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Our prompt was: โWrite about going through it.โ
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First of all do you remember the way a bear goes through a cabin when nobody is home? He goes through the front door. I mean he really goes through it. Then he takes the cupboard off the wall and eats a can of lard.
He eats all the apples, limes, dates, bottled decaffeinated coffee, and 35 pounds of granola. The asparagus soup cans fall to the floor. Yum! He chomps up Norwegian crackers stashed for the winter. And the bouillon, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onions, potatoes.
โโโโโโโโHe rips the Green Tara poster from the wall. Tries the Coleman Mustard. Spillsย the ink, tracks in the flour. Goes up stairs and takes a shit. Rips open the water bed, eats the incense and drinks the perfume. Knocks over the Japanese tansu and the Persian miniature of a man on horseback watching a woman bathing.
โโโโKnocks Shelter, Whole Earth Catalouge, Planet Drum, Northern Mists, Truck Tracks, and Womenโs Sports into the oozing water bed mess. โโโโโโโโโโโโโHe goes down stairs and out the back wall. He keeps on going for a long way and finds a good cave to sleep it all off. Luckily he ate the whole medicine cabinet, including stash of LSD, Peyote, Psilocybin, Amanita, Benzedrine, Valium and aspirin.
Credit: Milosz, Czeslaw, ed. A Book of Luminous Things (1997). Harcourt, Brace & Company.
Our prompt was:ย โWrite aboutย a momentย of unexpectedย connection.โ
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What can I tell her over breakfast when she says her son suffers from madness, and because there is no mental health, he has ended up in jail, and she is relieved, because at least he might be safe there or he might get to see the doctor. We are eating egg-white omelets; we are counting carbs. We are buttoning ourselves in our clean dresses and high-heeled shoes in order to bring home the bacon, doing what we need to do and โIt is what it is.โ Her granddaughter and daughter are living with her in the one bedroom. Nights, the daughter lounges by the pool, looking at her phone, while she teaches the child to plant seeds in a flower bed she feels bad she does not own. She tells she cried in the car coming here; she did not know me then. She thought we would be talking to each other the whole time about what we are selling, what the other might buy, but somehow we left that behind over the toast with the tiny pots of strawberry jam. Who can explain all this luxury, all this despair? Or how we all hold our secret shames so close and gloss our lips with โCinnamon Fireโ as if that were some legitimate form of protection. Cinnamon Fire! She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten yearsโyou wonโt know more, but you will get closer to forgiving, because it is all happening on a wheel that spins so fast. Why not stop to look at the pink flowers youโve planted with your granddaughter? Why not feel your bare toes in the good wet earth? We play with the crusts on our plates. The waitress takes the coffee away. We are strangers again, each carrying our lonely fear our children wonโt find their way, wishing for them some inner logicโsacred trust of earth and self, that exists for each of us so far within, so far under the skin, we canโt even begin to say what it is made of; it merely is, poised between love and grief: the blue space we call wonder, which is merely the dew on the grass, the shadow the sun makes as it rolls over the vast skin of the Earth.
Copyright ยฉ 2023 by Sheila Black. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on July 28, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am the truth, I am a lie
I am the ground, I am the sky
I am the silence, I am the call
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am hope, I am defeat
I am broken, I am complete
I am the grace, I am the fall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am the beggar, I am the queen
I am the end, I am the means
I am the hammer, I am the wall
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am a victor, I am the loss
I am a profit, I am the cost
I am the salve, I am the sting
Never, no never, no never one thing
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am a mother, I am the child
I am the meek, I am the wild
I am the witch, I am the saint
I am alive, never one thing
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
I am the lion, I am the swan
I am the bull, I am the fawn
I am a woman, I am the ring
I am my own, never one thing
I'm the underbelly, I am the claw
Never one thing no, not one thing at all
I'm a street fighter, I'm a prayer for peace
I'm a holy roller, I'm a honey bee
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Tyler Andrew Duncan
Our prompt was: โStart with ‘A community is..’โ
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head
and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear
I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in
I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.
From Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 by Margaret Atwood. Copyright ยฉ 1987 by Margaret Atwood.
Our prompt was:ย โWrite about the bluebird in your heart.โ
More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay in there, I’m not going to let anybody see you. there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I pour whiskey on him and inhale cigarette smoke and the whores and the bartenders and the grocery clerks never know that he’s in there.
there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too tough for him, I say, stay down, do you want to mess me up? you want to screw up the works? you want to blow my book sales in Europe? there’s a bluebird in my heart that wants to get out but I’m too clever, I only let him out at night sometimes when everybody’s asleep. I say, I know that you’re there, so don’t be sad. then I put him back, but he’s singing a little in there, I haven’t quite let him die and we sleep together like that with our secret pact and it’s nice enough to make a man weep, but I don’t weep, do you?
