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Tag Archives: acrostic

GLADvent Day 2

02 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

acrostic, advent, advent calendar, craft, creativity, gratitude, kindness, optimism, reflection, sharing, spirituality

Welcome, one and all, to GLADvent Day two! We began yesterday, with the quality of kindness, as played with in this acrostic poem:

kindness

And now, can you find the second stocking?

day-1-whole

 

Great, let’s turn it over and see what we’ve got…

 

g-day-2-sharing

SHARING:  “Pull up a chair. Take a taste. Come join us. Life is so endlessly delicious.”

– Ruth Reichl

Now take a moment to pause and reflect upon how sharing has shown up in your life recently; what has been shared and why? How did that add to or change the situation?

day-2-whole

Two stockings turned! Hope to see you tomorrow for number 3.

Do continue to share your thoughts and reflections in the comments section below as you wish…

My Day in a poetic 5,4,3,2,1

02 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

acrostic, couplet, fun, haiku, joy, nourishment, poem, poetry, quatrain, spirit, wisdom, writing

Just because it’s fun 🙂

 

5 – A Limerick

There was a barista named ‘Ru’

Who found herself tired and blue

She lay her head down

To dream off her frown

And woke up all brand spanking new

 

4 – A Quatrain

 

Time to slow down

you’re racing again

you don’t need permission

plump that cushion – zen!

 

3 – A Haikrostic 🙂

 

Just listen will you

Open your soul ears, now shhh

You’re doing just fine

 

2 – A Rhyming Couplet

 

The sun, the river, blue sky calls

How blessed to have a day all yours

 

1 – A six word story

 

Cooked soup; body sated, soul soothed

 

 

So how was your day my friends?

Father

19 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

acrostic, family, father, love, music, poem, poetry, song

image

In honour of my fabulous father, who came to hear me sing yesterday with the choir I’m in, and with whom I’m have shared (and will share) so many other life affirming moments, whether in celebration (like yesterday!) or commiseration – a solid rock from which I can launch myself at life with courage and joy…and song:-)

 

Foundations of a life lived full and well

Are built with care, early and deep

That love that loved me at my most unloveable

Has packed my heart with strength to ‘boldly go’

Every song I sing on the journey rising with a joy

Resonating right down to the roots of me

 

 

Wholeness

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

acrostic, challenge, love, poem, poetry, spirituality, wholeness

This is my response to the following challenge:

https://promptlings.wordpress.com/2016/06/14/the-sandbox-challenge-43-a-whole-in-one/

…and it’s also another poem for my own challenge – to write an affirmative acrostic for every letter of the alphabet. Just X, Y and Z to go!

 

When I feel broken, it’s because I’ve gone

Hard, rigid, resistant

Only by softening and opening,

Letting life in to touch my heart

Even when it hurts, can I melt into

Grace and mould myself back together

Evolving and expanding until

Separateness succumbs to softness and my

Soul knows its true place at one with the whole

 

Thank you to all who’ve been encouraging me along by reading these poems – do stick around 🙂

Valour

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acrostic, courage, fun, peace, poem, poetry

Verily I bid you friends, be bold

And face this world with courage in your hearts

Love conquers all, or so we have been told

Oh let no time be wasted, we must start

Unanimous in dreams of reigning peace

Relinquish fear and let the violence cease

Unity

13 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

acrostic, community, fire, forgiveness, gather, hope, humanity, poem, poetry

Urgency fills the air like the smoke of warning

No time to choke, look, though your eyes sting

Into the heart of this troubled human family

Then gather, all, around that fire of sadness to which we’ve all given fuel

You must sing the flames low, leaving ashes from which hope can grow

Triviality

06 Monday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

acrostic, creativity, poem, poetry, the arts, triviality, writing

They brought joy, smiles, escape – profound

Relief for souls shut down and sinking

Internally reopening windows of

Vital hope – breathing the spirit

In ways nothing else could

Affirming life as

Liveable again – for to survive bodily

In the absence of a soul that can smile and sing…

Take the hands of laughter and play and

You’ll be escorted, still breathing, to the deepest places

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/05/first-laughs-since-syria-the-clowns-getting-refugee-children-smiling

http://www.clownswithoutborders.org/

http://www.patchadams.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams_%28film%29

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079yvr4

 

This is a topic I’m deeply curious about, wildly enlivened by, and one I will explore more deeply another time, in the wider context of the current trivialization of the arts and creativity, and the impact this has, both personally and societally. For now, I’ll leave you with a fabulous quote from Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:

“The fact that I get to spend my life making objectively useless things means that I don’t live in a post apocalyptic dystopia. It means we still have enough space left in our civilization for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion – and even total frivolousness.”

