NaPoWriMo Day 8 – Calligram

And now for something completely different…

Our prompt for the day (optional, as always) plays of our resources. Today, I challenge you to write a visual poem. If that’s not specific enough, perhaps you can try your hand at a calligram? That’s a poem or other text in which the words are arranged into a specific shape or image. You might find inspiration in the famous calligrams written by Guillaume Apollinaire. And a word to the wise — the best way to cope with today’s exercise may well be to abandon your keyboard, and sit down with paper and pen (and maybe crayons or colored pencils or markers!)

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NaPoWriMo Day 7 – Palinode

Today I challenge you to write a palinode. And what’s that? It’s a poem in which the poet retracts a statement made in an earlier poem. You could take that route or, if you don’t have an actual poetically-expressed statement you want to retract, maybe you could write a poem in which you explain your reasons for changing your mind about something. It could be anything from how you decided that you like anchovies after all to how you decided that annoying girl was actually cool enough that you married her.

I
said I couldn’t run
The last time I tried
I was 9
and by the time I crossed the finish
line
adults were packing up the hotdogs.
Today I ran 5 kilometers.

I
said I couldn’t grow things
The last time I tried
I killed 2
cactus’s. You know the kind they say
can’t die?
I drowned them.
Today I ate kale from my garden.

I
said I couldn’t write regularly
As if words could flow on demand.
As if I were 3.
All it takes is a little
discipline.
Today I celebrate a week of poems.

NaPoWriMo Day 6 – Dis-aubade

Today’s (optional) prompt springs from the form known as the aubade. These are morning poems, about dawn and daybreak. Many aubades take the form of lovers’ morning farewells.

If I would lift my heavy head
drag it from my soft-warm bed
perhaps I’d catch the morning light
driving back the sacred night
I guess I’d see the dawn arise
reflect her curves in faithless eyes
I might marvel at the way
darkness morphs and turns to day
I’d be in awe, I don’t doubt,
of sunshine’s candor, early scout
But all this wonder soon would fade
as I with longing turn my gaze
to where my body ere laid.

NaPoWriMo Day 5 – Heaven has different signs

Find an Emily Dickinson poem – preferably one you’ve never previously read – and take out all the dashes and line breaks. Make it just one big block of prose. Now, rebreak the lines. Add words where you want. Take out some words. Make your own poem out of it!

Heaven” has different signs to me
Sometimes, I think that earth
Is but a sidebar to the Place
But when again, in Sorrow,

A mighty sigh runs round the World
And settles in my stomach
A Resentment, As if creation groaning
should be a stagewhisper like that

Upon the Ignomy steals a Thought
That when the promise of the hereafter is a Triumph
When death together becomes cause for Victory
And makes Some rejoice for the promise of Eternity

When the Rapture of an (un)finished Day
And Turning away from this now-unrest
All for the promise of the place
That Men call “paradise”

When “Heaven” Itself is fairer, preferable, to this present darkness
I prefer that Kingdom-come should not be Adored,
And held for a Superior Grace
Than Thy Kingdom come on earth

As it is In heaven.
Even the Not yet, Our eyes can see

NaPoWriMo Day 4 – Love

I suppose it might
Smell less like roses and more
Like mowing the lawn.

I suppose it might
Sound less like poems and more
Like please, thanks, sorry.

I suppose it might
Taste less like champagne and more
Like warm morning breath.

I suppose it might
Be less inevitable
Than we imagined.

I suppose.

un-Poem

NaPoWriMo Day 3 – Poem of negation: a poem that involves describing something in terms of what it is not, or not like.

This
is not the kind of poem
that rails
nor the kind that reflects
It is not the kind of poem
that describes wonder
nor the kind
that defends justice
It is not the kind of poem
that tells truths or half-truths
It is certainly not the kind
that speaks to untruths
This is not the kind of poem
that dreams or hopes or fears or despairs.
Not the kind that rushes to tell itself
nor the kind that wrestles in its telling
The words of this poem
don’t trip over themselves
nor do they labor
This poem is not the flashy kind, the stand-up-and-notice-me kind,
the deep-and-meaningful kind, the change-the-world kind,
the shouty kind, the take-home kind, the must-be-told kind.
This poem
is not the significant kind
This poem
is not even the particularly good kind
In fact
this poem will be remembered for nothing more than that it was written.

on the Geography of Justice

As husband-man and I have returned to South Africa we’ve begun thinking about where we want to root ourselves and how the space we choose to be in might best reflect our desire to love our neighbors well, to be part of reconciliation in this beautiful land, to rebuild and repair. As we’ve begun to speak about where we might land, I have been profoundly struck by how our society still reflects the history of our country.

So much of South Africa’s neighborhoods are still sharply racially and class segregated and this is no wonder. Apartheid was in large part upheld by the spatial engineering of physical space and geographies. Land was zoned according to ethnicity/race and groups were assigned demarcated areas to live in. Buffer zones of natural landscape features and man-made infrastructure were employed as physical barriers to keep people apart. Transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure as well as centers of commerce were by extension inaccessible to many persons of color who were often assigned land on the very outskirts of cities/towns.

In South Africa, we don’t have metaphorical walls keeping us separate and disconnected; we have physical demarcations of division. Train lines, roads, rivers, mountains, and scrubland are still the tangible expressions and reproductions of our separation.

Apartheid was not only a political, legal and economic dispensation – it was a spatial dispensation.

The inequitable distribution of resources, services and access in South African communities is still largely one of the physical legacies of apartheid.  As Edward Soja puts it, justice has a geography. Injustice is graphically manifested. Our spaces remain imbued with the remnants of the historical project, with power and with privilege or with the lack of both. We are positioned and continue to re-position in ways that reproduce and reinforce inequality.

