"contexts" poems
liminality;
barely there
ask if it matters
care if you dare
believe in impossibility
mind framing liminal spaces
places of liminal mind-frames
filaments between contexts
capturing subtleties as moths
liminally reaching inwards
map of a shady threshold
twilight netherworld border
between now & everywhen
cusp of crisp discovery
intangible as of late
liminal during daylight;
stars, fireflies, lanterns
night itself being liminal
colors need brightness
shadow for textures
whispering worlds
peripheral vision
vibes and feltsense
inner underworlds
embracing hell
reversing it
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
The worst thing about abuse
is not so much the guilt
of feeling you're to blame
that you should never
have been so attractive
so irresistible, so seductive
though in all other contexts
you felt anything but,
were filled with doubt
and lacked self confidence
No, the worst thing of all
is the way that when
it's repeated enough times
you get used to it, inured
then in time there's a part
of you comes to welcome
that expected familiarity
need it even, participate,
share the other's pleasure
But the rest of you
rails against this
taking of your autonomy
this removal of consent
and that part wages war
upon the part that
gives it's acquiescence
and you are fractured
hating your complicity
despise that you made it
in any part your fault
Yet to have healing
requires you recognise
the part of you
that went along
was no more to blame
than the part that didn't
it was just a coping strategy
you needed to survive
after all what else
could you have done?
Cynthia Pauline Jones, 18/10/13
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 6:07 AM UTC
Reflected, an iris of colored contexts that once had reception without spectacles. I signed voluntarily the letters to a name that I sincerely wanted to keep. I tried to limit the lines that divided the print of a written statement of deliverance; a sealed inner sanctum that has remained defunct while displaced of force all along devout of a substance, my words strived to be read ingrained on paper placed in constants among summations of variables clearly he scribed drafts maintaining a patterned complex of metaphors only to contradict the expressions layered, confusing this thinker so that the reader may interpret a plausible audibility for thought looking beyond spectrums of what is to be foreseen
Jan 23, 2010
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:30 PM UTC
~
Ivory-teal ruffled his parochial feathers
His tongue dipped in languages
He wanted to learn the pronunciation of life
As he folded himself in Egyptian ink
He opened his mind against the dioramic surface of syllables
Painted in alloy; dripping from a papery canvas
He brushed his ivory creme feathers
in crimson and lavender hieroglyphics
Bleeding their pictorial valor inside a golden sepia lantern
"Go on, light the world with your suspense and mystery"
Ivory-teal twittered to himself
Wrapping the bijoux night around his little body
he disappeared into the stars
The teal birthmark on his forehead; glowing
He took the lantern in his gold beak
fluttering away into spirals of smoke
Toward Mythology mountain
Where a storm of butterflies
were winging their seasonal weather
Ivory-teal sometimes wished he could be a candle flame
Flickering in the darkest of moments
Letting the sunshine bleed through his beautiful feathers and soft skin
But his destiny was a bit different
He was folded in cultural prophetic proverbs and
sewed neatly in parabolic traditions
Where nationality is mixed into colorful pixels inside skin
Accents are curved in throats and lilted on the edge of tongues
Ivory-teal was carved in diamond flex dreams
In a temple of mythical patterns
Imprinted in mercury cocoons laminated with knowledge
The Angel Apostles printed him in their book of Dreamtales
Where he became a bilingual silhouette
He was birthed right here on this mountain
As he balanced himself on thoughts
He had learned to love himself to this point of his life
He wanted to be the change he wanted in the world
He gently lifted the little lantern
It rose up toward the sun and exploded into rainbow fireworks
The contexts that were inside split sideways
Tilting and pressing themselves into the air particles
If birds could smile then that would've been Ivory-teal
As he laughed quietly
"Now breathe in earthlings, breath in the wonders and knowledge of life"
He then spread his gorgeous ivory creme wings
tattooed with all the languages of the world and life itself
He twirled into the sunset and bled himself in a cloud
A mountaineer had been watching and wondered to himself
As he unknowingly breathed in the context from Ivory-teal's lantern
"If flying is a language I would love to learn and speak it with my wings"
But shouldn't he know that language already
For it is the language of freedom
Ivory-teal is one of many symbolic accents
Of that beautiful language
~
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 11:10 AM UTC
It's all about contexts and
I only want there to be one.
