POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: BRADLEY OLSON : Four Poems #mythopoetry #guestpost #NationalPoetryMonth2017

FOUR POEMS

PAUL VERLAINE'S AIM

You have me disadvantaged, dear Arthur.

You possess the sharp, quill tip of your pen

And your youth.

I have only this pistol…

If only my wounds were so easily mended.

I have not yet come to terms with written words

As you have--when you were yet a boy!--

And now you leave them,

And me,

Adrift in a drunken boat.

©2017   Paul Verlaine’s Aim   Bradley Olson  mythopoetry.com
©2017  Paul Verlaine’s Aim    Bradley Olson  All Rights Retained

WINTER LEAVES

When I first heard it, I thought

It was really only rumor,

That this late in December's unforgiving draught

One golden leaf could still be in good humor.

Yet there it was, a palsied beggar,

At the mercy of winter's biting caprice.

How often have I (unwitting figure!),

Governed by an unattractive eye, failed to give notice.

I entered his world a puzzle, mostly skulking about

Then, by turning each leaf, I saw myself reflected.

His folios revealed me, so shockingly fleshed out,

That the sound, the fury, the Lear-ing suspicions no longer infected

A dislocated soul.  A corroded spirit.

The littered psychic landscape unveiled by a warm spring sun

Is healed by the call away from winter if one can hear it

And grasp that, though logos contradict it, there is never, finally, a "done."

©2017   Winter Leaves   Bradley  Olson  mythopoetry.com
©2017   Winter Leaves   Bradley Olson  All Rights Retained

FLIGHT INFORMATION

I watched her from behind my newspaper

Trying to read a pulpy paperback

While the disembodied voice of flight information

(in both English and Spanish)

destroyed her concentration and sent her

eyes scouting the page for the word she last read.

When she left to board I wondered if she would ever finish

If the heroine would find love at long last

If the evils in her life would be overcome by good

If the someone waiting for her at some other airport gate

loved her Passionately, Deeply,

And Truly. 

She looked like someone I usually wouldn't think about twice

Unless she were to trade the battered paperback for Hegel

Or someone else I couldn't understand.

I don't want what's familiar to me; I ran from the provincial long ago

I know instinctively by watching her

I ran away from everything like her; not towards anything.

She looked happy--comfortable in her own skin--it alarms me to think she actually was.

©2017   Flight Information   Bradley  Olson  mythopoetry.com
©2017   Flight Information   Bradley Olson  All Rights Retained

LIMINAL SPACE

I am puzzled of  late

by my single and peculiar life.

I am not what I used to be:

An airy dreamer

with a too truant disposition,

nor any longer a dark, upheaved soul

alone and lonely,

but rather betwixt and between

suffering from a usurpation of the senses.

La belle dame sans merci

draws from her black sack

“beautiful untrue things,”

the necessary deceptions

symbolizing and signaling life;

those heralds most deeply felt and dreamt of,

yet remaining oddly unapprehended…

the soul’s fugitives

bringing substance to an insubstantial life

and imagination  to a mundane world.

From this sack,

the very same one,

She brought forth Ilych’s death.

Grotesque to those who watched,

but did not see,

beautiful to him

whom it brought forbearance and joy.

Beautifully used and artfully worn was It.

Beautiful and holy.

So holy It seems

It can hold nothing at all

but air…

and light…

and time…

and space.

Giving room enough to live,

saving room enough to die,

proposing room enough to discover (to my surprise!)

where It is,

Death cannot be.

©2017   Liminal Space   Bradley  Olson  mythopoetry.com
©2017   Liminal Space   Bradley Olson  All Rights Retained

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bradley Olson, Ph.D is a former police officer who returned to school to earn a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and literature, two Master’s degrees in psychology, and a Ph.D. in Cultural Mythology. Dr. Olson is currently a psychotherapist in private practice at Mountain Waves Healing Arts in Flagstaff, Arizona; his work with clients is heavily influenced by his interest in Jungian Analytical Psychology and Mythological Studies. Brad is also the author of the acclaimed Falstaff Was My Tutor blog, which has earned him a nomination for the 2012 PUSHCART PRIZE in nonfiction.

