Tag Archives: Memory

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People, Peace, and Past

For these United States, yesterday was a day of remembrance. Ten years past, terrorism struck the heartland in one of the biggest horrors the nation has ever witnessed. It was one of those moments blazed into the psyche. Into the soul. Hardly a person can’t be turned to and asked, “Where were you when the Towers fell?” In many ways, it was a moment that defined this generation, for this and many other countries as well, as it kicked off ten years of war, fear, and globally shifting ideas of security.

Suitably, the dedications yesterday were far reaching – the connections, the memories, and the tears all treated with the highest of honors and dignity. Today, on this, the Monday of Quotes, the Waking Den would like to share, in the same vein, a few words throughout the ages on people, peace, and the past…

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance.  It is also owed to justice and to humanity.  Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong. 
~James Bryce

Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. 
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs.  The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists. 
~William J. Clinton

Man is harder than iron, stronger than stone and more fragile than a rose. 
~Turkish Proverb

The past is our definition.  We may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it. 
~Wendell Berry

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Visions of Yester-Year

Photo by: Sean McCormick.

 

We laid the foundation of our hearts

And spread beneath an open sky

Where neither walls nor whims

Knew limitation to licentious surrealism;

The clouds, like little rabbits framed

Running through the soul,

Stood as libation

In silent spring.

 

Weeds rack the roots,

No resurgence in the recalcitrant puberty,

Midst rustled horses and wrangled roses,

What saw us raise our heads to dream;

The foundation remains, regal rock

Walking beneath the sunlight

Where crumbled walls cracked

To visions of yester-year.

* My submission to part two of a special edition the One Shoot Sunday Photo Prompt, with that breathtaking frame shot provided by one Sean McCormick, a Canadian Photographer that is the focus of my latest interviews for One Stop. Great guy, with some truly stunning nature photography…it absolutely breathes with life, history, and all the shadows of memories gone before. Have a look when you get the chance, and check out all the other poets inspired by the prompt!

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Over-Saturation

 

Photo by Sean McCormick.

It is a rush—world—

Nothing holds not still above the

Colored creations of memory.

Years in the making the foundations

Sound and solid arise yet

Time bleeds into the framework,

The tumble of tumultuous tints tingeing like

Rainbows bursts of blown out washers –

We don’t forget, but the lines they

Blush against the battery of luminescent life –

We color detail till it all seems dreams,

And the world it circles and it sighs

And we’re rolling in the dyes of little lies

Watching change day by day.

Just beware of

Over-saturation.

* My submission to the latest One Shoot Sunday Photo Prompt, with that lovely barn/grainery shot provided by one Sean McCormick, a Canadian Photographer that is the focus of my latest interview for One Stop. Great guy, with some truly stunning nature photography…it absolutely breathes with life, history, and all the shadows of memories gone before. Have a look when you get the chance, and check out all the other poets inspired by the prompt!

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Winter-White Haiku

Winter in Rockford, MI. By Chris Galford.

Cold…so cold. High of 14 today. Inside writing, doing my best to hide from the chill. Not as much snow as in the photo – the picture’s from back in 2009 – but the wind and the ice don’t make things any better. On the bright side, a little cocoa and some tiny marshmallows do lead to the occasional Winter-ku…

White sea enfold me

All is silence in the rough

Hands ache summer’s cry.

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A Waking in a Kiss

 

By Lisa Michelle Arhontidis

A waking in a kiss

Cold lips in black light,

There is a life here that does not sleep

Between the sheets of memory, wrapped

She beckons and I heed, this endless

Obsession of souls, commands:

Drink these lips.

* Photography by Lisa Michelle Arhontidis, from her gorgeous photos and interview I conducted with her, as featured on One Stop Poetry.

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Colosseum

Image care of: Photobucket.com.

Windows on the world

Of this eternal light, this city brimming

With memory of massacre and masochistic

Delight, windows on a soul of fire

Brimming in the depths of those saluted,

Stirring in the sweat of the backs stretched forth in greeting,

These limbs, outstretched beneath your crumbling walls,

Drew cloth and steel against the flesh, your stone

Prison and theater, the spotlighted cell,

All eyes alive with the flames of your passion,

Round and round they circled, and still you writhe

With the congress of madness given yet delight

In all those souls who looked within and without

Your shudderless windows.

* Another poem for the wonderful Monday Poetry Potluck, as hosted by Jingle Poetry, and those lovely poets Amanda and Kavita! This week’s theme: Buildings, Landmarks and Monuments–for which I obviously chose the Roman Colosseum.

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Father’s Song

I watch them ride

memories of my failures–

wonder if I tried

or all were vaunted blunders.

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Too long I’ve been afield,

at war with thought, the world–

from this madness I have tried to shield

and so into the madness, they’ve unfurled.