All the "I've been done that's".
It's all miscommunications.
I haven't been done anything in a while.
Take me with you.
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 12:17 AM UTC
imagine all the cells that form to
join in your sensation
all the stars that blew your bits together
for proper procreation
being born with every breath and
reaching death through exhalation--
i simply can't exist without you
nor you without i,
and of this we can be sure that
(though the sureness of my i
obscures the many in us all[
mere words to ***** for thoughts we cope with]
)it will rumble beneath
and explode at the surface
to delayed surprise of just reprise
(mistaking inflation as progress)
that libations of dogmas won't change a thing:
when you look at the fibers in the fabric of being
(spun finely by spiders invisibly swift)
and if our knowledge were but a fly
we'd see ourselves trapped by its infinite web,
both victim to its trap and servant to its host
(though this is the nature of matters sticking close[
especially light years away])
just as the lattice of language roots deep
inside double-helix libraries unimaginably tall
filled with books authored by curious protons,
excited electrons and fleeting photons,
composed of sentences by snarky quarks and gluons
lying in -eate groups with unseen companions
(read between the lines) working in union
to fashion a sum greater than summation could do--
an alchemical-calculus of fractal fluidity,
finding contexts for novelty to sing songs
like Earth (though just a planet in other eyes)
to give conscious rise within the cosmic playground
embodied by us, but not encompassed by us;
rather extended through us
as curiosity mirrored.
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 2:37 AM UTC
I would argue that what is happening here isn’t the crushing of creativity but the addition of knowledge. As people get more knowledgeable they are better able to evaluate their ideas and sift out the ones that won’t work. Looking at the quantity of ideas for the use of a paperclip tells you nothing about creativity but the quality of the ideas might.
If we want pupils to be good at problem solving we need to give them a lot of knowledge with which to solve problems. There is no generic problem solving short cut we can use. The problem solving skills of “I need to put up a bookcase but have lost the instructions” is very different from the problem solving skills of “We need to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.” I we spent less time trying to find these short cuts we might have a lot fewer wonky bookcases and a little more chance of peace.
I can’t speak for all subjects and contexts but in secondary school geography we are constantly problem solving. It is what Geographers do but each problem needs a wide body of very specific knowledge. We look at how they would solve the problem of the UK’s energy mix, how they would improve housing in informal settlements and yes, even how to solve the problems in the Middle East (if someone without a knowledge of catchment hydrology tries to pontificate on the issue I wouldn’t give them the time of day).
The same applies to “creativity”. The ability to create is an important and wonderful thing. Music, art and drama should play a full and important part in the curriculum but they aren’t about teaching something as generic as “creativity”. They are about teaching the skills to allow you to be creative in that particular domain. Learning to express your creativity in art is unlikely to help you pick up the trombone and learning how to write is unlikely to make your interpretive dance any less awkward.
If you think that these things can be taught as stand alone generic skills (I assume you there is a 54% chance you are) then please do send me a lesson plan because I would love to see how it is done.
Conclusion
I think the term “21st century skills” is a nonsense. The generic skills that people will need in this century will be the same as they have needed in all of them because they are the things that make us human. I don’t think they can be taught in isolation. I don’t think we get better at “problem solving” by solving problems in different domains or better at “creativity” in one domain by practicing another.
Schools play a role in preparing children for the future and that role is to ensure they leave us as knowledgeable and well informed adults.