BRAD'S BLOG

FALSTAFF WAS MY TUTOR

BRAD ALSO BLOGS FOR JCF.ORG

MYTH BLAST

WEBSITE

MOUNTAIN WAVES HEALING ARTS

VISIT BRAD ON FACEBOOK AT

https://www.facebook.com/bradley.a.olson

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: BRIAN LANDIS Two Poems #guestpost #mythopoetry #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

TWO POEMS

EL RANCHO GRANDE

Avocado trees planted in rows

       walnuts and grapes

In the arroyo, pampas grass

       as if trilled or plucked

A chord of pampas grass

singing down the breezy cañon

       to the sparkling sea

Two dogs in the sideyard

       barking

A lazy cat opens one golden eye

©2017 El Rancho Grande Brian Landis mythopoetry.com
©2017 El Rancho Grande Brian Landis All Rights Retained

FAMOUS PEOPLE

Pablo Picasso

          sits with Jean Cocteau

          praising miracles

(not life, which is common).

They drink espresso

          and eat Italian pastries.

"God," Jean philosophizes,

"judges us by our appearances

          and is the ultimate idiot."

Pablo paints God's portrait

          and is the ultimate idiot.

Idiocy is relative.

Albert Einstein, at the next table

          scribbles in the margin

          of his New York Times:

                   "Relativity is next to godliness"

He signs his name.

He leaves it on the table

          for the waiter to see.

(If you don't promote your own work,

          who will?)

©2017 Famous People Brian Landis mythopoetry.com
©2017 Brian Landis Famous People All Rights Retained

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Landis is a Buddhist/Jungian psychotherapist, because poetry is a very bad way to make a living, living and working in San Luis Obispo, California.  As the years unfold, he looks more and more like his beloved arroyos and potreros, wild and unkempt.  He likes it that way and is ecstatic to be going to seed after a lifetime of bloom.

BRIAN ON FACEBOOK

Visit Brian on facebook

BOOK

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: LINDA SUDDARTH : Three Poems #mythopoetry #guestpost #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

THREE POEMS

CURIOUS AND RICH

When I walk past
the fragrant forest
after heavy rain,
which smells like
the freshest salad
you ever ate,
some vegetation
from Otherworld
that when eaten
makes you feel alive,

then I listen, listen
and there is
nothing, nothing but.

When it is almost dusk
and the horizon is tinged
with the most delicate
hint of lavender,
against it dark
silhouettes of tiny
fruit-tree branches,

I listen, listen
there is nothing, nothing but.

When I pass the small mountain
rising like a god
impressing the night
and the still liquid sky,

I listen, listen
and there is nothing, nothing.

But nothing is something
curious and rich,
and I have heard it.


©2017 Curious And Rich Linda Suddarth
 mythopoetry.com

©2017 Curious And Rich
Linda Suddarth All Rights Retained

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

“Curious and Rich,” Featured poem for Parabola Online, Summer 2014

BORROWED FOREST, RENTED THICKET

My comfort falls on deaf ears.

Though you are only volunteers,

comical encroaching

forest with your odd smells:

sweet, tangy mid-spring,

hints of honeysuckle, cedar,

thyme, vinegar, rose, float,

don’t you know tomorrow

will be the back-hoe,

saws, bulldozers,

and your lovely thickets

will be undone?

Strange tiny flowers, like bells

and purple prehistoric shaped,

beside the poke berry

monster, decorated

with pieces of old fence.

You’re not sad?

Little birds, find other nests.

Yesterday when the crow

sat eating your young

on the telephone wire,

stolen from you,

and from the maple,

didn’t you see

that was a sign to scatter?

Yet you still sing,

sitting in the tree

that will be gone tomorrow.

The maple who has given

much shade and color

isn’t sad either. She

is giving me strength.

