Let Me Be Squashed

I want God and the angels
To trample me in the dust
So I will have the opportunity
To become a rose.
Better myself.

Please get me out of this hellhole
Oh Lord.

Pleasant to be squashed by God's
And the angels' golden heels
Run down by their spurs.

Roses

I lie on my bed looking outside
Smelling the roses' fragrance
Reminding me of the tea
I sip in my loneliness.

Tinariwen
Where is Tinariwen playing
Tonight? Are they playing
Somewhere before us moderns
Soothing over smoothing over
Our alienation?

Or are they warming
Their tea in that dry serene
Ocean in North Africa,
Poets pondering centuries?

Looking Through My Poetry Notebook Today, A Find

I'm on vacation from classes for the next two weeks. 

This is a time I want to use as a period to reflect and rediscover who I am again.  I'm going through a grieving process right now over a relationship that went sour. I expected too much once again.  Perhaps this time I have learned my lesson.  I really hope so.  

We cannot put the totality of our faith and hope for happiness in others.  Sometimes we get lost in other people, and that is a huge mistake. We have to find our higher selves in reflection, quiet, and if we believe in God, Him the Comforter. I am seeking these to recover from my sadness and disappointment.  

I wept a little today for the first time in weeks.  I cry and grieve easily about this life. Today tears and also prayer healed me and I sought my poetry notebook, the poetry of a few others, and I ended up here.  The battle with this hurt will linger for awhile, but I feel I will overcome it and be a better and wiser person.  Love and respect people, but never expect very much. 

I'm trying to get refocused on a love of mine that I have some control over, my poetry.  Here is a poem I wrote that I haven't granted a title to yet that found in my poetry notebook.  

As a little girl I wanted to play my grandmother's clotheslines
Like a musical instrument.
They were strings of a giant guitar.
I loved guitars, my very young aunt had one.

Grandmother would go outside
With two or three clothes baskets
Nearly vomiting out clothes, bath and dish towels.
She was robust and patient out there
With butterflies, bees, and dragonflies, orbiting her.
I would sit on the concrete doorstep and watch.

Then hot and restless in the summer sun
I would go back inside to the washroom
Where the potbellied obese ringer washer sat
On it's skinny legs in the corner.
Playing with its rollers, I would try to twist them,
But they only moved when grandma and my aunt washed,
Inserting underwear, towels, clothes,
Slaughtering them like a streamroller.

Eternal Urchin

For me love is like 
That diamond ring,
The pink one in 
The jewelry store 
Window. I want to afford it.
It's not designed that I can.  
I remain the urchin
staring in the window. 

A Poppy Above Athens

How did it push itself through 

Ancient rock I wondered that day

On the Acropolis. A lonely poppy

Minute like a small splash of blood,

Grown through stone fragrant

Above Athens, the Parthenon's

Shadow blanketing it. 

Re-Opening: It Has Been a Year and a Half

I shut down this blog to private a year and a half ago.  Over that time period I debated whether to reopen it.  I had gotten some good responses to it, so that wasn't the reason I closed it off from cyberspace.  I was concerned that someone might steal some of my poems. However, all poems I posted here are in their first, raw stages.  They need more work.  Overall for someone who has written the bulk of her poetry in middle age, I feel I've done a fairly good job as a novice poet.  If someone steals some of them, they will only be snatching the first stage of each of these poems.  My passion for poetry and the desire to write my own really blossomed about four years ago.  I have a long way to go as a poet, but I believe I have potential.  

The last time I posted I was in the US.  Now I am living in northwestern Anatolia in the city of Eskişehir which was the home of one of Turkey's earlier and greatest poets Yunus Emre. I teach English here to teenagers, university students, and adults. A Turk told me Yunus Emre is like the Shakespeare of Turkey.  

I always remember Jo in Little Women saying something to the affect that living abroad is good for the writing. I think she was speaking of Europe specifically, but Europe is not the only inspiring place on earth.  I find Turkey to be quite inspiring.  

This week with so much snow on the ground and very few classes because of New Years, the desire for writing came back to me.  Being alone with no one to talk to over the last few days,  trying to arrange my thoughts and focus on writing again apparently brought back the urge to write most powerfully.  Ideas about what my writing means and how it might affect others even if I never become a big time author and poet have been in my thoughts.  

I'm learning that the most important to do if the desire for writing is present is to write.  Write even if the words are not coming I've read in several places.  It also doesn't matter the size of the audience or whether fame or fortune are possible. What matters is to write and release that need for creativity.  

Summer 2014 I wrote two short stories, the first time I'd tried such writing since I took creative writing in when I was an undergraduate.  I attempted to be literary and psychological in those two stories.  I'm trying to find my voice.  I'm trying to discover what kind of writer I really am.

So here at the beginning of 2015 I begin a new session of poetry.  Enjoy.  

Three Haiku

I've been reading haiku a lot lately and posted a number of poems by masters such as Buson, Issa, Shiki, Basho, and Taneda on my social media accounts Facebook and Twitter.  They are also my favorite composers of haiku. 

What triggered my love of haiku was this book that I have a copy of: Haiku: An Anthology of Japanese Poems.

Here's a nice page of classic haiku: The Haiga Pages.  Also many classical haiku can be read on Poemhunter.com. 

I briefly studied haiku sometime in probably high school, but I remember feeling intimidated by it.  My teacher tried to keep us within the 5-7-5 syllable pattern which is the Japanese method, but I've learned that the rules are not so strict in English.  So tonight I tried my hand at some.

Walking, worried eyes

down a lonely road,

my car broke down.

 

Birds singing,

too confused to sleep,

midnight super moon.

 

A floral branch hangs

in front of the moon,

I gaze in my loneliness