This was published in Bukowski’s book “The Last Night of the Earth Poems” circa 1992ยฉ by owner.
Our prompt was: โWrite about a small forgotten miracle.โ
More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
โIt is believed that the onion originally came from India. In Egypt it was an object of worship โwhy I havenโt been able to find out. From Egypt the onion entered Greece and on to Italy, thence into all of Europe.โ โ Better Living Cookbook
When I think how far the onion has traveled just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise all small forgotten miracles, crackly paper peeling on the drainboard, pearly layers in smooth agreement, the way the knife enters onion and onion falls apart on the chopping block, a history revealed. And I would never scold the onion for causing tears. It is right that tears fall for something small and forgotten. How at meal, we sit to eat, commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma but never on the translucence of onion, now limp, now divided, or its traditionally honorable career: For the sake of others, disappear.
Naomi Shihab Nye, โThe Traveling Onionโ from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Copyright ยฉ 1995 by Naomi Shihab Nye. Reprinted with the permission of the author.
Our prompt was:ย โWrite about a road not taken.โ
More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
The few weeks I was pregnant, whenever people asked how are you, meg? Iโd answer, oh ya knowโฆ with child which I thought was dead funny. I donโt think about it now except sometimes in a fitness class surrounded by women trying to shed baby weight and I make the calculations, (heโd be about fourteen by now) and then I look at myself in the class mirror while women squat and lift their legs and think, wow!, I look so good for having a fourteen year old and then Iโd think again, how if he was a reality, Iโd say it all the time and embarrass him in front of his school friends and for some reason, I think heโd be a drummer and wear green. I have no regrets, but I wonder if heโs waiting in the sky somewhere or doing blow in another dimension where heโs a rocker and very much flesh. I donโt believe in kin by blood, but I believe poems can give form to the formless, that one can resurrect roads not taken in a line and give it a name. Itโs a novel by Virginia Woolf, Iโd say and rattle on and heโd wave me off but maybe read it one day in college and think about his young mother who wanted to be a writer and what she might have had to give up in order to raise him at twenty-three. Heโd write me a song. Heโd title it with my name.
Our prompt was: โWrite about what is seen in the half-night.โ
More details will be posted on this session, so check back again!
Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (โLeave a Replyโ), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.
Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if youโre able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!
There is snow, nowโ A thing of silent creepingโ And day is strange half-night . . . And the mountains have gone, softly murmuring something . . .
And I remember pale days, Pale as the half-night . . . and as strange and sad.
I remember times in this room When but to glance thru an opened window Was to be filled with an ageless crying wonder: The grand slope of the meadows, The green rising of the hills, And then far-away slumbering mountainsโ Dark, fearful, oldโ Older than old, rusted, crumbling rock, Those mountains . . . But sometimes came a strange thing And theirs was the youth of a cloudlet flying, Sunwise, flashing . . .
And such is the wisdom of the mountains! Knowing it nothing to be old, And nothing to be young!
There is snow, nowโ A silent creeping . . .
And I have walked into the mountains, Into canyons that gave back my laughter, And the lover-girlโs laughter . . . And at dark, When our skin twinged to the night-wind, Built us a great marvelous fire And sat in quiet, Carefully sipping at scorching coffee . . .
But when a coyote gave to the night A wail of all the bleeding sorrow, All the dismal, grey-eyed pain That those slumbering mountains had ever knownโ Crept close to each other And close to the fireโ Listeningโ Then hastily doused the fire And fled (giving many excuses) With tightly-clasping hands.
Snow, snow, snowโ A thing of silent creeping
And once, On a night of screaming chill, I went to climb a mountainโs cold, cold body With a boy whose eyes had the ancient look of the mountains, And whose heart the swinging dance of a laughter-child . . . Our thighs ached And lungs were fired with frost and heaving breathโ The long, long slopeโ A wind mad and raging . . . Thenโthe top!
There should have been . . . something . . . But there was silence, onlyโ Quiet after the windโs frenzy, Quiet after all frenzyโ And more mountains, Endlessly into the night . . .
And such is the wisdom of mountains! Knowing how great is silence, How nothing is greater than silence!
And so they are gone, now, And they murmured something as they wentโ Something in the strange half-night . . .
Connections in Narrative Medicine 