Category Archives: Poetry

Today’s Wonder of the World poem is about Victoria Falls, and as I read about it, I wondered if anyone was ever foolhardy enough to try to ride over it. So, that became my light-hearted poem, inviting you into my raft. I decided to use Prezi for the platform because I was interesting in using Prezi’s weakness (that feeling of vertigo) as the poem’s strength (falling over the falls). I don’t think the poem itself is one my stronger pieces of writing but I like the “experience” of the poem as it came out. I went with a simple dark black background and white text to keep it simple.

Peace (in the story to tell),
Kevin

Today’s topic for the Wonders of the World poetry is the Amazon Rain Forest. I tried to write a prose poem, of sorts, and wrote it with the intent of “performing” it as a podcast. I wrote with flow, I hope.

Never an Explorer (Amazon Rain Forest )

I could never explore
the forest: Too many bugs.
Too many birds to keep me up at night;
Too many words
that would escape my imagination.
Too much heat I’d have to fight off.
I’d no doubt become delirious,
in this often mysterious
unknown world,
crawling just beneath the surface,
so that even if I left you this poem,
tacked to the giant tree in the center of the wood,
in a place barely understood —
not on any map that we’ve ever known —
nothing would be left of my words over time
but the invisible ink of an explorer
gone way out of his depth —
struggling for rhythm, grappling with rhyme —
No, I’d be the one who never made it back home,
the writer who give his life
for the wildness of the world,
and that isn’t going to happen this time.

Peace (in the exploration),
Kevin

Today’s Wonder poem is about Mount Everest, and the mountain and its role as  an unpredictable force of nature has been in the news lately (sadly) with the avalanche that has taken the lives of native guides. Mary Lee captures that role of the mountain in her powerful poem this morning. I decided to go after the mountain with wonder, in the form of a haiku.

Created with Haiku Deck, the free presentation app

Peace (in a few lines),
Kevin

Today’s Wonders of the World Poem is focused on the Great Barrier Reef. I found myself entranced first by the colors, which are brilliant, and then on the sobering news of how Global Warming and environmental change is killing off the reef, making it gray and solid. The poem then become a metaphor poem (or is every poem ultimately a metaphor poem in the end?)

Your Tongue as Pen to Stories of the World (Great Barrier Reef)

You used to splatter me with paint:
bright blues;
interesting oranges;
radiant reds.

I’d lounge here quietly in this cascade of colors,
letting the currents bring you in and out,
and in again as with the tides,
your tongue as pen to stories of the world.

But even I can hardly fail to notice that
with each passing day,
our hues have become a bit more duller
and our movements, ever slower.

Where once the solid form of us was teeming with love
and alive with wonder,
now, it is becoming little more than
a hardened reminder,
a silent statue of remembrance to
what once might have been.

Here is the podcast, too.

Audio and voice recording >>
 

Peace (on the reef),
Kevin

Today’s Wonder poem is about the Grand Canyon. I found myself thinking of the water more than the rock with this one.
Peace (in the look down),
Kevin

It’s difficult to read about Machu Picchu (as I did this morning for our Wonder poem selection) and not be saddened by what the Spaniards wrought when they came to South America and reshaped the world with violence, and illness, and their quest for gold. I understand I am looking at it from a modern perspective, but still …

So, this morning’s poem about the city on the mountain is in the form of a ransom note (using the cool ransomizer generator:
History held ransom

to the armies of Spanish invaders;

abandoned walls

carved in by Inca creators,

scared, and on the run

fleeing armed strangers

who traveled from the edge of the world

bringing untold dangers

of time and wind and daggers

of violence and royal decrees and wagers

that gold and conquest become the power;

yet here, now,

these ghosts are now natures painters.

🙂

Here is the poem in plain ‘ol English:

History held ransom
to the armies of Spanish invaders;
abandoned walls
carved in by Inca creators,
scared, and on the run
fleeing armed strangers
who traveled from the edge of the world
bringing untold dangers
of time and wind and daggers
of violence and royal decrees and wagers
that gold and conquest become the power;
yet here, now,
these ghosts are now nature’s painters.

Peace (in the poem),
Kevin

Today’s Wonder Poem is about Petra, or the Rose City of Jordan. Here’s another Wonder of the World that I knew very little about until Mary Lee put it on the list for poetry. I decided to write my poem in an open source writing platform called TitanPad. It’s sort of like Google Docs, in that you can collaborate, but I like how it creates a “timeline” of revisions, which I then captured as a short video of the writing of the poem. I can say there were no dramatic revisions here, just a bit of moving around words and fixing syntax. So the timeline-effect is not as dramatic as it could be.

I hosted it up at YouTube.

This is the final poem itself:

Rose City (Petra)

This city carved out of stone and rock –
red with time –
calls to me

How many hands
dug deep into mountains to remake it?
How many lives
were lost in the mountain to reshape it?

This city standing on the precipice –
red with stories —
calls to me

Where are the ghost defenders
praying deep into the night to save it?
Where are the brave contenders
seeking for the right to take it?

This city shackled in the earth –
red with history —
calls to me.

Peace (in the writing),
Kevin