain are pleased to see it."

 Versus:

Dis                 u

n

i                                                     ty

Your Challenge: In a new poem, bring diverse or disparate entities into unity.  

Excerpt from The Anti-Suffragists

BY CHARLOTTE ANNA PERKINS GILMAN

Fashionable women in luxurious homes,

With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills,

Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief;

Hostess or guest, and always so supplied

With graceful deference and courtesy;

Surrounded by their servants, horses, dogs, �

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

Successful women who have won their way

Alone, with strength of their unaided arm,

Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up

By the sweet aid of �woman�s influence�;

Successful any way, and caring naught

For any other woman�s unsuccess, �

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

. . . . (Read the rest of this amazing poem HERE.)

I Have Learned So Much

BY HAFITZ

I
haveLearned

So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
A Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me

That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
My mind has ever known.

The Red Wheelbarrow

by William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

#

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and then visit others in the spirit of the community.

( Next week Sumana�s Midweek Motif will be ~ Change)

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Door

Jesus said, "I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture."  (John 10:9)

Source

�A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that�s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.��Ludwig Wittgenstein

�A very little key will open a very heavy door.� 
? Charles Dickens, Hunted Down

�Listen, there�s a hell of a good universe next door: let�s go.��e.e.cummings

             Midweek Motif ~ The Door

 Moving in or out, in between we have The Door. Once in, whether it is a safe haven or a dungeon the door remains a guard.

Nevertheless the door encourages seeking change by opening it.

It is like a thriller with its �what-lies-beyond� quotient.

Moreover one may be out of doors, be at death�s door, behind closed doors, be on the door, be through the back door; one may even darken someone�s door, keep the wolf from the door and also leave The Door open.

So�Use the motif The Door in your poem today.

The Door

By Miroslav Holub

Go and open the door. Maybe outside there�s a tree, or a wood, a garden, or a magic city.

Go and open the door. Maybe a dog�s rummaging. Maybe you�ll see a face, or an eye, or the picture of a picture.

Go and open the door. If there�s a fog it will clear.

Go and open the door. Even if there�s only the darkness ticking, even if there�s only the hollow wind, even if nothing is there, go and open the door.

At least there�ll be a draught.

The Lockless Door 

by Robert Frost

It went many years,
But at last came a knock,
And I though of the door
With no lock to lock.

I blew out the light,
I tip-toed the floor,
And raised both hands
In prayer to the door.

But the knock came again.
My window was wide;
I climbed on the sill
And descended outside.

Back over the sill
I bade a 'Come in'
To whatever the knock
At the door may have been.

So at a knock
I emptied my cage
To hide in the world
And alter with age.

Doors

By Carl sandBurg

An open door says, �Come in.�

A shut door says, �Who are you?�

Shadows and ghosts go through shut doors.

If a door is shut and you want it shut,

     why open it?

If a door is open and you want it open,

     why shut it?

Doors forget but only doors know what it is

     doors forget. 

  The Listeners

By Walter De La Mare

"Is there anybody there?" said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And his horse in the silence champed the grass
Of the forest's ferny floor;
And a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller's head:
And he smote upon the door again a second time;
"Is there anybody there?" he said.
But no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller's call.
And he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
'Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:--
"Tell them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word," he said.
Never the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community�

  ( Next week Susan�s Midweek Motif will be ~ Unity)

        

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Music

�Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.��Plato

Source

               Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Music

�Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune, so no one will suspect I�m afraid�
And every single time,
the happiness in the tune convinces me that I�m not afraid.�

                 

This is how Rodgers and Hammerstein lyrics illustrate wonders of Music.

What is this life with no rhythm, melodies or harmonies?

Music itself is a universal language connecting all and Music is everywhere. We only need to lend our ears to SEE music!

Musicis our motif today. You might also focus on any musical instrument, any special song or composer.

Music Swims Back To Me

By Anne Sexton

Wait Mister. Which way is home? 
They turned the light out
and the dark is moving in the corner.
There are no sign posts in this room, 
four ladies, over eighty, 
in diapers every one of them.
La la la, Oh music swims back to me
and I can feel the tune they played
the night they left me
in this private institution on a hill.

Imagine it. A radio playing
and everyone here was crazy.
I liked it and danced in a circle.
Music pours over the sense
and in a funny way
music sees more than I.
I mean it remembers better; 
remembers the first night here.
It was the strangled cold of November; 
even the stars were strapped in the sky
and that moon too bright
forking through the bars to stick me
with a singing in the head.
I have forgotten all the rest.