Aug 26, 2019
Aug 26, 2019 at 1:05 PM UTC
*I well recall encouraging
in the early days,
sending messages to and from,
what was beyond and in between,
what lay between a woman's
wind tossed
heart
and her
breathless, winded,
words
these spaces,
so wonderfully human
and fine,
that we better
recognize
their existence
in ourselves,
through her words
motives purely
selfish, then, I guess,
words pearly,
gifted and given,
how we find the same language,
forges all
our contexts,
with a binding grace,
that elevates us all
beyond and un-between,
above
life's grays
I well recall the
rare, early days here,
when communitas was the
only guiding principle,
seldom was heard
a discouraging word,
how sharing each other's
innermost,
was
the most,
the finest,
expression of the ultimate humanity
inner,
that we choose to accept,
when wearing the
poetry cloak,
a notional emotional
grace
supra-national
in a shared world heritage site,
that no one poet could ever hope to obtain alone
I thank you
once more,
one more,
time and time again,
for the bloom
of your rose,
gifted to all we
itinerant dabblers,
in a world where
words and will,
literary and love,
transforms and re-forms
each other
with the constancy-frequency
glowing alliteration of
an early morn Florida sunrise
you are among the best of us,
we will brook
no,
this denying,
keep us together,
be the poetic glue,
the ganglia connecting us,
this ragtag band
of brothers
and
sisters,
after all this
are we,
not the lucky ones
who read, observe, feel,
and love the special aura of
the poetess*
Ketoma Rose
~~
with affection
nat
Jan 9, 2016
Jan 9, 2016 at 8:48 AM UTC
i pear my eyes at the gloomy sky,
twitching with pleasure and pain.
where i hope rain will fall,
is only the acrid dust of the frenso desert.
where i hope corn will grow,
is only the weeds and seeds of earth.
i know i can not live for longer in this way. that i shall Soon Die without sistenace
all that is before my weery eyes are my Kin.
My family.
My friends.
And yes.
My livers.
The ***** themselves.
My trauma started to scream! My eyes flooded with tears from the depths of Hell Himself. Yet I know it must be done. I crunched into his shell with the fury of.l a thousand suns. It shattered beneath my choppers as I seasoned his flesh with my own salty tears. My tong registered the taste of crab flesh, that before I had only tasted in the most scandalous of contexts.
I felt his life drain, and my own restored. But at what cost?
Jan 12, 2020
Jan 12, 2020 at 1:16 AM UTC
Only some things make sense.
Like full stops. No, they hardly make sense these days too.
The sun? No, not when you get down to it.
One tries not exaggerate,
but when the laws of physics
start to state
that the
only order is chaos
and that our Universe
for most of time
doesn't exist.
Or exists in different contexts
with different people
and different outcomes.
so either we exist in multiplicity
or not all.
One tends to exaggerate.
Why?
Saying nothing makes sense.
Sounds appropriate.
Sure.
We can function.
We know how to ********
But that’s the thing,
We make sense through lacking
This is it
Entropy
The natural turn to chaos.
Makes sense,
When you try to hold the handle
It breaks,
And you’re stuck
Entropy.
When you
Saw
Heared
Smelled
Touched
Tasted
Her for the first time
Entropy.
You – I? – were too far gone
Entropy.
You’ve fallen into chaos
Interesting...
As opposed to falling in love?
Makes sense.
Many would say it’s not at all like that.
Some of us are a little damaged.
Bruised. Scratched. Broken.
We don’t squeak.
We don’t light up.
We don’t walk.
A little damaged.
Some you can only hear the damage
When you shake them.
Broken bits are flung around.
Others, you hear nothing at all.
Full stops.
They use to make sense.
Now they look like commas.
Or exclamation points. Bang.
but yes if i flung my punctuation out
the window it would
not make sense as we
wouldntfunctionintheslightest
without the whitespace.
Let’s bring back the Universe
The sun
The nothing
The everything
The full stops
The periods
I’ll end my cryptic harangue
And step back from my rant.
It was grand to know you
And I’m ecstatic to consider
This:
Maybe in one of all those other
Universes,
It made sense
Rather that
Than not
Existing
At all.