In my heart,

borrowed forest, rented thicket,

you are forever,

many and varied shades of green,

and ever joyous in your singing.

Someday I’ll put some money

down and buy some wild place:

let it be what it is.


©2017 Borrowed Forest, Rented Thicket Linda Suddarth
mythopoetry.com

©2017 Borrowed Forest, Rented Thicket
Linda Suddarth All Rights Retained

HAPPY OTHER PLACE

With every rain the woods

grow another foot,

on the breeze

rose and honeysuckle

faintly permeate

the corners of the sky.

In the far-seeing

of distance is

the blue of mountain

through the tree tops:

the mountain that looks

down on all of us.

I’ve been there,

these are the apple groves

up on top of the blue.

One fall we sat

under an apple tree,

spread a blanket

and ate apple pie,

while the bees

resembled angels

singing all in harmony.

People strolled in a daze

with apple nets

in their hands,

collecting the harvest

in this happy

other-place.
©2017 Happy Other Place Linda Suddarth
mythopoetry.com

©2017 Happy Other Place
Linda Suddarth All Rights Retained

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First publication of the poem, HAPPY OTHER PLACE occurs April 15, 2017 on Linda's blog, LINDA WORD AND IMAGE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Linda Ann Suddarth sees the creative life as a vital expression of the psyche. Linda has been writing poetry and drawing/painting for more than thirty years. She has recently published poems in Parabola, Silver Birch Press, Anima, and Red River Review. Linda has a BFA in painting, an interdisciplinary MA in Aesthetic Studies, and a PhD in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology. She teaches English, Art, and Humanities at the College level. Linda’s blog is www.lindawordandimage.blogspot.com, and she can be reached at linsudd (at) aol (dot) com.

VISIT LINDA ON FACEBOOK AT

LINDA SUDDARTH POETRY AND ART

LINDA'S BLOG

LINDA WORD AND IMAGE

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: PHILIP ROSENBERG: RAGS AND BONES MUSIC VIDEO: THESE BONES and A Poetry Reading of "The Way I Love You" #mythopoetry #guestpost #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

featuring Philip Rosenberg / RAGS AND BONES

A MUSIC VIDEO AND A POETRY READING

THESE BONES

©2017 Philip Rosenberg, Rags And Bones Music All Rights Retained

POETRY READING OF THE POEM "THE WAY I LOVE YOU"

© 2017 Philip Rosenberg, All Rights Retained


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"The Way I Love You" is published in the book Raised In The Shadow: A Collection of Twenty-five Poems by Philip Rosenberg, Sunland Press, 2007.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rags & Bones

The foul rag and bone shop of the heart,” Yeats called it – that repository of musings, detritus and discarded emotions out of which we assemble art.  Songwriter-poet Phillip Rosenberg, performing under the name Rags and Bones, has spent a lifetime sifting through the leftover parts of the world and himself to try and create an archival record.  At 70, he feels like he may be getting close. In 2008 he left Nashville for the People's Republic of Joshua Tree where he hones his craft, teaches guitar, plays for the lunch crowd at the JT Saloon, writes poetry, and organizes the monthly Songwriters in the Round at the Beatnik Lounge.

VISIT WITH THE MUSIC OF PHILIP ROSENBERG'S RAGS AND BONES

https://www.ragsandbonesmusic.com/

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: DEANNA MCKINSTRY-EDWARDS Song And Poetry #mythopoetry #guestpost #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

HOPEFUL GROUND
Written and performed by Deanna McKinstry-Edwards of Carmel, CA. Hopeful Ground is written and performed by Deanna McKinstry-Edwards and uploaded to SoundCloud by Stephanie Pope April 24, 2017 ©2017 Hopeful Ground Deanna McKinstry-Edwards All Rights Retained

SONG LYRICS

I remember the world

when I was a girl,

And it all spun round

on hopeful ground.

I remember the way

The songs of that day

Carried the sound

Of a higher ground.

Chorus:

We are the girls

Who never stopped believing.

Our voices should be heard

For there are dreams worth keeping.