They lock me in this chair at eight a.m.
and there are no signs to tell the way, 
just the radio beating to itself
and the song that remembers
more than I. Oh, la la la, 
this music swims back to me.
The night I came I danced a circle
and was not afraid.
Mister? 

I Know The Music

By Wilfred Owen

All sounds have been as music to my listening:
Pacific lamentations of slow bells,
The crunch of boots on blue snow rosy-glistening,
Shuffle of autumn leaves; and all farewells:

Bugles that sadden all the evening air,
And country bells clamouring their last appeals
Before [the] music of the evening prayer;
Bridges, sonorous under carriage wheels.

Gurgle of sluicing surge through hollow rocks,
The gluttonous lapping of the waves on weeds,
Whisper of grass; the myriad-tinkling flocks,
The warbling drawl of flutes and shepherds' reeds.

The orchestral noises of October nights
Blowing ( ) symphonetic storms
Of startled clarions ( )
Drums, rumbling and rolling thunderous and ( ).

Thrilling of throstles in the keen blue dawn,
Bees fumbling and fuming over sainfoin-fields. 

 Music When Soft Voices Die

 By P. B. Shelley

Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. 

Music

By Rainer Maria Rilke

Take me by the hand;
it's so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.

You see, I'm scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn't make use of
whatever was given,

so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.


(Translated by A. Poulin) 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community�

               ( Susan�s Midweek Motif on 01/04/2017 will be ~ Vision)

             

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Civil aircraft. Photo: ICAO

�Working Together to Ensure 
No Country is Left Behind�

(Theme of International Civil Aviation Day for 2015-2019)

International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Flag

�The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who... looked enviously on the birds soaring freely through space... on the infinite highway of the air.� ? Wilbur Wright

�Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.� ? Leonardo da Vinci

�Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.� ? Henry David Thoreau

"Aviation, this young modern giant, exemplifies the possible relationship of women and the creations of science. Although women have not taken full advantage of its use and benefits, air travel is as available to them as to men."--Amelia Earhart

�Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.�? Amelia Earhart

Midweek Motif ~ Aviation

Today's motif may feel like a complete change of subject, 

but it can be as political or non-political as you make it.

7 December is International Civil Aviation Day. Interesting that it is the same day as the USA National Pearl Harbor Remembrance. Do the two uses of aviation~for war and for peace~balance each other out? 

I rarely fly.  I've been finding flying increasingly uncomfortable from airport security and wait time to take off, flight service and landing. But still, flying to a remote location for vacation is a privilege that carries romance as well as discomfort and danger.

Our Challenge: Compose a new poem from the point of view of someone looking out the window of a flying machine.

Laurie Anderson's "From the Air"

FLIGHT TO LIMBO

Related Poem Content Details

BY JOHN UPDIKE

(At What Used to Be Called Idlewild)

The line didn�t move, though there were not 

many people in it. In a half-hearted light 

the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly 

with a large dazed family ranging 

from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady 

in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage 

was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed, 

the rumor went through the line. We shrugged, 

in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation 

had never seemed a very natural idea. 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

excerpt from New York to San Fran

Related Poem Content Details

BY ALLEN GINSBERG

. . . . 

Once more wingtip lifting to the sun

& whine of dynamos in the

stunned ear,

and shafts of light on the page

in the airplane cabin?�?

Once more the cities of cloud

advancing over New York?�?�

Once more the houses parked like used

cars in myriad row lots?�?

I plug in the Jetarama Theater

sterilized Earphones?�?�

it�s wagner!

the ride of the valkyries!

We�re above the clouds! The

Sunlight flashes on a giant bay!

Earth is below! The horns of

Siegfried sound gigantic in my ear?�?

The banks of silver clouds 
like mountain ranges

I spread my giant green map

on the air-table?�?

The Hudson curved below to the

floor-drop of the World,

Mountain range after mountain range,

Thunder after thunder,

Cumulus above cumulus,

World after world reborn,

in the ears 

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE at the Poetry Foundation.)

Courage 

BY Amelia Earhart

Courage is the price that Life exacts

     for granting peace.

The soul that knows it not

Knows no release from little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

     The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate

For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we

make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the resistless day,

And count it fair. 

Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community.  AND: please put a link to this prompt with your poem.  

(Next week Sumana's Midweek Motif will be Music. )