Sunday, April 30, 2017

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





Saturday, April 29, 2017

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 caƱon
       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

Friday, April 28, 2017

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


Wednesday, April 26, 2017

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/

Monday, April 24, 2017

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

















Sunday, April 23, 2017

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

Friday, April 21, 2017

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 Americaan 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/