A daily poetry practice to generate and sustain the Life/Lines among us, for published and novice poets alike
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Prompt
Write a short poem (rhyming not necessary) that includes each of the following 5 words (anywhere and in any order). Poems should not exceed 7 or 8 lines.
write
beat
nerve
sound
cry
Send us your poem via our Submissions page or post on Twitter or Facebook using the hashtag #lifelines.
Today’s words were contributed by guest curator Olivia Lott, translator of Lucía Estrada’s Katabasis and finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She is a PhD candidate in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at Washington University and a Graduate Student Fellow in the Center for the Humanities.
Poems submitted for April 6
For Scott
Today I long to write the beat
back into your heart.
This needle, no gentle darner,
still stings where it punctured
a nerve. The sound of our cry lifts off
and settles in the trees,
mingles with your breath,
the breeze,
becomes an April song.
Jill H., Duluth, MN
***
Clenched fists were used to beat
The nerve they had to repeat
No sound was made when they cry
They only hope and pray to die
Police reports refuse to write
for it's only a "domestic" fight
Too late to save them from this plight.
Cat
***
Quand les jours sont longs et la lumière continue à diminuer,
mon cœur a envie de crier douloureusement à haute voix:
je manque de nerf pour continuer!
Mais quand j'entends le son doux d'un oiseau,
je me souviens le rythme de la chanson du printemps.
L'énergie circule dans mon corps,
et mon esprit se réjouit, commençant encore à écrire ma vie.
Christina Conrady -- Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Jubilate Fele (Rejoice in the Cat)
After Christopher Smart
For I will consider my cat Tony.
For the sound of his purring praises God in his fashion.
For his morning cry because he is famished gently wakes me.
For he beats his striped tail to his own rhythm.
For when he walks across my keyboard he writes a secret language.
For his nerves are like steel when he discovers a mouse.
For he wards off evil by his hissing and sharp eyes.
For he is the cleanest of quadrupeds as he licks over his fur.
Robert Henke
***
I write
And give sound to the
Song of my soul,
Finding the nerve
To cry out, break out
Of isolation and
Beat back the darkness.
Pam Hughes
***
Write, cry nerve-
Beat sound!
Jamie Moog
***
L'écriture bat dans le cœur et les nerfs des gens.
Dure et provocante.
Vous pouvez entendre le rythme des mots et les sons de leurs cris.
Chaque réponse est différente.
Le pouvoir des mots.
Paige Samz (Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Les sanglots longs, des violons
Je suis un voleur du langage
Chaque fois que j’entends un mot avec un son sucré
Ou un poème avec un rythme raffiné
Mes nerfs bourdonnent d'adrénaline
Je consomme désespérément des mots, des histoires, des poèmes
Avec l’espoir qu’un jour je pourrai écrire quelque chose qui vaut la peine d'être volé
Par Grethe Andersen (Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
A Pained Adaptation
Beaten of zest from her day on the run
She sat down cross-legged upon fresh-mowed lawn
With a whimpering cry her only heard sound
She pronated and jack-knifed elbows to ground
The nerve at L-4 stretched in pain never slight
But now settling in she found she could write.
Ted
***
Another poem for Ursula
The cardinals are ransacking the feeder, fresh filled
with sunflower seeds. They torpedo in and their sounds
ring against the house, echoing into the open windows.
My blind cat sits, answers their tunes with a cry
her eyes turned toward them, but it is only the nerve
recalling how to zero in on wing-beat and song.
I write this new poem and hope that what is killing
her finds calm; will ask for more words.
— M.E. Hope
***
Project Blowed
3 in the morning under palm trees and street lights
Emcees write
Rhymes and time
And sound surround us all
As the beat drops.
It's like my heart stops
While I gather the nerve
To man-up and serve
In the B-boy battle cry
And lackluster rappers
Hear: PLEASE PASS THE MIC!
— J. Thomas
***
Beat heart
Sound loud
Cry far
Write free
They listened to me
Is the nerve
Motor or sensory?
***
Quand un enfant crie,
c’est un son de vie.
Sans rythme et sans mots,
il s’exprime en sanglots.
Sans écrire ses expressions,
il décrit son cerveau,
son réseau de nerfs et de neurones.
(cry = translated as "crie", sound = translated as "son" , write = translated as "écrire", nerve translated as "nerf", beat = translated as "rythme")
Sichi Onyemeh
Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Beat It Baby in Black
Jack Kerouac had some nerve.
Big Daddy Allen G had him beat
hands down. He was the Ginsberg
before RBG. Sound out his beats.
Cry the blues and shout the shit.
Put on a black T and a beret.
Write it down.
Howl it loud.
By R. C. Wood Ph. the D.
***
C'est écrit dans ses yeux,
Dans le son de ses cris,
Dans le rythme de son cœur
Plus fort que ses pieds,
La Peur. Mais c'est déjà fini.
La seringue est hors du nerf.
write = écrite, sound = son, cry = cries, beat = rythme, nerve = nerf
Kairav Shah: Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
The shrieks from the crowd, like a bird’s cry,
As the beat bleeds on, to write about this memory would do it no justice.
