cobanionsmith

[cobanionsmith]

My voice is the cry of lions. ... #March 13 Today's #PoetryLotD for the #CentoChallenge comes from "Last Moments Before Stone" by Vanessa Zimmer-Powell ... Poem: http://bit.ly/2UxM8xW Post: https://wp.me/paENBN-bg Photo: Photo by Prince David @Unsplash Learn more about the Poetry Line of the Day and my Cento Challenge poetry project at centochallenge.com ... #Localpoets #Poetry #MarCC #Houston #HTown #HTX #htxpoet #htxpoets #instagrampoets #poetsofinstragram #instapoets #poets #poetrycommunity #write #amreading #WIP #Houstonpoets #writersofhouston #houstonwriters (at Houston, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu8vi1tHuo5/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=111q4r8joovjo

[cobanionsmith]

an insincere kiss that disappears from sight #March 10 Today's #PoetryLotD for the #CentoChallenge comes from “Vanishing Point” by Rich Levy Poem: bit.ly/richlevy Poet: https://www.uh.edu/kgmca/arts-leadership/profiles/rich-levy.php Post: https://wp.me/paENBN-aV Learn more about the Poetry Line of the Day and my Cento Challenge poetry project at centochallenge.com #Localpoets #Poetry #MarCC #Houston #HTown #HTX #instagrampoets #poetsofinstragram #instapoets #poets #poetrycommunity #write #amreading #WIP #Houstonpoets #writersofhouston #houstonwriters (at Houston, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu1DBoIHlDM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=a7or16ks31ef

[cobanionsmith]

I call your name. Feb. 21 Today's #PoetryLotD for #February's #CentoChallenge comes from "Falling" by Patrick Phillips. #Love #Poetry http://bit.ly/2XguCAj https://wp.me/paENBN-8x Learn more about the Poetry Line of the Day and my Cento Challenge poetry project at centochallenge.com #instagrampoets #poetsofinstragram #instapoets #poets #poetrycommunity https://www.instagram.com/p/BuJcFSLHIgG/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=h68jvmjc8mcr

[cobanionsmith]

I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold, Feb. 20 Today's #PoetryLotD for #February's #CentoChallenge comes from "To My Dear and Loving Husband" by Anne Bradstreet. #Love #Poetry http://bit.ly/dearloving https://wp.me/paENBN-8q Learn more about the Poetry Line of the Day and my Cento Challenge poetry project at centochallenge.com #instagrampoets #poetsofinstragram #instapoets #poets #poetrycommunity (at Houston, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/BuGw882nM7X/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12eaafgzm4z1q

[cobanionsmith]

Feb. 14 #PoetryLotD comes from Sarah Browning's "Praisesong": listen to love from the golden throat #CentoChallenge #Love #Poetry #ValentinesDay https://t.co/chG8MbD5bp https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt4OTlqnxvf/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=pa8ba2jxgczx

[cobanionsmith]

ATTENTION #Houston #Htown #HTX #Houstonpoets #poetsofHouston! ENTER The Cento Challenge #poetrycontest! +27 other #poetrycontests to choose from sponsored by @poetsnorthwest Deadline: March 25, 2019 Must live in the Houston area to enter #poetry #CentoChallenge #cento #PoetryLotD (at Houston, Texas) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bty29nGnEJe/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wv7bgyx3ccsa

[cobanionsmith]

#PoetryLotD for Feb. 11 from Ted Kooser's "The Witness" #poetry #CentoChallenge #FebCC https://www.instagram.com/p/Btvnx7rH5Y0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=m0rcfr687fwz

[cobanionsmith]

Thanks to @PressGaia, @authorburnett, @rodcarlosrodriguez7 for publishing my poem "Documentarian" Vol. 3.1 of the Ocotillo Review! http://bit.ly/2TANY0K https://www.instagram.com/p/BtjscfrHl2V/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1ptuybjvb8pmb