Aug 9, 2011
Aug 9, 2011 at 7:51 AM UTC
Last time I tried this hard
to add things up was Algebra II
I still **** at math, so I'm working through
each problem one at a time
my therapist says I shouldn't do that to people,
packed into boxes, expected to do what they say
but here I am all the same
four blue lines around your name
I guess I should just be glad you came,
**** an afterthought, I'm the ******* train
thought you could stand on the tracks, white flag in your hand
like I've already signed off on a 12-month lease
well, this year doesn't belong to you
it's doing fine just on its own;
you always saw me as a rolling stone,
a little too loose in the heart or the head
guess I was just that good in bed,
but oh, you wouldn't know, right?
It's not like you spent every other night
******* me in and out of sleep,
my name on your lips along with my skin
& all that ******** about losing to win-
no wonder I'm ******* struggling
to calculate the weight of words
only significant in certain contexts.
150 pounds feels like less on the moon,
unless you're the ******* ground carrying it
(pain is relative)
so go ahead, walk all over me
I'm like carbonation, feeling gravity-free
as pliable as your plastic Wal-Mart bags,
but even those are meant to be used again-
I'm just waiting to find out where & when.
Aug 2, 2019
Aug 2, 2019 at 8:37 PM UTC
O' beloved your love has intoxicated me
I sit here lost in your beautiful thoughts
And my soul is in your search everywhere
I am surrounded by your ecstatic bliss
And my eyes can only see you everywhere
My heart sights you on its throne
And my ears can only hear you everywhere
O' beloved your love has intoxicated me
I sit here lost in your beautiful thoughts
And my soul is in your search everywhere
My tongue utters words of your love
And my mind only imagines you everywhere
My hands write your love poems
And my legs are in your quest everywhere
O' beloved your love has intoxicated me
I sit here lost in your beautiful thoughts
And my soul is in your search everywhere
✑
This poem contains the following two contexts:-
✽ First is from a very famous saying that when the Creator loves a person, he becomes his ears with which he hears, his eyes with which he sees, his hands with which he strikes and his feet with which he walks.
✽ Second is that every human soul yearns for a union with its origin. Since both men and women have some Divine attributes that are missing in each other, they are attracted to each other by what they see as the other half of the Divine Existence.
✒ ℐamil Hussain
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 6:00 AM UTC
we have found each other
across thousands of miles
across different cultures and traditions
we have found each other
among seven billion plus people
on this globe
finding each other
was the easiest part
strangers in the night
staying together
has been truly challenging
at times
idiosyncracies
failures deficiencies fears
hopes wishes dreams
illusions and taboos
pieces of history from previous lives
keep popping up at crucial moments
in often Freudian transfigurations
innocuous words
may trigger convoluted memories
freighten new contexts
with old pain and sorrow
a gesture
a tone of speech
a situation
suddenly turn into déjà vu
twisting their present freshness
beyond belief
into habitual frames of order
the prisons of our pasts
do not offer easy escapes
yet we have found each other
among the billions on this globe
there is no other but the each
to build a life together
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 3:08 PM UTC
Another year and
While we're sharing toasts and cheers
I wonder what you're drinking and
Where you are.
Here's a toast to you
And the love we wanted to share
But circumstances and contexts
Couldn't allow.
I wonder if you're cheering and toasting and
Thinking about what I'm drinking
And where I am and who and what
I'm doing now and
I wonder if you're wondering
If I'm wondering about you, too.
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 2:05 AM UTC
dimitri was a music man who paid attention to life's subtleties
he chiseled at a block of notes, hammering them down to sculpted perfection
music did he use as a platform to disguise his controversial contexts
distracting his judges with thin air before delving into the matter at hand
a scherzo, to illumine Stalin's atrocities
sewn into the playful boom-chuck, dangerous melodies and complex harmonies
in one instance, the William Tell did he use to comment on
power to the people and their triumph over the regime
it was a strategic ironic play
Rossini's light, airy music brewing with tumult in fact
une blague, a sort of joke to mock society
an unsettling fiddle bit later echoed in the likes of Bernstein
dimitri read his part at a UNESCO convention--
--deadpan, not looking up once from his paper
it was clear, he had his own opinion
a voice rang in the distance, an approaching bell
at a time when all were violently silenced
the opposition cleverly fashioning his statements
one only had to listen to his symphonies to find
dimitri's was a very attuned mind.