And you know what Einstein did when he got stuck on a theory? Played his violin…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine/201003/einstein-creative-thinking-music-and-the-intuitive-art-scientific-imagination

And you know one of the things that got Mandela through 27 years of imprisonment? A poem:

 

What brings unexpected depth to your life that may objectively be termed ‘trivial’? In that case, can it really be defined as such…?

 

Solitude and Sadness

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

acrostic, poem, poetry, sadness, solitude

Solitude (1)

 

Soaking it up

On a lone walk through the woods

Leaving the choice of direction to

Intuition and wise, willing feet

Taking my time to listen

Underneath my chattering mind

Deep within to a voice that’s too shy until

Everyone but the trees has gone

 

Solitude (2)

 

Scared to face the layers

Of boredom, fear, confusion, that

Loudly proclaim ‘we’re social animals!’

In the hope of avoiding

That meeting with self, soul, stillness

Up goes the volume on the TV

Don’t people get punished for serious crimes by

Enforced solitary confinement?

 

Solitude (3)

 

So it’s time to make (another) cup of tea

Over an hour, I’m sure, since the last

Let it brew for a few

It’s not like there’s any rush

They’re so busy you know

Under so much pressure

Debts and work and school meetings – but

Even just a phone call would sweeten my tea

 

Sadness (1)

 

So where are you?

Are you in my head? My heart?

Down in my stomach?

Now they all ache, weep, heave

Eyes made brighter like dew strewn petals

Shining, alive, reflective

Stretching me, heart and soul

 

Sadness (2)

 

So heavy I could fall

All the way through the nets of friendship

Deep into the drowning depths

No light, no air

Even the life that surrounds me

Seems silent and still down here

Soaked to my soul skin

 

So yes, I’ve inundated you a bit today, but following a walk and talk with a wise friend, I was encouraged to play with this acrostic challenge I’ve set myself a little more, and move beyond just positive words (there was a reason I started there, but more on that another time) to explore words assumed to be wholly negative, or indeed to explore a word that I personally have a spontaneously positive response to, then write it from another angle.

 

With solitude, I ended up writing three. The first is my immediate, most natural response. Solitude is a resoundingly positive word for me, as the poem shows. However, as a word it is of course far more rounded and complex than that. The second was an attempt to explore its more challenging side, but as I reread, it feels like more of a judgement of those who are not comfortable with being alone. The third was my attempt to genuinely feel into a situation where solitude is experienced as truly upsetting and difficult, and one I find no difficulty empathizing with.

 

With sadness I was already in a place of finding it an emotion that lays warmly and wholly somewhere central for me. No doubt if we were asked to divide emotions neatly in two, this would end up on the negative side. However, my experience of sadness is one of discomfort, yes, but also one of softness and connection, and one that is capable of making me feel as alive as joy, in the sense of it making me very aware of my heart and of my responsiveness to the world around me. I saw a beautiful film a while back, Inside Out, which explored the emotions as characters in the mind of a young girl experiencing a time of great change and challenge in her life. I remember reading in one review how the character of ‘sadness’ had been the reviewer’s personal favourite. So when I wrote the two sadness acrostics, that mixture and movement is what I was attempting to get across in the first, and the second was my attempt at writing it as wholly negative. Personally I find the first more interesting and more real/true.

If you’ve read this far…thanks very much!!! And as you’ve already proved your stamina and interest, do you fancy having a go at a solitude or sadness poem of your own, to explore your own responses to those words? I’d love to see them in the comments section.

Reverence

03 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

acrostic, fun, haiku, life, love, nature, poem, poetry, reverence, source

Reaching out to touch the perfect blossom

Engaging playful wonder, ‘How could you become fruit?’

Vying against my modern mind made cynical for the right to

Envelop myself whole in the sacred beauty that surrounds

Reminding me we’ve all come from the same place, for

Everything shines with source if I make attendance openly

No need for formalities that seek to separate the sacred from the

Commonality of an everyday field of worship as I

Entreat the curious lamb to dare step closer that I might know softness

 

 

And another animal Haikrostic for you:

Rat

Rodent most reviled

Attracted by mess and smells

Travels the sewers

 

Quiet

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by harulawordsthatserve in Poetry, Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

acrostic, fun, poem, poetry, quiet, silence

Quick, turn it off!

Unplug everything humming with electricity

It takes a moment for the mind to catch up

Exhale, and really hear the breath leave you

Take a mini holiday from noise

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