[cobanionsmith]

and no one--no one--can escape the heart's progress Today's #PoetryLotD comes from LXXI by Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets, Trans. Stephen Tapscott, p. 151, UT Press #CentoChallenge #Love #poetry #FebCC https://t.co/EdxrX6YImN https://www.instagram.com/p/BtgNfHqHAdO/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=155z7krwnzrdz

[cobanionsmith]

The year's first cento of the #CentoChallenge has begun! #PoetryLotD #poetry https://www.instagram.com/p/BtTiXAZnKfi/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=741tl5ejhhul

[cobanionsmith]

@smallestleaf and the story for my Frost Cento starts at the Houston's Favorite Poems reading last April #CentoChallenge (at Brazos Bookstore) https://www.instagram.com/p/BtKc6k5HBBP/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1e1clhtrvj8qq

[cobanionsmith]

So I wrote something about poetry. Centos Aren't Ripoffs #poetry #PoetryLotD #CentoChallenge http://bit.ly/2Ujqjls https://www.instagram.com/p/BtEQpWJHzmU/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=17oxh98gq23dv

[cobanionsmith]

Favorite Cento: Lover’s Quarrel with the World

Long, long before we were from any creature, You have seen me when I was taken and swept To everything on earth the compass round Upon my way to sleep before it fell By countless silken ties of love and thought. This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is Could be profound. And so I dream of going back to be Between you and me. And there is something sending up the sun As if regret were in it and were sacred. Anything more than the truth would have seemed too weak; The universal cataract of death That spends nothingness—and unresisted, That is its pinnacle to heavenward— It is this backward motion toward the source, What form my dreaming was about to take. You’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. White feathers from the struggle of whose breast Told me my secret must be known: Here we, in our impatience of the steps To fill the abyss’s void with emptiness. And life is too much like a pathless wood: Then leaf subsides to leaf, Make the day to us seem less brief, To separate us for a panic moment The which it is reserved for God above As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored And Pirouette, forever in one place, Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love: We must be something. If design govern in a thing so small, It is from this in nature we are from: Nothing gold can stay. Word I had no one left but God. It seriously, sadly, runs away Save by some strange resistance in itself— It has this throwing backward on itself— Stands still and dances, but it runs away. May no fate willfully misunderstand me And half grant what I wish and snatch me away Word I was in my life alone. It’s when I’m weary of considerations, Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away, I’d like to get away from earth awhile. That would be good both going and coming back With the same pains you use to fill a cup. The heart is still aching to seek, But I was going to say when Truth broke in For this is love and nothing else is love, And then come back to it and begin over, Get back to the beginning of beginnings. But I was well And all but lost, Not gaining but not losing, like a bird. The fact is the sweetest dream that labor knows, I was looking for you. And the white water rode the black forever. But it flows over us. It flows between us; I don’t know where it’s likely to go, To go with the drift of things. The total sky almost without defect, But strictly held by none, is loosely bound. It is most us, And I could tell We love the things we love for what they are Whether they work together or apart. ----- This cento was composed of my favorite lines from a list of poems by Robert Frost given to me by a Frost scholar I met last week. The title comes from the epitaph on Frost’s tombstone: “I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” The lines come from the following poems: A Prayer in Spring, Mowing, The Tuft of Flowers, October, Reluctance, Nothing Gold Can Stay, After Apple-picking, Hyla Brook, Birches, The Last Word of a Bluebird, Spring Pools, Tree at My Window, West Running Brook, Design, The Silken Tent.