We’ve crested life’s fierce waves,

We’ve honored all the graves

Of those who came before us

Who even now implore us

To live on hopeful ground.

 I remember the way

the light shaped the day.

There were great things to do,

whole worlds to renew.

We took up the call

Risked taking a fall,

But it all made sense,

We were now off the fence.

POETRY

BIRD DOG      For Asher

His mind moves

like a prophet

stalking

the beauty of food.

Every footstep a sacrifice,

a praise song of breath and motion,

a stamina born of tall grasses

and woodlands full of

ripe birds and the games of men.

Dreams soaked with hunger

pad his footfalls in promises.

He must not disappoint himself,

and his comrades.

The tall grasses have not forgotten him,

nor he their history

brushing against his fur,

hiding him as he moves

almost without moving, closer.

It is a foolish music

that can only win now and then,

but the now and then is the

music that drives his body.

And at night on the couch,

when he sleep with his legs

in the air like bent reeds,

I know I am seeing far, far

back into the friendship of fur

and human need

played out in olden times by firelight,

roasting the beatitudes of food

from the shared hunt.

©2017 Bird Dog Deanna McKinstry-Edwards mythopoetry.com
©2017 Bird Dog Deanna McKinstry-Edwards All Rights Retained

THE DEAD

The dead. Rarely are.

Even if you walk in moccasins

through a mossy wood,

and disturb not a leaf,

the dead will be disturbed.

They can’t help it.

Even if rivers make promises

to swallow their ashes,

and mountains chew their bones,

their voices seep through

the smallest spaces.

The dead always slip through,

courting the living.

Something about death,

however, cannot last forever.

Something about forever

is little understood.

©2017 The Dead Deanna McKinstry-Edwards  mythopoetry.com

©2017 The Dead  Deanna McKinstry-Edwards  All Rights Retained

THE LAST LIGHT IN THE MOLES EYES

Dying on the blacktop

from the wheels

of a fast moving traveler

the little mole

has waited for me to pass by.

Our eyes meet. 

He has me

the way an apple falls to earth

and the earth rises to greet it.

Lifting his

still breathing smallness

onto a large leaf,

I lay him in the soft touches

of spring throated grass

near the road

as sunlight and moonlight

sweep through each other

spinning tales of the

beginning and ending

of light.

©2017 The Last Light In The Moles Eyes Deanna McKinstry-Edwards
mythopoetry.com

©2017 The Last Light In The Moles Eyes  Deanna McKinstry-Edwards
All Rights Retained
  

WE CARRY

We carry creation’s seed

in the nest of our bodies.

We carry homeless

worlds,

forgotten and forsaken.

We wear the earth

in baskets on our backs,

brimming with grasses and sticks.

We carry life-loving soil.

 dusty and flood soaked

 it stains our feet.

We carry the old wood

fires, and the future

skies.

We sit on mountain tops

weaving wounds into blankets

and balm for generations to come.

We carry the voices

of the valleys,

the deep, deep valleys

where meandering streams meet

the meadows singing

replenishing Hallelujahs.

We stand taller than pyramids

and buildings dedicated

to the sun, blinding light

and perfect measure.

We are the moon-keepers.

shepards of shadows

and shade, and the soul’s

never-ending thirst

for the murmurations

of meaning.

We carry our men

back to their hearts,

and they carry us

back to ours. 

We

have grown in each other’s

branches, twisting, tender

with longing, longing to trust

who we really are.

How vulnerable.

We carry death, and sing it

back to life again.

We carry songs.  We sing.

We always sing.  Especially

when we’re broken,

and the whole world feels broken, too.

We are the song

that allows starry nights

their moisturing dark

for dry days, and those to come.

We carry the hearth

of heaven

in our touch

and voices.

We carry.  We carry.

We

Carry.

