4 x 4 Poetry Meme

Clare at Clare's Sunflower Sky tagged me to do the 4 x 4 Poetry meme. One is supposed to list at least 4 things you think a beginning poet should attend to, and 4 mistakes you think a poet should avoid.

I bent the rules a little to get a nice chance in saying all I wanted to say (hope that's not a problem) and stated five pieces of humble advice on poetry writing (what you shouldn't do is implicit in them as well). Well, it was fun to write, so here it goes...

About Poetry

-Even though without them a poem cannot come to be, the finality of a poem is not in the words themselves, but in what they mean, so picture the words you use as an instrument for expressing some greater thought. Let words serve your ideas, and not the opposite.

-Being objective and subjective at the same time usually causes the effect of depth in a poem. Good poems don’t exhaust their content easily; rather they allow themselves to be rediscovered through time.

-Examine yourself and the terrain in which you step in, the things that cross your mind. If you understand yourself, chances are that others will too.

-Let feeling guide your choice of words. Poems are especially good because of the feelings that they can recreate in us, and a poem that was written with feeling will most likely be a sensorial experience to those who read it as well.

- Poems can be magical but they’re not usually created out of magic, in fact, most times a good poem is very hard work. So give yourself time, respect yourself and the poem your writing. It so happens that the words you’re looking for might be waiting for you in the next corner!

The Mystery Of Bulgarian Voices

I’ve been scanning the web in search of tunes. Music is that one thing cultural expression that can be found all across the world, yet, even though there have been many advances in communication means, we seem to only have contact with a farley small share of the variety. The mass media have many effective ways of making a whole bunch of people listen to the same records and jump to the same songs. And that would be ok if I didn’t make me feel so irreversibly bored. So it might not be a bad idea to try to relearn how to listen and appreciate music, so I can be open to whatever touches me. This one video I found on youtube touched me and made me think of depth, soul and the beauties of the human voice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5_f2E22MPI

Giving Space (Sunday Scribblings)

In a hospital
Empty corridors
Meet crowded alleys
Silence, death
Joy and birth
A world of contrast
Of pain and grief,
Relief…

Some battles won
And others lost
By those who struggle
Those who quit
Those who fight
To breathe for one more night

And life’s put into question
Coz’ between
Exhaling and inhaling
Our planet counts
Another spin
With an untouched chapter
For which to start
And start again


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As High turns Low

By linlin (away) on Flickr

Pause,
Is a button worth pressing… sometimes
So we can give ourselves time
To rethink the scheme
Appreciate silence
Breathe…

A load of fresh air
Embraced in my lungs
Comforts the mind
Where senses can meet
And vague uncertainty
Makes my heart beat faster

Like the incoming scene
Of an avant-garde movie
Emotionally packed
To make us aware
Of what we’d rather not know
And would prefer to let be

I chose not to fear
And neither to forget
That life is a novel
With pages of storing telling
And appreciating the sheets
Helps me write while I read

Ocean Paths (Writers Island)

Image by cresk on Flickr

Water curls
Meeting land
Dancing waves
Bathe the sand
Moisten my toes
Wash my feet
While prints and trails
They gently sweep
Back and forth
Amongst the tides
A yellow moon
Its color shines
To a quiet world
Within the sea
Where secrets rest
And muteness sleeps
Is how I’ll tell my story
In a bottle
Cradled by currents
With destiny unmarked
Giving in to chance
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Doing Something I Like (Sunday Scribblings)

I’ve only had one real job so far which is to teach English. I started teaching a little over three years ago and since then I’ve learned a lot about what it means to work with other people and experience a bit of each one’s universe. I guess one thing I could say about teaching is that, although the content may sometimes be the same, the way people react in a classroom environment can always take the most interesting turns and dealing with new situations all the time can really work against the boredom of routine. It’s a good job, but not my dream job. My dream job is music, piano music specifically and I recently made a big professional decision in order to make this dream job become my real job by giving up my English degree to be able to dedicate myself entirely to this study. Even though it’s a highly competitive market requiring dedication beyond limits, I feel that making good use of the one life I call my own by pouring myself in something I believe in might be my best shot at living a happy and meaningful life. As for my idea of a terrible job, I had a friend that went to Europe and spent a few months washing dishes in a French restaurant so he could raise some money to travel, and I thought to myself, “Europe is a fine place to be in, but I’d bore myself to death if I had to see dirty plates in front of me all day long.”

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Renewal - Writers Island

Image by macwright on Flickr

The key to reinvent
Is to forget what we know
What we think we know
And no longer mind

As if pressing the same buttons
Left our fingers numb
Like well constructed robots
Living auto-pilot lives

I choose for rubber instead
Erasing preconceptions
And disengaging filters
That made life seem so obvious

Leaves me full of doubt
Unfamiliar with the process
Of watching all come fresh
And though I give my best

I feel like a strange man
Living in a stranger world
As I try to recognize
All that’s seen for the first time



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Feeling Sorry – A Poem about War (Sunday Scribblings)

Image by *Gary* on Flickr

In a skipped beat
Of timeless pause
I saw the living
Unfold in shock

And shed a tear
For losing soul
On thorns too sharp
For hands to hold

Those whose hearts
Have soured up
With evil bliss
In mass destruct

They kill their own
With bubbling rage
Inspired by wounds
That cry for hate

Oppressing all
For fear of loss
Power and control
No matter the cost

Is what evolves
To make us shallow
Loveless and
Self-centered

I feel sorry for
Us humans
That seem to learn
The hard way

We just can’t see
That each of us
Has everyone else
On the inside

Should war
And killing
Be the meaning
Of one’s life?

