I write because

A poetry prompt group in which I participate, We Write Poems, wants us to write a line poem about: “I write (because).”  There are many reasons why one writes, however the greatest is most likely an inner urge that needs satisfaction and the pure pleasure of putting thought to written word. So here are my thoughts, some of them, the others I will keep to myself. I like to be a little unpredictable.

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I write to express my contentious and clamoring inner voice.
I write to better understand humanity, the world, and our place in it, and why emotion becomes an insipid event for those who do not understand poetic verse.
I write to define how life’s emotions impact our relationship with self.
I write to paint a vivid memory upon the wheel of time.
I write to fulfill the artistic side of my nature with creation my canvas,
words my pallet, and poetic form my brush.
I write to leave a lasting evidence of my journey through this moment of existence.
I write so that my words might be a light for others to find their way.
I write to satisfy a natural urge, as one needs food to survive, poetry is the  sustenance to my soul.
I write to say somethings that need to be said and are better said in a poetic verse regardless of where the chips fall.
I write because Gaea and I find it is a spiritual experience that enlightens us together.
I write because there is wonder in the diversity of words and their challenging meanings.
I write because I find camaraderie, and appreciation in the company of poetry and poets.
I write because other than my darling wife Luscious, poetry is my literary mistress full of beauty and gratification.

©2012, Donald Harbour

Dali got it right

Last night I happily dreamed,
Our world’s ship turned upside down,
Giant oaks hung suspended in the air,
While birds flew on the ground.

Air was not polluted for breath,
All water pure for drinking too,
The earth’s creatures took photographs,
Of caged humans in their public zoo.

It was a world of imaginations,
Where peace reigned supreme,
Where guns were licorice sticks,
And oil was frothy whipped cream.

Blue skies were always overhead,
Rivers and lakes placidly flowed,
Fish were scaled in sparkling diamonds,
Multicolored butterflies paved each road.

Cows were made for milk and mooing,
Chickens cheerfully clucked a chicken song,
Lions laid beside fluffy lambs,
No one ever heard the words: this is wrong.

There were no gods or seraph,
No torture or misguided religious grief,
No war mongers, government or politicians,
Pontificating their bellicose belief.

Pink peddle-pushers road horseback,
Through fields of limeade green,
Not found were homeless without homes,
Unbranded tennis shoes were only seen.

Dali was captain of this ship,
Sailing among the galaxies of space,
The passengers of his whimsical bark,
Different hues of the same human race.

Dawn pulled me from the dream,
It whispered a new beginning had begun,
Startled I realized in a jolt of epiphany,
All of us, could make 2012, the one.

©2012, Donald Harbour

Who is Marey Mercy

to know Marey Mercy
is to know too much
a pick pocket of persona
a plumed bird of image multiplicity
whether grainy black and white
fading sepia or blurred graphic
she is a 35mm Pantone expression
a randomly clicked slide show
art spreading out a panorama
of pixelated creative genius.

©2011, Donald Harbour

Epilogue to a short man

Cemetery in Malvern by Doug Shaver

One night I walked in a French cemetery
of Verdelais, near Château of Malromé,
there finding an old friend enjoying the same.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec stood composed
among giants in the art graveyard.
Head level with the tombstones,
Van Gogh, Matisse, Monet, Klimt,
yet he towered over them all.
He was the master of belle époque,
a provocateur of compulsion,
a sepia tone blurred by ridicule,
the incessant hammering of handicap.
An artist graded by the brothels,
the laughing sneers of the cabarets.
Each moment of joie de vivre,
captured in the turning of a century,
and the impressions of the Montemarte.
With the sweet scent of passion,
absinthe hung in the midnight mist,
I wondered why this spectral meeting.
He turned, as he did to Count Alphonse,
saying, “I knew you wouldn’t miss the kill.”
Smiling he pulled on his beard,
adjusted his frock and faded into history.
Shocked, dumbfounded, I realized,
I did not tell him how much he is missed.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour

Roxanne Swentzell: How the spirits came to speak

A poem inspired by a picture of Roxanne Swentzell, one of life’s truly great Native American artists.

Some where between the beginning
And the end of eternity,
The spirits conspired to speak,
For they were without a voice.
Their words unknown, unspoken,
Visible only in the art of creation.
Their hands were in the earth,
In the breath of the wind, the
Cooling showers of spring,
The birth giving heat of the sun,
The nurturing light of the moon.
The spirits had shaped and molded
All that ever was, or would be.
On a mesa swept with dust
Came they together to wait.
Time passed and time changed.
A pueblo rose from the clay
The spirits opened a dark hole in the dirt,
Sending the blind Mole into its depths
Bringing into the light the people,
The Tewa, to live in the Pueblo.
On the mesa called Turtle Mountain,
The people honored the spirits
In dance, in song, in pottery.
Yet, the spirits waited,  watching.
And, when the people had grown,
When the Red Willow People
Had found their true place,
Binding their hearts with Corn Mother,
A perfect seed was formed.
At the moment of that conception,
In this new small living seed,
The spirits joined their hands,
And gave to it their words.
The seed carried with in it
The unspoken art of creation,
The unknown voice of the spirits.
In the night, the seed grew, blossoming.
Its heart belonged to the Tewa,
Its hands to the voice of the spirits.
At morning,  when the sun began to rise,
The seed came into the world as a girl child,
She was named Roxanne, for the dawn.

Copyright: 2009, Donald Harbour