30 in 30: Update

I know that I'm behind a few days, and for that, I'm sorry. My excuse is that I've been home for fall break and have been terribly preoccupied with old friends and a paper on Kant due Monday. Tomorrow, though, I'm going to make it top priority to catch up to where I'm supposed to be. Just giving you guys (however few you are) an update and apology.

Special thanks to Angie for holding me to my word!

30 in 30: Day 3

Prompt: write a poem that begins with a proclamation.

Form: Kyrielle

I will not let my body rot!
To waste I know that I will not.
Like if to then I have forgot,
Day's sweat and blood my body needs.

Such simple food I should intake,
Yet I never fail to mistake
Nutrients of green beans with cake.
And so for this my body pleads.

A day spent out below the sun,
An afternoon spent on a run.
Why do I fail to see this fun?
Such a healthy bodily deed.

I hate the type of man I am,
One who does not do what I can.
Instead of heeding healthy plans,
On trash and filth my body feeds.

30 in 30: Day 2

Prompt: write a poem that begins with you waking up.

Form: abababcc, no meter

Down my face, a sweat bead slips,
A moistened trail, a salty stain.
An ardent smile, brown hair to miss,
So surreal and full of pain.
A jolt of life as her hair flips,
Lucid à lonely once again.
Too many times, this splendid love
Is day's first blush, too quickly snubbed.

30 in 30: Day 1

Today I found this blog series called "30 Poems in 30 Days." The idea is obvious: to write 30 poems - one each day - in thirty days. The catch is that the author of the series announces a topic, prompt or guideline each day that you must follow. The series is annual, and it's already been concluded for this year, but I'm going to undertake it a month late, anyway. Call me out if I start to slack! I really want to do this.

Day 1's prompt is to "use the word Pattern in the first line and/or the last line of your poem."

Form: Free Verse

Patterns of a private campus,
Like muck, grimy and malodorous.
An infectious disease with the greatest of ease
Spreads the plague of uniform thinking.

In vain I left my coat at home,
My aegis from the sludge.
My boots, as well, sit in my room;
My body is a sponge.

Every day I tread the waters,
A straw in my mouth just in case.
I absorb the foreign manners of life
Unwillingly, but am sure to throw them up.

Be transformed! Renew your mind!
I hate what I see,
Such thoughtless thought.
Do not conform to the patterns of this world.

You are the music while the music lasts.

One of the most elegant, profound passages I have ever read:

But to apprehend
The point of intersection of the timeless
With time, is an occupation for the saint-
No occupation either, but something given
And taken, in a lifetime's death in love,
Ardour and selflessness and self-surrender.
For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,
Hints followed by guesses ; and the rest
Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.
The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and future
Are conquered, and reconciled,
Where action were otherwise movement
Of that which is only moved
And has in it no source of movement-
Driven by dæmonic, chthonic
Powers. And right action is freedom
From past and future also.
For most of us, this is the aim
Never here to be realised ;
Who are only undefeated
Because we have gone on trying ;
We, content at the last
If our temporal reversion nourish
(Not too far from the yew-tree)
The life of significant soil.

Four Quartets, pp. 44-45

Untitled Poem 2

A ghost to me
Thou shalt be
One walking through the walls
I squint to see
The back of thee
Fading down the hall

The ground is mine
The Earth is thine
A house thou'rt surest free to haunt
Pass through my blinds
Into my mind
Do with me what thou want

Without a trace
Yet full of grace
Thou hate to see my loss
To see thy face
Thou took my place
Upon that sturdy cross

And so for thee
I'll try to be
A lantern for the lost
But first if ye
Would so kindly
Allow me to accost

I'd have no fear
If thou were near

Untitled Prose 1

That point of intimacy, treading on the core of privy interests... That look of indubitable love, harboring an inescapable dream that brings so much despair, affirming only the thought that you'll be alone forever. But you are resilient.