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Powerful (Sunday Scribblings)

Image by thomwatson on Flickr

Powerful is the ability to comprehend
What has power over you
To confront the part that hurts
And not give in when all comes worse

It’s an understanding
Of why you do the things you do
What you want from them
And where you think they’ll take you

It’s about going broadband
On senses and feelings
Tuning the heart and training the mind
The parts that make us human

Powerful is a powerful word
It requires wisdom and fragile handling
No use having it exteriorized
Being unsure or reckless on the inside

More powerful readings on Sunday Scribblings

The Pace of Waltz

Photo by Desideria on Flickr

Quick gasps of oxygen and deep underwater diving. Where I can talk with fish and play hide and seek amongst the corals. All is fine in the sub aquatic world of silence. And the surface of shimmering sunlight looks brighter than ever. I love the breeze, don’t you? Seems to me like nature’s way of caressing us with air. And the stillness of contemplation to slippery for words to describe, if I only knew how to prolong its effects. Oh well, dreams measure neither place nor time.

In the meanwhile here’s what’s supposed to be a haiku, and only partially met its purpose. But what it is means less than the words themselves, so I chose to write it down anyway.

whew, whew… ploc!
Am I not being serious?
When chewing on gum?

The Gift (Writers Island)

Photo by strangemagee on Flickr

When I first saw this prompt, I thought about people; people with gifts. Then I started to question the whole concept. What does that mean? To be gifted? Gifted means receiving a gift, a gift to be able to do something that supposedly the majority of people could not. And that seems to be a comfortable definition to rest on. Like there was no better excuse for us to dwell on than to sit with arms crossed and say: “Oh, to bad I don’t have that gift.” Now, I’m not saying that gifted people don’t exist; history has shown us dazzling examples of true geniuses and their incredible outcomes. But a closer look reveals me equal shares of intelligence and plenty hard work. It’s like we get so fascinated by the magic in certain achievements that we often forget that behind it lies a lifetime of search and dedication. And I can’t help thinking that simply calling it a gift seems to diminish all the sacrifice and pursuit put into overcoming difficulties by treating it as… a gift, a present, something handed without effort landing on someone by chance. It’s unfair to those who know the stories behind their gifts. Sometimes I think that there is no truer gift than the gift to love, to love something so deeply that you pour yourself into it without measuring the efforts. The stories of geniuses are to me stories of love, and maybe if we dedicated ourselves as intensely as they did we would be gifted as well.

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Light Trails

A breath of fresh air
Brought perfume to lungs
Held tight in my chest

To take in a spark
Of the almighty fire
Burning below my feet

And sewing each dream
With flames made of thread
Pierced into the dark

And slowly made path
Beyond destinations
Or last stop drop offs

I’ll curl in my sleep
And dig out the words
Fueled to press further

On needles of trust
Adorning my quilts
Mending strings without end

The Colors of Sound / As Cores do Som

This is my attempt to paint music, orchestral music specifically. I was listening to Chopin’s first piano concerto when I got out the paint tubes and decided to paint something less concrete. Recently, I’ve really stopped to think about the connections between visuals and music and found them most interesting. Like for example, the spaces between the notes played on a keyboard and the traces in a painting, or the similar ways by which notes and colors can be harmonized. Well, for me it’s very interesting to have one accompanied by the other and blend them in creative ways.

Esta é minha tentativa de pintar música, a música orquestral especificadamente. Eu estava escutando o primeiro concerto de piano de Chopin quando peguei as tintas para pintar algo menos concreto. Recentemente tenho parado para pensar sobre as conexões entre o visual e a música. Como, por exemplo, a relação entre os espaços das notas tocadas em um teclado e os traços de uma pintura, ou, a maneira como as notas e as cores podem ser postas em harmonia. Bem, é bem interessante ver um acompanhado do outro e poder misturá-los criativamente.

Writing (Sunday Scribblings)

Photo by Nathanael.Archer on Flickr

Writing is the kind of medicine I just couldn’t find in drugstores. I discovered writing throughout my teenage years while trying to cope with some difficult times. Not having someone to talk to, or at least someone that would comprehend what I was going through really pushed me towards paper and ink. And in writing down my feelings I found an oasis, an outlet to what seemed to be back then an unbearable world. The sheets of paper imposed neither restriction nor censorship for what needed to be expressed and all my dissatisfaction somehow found their way across pages of notebooks and diaries. I would fill in a page every night before going to bed and that seemed to be my personal way of experiencing morphine; a way to feel lighter, self-therapy one might say. Revisiting those diaries is something I stopped doing a few months ago because I needed to move forwards and let go of bad memories which were better off forgotten. As I grew older, I started to feel better and tried focusing on less personal writings so that maybe I could share them with others as well. That’s where I m standing now, discovering poetry, different kinds of literature and blogging as well. Blogging seems to be an excellent creative exercise for both readers and writers, and I see a lot of good potential in it. Well, like I said, for those who enjoy its nature, writing can be a multiuse medicine that you won’t find in drugstores!

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Blogger Reflection Award

CLARE'S SUNFLOWER SKY by Clare, awarded me a "blogger reflection award". And this is a real honor to me given the award and the person that awarded me with it. Before I started blogging (less than two months ago), I was going over some blogs to see what blogging was about (I really didn't know much about it). Reading Clare's blog gave a very strong reference of someone with a very original and interesting view of the world. Since then I've been introduced to a whole community of extremely talented and gifted people who I can learn from and break geografical bearers when It comes to sharing poems, thoughts and ideas. Thank you all for making this possible and creating such warm enviorments to be in; all of you who share your thoughts and contribuitions.