My Poetry is …..

neither a shout

or a scream

not a whimper

or a whisper

….....

but an eruption

of emotion

from within

….......

once released

it plots its own path

and passion

towards darkness

or light
...

© 2017 michael d emmerich

Alive, but?

duty calls

conflicting with the heart

which is more important

what do we know?



does not knowing

burden the weary traveller

sadness presses down

but we are alive



beaten down

by the weight of fate

alone we stand

shoulder to shoulder



how cautious can we be?

stand up and be free

whilst continuously

coming up for air

© 2017 michael d emmerich

Obligations of Life

 

outward bound

battered suitcase by my side

backpack slung over shoulder

closing door pushes me out

taxi, plane and bus awaits



on the road again

wife and lover left behind

mama don’t cry for me

as I go down

that lonesome road again



not to live

just to work

off to work I go

obligations, complexity

…. perspective

still it sucks

© 2017 michael d emmerich

#micropoetry No. 10

 Continuing the challenge to keep writing poems of 144 characters or less. Here are a few more #micropoems. Poetry for twitter

1.

fact becomes fiction

reality becomes life

alternate is the new the norm

drink and feast

for tomorrow you die




2.

travelling into my space

the road less travelled

 dipping in and out

just visiting

a scary process

discovering what lies beneath

at my place


3.

poets, dreamers & writers

who do you talk to

and where do you go?

to those who live in

strange places

dead spaces

and

dream places?

 

© 2017 michael d emmerich

My Space

travelling into my space

the road less travelled

it’s better this way

dipping in and out

not to live

just to visit

it can be a scary process

discovering what lies beneath

in my space

© 2017 michael d emmerich

Thoughts on getting lost as a means of finding oneself…

Rebecca Solnit, whose mind and writings are among the most consistently enchanting of our time, explores this tender tango with the unknown in her altogether sublime collection of essays in A Field Guide to Getting Lost 

I thoroughly enjoy her writings, having indulged in a few of her books and essays. And Getting Lost is one of the more personally transformative collection of essays I have had the pleasure of reading. Solnit, explores themes and issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and our place on this planet.

Solnit writes in the opening essay:

Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go. The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration — how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

Henry Miller wrote: “On how one orients himself to the moment, depends the failure or fruitfulness of it.” we are all apart of this transitional process called – Life.

“There is an illusion of ‘end,’ a stasis seemingly like death. But it is only an illusion. Everything, at this crucial point, lies in the attitude which we assume towards the moment.”

Henry Miller

T.S. Eliot’s poem Four Quarters –  expounds on the journey of life and its self discovery, and ultimately learning to know ourselves. we are on a never-ending lifelong journey of exploration – of our self, environment, the world in which we live.Life is a destination, but prehaps we never really travel further than we really are at this present moment, all that changes is our understanding of the now …

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Sometimes we have to lose ourselves to find ourselves. Never to get lost is not to live.

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