Mar 28, 2012
Mar 28, 2012 at 7:39 AM UTC
DEPRESSION
Ayad Gharbawi
A word, my friend, I heard
Where Angels of my Father’s memories, spoke shockingly
Where Mother’s weepings sang dirges in my mind
I can never ignore these pages and essays that affect us brittle humans
And where throats hurt once more
The dryness wounds sincerely
How could a clown cry, I thought?
Here, and forever more, I thought - and for what meaningful end?
The Wilderness will forever be my highway!
Endless in repercussions and unsure threats vague
Where eyes conversed in sentences distracted and disconnected
Where body language denied the presence of all meanings or sense
I complained unto no one
For I did complain once unto a god I believed in once
A god I thought could change and alter physics and its grand laws
Yet dryness once more hurt my memory as I attempted
As I attempted and tried to recall what efforts I needed to do
Such as recalling images exact of my ‘friends’ that were meant to help me
I saw too many hollow, unoccupied, futile skies
‘Neath which thorny verses of Sacred Scripture were passionately, lucidly preached
But I tried my self far removed and away
And turned aghast towards
Situations where lies convinced us of truths
Where lovers expressed intimacy within plasticity’s contexts
Eventually, surrendering my sanity and soul
I myself simply stood and looked at snowy sands cold
That was all I existed for
To stand and watch you all live on.
Jan 28, 2010
Jan 28, 2010 at 8:08 AM UTC
I need to resist writing metaphorically
with literary techniques and motifs
that occur only for my mind.
I once wrote openly with clear contexts
with rhythmic verses that showed
thoughts kept in line.
That is all lost now.
Writing use to be my medium, my expose
but i've learned beyond this middle line that Icarus
swayed in the sun, fluttering grasping his own wings
that were never part of himself.
He could have used "Red Bull" , but that is just
another false marketing campaign to ourselves;
to utilize tools that already preexist within us all.
The world that we live in is filled with stimuli
that our senses get overloaded and we focus
on what we see in front, as opposed to our front
sour facades, and alternative personas
just so that we can conform; forming
molds that we have no choice but to breath in.Cough!
There is a reason why I wrote in symbols
broken sentence structures, because i did not want to be vulnerable.
To speak this mind, not of mind, not for mind,
but to remindme of emotions, experiences, and realizations.
What we keep inside is our pandora
our deep hope cluttered, underneath,
covered with all that confusionthat we reflect to others.
So, I failed to resist to write in metaphor
but i spoke my mind, i spoke in passion
yet remained somewhat clearand ascertained something to adhere.
Who I am to myself.
Jan 23, 2010
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:29 PM UTC
One liner supreme- that's my poetry
Hit you up like a punchline from comedy
A drama full gamma and sun rays
Oh the ways I paint-
To create art forms to fit your norms
In the form of letters and verbs
Contexts and clues
A cluster of intangible strings of words
That do worship and detest your lords
Overlords of poetry, hear me:
Be in awe for I write only for myself,
I can only give you a punchline straight to the jaw
The end.
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 8:51 AM UTC
Days sometimes blind me like hotel rooms-
all stuffy air heating over zesty grey radiators,
I want to lift the blinds; I already see the light shading through.
That’s not enough; I want to feel orange again,
play with the sunning glow as it re-imagines beauty in skins devilish pores.
I want August’s comfort in afternoon naked towel naps
dreaming that cable dishes are just fish carcasses in the wind,
imagine its possible to watch nails grow,
bed them in earth’s soil, and let it remind me of ***
and the unevenness of intimacy strewn oddly when ***** sweaty limbs
can not keep up with eyes that dart faster than the sway, stay of pendulum pressure.