[cobanionsmith]

Conservation Efforts

This poem is a combination of today's prompt, report; yesterday's prompt, insects, and the prompt I missed for day 8, family. Conservation Efforts While she waits for the processional to arrive, they ask how she knows the deceased. “Uncle.” She points to a headstone. “My grandparents. He’ll be buried next to his daddy. Their oldest son, my daddy, was buried almost nine years ago to the day,” she points north, “at Cross Cemetery near my mama’s family. Only one son’s left now.” *** For the first time, a bumblebee has been placed on the endangered species list…If all bumblebees disappeared it is highly likely that we would feel the ripples of their loss. *** As if blind, a mostly black bumble bee buzzes her face. She flinches, fans her hand as she leans away. She can’t remember the last time she’s seen one in the suburbs. *** "Everything in nature is connected as a result of millions of years of evolution," Bolt added. "Take away a bee and what happens to the flowers that depend on them, or the birds that eat the seeds from those flowers, the raptors that eat those seed-eating birds, and the fish that rely on stands of pollinated plants to filter ground water?" *** As a girl, they buzzed her mama’s cascading wisteria that twisted along the barbed wire fence at the edge of the yard. The grape soda-smelling purple blossoms vibrated with fuzzy pollinators, their song constant as they kissed the buds and sucked nectar until they flitted on to pastures of red Indian paint brushes, fiery starbursts of Indian blankets, jaunty Mexican hats, maroon winecups, misnamed spotted beebalm, bluebonnets, and pink evening primroses whose yellow pollen dusted the tip of her nose making her giggle whenever she sniffed their sweet scent. She watches the bumblebee fly on tracking its rumbling buzz over the same wildflowers among headstones with surnames she recognizes and past the cross made of blue delphinium standing behind her grandparent’s grave. *** Unfortunately, the rusty-patched bumblebee's dramatic decline is only the tip of the iceberg for the loss of North American bumblebee species. One out of every four species of bumblebee on the continent is at risk of extinction. *** A funeral attendant closes the casket and drapes a Texas flag over its length centering the star over the lid. The last son sits in the first folding metal chair in the last row under the green canopy. He shushes his four-year-old grandson standing between his knees as Loretta Lynne’s twangy rendition of the Old Rugged Cross plays on the portable radio from a concrete Roman pillar spray-painted gold. The wind picks up, and a black and white American flag with a blue line just below the stars flaps in time to the music. *** “The Trump administration reversed course and listed the rusty patched bumblebee as an endangered species just in the nick of time," said Rebecca Riley, senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). "Federal protections may be the only thing standing between the bumblebee and extinction,” she said. *** After the service, the cousins talk awkwardly, remember the cold snap two years ago on the gray day of Grandma’s funeral. With tight smiles and wet eyes, they apologize, promise to visit soon under better circumstances and stay in touch. The cousin, whose name she keeps forgetting, holds the four-year-old’s newborn sister; the baby’s silver-glittered headband and tiny bow shine in the spring sun. *** What's good news, she said, is that the actions taken to protect the rusty patched bumblebee should also help protect other species. Butterflies and birds will also be helped. *** Her last living uncle stands, the tallest person present. She reaches up and wraps her arms around his bullish neck. “Thanks for coming,” he says over her shoulder. She looks at the faded blue sky. “It’s good to see you again.” Courtney O'Banion Smith @cobanionsmith Portions of this poem were quoted from the following two online articles: What if all bumblebees went extinct? We'd be in 'a world of trouble’ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/03/24/what-if-all-bumblebees-went-extinct-wed-world-trouble/99582888/ Trump relents: Bumblebee to be listed as endangered species https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2017/03/21/trump-relents-bumblebee-listed-endangered-species/99454416/

[cobanionsmith]

At the Funeral

Revelation and preservation eternal, we always forget there are so many ways to be labeled example. Always a marker to mind, a prophecy fulfilled, blessed or cursed, a question and an answer. Ever a witness, each makes a single testimony of another remnant, a part in the plot towards one resolution.

[cobanionsmith]

Battle of Dinner

Plates—territories. White napkins at the ready. Who will surrender? Eat your vegetables, our war cry, but he'll watch it all burn.

[cobanionsmith]

At the Poetry Reading

crimson lungs taste poems with quasar precision breathe stars smell patterns of the oceans in the irises if their eyes neon neurons touch divining tongues caress galaxies of skin as big bangs fill ears to overflowing with Venn diagrams overlapping metaphors of their electric hearts who listen at all the open doors and caress sails of stained-glass windows