A dark, rusty apartment converted into a musical utopia of glittering sound,
The nerve of the weeping synth makes me cry out in joy as well.
***
I write,
even as
tears stream down my face
Quiet cries,
can't make a sound
or else alarm someone
I feel so beat,
one nerve too many,
will I ever be happy?
***
What comes next? After the music, I mean
and the sound of laughter, the smoke
drifting in through the open window. It is spring
for so little. I try to write, but each time hit
a nerve. Somewhere in the beat between
your laugh and mine the magic gave way
without a sound. I had counted on this:
that it would make a sound. Months later,
I cry out from a dream in which
you are busy dying, and the world regards me
woodenly, then returns to its sleeping.
Gwyneth Henke
***
L’écriture de mon cœur,
qui ne bats que pour vous,
me fait crier
en entendant le son de mon cœur solitaire.
Tu détruis mes nerfs, sans savoir si
ton cœur ne bat que pour moi aussi.
Antwine Willis
Cours de littérature française du Prof. Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 “La peur de l’Autre)
***
Les oiseaux crient et mon
Ami, mon amour, je crie pour toi.
Le son, le tapotement de ses doigts
Me semble beau. ma foi
en nous, en toi est fini
Et l’instant est fini, sous
Un moment de tension
Comme un nerf qui s’allume, mais qui s’éteint.
Joyelle Van Eron - Professor Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
I Cry
Writing is my heart,
beat.
It is the synergy of nerve,
endings harmoniously intertwining,
into the most intricate,
and yet ever so delicate sound.
It is enough to make any
grown woman cry. I am.
Kenytha Arlisa Harvey
***
Bearing Witness
A foot on his neck,
Unable to cry out,
Just the sound of his breath, gasping for air
While the officer coolly maintained his nerve,
Didn’t miss a beat.
And I…I stood helplessly by,
Silent,
No foot on my neck.
So now I write, and cry out,
Too late.
Pam Hughes
***
Last night the sound of a cry
attached itself to the one nerve
left in my body. The one nerve
that hadn’t been beat. A beating
for the truth I had written. So tonight
I write the tale of my tears. Tomorrow,
if I am still here, you may read them.
Terrie Jacks
***
Pencil to lightly lined paper this afternoon.
She writes the letters, one by one;
occasionally stopping to sound an incomplete sentence.
A bird alights on a nearby wooden fence.
Its cries nervously repetitive and piercing.
Suddenly, the swooshing of wings calls her
to lift again her gaze at a departing gaggle
and leave lone words to stagnate.
Lisette Dennis
***
À toucher un point sensible, à couper un nerf.
La blanche pureté rouge-tachée.
Le son d’électricité, choqué. Un cri d’un petit
sans nom, avec nombres:
Code-barres. Prix. Un mois en âge.
“Mais c’est simplement la viande. Ne gâchez pas le rythme du fête—"
Les Pâques: prendre la vie d’agneau pour symboliser la vie éternelle.
Les scriptures écrivent-ils que vous ne tuerez?
Translation:
To strike a nerve, to cut a nerve.
The white purity red-stained.
The sound of electricity, shocked. The cry of a little one
Without name, with numbers:
Barcode. Price. One month old.
“But it’s only meat. Don’t ruin the rhythm of the holiday—"
Easter: take the life of a lamb to symbolize eternal life.
DIdn’t the scriptures write thou shalt not kill?
Mia Bloss, Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre").
***
Le Journaliste
Le jeune journaliste, qui écrivait toute la journée et la nuit,
Pour parfaire son travail, pour satisfaire son père, son chef
N'était jamais assez bon; ce n'était jamais assez
Après avoir présenté son oeuvre, son père n'a pas été impressionné
Mais insulté; le nerf qu'il a dû a insulter son père
C'est ce qui a fait perdre l'enfer, le diable fraye dans le père
Et le père s'est battu, pas le diable à l'intérieur mais son fils
Jusqu'à ce qu'il n'y ait pas de cri, jusqu'à ce qu'il n'y ait pas de son
Battu au silence, à la fois de son corps et de son œuvre
Valerie Timofeyev
Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325)
***
#FreeBritney / The Millennial’s Lament
Remember when Britney Spears covered Sonny and Cher,
“The Beat Goes On,” on her 1999 debut album, Baby One More Time,
or am I the only girl in the world who thinks about this still?
(God, the nerve of me to even wonder that.)
I knew she didn’t write her own songs—
that Swedish guy did, mostly, like he did for all the pop stars,
and yet, her sound is hers alone, always hers, forever hers,
plus blue inflatable furniture, lip smackers, Y2K, blooming bisexuality.
So nostalgic I could cry.
— GM
***
Write what you know is right
Beat a drum for those who are beaten
Have the nerve to touch a nerve
Stand for the right to allow our hero’s statues to stand
Sound the cry because if you are silent all humanity will cry
***
UNTITLED
January 6 hit a nerve, yet
as we cry, howl, write and
beat the drums about the
betrayal of the traitors, the
far right’s “so-called patriots”,
our sound falls on deaf ears
Betty Springfield
***
The sound of a beat should be embedded in what you write.
