Creativity calls!

     My English homework for this week is to create a writing prompt, post some readings that support said prompt, and then of course, write something based on that same prompt. I decided to pursue found poems, and then proceeded to go overboard. One of the resulting poems was 4 pages long, with another 2 of reference material (because I had to cite where the lines came form; don't want to be accused of plagiarism!) The other poem was only one page, but as I took lines form my much-loved copy of The Dovekeepers (written by the incomparable Alice Hoffman) I had to remind myself that I was only looking up random lines, not reading the whole book.
     My search for poets to include as reading sources led me to Carie Juettner's AMAZING website: https://cariejuettner.com/?s=book+title+poems I didn't make my poems this way, but I intend to give this a try as soon as possible!
     So, without any more preamble, I give you my two found pomes, written last night:

A Requiem for the Dovekeepers

by Nicole Kapise Perkins

 

We went walking through the orchard, toward terraces where ancient olive trees and huge, twisted 
                                                                     grapevines grew.

The birds were cooing. I felt a pulse in my throat, remembering how I had waited for my prey in the wilderness, how they had come to me and how I had destroyed them.

He vowed that the color of my hair was shared by all the most beautiful women in his land and, he added slyly, in mine.

I recognized Ashtoreth, the mother and warrior, whose presence has been long outlawed.

Chayei ‘olam le-‘olam. Eternal life, forever.

Sometimes people imagine I am crying, they believe they’ve spied a tear, but they’re wrong.

I now understood it was our duty as human beings to see behind the veil to the inside of the world, to the heart of things.

I wished to be forgiven.

 

 

Lines taken from The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman,

Pages 83; 92; 130; 157; 220; 242; 289; 377

*********          *********        *********       ********        **********        ********

Lines From Letters

by Nicole Kapise Perkins

 Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners.

Here we are in the vortex, but this evening snatching a few moments repose in the “Ladies’ Parlor” for domestic life.

We little dreamed when we began this contest, optimistic with the hope and buoyancy of youth, that half a century later we would be compelled to leave the finish of the battle to another generation of women.

If I break a law of state or nation it is the duty of the civil courts to deal with me.

I am so full of misery to-night that I am ridiculous.

Three or four times I have given you the opportunity to make, gaily & good-humouredly, the transition which seems to me inevitable; & you have not chosen to do it.

I am only one, only one, only one; only one life to live, only sixty minutes in one hour; only one pair of eyes.

Of course we are lone survivors, of course the past that was our lives is at the bottom of an abyss—if the abyss has any bottom; of course too there’s no use talking unless one particularly wants to.

And so we are justified in taking risks.

This gift, like all the others, is characterized by simplicity and thoughtfulness, which I hope each member will make the slogan of their lives.

I am just slowly killing myself.

All’s well, and the twilight is like spring—vague azure and green and silver.

Turn your face to gay, thrilling instruction—the conquest of more & more amazing natural facts.

The photograph is all I have: it is with me from the morning when I think of you and of death at night.

I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.

A night when I can not sleep—I think the first one since I am out here—bright moonlight on my door—everything so still but for a persistent mocking bird—somewhere out there in the night.

The ideas of man often interfere with natural processes.

I wanted most desperately to live and still do, and I thought about you a 1000 times, and wanted to see you again, and there was the impossible anguish and regret of all the work I had not done, of all the work I had to do.

If so I will make a prophecy—in ten years time no one will work for you for either love or money.

My fingers were on his lips, but no sound came from them for several seconds.

After some thought, I have decided that you are the most valuable person alive, so for God’s sake take care of yourself.

But if my own conscience tells me I’ve done my duty—I will always come back to you in the certainty that you’d understand any fall from the high places, and that my place in your heart would be as big as ever.

You may not approve of it and it may not be the form in which you see the ideal—but I would like you to accept, as my tribute to you, the fact that what I took from you was taken for the figure of my own god.

But I also want to let all of this beauty get into my body.

Now night has come, everything is silent and peaceful.

In the comment on Life’s storage wall, I wrote: “…a pretty good case can be made out for setting fire to it and starting fresh.”

Be comforted, then, that we were serene and understood with the deepest kind of understanding, that civilization had not as yet progressed to the point where life did not have to be lost for the sake of life; and that we were comforted in the sure knowledge that others would carry on after us.

A desire I have had for a long time has overtaken me.

But I have been mentally blocked for a long time, first because I didn’t know just what it was I wanted to say about Life, and also for a reason more difficult to explain.

I’ve written a lot of poems from my heartache of being without you.

When the question is asked “How many lives are you willing to sacrifice:--it tears at my heart.

I am not afraid of Time or lies or losing money or defeat.

I want to make love to the world.

Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart—I’m in both: if you need me.

For the past few weeks I’ve been evaluating + reevaluating everything.

There really is nothing for me there.

I’m beginning to like this fucking case.

 

 

Lines taken from the anthology Letters of the Century: America 1900-1999,

edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler

Letters written by:

20: Elizabeth Cabot

26: Susan B. Anthony

33: Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

49: Wallace Stevens

76: Edith Wharton

81: Robert Frost

84: Arthur Fifield

92: Henry James

99: Woodrow Wilson

151: George Washington Carver

160: “A Mother of Two” writing to Margaret Sanger

171: William Faulkner

202: Theodore Dreiser

203: F. Scott Fitzgerald

204: Amelia Earhart

206: Georgia O’Keeffe

221: George Draper

235: Helen Keller

244: Frank Lloyd Wright

251: Thomas Wolfe

264: Jessie Bernard

269: Dorothea Taylor

273: Alexander Woollcott

290: Dwight Eisenhower

303: Ayn Rand

306: E. B. White

386: Ethel Rosenberg

394: Jonas Salk

407: Rachel Carson

459: Lady Bird Johnson

477: Valerie Solanas

486: Anne Sexton

525: “Pat” writing to her parents

550: Son of Sam

594: Joseph Jamail

597: “Cher” writing to “Chuck,” killed in Vietnam

627: President George H. W. Bush