I want to remind myself that everything exists in contexts
casting emotion on stripped layers, crusts of being.
So I invite my nearest tempest, maybe that moon soft roof
to captain ships of candy shoppe imagination over my starving anxiety
and chalk them out on cemented buildings. I talk to myself loudly.
I tell myself, isn’t it funny when words become tools of composition?
But its ironic because I weigh them with as much suspicion as a glass of milk –
I hesitate to think I ever really have to question anything,
when really, quite possibly, anything is possible
in a sentence pure and ending.
Aug 2, 2011
Aug 2, 2011 at 1:10 PM UTC
You **** Sapiens; us neanderthals
exist together
in separate contexts:
You
Move mountains of meaning with the swipe of an opposable thumb,
Fill your coffers with shiny, expendable treasure.
we
gather bundles of metaphor to keep warm
hunt ferocious words to survive
Jun 24, 2018
Jun 24, 2018 at 12:36 AM UTC
.
Tangled threads of beaming light
Yesterday today and tomorrows blessing
As we borrow pity and switch the beat
Hands held high, praising praising
The glory that sits upon our blistered feet
And we dare not utter sleep
*We are the minds counterpart
Heavy in the contexts
A linger in the words felt
Through the hollows door
An explicit glance through the past
And therefore our future*
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
They say,
Girl all your poems are the same,
I took a closer look and realised
They are correct,
The words are different
But the contexts are usually the same
But what can I do
If I see this world
in shades of pain and heartbreak.
They say,
Girl, all you write about is love
A few seconds of introspection and I realised
They are correct
But what can I say
If the only emotions
I have felt
Is love and its absence
They say
Girl, all your wishes are about
things so little and ordinary
A deeper look into my dreams
And I realised
They are right
But what can I say
If all I long is to go back
To those simpler, childhood days
They ask,
Girl, why do you feel so strongly
A look at my wounds and I see they are right
But what can I say?
If I was born
With an enormous need
To be loved
And give it away
They ask
Girl why do you fret over
The endings so much
On an encounter with my lover,
I felt they are correct
Well, what can I say
If the iti in my name means end
And that tells all the story by itself
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 12:33 AM UTC
Old women
Old women
Bent over
Or straight
Bony thin women
****** women
Soft but deflated
Old women
Sitting alone
Holding a plate
Of half-eaten food
Of all-shattered prospects
Of blowzier days
Romance and contexts
That never materialized
Or did
But then vanished
Or slipped away
Leaving so many
Silenced and banished
Useless as pennies
Sitting in corners
Under old women shawls
With little to do
But hold onto plates
Old women
Old women
Boarders in
Somebody’s house
Or some institution
On somebody’s orders
Or out on the street
In old woman confusion
Holding a plate
To hold onto something
Old dried up promises
Lingered impressions
Of young women hopes
Things that once mattered
All in the past
Leaving old women tattered
Trying to atone
For young women sins
For whatever they did
To be so alone
Or whatever they didn’t
In those
Rare lucid moments
Old women quicken
Still holding their plates
Old women
Old women
Hide old
Beating hearts
Beneath sour old garments
Old women scarves
Hide old women failings
Hold old women tongues
Against old women wailing
Of things that have gone
With unsteady fingers
Still gripping plates
To show themselves living
To avoid being left
- Tho’ some old women prefer -
For the old women train
Taking old women wherever old women go
To never return
Around an old women curve
The young never see coming
Are never prepared
To face old women shaken
By old bodies broken
Of old women forsaken
Hold onto your plates
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 7:11 PM UTC
A Vial of Acid in the Freezer
would be somewhat analogous to
having healthy Respect of the Power of Fire;
One would (hopefully) know
not to get too close,
or to **** with it too much,
once One has been burned by it
before.
Though, I do declare,
it can be a great source of warmth and inspiration
in proper moderation, company and contexts.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 3:34 PM UTC