©2017 We Carry Deanna McKinstry-Edwards mythopoetry.com

©2017 We Carry Deanna McKinstry-Edwards All Rights Retained  

CELERY SALAD AND OLD EYES

This is not a sad story.
Life moves on that’s all. Moves
around and through things
becoming something else,
continents shaking at their edges
trawling for missing pieces.
Take celery root.  It’s tuberous
hardness cooked supple and soft,
becomes celery salad.
“No, I ‘ve never had celery salad,”
I told her.
She lives alone,
by a sacred fire of small things
made meaningful by her attention
and 96 year old hands dicing, chopping,
peeling, mixing mayonnaise, onion
and vinegar.
Late afternoon traffic on Sunset Boulevard,
framed in her living room windows,
lurches homeward,
the drivers, listening to tapes, music,
the news of murders and quaking continents,
a hundred leagues away they are from where they are,
split by long drives and the misgivings
of the day.
But with her, there are no misgivings,
she is already home, into her
evening rituals, present to
the smallest, and her cat
circling around her legs.
The rush is somewhere else.
Celery salad is being composed here
by 96 year old hands and
old eyes dimmed by macular
degeneration. Her soul’s
eyes are another story.
She is not what she was,
but always what she is.
The cutting board crackles
under her knife, the cat’s bell
jingles the air. 
I’m sitting under the relaxed sky
of her roomy apartment, filled with
96 years of memories, china, photos,
animal figures, animal paintings,
stuffed animals, some who can speak
and sing…
Animals, animals, animals, part of
our shared sacraments and bond.
Her footsteps, barely audible,
fall like magnolia petals,
onto the linoleum.  Will I ever walk this softly?
She is content.  Prepared to live,
19 bottles of distilled water
within reach, and prepared to move on
to a place as certain and clear in her mind
as the purest stream and sky
she could imagine.
Do you know anyone like that?
To know even one soul,
like a single pelican
rising from a salty lagoon,
full of liftoff, fluidity and flight,
will lay you down at day’s end,
home again, with simple things,
and no rush.

©2017 Celery Salad And Old Eyes Deanna McKinstry-Edwards mythopoetry.com
©2017 Celery Salad And Old Eyes Deanna McKinstry-Edwards All Rights Retained

Celery Salad And Old Eyes by Deanna McKinstry-Edwards is previously published in Mythopoetry Scholar: Annual Reflections In Depth Perspectives Volume 2  “Matter And Beauty”, January, 2011

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deanna McKinstry-Edwards, PhD is a professional actress, singer, writer and Pushcart nominated poet.   Returning to college in 1999, she earned a Master’s and Doctoral Degree in Mythology and Depth Psychology at the Pacifica Graduate Institute.  Her doctoral dissertation, Singing; Soul’s Mythic Mirror, explores singing as the indigenous voice and language of human beings.   Her lectures on singing and myth merge her performance talents with her academic background.  She teaches a course on Ecopsychology, and is the author of Psyche, Eros and Me; A Mythic Memoir.  

BOOK

PSYCHE, EROS AND ME: A MYTHIC MEMOIR

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: DENNIS PATRICK SLATTERY Three Poems #guestpost #mythopoetry #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

THREE POEMS

SERENITY IN LIKENESS

To find in one another

some likeness in history

is unlike the seeing of the many.

Memory singes history

with its own truths, failures, limits

flimsy to the touch

but fierce in       staying power.

Now is the power of our birth, amen.

Cancelled checks singe money

remembered.

I am unlike you in

dress and dross

And yet—

Below ground we circle slowly

in the same den    the same dim light

of a future undressed

waiting for a proper fitting.

You—a likeness monster

in your ordinary wrap

now find your own solace

where wind whistles in

the cave at dawn.

Similar yes like yesterday

But not the same really. 


© 2017 Serenity In Likeness Dennis Patrick Slattery mythopoetry.com
© 2017 Dennis Patrick Slattery All Rights Retained

WORDS DRY OUT

Where goes what withers

to be refreshed?

The heat of a day’s longing

is enough to sap all moisture

from the stems of things.

