“HOW DO YOU VIEW your life? – POETIC BLOOMINGS MEMOIR PROJECT

PART 2 – LOOK WHAT I DID! – Prompt #67

We would like you to write about an accomplishment in your life that fills you with pride. An award, a discovery, a bit of heroics, a completion of a progam – anything we’d love to find out about and share in your pride.

Please note: We are all proud of our children/grandchildren as they fill us with pride and joy. So, they are off of the table. We’re looking for an award, an accomplishment, a commendation, a goal, quota…, being voted poet most likely to write a Sestina… something you can hang your hat on. Brag about it. If you feel it is worthy of your pride, we will hold your banner high. Swallow your modesty and express it! Every accomplishment is awarded here!

MARIE ELENA’S PRIDE

PRIDE (confession in sonnet)

The very word sends shivers to my spine
For pride, it’s said, arrives before the fall.
To write about my pride, I would decline:
A cowardly response, and not my call.

Since false humility is pride implied,
A path to cover tracks that lead to fact,
I recognize the need to swallow pride,
And keep some semblance of the truth intact.

With that, I look upon this very site -
Admit I’m proud of what we two have done.
So here’s my ego, splayed in black and white -
Along with hopes we’ve only just begun.

This said, my heart and pen make this demand:
“Don’t leave this page ungrateful for God’s hand.”

© Marie Elena Good – 2012

WALT’S ACCOLADE:

I struggled with which one to pursue, so I wrote two. The first, a great accomplishment, only made possible by the second:

LAUREATE AT THE STAKE*

Sacrificed on the altar of reason,
pages ignite; an incendiary conflagration
of words and rhyme – metered and meted.

Ashes strewn, wind blown; sown upon
the fertility of a mind left wanting to be heard.
Every word burning like midnight oil to ravage

all this savage heart has toiled to achieve.
Like decayed leaves these poems smolder.
Line by line, they feed the fire; burning.

Learning that poetic purity is akin to obscurity,
remnants of thought filling the air
like sparks off to incite the masses and high grasses

in smoky simile; nothing is left unsaid.
Laureate at the stake burning, take the time to learn.
There is rhyme enough to burn.

© Walter J. Wojtanik – 2012

* Note:  On being selected the 2010 Poet Laureate for the April PAD at Writer’s Digest.com/Poetic Asides with Robert Lee Brewer. I seemed in a hurry to get there, and humbly find I still have much to learn and accomplish.

BEING HERE*

Breath and heartbeat.
Every new day is an event.
Hell bent on staying the course
with this life-force surging,
and purging every last bit of
fear and confusion; these intrusions
on a battered mind.
The lessons finally learned:
What matters, matters -
all else pales in comparison
in this garrison of vitality.
The reality of seemingly endless days
finds ways to enliven; given
to make these gifts a cause
to rejoice; a loud voice
in the wilderness, thankful
for all that has transpired.
As tired as it feels,
a good deal of these days now
are spent in praise of Being.
Seeing the forest AND the trees,
with knees to ground to pray.
This magnificence in relation.
Every new day – an elation;
a life spent in celebration.

© Walter J. Wojtanik – 2012

*Note: After fifty-six years in fermentation, the wine is finally reaching its peak!

Walt has fashioned this “badge/banner” for our poets

and it is available on the P.B. Badge tab above (Html included).