The Tuesday Platform

Since Thou Hast Given Me This Good Hope, O God

Since thou hast given me this good hope, O God,
That while my footsteps tread the flowery sod
And the great woods embower me, and white dawn
And purple even sweetly lead me on
From day to day, and night to night, O God,
My life shall no wise miss the light of love;
But ever climbing, climb above
Man's one poor star, man's supine lands,
Into the azure steadfastness of death,
My life shall no wise lack the light of love,
My hands not lack the loving touch of hands;
But day by day, while yet I draw my breath,
And day by day, unto my last of years,
I shall be one that has a perfect friend.
Her heart shall taste my laughter and my tears,
And her kind eyes shall lead me to the end.

- Robert Louis Stevenson 

The sky is a palette of gutsy purple, solitary moments and new beginnings. On days like this I feel its energy the same way I would of the ones I love, infuse my soul and raise me higher. Once again I battle the wind and find myself in joyful anticipation of what the new year has yet to bring.

If you have any thoughts to share, ideas you wish to release into the wild or a world view to express, then you have come to the right place. Please share a poem of your choice and enjoy the company of your fellow scribes. We look forward to reading you and hope you have a wonderful day ahead.

SHARE * READ * COMMENT * ENJOY

Meet 2018 with a manifesto

Hello fellow amphibians, this is Bjorn and today in the last quivering hours of 2017 the time has come to both reflect and look ahead. For many of us 2017 will stand out as an Annus Horribilis. I am sure that there have also been a year of positive changes but maybe we tend to focus on negative movements. It’s like weather, we remember the days of hurricanes and rain and forget the many days of sunshine. The good thing about stormy weather is how much we appreciate the days that follows.

What can we do then to make 2018 into an Annus Mirabilis?

Many times we focus on the changes we can do ourselves by giving new year’s resolutions, but having lived some years I have learned how much this means failures. At the end of the day we are all alone in our resolutions, and if we are really successful we might end up with a better body, a happier mind, we might have found a new love or made some improvements to the housed, but we have failed to change the world.

Through history change has been driven through movements, through inspired actions and through art, and at the core of change there is often a declaration or a manifesto.

Today I want you to write a manifesto, for yourself, for a group (real or imaginary), for your writing or for any cause you find important.

Analyzing manifestos we find some common themes:

Name your manifesto to make it clear what you want to achieve. (e.g. Declaration of independence, the Communist Manifesto)

Write it in first person (singular or plural

State the problem but do not dwell too much on what is wrong but focus on what you think is right and what should happen

Use strong language. Use verbs. Start sentences with a pronomen (I will…, we believe…, I have a dream …

If you use metaphors make them clear and not ambiguous. In a manifesto you can (and should) use cliches that are easily understandable

Focus on rhythm and cadence. A manifesto should be written to be spoken.

Use repetitions and rephrase the main points of what you want to change.

Identify any threats and tell us how to deal with them.

You might even quote famous passages from other works and manifestos, like Martin Luther King reminded us of the declaration of independence.

But primarily: try to win me over to your views.

If you want some inspiration why not listen to Martin Luther King

I wish you all a happy new year, and let us make 2018 the best year ever. I will return with my Physics Prompts during 2018.

Get Listed, Solstice Edition

The Message - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five

America is Waiting - Byrne / Eno

The big thing happened again, like it does every year:

Daylight started crawling higher, unless you've drifted below the line (where Kerry lives) and the reverse is true.

So for this month's Get Listed, the theme is changing direction.

As a reminder, please write a new poem, using at least 3 of the following words (or reasonable variants thereof), post it to your blog, then link to the poem using Mr. Linky, below.

After posting, please return and visit your fellow author's pieces, commenting if you would: what better gift than to let someone know you're paying attention?

The list: reverse, corner, turn, bottom, peak, edge, limit, choose, bend, close, push, sleep

And the reversal, if you will: do NOT use the words "new," "change" or "direction" (or variants / tenses derived therefrom), because bah humbug.

Thanks for playing, and hope you have a good new year !

~ M

Elbow: This Blue World - Charge, The Takeoff and Landing of Everything

Bits Of Inspiration ~ Happy New Year

Happy New Year my fellow toads and visitors! 

I hope for all of us this will be a wonderful year!

Today's challenge is a simple one. Below are quotes addressing a new year. Choose as few as one or bits of all of them as jumping boards for inspiration. Write about the new year in resolutions, non resolutions, hopes, dreams, plans, or merely the acknowledgement the calender has turned over into a new year. This is your poetic step into 2015!

