Creation myth from The Tongue Has Its Secrets by Donna Snyder admired & read by PD Lyons

 

An attempt by myself to do justice to one of Donna’s fine pieces of poetry. Hope its ok. Donna!

Creation myth from The Tongue Has Its Secrets by Donna Snyder

from a series of reviews of selected poetry admired & read by PD Lyons

 

The Tongue Has Its Secrets by Donna Snyder 2016 NeoPoiesis Press, Seattle ISBN 978-0-9003565-5-4 (pbk) ~ most excellent cover design by Milo Duffin & Stephen Rosborough

 

 

Diary by PD Lyons

Pdlyons's Explorations

Diary

Dust in the corner

Pale light through loose boards

Soft paper pages partially filled

So small

The world with all its bigness

Could have so easily passed by.

~

Will we, all of us leave the same absence?

Know the same impossible loneliness,

As if somehow shared, we could know one another ,

~

We have all touched this world with little fingers,

As have I;

Not as some imagining or speculation

But as a human being.

Certain of my own sense of purpose.

So many things bigger than me.

So many things I could not wait to do.

How long it takes to be a grown up.

~

Unlike you I do know the story’s end.

Unlike you I could not, not know.

Remember me this way:

Small as I was, it all fit into my life.

(for Anne)

wrote this about five years ago. sent a version…

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The Orphan As Adult by pd Lyons, from In Protest 150 Poems for Human Rights. Read by the poet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was very proud to have this poem included in the Human Rights Consortium and the Institute of English Studies and London-based poetry collective the Keats House Poets Anthology 150 Poems For Human Rights. I submitted it along with The Diary – a poem in response to Anne Frank.  https://pdlyons.wordpress.com/2014/06…  While published in 2014 it was written contemporary with the second National Geographic photo of April 2007. ~

The Orphan As Adult by PD Lyons, was written upon seeing the famous National Geographic cover photo of the grown up Afghan girl who was herself originally on the cover as a child during the Russian involvement in Afghanistan. Twenty years later and not much has changed.

 

The Orphan As Adult

my eyes were not green for you
I did not rebel or lead
never even learned to read.
children dropped from me
in a pain no one cared about.
my years marked by long days and short lives.

as if expecting greeting, you return.
as if your photographs meant something
other than a young girl momentarily annoyed
her world same now as it was then
a place where things just are the way they are.

my eyes were not green for you
only an accident of birth
same as your own.
                                                       For Afghanistan

 

 

 

Description

Edited by Helle Abelvik-Lawson, Anthony Hett and Laila Sumpton. Published 2013. ISBN:9780957221032.

Detailed Description

In Protest: 150 Poems for Human Rights is an anthology of new poetry exploring human rights and social justice themes. This collection, a collaboration between the Human Rights Consortium at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and the Keats House Poets, brings together writing that is often very moving, frequently touching, and occasionally humorous. The 150 poems included here come from over 16 countries, and provide a rare insight into experiences of oppression, discrimination, and dispossession – and yet they also offer strong messages of hope and solidarity.

This anthology brings you contemporary works that are truly outstanding for both their human rights and poetic content. Arranged across thirteen themes – Expression, History, Land, Exile, War, Children, Sentenced, Slavery, Women, Regimes, Workers, Unequal, and Protest – you will find within this collection a poem that inspires and engages you. ‘Poetry brings tiny details to life, and in a world where human rights is mostly about reports and abstractions, where real life and real details are lost – poetry can still make us see, and feel.’ – Sigrid Rausing.

Cuirt Annual 21 2006 International Festival of Literature Ireland PD Lyons reading his work from it.

The Cuirt International Festival of Literature is Ireland’s leading festival. In 2006 it’s 21st year the editors Alan Hayes & Maura Kennedy selected one of my poems to appear in the anthology along side such artist as Seamus Heany, Edna O’Brien, Nikki Giovanni, Eoin Colfer and many fine others. So very grateful to have been there. Thank you for watching & reading.

Waltzing Miss Jeanie

The sky barely visible

Gunmetal cold keeps each bit of snow completely separate.

Sounds, most into silence or muffled by a swish and swirl

As my horse moves through.

Imagine sand against a giant hourglass,

Wicked witch of the west,

There’s no place like home…

Nothing else moves,

Rock walls mostly covered

Drainage ditches camouflaged

Snow drifts level the landscape almost beyond illusion.

By memory only we keep to the road.

Imagine being the first to cross this land in winter

And if it were a time before horses…?

Off the open ridge we cut down to where the pine woods

Shelter enough so we can pick up the pace.

Occasionally over burdened snow spills,

Sometimes peeling bits of green, chunks of old ice, thuds magnified by the quiet.

Perhaps an excuse to break monotony

Or some primal memory aroused –

She spooks.

Imagine double barrel blast, a restless dragon, a living legend…

So I talk her through; my voice being a calm place for her to focus.

So I sing, putting the name she knows into the song,

My fathers’ curious choice for a lullaby he used to sing to me.

Imagine not yet five years old, frightened from things that you don’t even have words for.

Things that move only in those darker places in your room,

And then his heavy footsteps,

the weight of his body as he sits on the edge the bed,

his strong steady hands sometimes rubbing sometimes patting

while always singing over and over until finally asleep you couldn’t ask him to again…

We make our way like that now,

Dealing with imagined as well as real risks –

Patches of ice beneath this rising snow upon this rising, winding road

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

versions of this were published by Hotmetal Press and West47 Galway arts, Inquietudes Literary Journal & erbacce press.

~ some of the most rare and wonderful moments of my life were brought to me by horses ( lovers and acid). i have actually been out in blizzard conditions on horse back albeit in Connecticut and only a few miles to go. Jeanie was a hot little chestnut Morgan mare, she taught me much, broke my heart and a few bones in the process. I am very grateful for having known her.

good luck bye! ~

words and photographs by pd lyons

 

Roses swollen with rain

 

full breasts dreaming for the hungry mouths of bees

soft in a gold of sunshine sung by small birds invisible

day dream ripples dull grey puddle answers spilling over the edge

storm gutters blocked by neglect

and wishes would ride the open mouth kisses of our own

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wishing You the Constant Joy of Your Own Song ~ by PD Lyons

 

 

Wishing You the Constant Joy of Your Own Song

The artist whose voice

still goes right through me

most exquisite of them all

I know exact and precise

As if I really knew you ~

to be forever in that moment

to be forever that creation

Where always was your joy

That is exactly where

you should always be.

 

First time  you  were 21 years old

Toads Bar in New Haven

Flew straight through

First album

One gig

No banter

No break

Your voice went right through me.

Person I was with, rest of the place,  all  disappeared.

And I knew the only joy you’d ever know

Would be the art of your own creation.

Now decades come and go

Albums now CD’s

Politics a torture

religion and Family

curses and blessings

And me someone you’ll never know

What would I wish for you if I knew that wish would come true?

 

two from Myths of Multiplicity read by the poet PD Lyons

Tattoo on Leaving Gettysburg

&

For All the Sylvias

~ from Myths of Multiplicity by PD Lyons

 erbacce-press 2014 UK ISBN 978-1-907878-70-1

 

Promised Land from As If The rain Fell In Ordinary Time ~ read by the Poet

MORE REMINISCENCE FROM THE CITIES. a LITTLE BIT OF NYC 1980’S WITH A DASH OF WATERBURY CT AND SOME POLITICALLY  INCORRECT DRIVING REFERENCES.

THANK YOU FOR SPENDING TIME WITH ME.

GOOD LUCK! Bye.

CHEERS.