Image: informationseries.com
“A prison gets to be a friend” Emily Dickinson
34
long awaited
such a good number
a reminder by the ancients
to find balance,
an indication by the stars
of a new beginning,
something about a
challenge to growth,
creativity, inspiration,
and affinity,
it is also the count of
justice long hoped.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Photo: from aljazeera.com Family home bombed in Gaza
“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned” William Butler Yeats
Leave The Eye Out Of It
An eye for an eye
a singular transaction
I give you an apple in exchange
for a pear or perhaps an orange,
so, tell me,
If I take 251 apples from you
don't I only owe you
say
251 pears or oranges?
How does 251
become 34,000
isn't that 25 times the
going rate,
now being exacted as
human sacrifice
down in Gaza?
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
At dVerse Li is hosting Open Link Night – the night we choose a poem to post.
Photo: nationalgeographic.org
“They had gambled in a sense on a question of sustaining” Juliana Spahr
Everything Is Not Okay
The greyed monotone
talking head
blankly stared through the
camera of opportunity to
blandly declare that
everything was fine,
yes
fish stocks are depleted
ice caps melting
weather freaky
micro plastics in your blood,
but please
don't panic,
everything is fine
carry on
carrying on
until this message ceases
massaging your fears
and sense of small
achievement because
you use LEDs
in your dining room.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under climate change, environment, Epigraph, Free Verse, nature, poem
Photo: Yellow billed Oxpeckers on a Cape Buffalo from teachers.thinkoutside.org
“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” Mary Oliver
Let's Move Together
Let there be movement
to shed the carapace,
form new skin
in this gloss of life,
shape the script
for wonder of
the wander towards
undiscovered paradigms,
what could it mean
to grow collective natures?
It might be an avenue
a symbiosis,
body, mind, and spirit
without fear of
missing out,
a skin
mediating,
permeable,
with new stories.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, climate change, community, compassion, Epigraph, hope, poem
At dVerse Lillian is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write either an Ekphrastic poem or a poem inspired by one of the four delightful art works provided by Catrin Welz-Stein.
dVerse Poets – Poetics – Feeling A Bit Nostalgic Today
The piece of artwork I have chosen is:
Art Work: Lady With Eyes by Catrin Welz-Stein
I have chosen to write as inspired by this piece of art rather than undertake an Ekphrastic poem.
“With that deep thirst we quicken our desires” William Carlos Williams
Here's To Looking At You
I
wasn't in the least hidden,
but, as if I were,
she called out -
I see you
and what you're about,
my eyes are on you
they are through you,
know that
I am eye
and you are you,
I'm watching you
with Mona smile
looking into your desire,
making sure your intentions
are worthy of my ache,
a touch to heal
a look to deal
a stroke to feel
me stir,
come
possess me slowly
as I peel
my self-consciousness,
my soul deference is
eye see you
as I am wont of you.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
At dVerse Melissa is hosting Prosery (144 words) with an invitation to write prose around the chosen line “I pray to God that she may lie forever with unopened eye” from ‘Sleeper’ by Edgar Allan Poe
dVerse Poets – Prosery – Forever With Unopened Eye
Image: from history.co.uk
“All these did wise Ulysses lead, in counsel peer to Jove” Homer (Iliad – Book Two)
I Hope She Hears
The enemy is slowly closing in, I see them on every side. Even now a sliver of hope enters my mind, a way through, perhaps. One sadness remains, they have overrun the outer keep, some have died and they have captured her. She is pure and strong, a woman of integrity, but she has and I dare, one flaw, her achilles is her penchant for the truth which will likely be our end. Is truth worth life? For the sake of everyone who remains, just this once, I pray to God that she may lie. Forever with unopened eye I pray, if that is what it takes to sway this moment of Damocles. One lie for the lives of all is that too much to ask? Without her lie I will die. If the God is deaf, I hope she alone hears my prayer.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Note: Yes I deliberately chose the other meaning of the word lie.
Photo: beach front at Koombana Bay, Bunbury.
“To see a world in a grain of sand” William Blake
I Wanted To Count Them
They're millennia old these
minute pieces of rounded universe
their number so vast
a puzzle for me, and
as I remember, at four I
wanted to count them all
to know this ocean of sand,
only to be bored when I
got to one hundred and fifteen,
knowing, but of course,
there's no possible number
to be contained,
only sensations I
feel on my feet and
sift through my hands,
so I count the pleasures instead
to the billionth billionth
but I've no need, now
I simply enjoy the sand
as it is.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under beach, Epigraph, Free Verse, life, mindfulness, poem
Image by Juanita Foucault from Pixabay
“Between the words the reading and the reader a dimension opens” Michael Donaghy
Words
What letters leave your mouth
in such beautiful colours,
how are they formed
in your mind's heart
to this clever ordered
disorder of sentences,
words offered as meaning?
Does anything come back
or is there only a hard wall
echo bouncing around
waiting for an ending?
Or are they embedded,
embodied, received?
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
“Joy, beautiful spark of the gods” Friedrich Schiller
When Does Joy Die?
I never remember at the time
to stop and take into account
the great question that
occupies my mind afterwards,
at what moment
precisely
does joy culminate in the
end of joy,
when does joy die,
of course, yes
it is the phoenix,
everyone knows this fact,
but yet it dies
before it rises
Oh, how to break that cycle.
Copyright 2024 ©️Paul Vincent Cannon
All Rights Reserved ®️
Filed under awareness, Epigraph, Free Verse, life, poem
The view from here ... Or here!
Books, reading and more ... with an Australian focus ... written on Ngunnawal Country
Luxuriating in the Arts - Art Remembers Us
rhymes, poems, thoughts
Kunst & Theater, Kunsbilder, digitale Fotografie, Objektkunst
A not so ordinary weblog
thoughts from a twenty something
We are each day’s dawning, each moonlight’s glow. It’s within us all.
Literature from Kazakhstan for the rest of the world
The view from here ... Or here!
Books, reading and more ... with an Australian focus ... written on Ngunnawal Country
Luxuriating in the Arts - Art Remembers Us
rhymes, poems, thoughts
Kunst & Theater, Kunsbilder, digitale Fotografie, Objektkunst
A not so ordinary weblog
thoughts from a twenty something
We are each day’s dawning, each moonlight’s glow. It’s within us all.
Literature from Kazakhstan for the rest of the world
parallax 