Tag: Plato

Soul Sunday

Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Plato said that “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” Nietzsche said “Poets are shameless with their experiences: They exploit them.” T. S. Eliot said “It is a test that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” What is your truth? How can you exploit what you have experienced into a form of poetry? What are you struggling to understand? Write a poem. You might find an answer. Here is my poem for today:

“The Quest for Knowledge”

We are visiting you at your esteemed institution of learning,

My brilliant, driven, ambitious, beautiful daughter.

There are buildings, and books, and the bustle of ceaseless curiosity,

surrounding us everywhere in this oasis of youth and possibility.

Where will this erudition take you towards your lofty dreams?

I study you closely, pondering these things, quietly to myself.

But then I look up at your carefully crafted picture wall . . .

Beautiful pictures of beautiful people and precious pets,

Your family and your friends all glowing with mutual love and admiration,

The most interesting picture is placed in the center, simple framed words:

“I’ve learned that it’s not what I have in my life, but who I have in my life that counts.”

And this is when I serenely smile to myself, gratefully understanding

that you already know everything that you will ever need to know.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Good morning. My regular readers know that I devote Sundays to poetry on the blog. I don’t have a poem today. I don’t have a poem in any way. I’m not sharing one I wrote. But what I have, is wrote in quote. Poets don’t always write in rhyme – for that, they don’t always have the time. Sometimes poets just really have wise things to say, and so that is what I am sharing with you today.

“I have never started a poem whose end I knew. Writing a poem is discovering.” – Robert Frost

“Poetry is the clear expression of mixed feelings.” – W. H. Auden

“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” – Emily Dickinson

“A picture is a poem without words.” – Horace

“Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” – Plato

“If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.” – Seamus Heaney

“A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.” – Wallace Stevens

“To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” – Walt Whitman

Thank you for being my great audience, readers. I love you. Have a blessed, poetic Sunday. <3 (Write a poem. Discover the ending. Make sense of your mixed feelings. Blow your own mind, or perhaps just take a photo and see the poetry in it. Find the vital truth that only your deepest inwardness knows. Fall in love with yourself through your words. You are a great poet, even if the only audience is yourself. <3 )

Soul Sunday

Fortune for the day -“One who seeks knowledge must desire from a young age to hear the entire truth.” – Plato

Sundays are poetry workshop days, here at Adulting – Second Half. I hope that you are sitting comfortably, maybe even cozily wrapped in a blanket. I hope that you have a delicious, warm cup of tea or coffee, readily available, in order to warm your hands, and your heart. I hope that, in this very moment, you feel surrounded by peace, comfort, acceptance and love. I hope that, right now, in this very place in time, you are in your sacred space.

Here is my poem for today, and as always, please feel the courage, the inclination, the vulnerability and the inspiration, to share your own poems in the Comments section. One day, I hope that this poetry workshop of ours, is “Standing Room Only.” It’s our creative impulses, that come out from within the deepest part of ourselves (without demeaning censure coming from ourselves or from others), that drive this world forward – a beautiful world, which we are all co-creating together. Be free. Be open. Be real. Be alive. Don’t waste another second, in a precious day of your life on anything less than your purest, kindest authenticity. You, and our world, will be uplifted for your effort, and yet also the effortlessness it takes for you to be, your purest, truest self.

Melange

If my things were to represent my mind,

My mind would be chaotic, and in disarray.

Jumping from lucky symbols, to memories captured in the form of photographs,

Piles of inspirations, and numbered orderly logs, laid out in disorderly fashion.

Objects that touched my heart, at the very instance that I laid eyes on the piece,

For no particular rhyme or reason, perhaps just deeply primal.

The compilation of it all, makes no sense to the untrained eye.

But to me, it is a beautiful, nonsensical pattern,

A medley, an assortment, that makes perfect sense.

The inner me, coming forth in physical form.

Amusing, interesting, cluttered, muddled, yet clear.

A hodgepodge in harmony.

Sing Us a Song

Last night, I attended a wonderful concert, in which a 71-year-old musician, an old-time rocker, had us all up on our feet. He was still a great showman, changing costumes, running across the stage and yelling out a primal scream that at my age of 48, I don’t think that I have in me anymore. I imagine that this performer will be a showman until the day that he dies.

I love musicians. If there is anyone who lives their lives on their sleeves, it is them. Anyone who can turn raw emotion into a song that keeps the rest of us humming along in life, is a true alchemist. Watching a band in the middle of a set, is watching pure life and happiness flow out of its human forms to congregate and make beautiful sound and rhythm and harmony, that the rest of us catch and bring into our souls, as we sing and dance along. There is no wonder why musicians capture our awe and adoration. They remind us what pure life sounds like and feels like in reverberation. What a gift that has been bestowed upon them, in the form of a talent that is only best understood when it is shared. Music is Love whispered, shouted, sung, and hummed and strummed, reminding us of the vibration of our own very hearts, way beyond just the physical beats.

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” ― Plato