Withering roots; where ecstasy

grows upward in a forest

without fear? Loosen your hold

on dry sticks when combustion

is near. Fear makes deserts of

our destinies.

Moisten your lips with olive oil.

Take pains to live close to a well.

Follow the white porcelain of mist.

Push fear to the curb and the stories

that wet its plots.

Danger in the details of a

negative narrative

dry the soul to a brittle cloth

bereft of blessings.

Seek still waters and

awaken. 


© 2017 Words Dry Out Dennis Patrick Slattery mythopoetry.com
© 2017 Dennis Patrick Slattery All Rights Retained

MELODY

Music prints the air in sheets

enough to cover the path

she walks on.

Notes on her soles and

lyric lines limm her thoughts.

Between the aches of

an uncertain hour

and the long chords of lament

Behind glass melodies

without the rhythm

of lonely parts

She plays she plays

she plays.

© 2017 Melody Dennis Patrick Slattery mythopoetry.com
© 2017 Dennis Patrick Slattery All Rights Retained

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

           Dennis Patrick Slattery Ph.D. is core faculty, Mythological Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California.  He has been teaching literature and mythology for over 40 years.  He is the author, coauthor, editor, or coeditor of 24 books, including six volumes of poetry; he has published over 200 articles and reviews on literature, psychology, mythology, as well as popular essays on surprises in the world.

 visit his website at
www.dennispslattery.com

POETS OF MYTHOPOETRY: LEIGH MELANDER: TWO POEMS #guestpost #mythopoetry #NationalPoetryMonth 2017

TWO POEMS

AND, ONE SPRING:

Spring breaks my heart

Being possible

Soothing away

The quiet lack of faith

Protecting me

From myself

A pilgrimage

Of violins and larks

Brings me back

To other springs

On a brick stoop

And praying crocus

A remembered light

To weep for

Joins me kissed

By wind breath

Wanting

Hands held out

They call it awakening

Arising, quickening

I am so afraid

Of such hoping

And such joy

Spring breaks my heart

©2007 And, One Spring Leigh Melander All Rights Retained

©2017 And, One Spring Leigh Melander mythopoetry.com

FOR DEREK WALCOTT AFTER HEARING HIM READ, “OMEROS” ONE HOT NIGHT IN AUGUST ON CAPE COD

This poem I wrote about and for Derek Walcott, and then studied with him. He just died at 87 last week (March 17, 2017), and it’s resurfaced in my consciousness.  At a pivotal moment in my life, Derek saw me as an artist, a poet, and invited me to come and study with him in Boston.  This act of kindness and of creative connection changed my life.

I heard a man speak tonight

Laurel words unfurling from his lips like

great white sails of ships

casting past the tide

and we ride out through the heat

and hear of Odysseus and his

journeys away from himself and

then back home again

where his solace waits nightly

alone in her bed

unsinging his death shroud

© 2005 FOR DEREK WALCOTT AFTER HEARING HIM READ, “OMEROS” ONE HOT NIGHT IN AUGUST ON CAPE COD Leigh Melander, All Rights Retained
©2017 FOR DEREK WALCOTT AFTER HEARING HIM READ, “OMEROS” ONE HOT NIGHT IN AUGUST ON CAPE COD Leigh Melander mythopoetry.com 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Leigh has an eclectic background in the arts and organizational development, working with individuals and organizations in the US and internationally for over 20 years. She has a doctorate in cultural mythology and psychology and wrote her dissertation on frivolity as an entry into the world of imagination. Her writings on mythology and imagination can be seen in a variety of publications, and she has appeared on the History Channel as a mythology expert. She also hosts a radio show on an NPR community affiliate: Myth America, an exploration into how myth shapes our sense of identity. Leigh and her husband own Spillian, an historic lodge and retreat center celebrating imagination in the Catskills, and she works with individual and group clients on creative projects. She is honored to serve as the Vice President of the Joseph Campbell Foundation Board of Directors.

VISIT MYTH AMERICA RADIO
  
VISIT SPILLIAN

VISIT LEIGH AT http://leighmelander.com/