How can we begin asking the hard questions about the socio-spatial distributions of wants and needs in our cities – access to job opportunities, to health care, to good air quality? How might we begin to recognize that the morality of place and physicality of space – accessibility, walkability, transport equity – is not solely the mandate of government; it is the explicit remit of the church.

“Seek the peace of the city where I have sent you.” Jeremiah 29:7. The peace that is required here is shalom. Not merely the absence of conflict but the flourishing of life.  From the dust of the land we were created and to the dust of the land we will return. Our beginning and end is with the earth, place, space. The use of land not only reflects equitableness, but our relationship to it imbues our sense of placement, home, rootedness, safety, flourishing, and survival. “In whose image is space created?” asks David Harvey. Does space in South Africa reflect the image of God reconciling mankind to one another? Is the Kingdom reflected on earth; is “thy will be done” mirrored back to heaven? Does place and space reflect our shalom imperative?

If our separateness had such an intentionality and physicality behind its formation, then surely our reconciliation has to be both intentional and physical. We cannot be content with merely reaching over the invisible walls; we have to begin crossing the visible streets. What are the tangible ways we can spatially re-engineer our lives to create geographies of justice? How would we tread if we really believed that this ground, the ground, is holy ground?

Husband-man and I we are wrestling with whether breaking down the physical demarcations of our division might mean moving in to the places we’re still socially (if no longer legally) not supposed to be in.

Let’s take off our shoes, and walk as though we believe in the sacredness of place.

on 29

This is the year of my Shalom.

In just a few months husband-man and I will launch into yet another major life transition – but this time one that we hope and trust leads us to a season of restful waters. I hope to find in it Shalom – the incredible earth-shattering presence of wholeness, health, welfare, safety, soundness, tranquility, prosperity, perfectness, fullness, rest, and harmony.  A dazzling display of life to the full, complete and perfect.

So as I leave 28 and head steadily to 30 this year. Here are some of the things I want to fill my days with. I want to..

1. Learn to Surf

2. Learn to cook Indian food from scratch

3. Perform an original spoken word piece

4. Learn to code in HTML (I’m open to being persuaded there is a better first language to learn)

5. Learn to do my own makeup

6. Ride a motorcycle

7. Redo my FirstAid training

8. Learn to dance

9. Learn how to service a car and change a tire

10. Grow a salad

11. Read through the whole bible

12. Learn to play hockey

Some of these play to my core passions and some drive me far outside of my comfortability. Some are practical skills and some are  extravagant. Some use my mind, some my body, and some my spirit. Some will be learned in solitude, and will take me inside myself; some will be learned at the feet of friends and family, and will draw me out of myself.

They demonstrate in small and perhaps insignificant ways my desire for shalom in how I am with those around me, with my physical self, with the Creator, with nature, with culture, with technology, and with my own creativity.

Here’s to looking forward to 30 with anticipation not apprehension. Here’s to revelling not regretting.

Here’s to Shalom – life to the full.

 

on words before time

I.

I (*pause, inhale deeply, sigh it out*) am in love.

These words?

Ignited me.

Burned in me before I’d ever heard them uttered..

These words?

Isolated me.

Marooned me till I, woman, became an island, impossible and glorious.

Their cadence?

Tore through my soul and re-introduced me to myself.

Spoke my humanity.

Sung my desire.

Whispered my heartache.

Shouted my fury.

Caressed my soul.

These words breathed me into being.

From words I was formed and to words I return.

I love their all in all.

Power conveyed to nothing-me

to grasp the intangible,

to describe the invisible,

to fold into myself the inevitable,

and lay at your feet the indescribable.

Oh, but how I hate.

I hate that these immutable words preempt my every thought.

I hate that these interminable words spoke me before I ever uttered them.

I hate that these words were before me and before all time.

I hate how they have been spun and caressed,

wooed and seduced,

breathed out and breathed in a billion times before my first.

Every word.

Every line.

Every intimation of intimacy

Sucked out of them til I.

I am left breathless,

Speechless.

Wordless.

Powerless.

Each expansive, enigmatic, enticing utterance leaves me

envious, embittered, and empty

Words, promised me, cheated on me,  failed me

Words, leave me panting, anticlimatic

As all the passion seeps from my soul, my marrow, my lips

Until I am silent and still.

Mellifluous and cacophonous.

Ellipses to the eternal noise

of words, words, words

…

on cherry blossoms

Why do cherry blossoms in this neighborhood surprise me?

As if grace is insufficient

As if hope is impotent

As if love is insipient

As if mercy cannot triumph over judgment

As if dancers cannot dance upon injustice

As if redemption is a lie; restoration a myth

As if the dividing wall of hostility were never torn down

As if sorrow will last beyond the night

and joy is stifled by the morning

As if we are not truly being changed from glory to Glory

As if only some things are brought together under Him

As if the rocks do not shout out

and the trees no longer clap their hands

As if death never lost its sting

As if the grave was victorious

As if darkness dispels light

As if the oil of gladness slips over and past these rivers of mourning

As if the fullness of Him who fills all things, leaves these streets dry and empty

As if there is no freedom for these oppressions

and the cords of these yokes cannot be loosened

As if these chains cannot be broken

As if there is no reconciliation for these divides

As if there is no provision for these griefs

As if there is no garment to cloak these despairs

As if beauty cannot replace even these ashes

 

As if roots cannot push their way up through this concrete

As if life cannot break forth unexpectedly

And be magnificantly, phenomenally, shockingly unsurprising