"I think in terms of the day's resolutions, not the years".   Henry Moore

"Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, 'It will be happier."  Alfred Lord Tennyson

“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.”   T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“We desire an exciting future, but the demand for familiar and comfortable tempers our steps to the point that often our steps are little more than stepping in place.”   Craig D. Lounsbrough

“What the new year brings to you will depend a great deal on what you bring to the new year.”    Vern McLellan

As always and especially since this is a brand new year, write a brand new poem for the challenge; add it to Mr. Linky; and celebrate by reading your fellow poets' work.

Get Listed: Final for 2014

Lots of rituals this time of year.

Here's one more: thank you to Chief Toad, Kerry O'Connor, and to all the toad dwellers and visitors, for making this site both challenging and welcome.

And now, the final word list for 2014.

music, few, grip, feather, glove, steam, embrace, rise, fall, water, shadow, bed

If you wish, write of the year gone, or up ahead, or really whatever strikes your fancy. I'm a bit less enamored of ritual as I get older.

As a reminder: select three or more words (or reasonable variants) from this list for your poem, post it to your blog, then link the pen itself to Mr. Linky below.

Then please visit again to read your fellow's work, comment if you would (we all do enjoy the feedback)... and best wishes for 2015.

cheers,

~ M (grapeling)

Personal Challenge #1 for 2014

fair use image

Welcome, Toads and Visitors, to the imaginary garden with real toads.

Kerry, aka HeadMistress Toad, has elected - in the spirit of the new year (2014 in the common, or Christian calendar, as opposed to, say, the Lunar or Chinese calendar where it will be 4712 on January 31st, or the Jewish calendar, where New Year’s Eve, 5775 isn’t until next September 24th) - to re-invigorate a Garden tradition:

The Personal Challenge, last seen in these parts way back in 2012 (4710/5773) (cue up the Victrola, let down the swing-arm to the vinyl... dunh dunh DUNH). That is, prior to my hopping into the garden.

Some of these challenges were quite deliciously wicked. (Pay a visit to the archives and you'll see - I highly recommend it!)

HeadMistress Toad must have been feeling benevolent, since her task to me is simply this (and so I quote) (not that I will be so benign, fellow to-be-victim Toad): 

"Here is my challenge for you: I have selected 3 of D.H. Lawrence's poems and created a small word pool from each one. I want you to select one of the choices I have given and use at least 9 (of 10) words in a poem of your own. Alternately, you can select three words from each list and slam them together in your poem. Up to you..."

Enough parentheses.

Frankenstein, as it were, cobbled by the mad doctor/poet from the flesh of Lawrence’s pens. Being stubborn and vain, I used all 30. Please see below the post to view the seed poems and selected words.

Thank you for coming this far; please visit the sidebar, where each Toad's own blog is featured, and hop over to read their pens.

Spoils

The new year slipped
in, no stranger
to the chaos of clinked flutes and ambiguous hospitality
painted on the hollow
cheeks of somebody – everybody – who fled exile
from their usual blinked screens this speckled night
(like every other
but for the last
digit)

Keen-eyed, the year looked up
then winged a curving arc
between ottoman and chaise
to the carob-tree decked in borrowed hair-fine tinsel, a groomed
specimen of sober patience, presentable in her bark-chip skirt,
leaves plucked clean as brows

Unobserved together
they swayed as to Sinatra in a bygone day
until the never-subtle crowd
(a singular beast lapping bubbly with a two-forked tongue,
an undivided seething eddy of flesh-gouged-sequins
groaning and tramping the old its annual death-
throes, bones melting with the usual slackness
reserved for one liquidly cheering the red end)
suddenly fissured - a crack in the make-up -
a chiming perversity cleaving the collective shimmer
into suddenly self-aware units

and the year snapped
to, wedged itself (pierce as a tack)
into the numbed, personal grey
residue that always gathers
when the gathering convulses to solitude

As every w(ye)ar has its spoils,
every party has its villains to be avoided and beauties
to be pacified, often from the same perch.
The fellow who at first appeared sleek? turns
out has yellow teeth gating breath black as soil
- and that eye-glint was only a leer

so welcome, welcome, the new year

.....

.....

As you no doubt can tell, other than the singular words selected by Kerry from D.H. Lawrence’s poems (all from PoemHunter), this creature has nothing at all to do with his craft.

Snake:
carob-tree, slackness, fissure, pacified, perversity, hospitality, convulsed, exile, curving, two-forked 

How Beastly the Bourgeois Is:
Presentable, Tramping, Specimen, Sleek, Bygone, Hollow, Upright, Seething, Soil, Groomed

The Song of a Man Who Came Through:
direction, wedge, chaos, winged, fine, spoil, borrowed, subtle, somebody, keen

~ M