A nerve detects it as you read.
A poem can be a cry to music.
Margaret Fourt Goka
***
He wanted to write as a guitarist plays
aware and charged like a nerve
that connects head to heart to hand
spruce curving into knee
steel pressing into mahogany
sound bending into a cry
hand responding to some unseen beat
imagined patterns creating meaning.
Steve Givens
***
You write love all over my nerve endings
when you play with the babies.
I cry without sound from deep in my soul,
and the beat of my heart keeps time with yours.
How I wish we were at the beginning
instead of the end.
Linda O’Connell
***
They Simply Didn’t Know
Professors of long ago
despaired that I would ever
a good writer be.
I was too happy,
they said.
How dare I have the nerve
to find such joy in being
when my breast should beat
with sounds of anger and despair
at the never heard cry of my babe
born still.
They simply didn’t know
the lessons learned
from her.
Cathleen Callahan
***
The nerve to write a tale
Not for dead men
But those who live
The cry of the pen
Sings a sound that
Beats despair
— M.A.
***
Pen poised in thenar webspace,
it can hear the blank page cry, begging it to write.
Will it muster the nerve to dip down,
to fill the pale void with the sound
of nib scratching out a beat on too-thin paper?
***
the sound of snow geese
moving north…
I get up my nerve to beat
isolation by writing a poem,
which only makes me cry
John J. Han
***
I write this poem to understand
the beat of my own heart.
Each nerve in my soul reminds me
of the sounds of hope and joy,
the cry
of light.
Aimee Wittman
***
Write what you know.
Sing what you feel.
Laugh and cry.
Strike a nerve.
Beat the drum.
Make a sound.
Vibrate.
Hum.
— jkf
***
To write is to have courage
To cry on a page
To expose our last nerve
To beat our chests and shout
That we have something to say
That can’t be contained
By the mere sound of our voices.
— Chad Savage
***
My feet beat a metronome
When the hawk’s cry pricks the nerve of my meditation.
The sound nature writes in my bones
Is found deep down the trail.
Stacey K. Barton, MSW, LCSW
***
Write the sound of spring
Birds cry signals a new day
What nerve as wings beat
K.J. Boehler
***
At the foot of the Tree, soft-breeze giggles dance through our hair.
There’s a gathering of lilies; we bunch them into our bodies and tie ourselves into a bouquet.
You help me find the hilarity in the midst of my allergies.
When I look at you, I see heaven’s mercy cascading through your eyes.
Like a prodigal child come home, there is devilry in your smile;
I wonder who put it there.
Sabrina Spence, '22
***
Men in slouch hats, flasks
jammed in a trenchcoat pocket,
race through the city all cocked up about their “beat,”
their Hemingway prose, their secret sources, their scoops.
They aim to strike a nerve, expose some muck, tear down the muckety muck in charge of it—
or maybe just make somebody cry.
Sometimes they lie, but nobody cries fake.
What they write turns into sound, fury, contradiction—
but it is read.
— Jeannette Cooperman
***
Write, Write, Write,
Have the guts to write.
Beat the demons
Follow the beat
Cry out loud
Cut your nerves
hear the noise of blood
Slowly but surely
The sweet sound of keys
will come to you.
Jey Sushil
***
A drum beat
I write
Every sound
Every feeling in the nerve
That can make me cry
And laugh
Same time
james goodman
***
nerve beat
sound of a cry inside
me
write!
by Lloyd Klinedinst
***
Hopeful, I am
Healing from
What we once called humane,
from the binary world
now slowly more heterogeneous.
Less hypocritical, not yet harmonious.
--Rita Winters
***
Zebras
each nerve quivers,
delivers lions' cry!
the sound astounds,
launches their flight;
they bound,
they write in dizzying lines
of black and white
on necks and backs and haunches,
they stream across the plain
and out of sight.
only the beat of hooves
and dust remain
J Kiefer
***
Ghosts of Route 66
Slow walking across Chain of Rocks Bridge
Strolling where Keruac raced, lured by Carlo's cry from the west.
Listening for the beat of bald and unbalanced tires,
the pulsing sound of America, the nerve that tingles with speed.
Unfurl the scroll and write the story of the road.
***
despite hearing someone’s cry
deep inside, the insistent sound
a constant beat
nagging on her nerve
WRITE!
WRITE!
WRITE!
d. bates
***
I'll write the beat and cry
as my nerves sound out emotion's speculation,
like shadow puppets behind a sheet
where dreams lay down only to rise
articulate in odd suggestive ways,
the twitch of percussion,
the melody of sorrow or joy,
darkness visible in light.
— Dan Cuddy
***
Oh, hear my cry.
It's all repressed and hardly
makes a sound. At first
I was pure Beat and went on nerve.
And then my dad said,
"You can't write that."
— Matthew Freeman
***
Rien ne sonne comme avant :
Mon cœur bat d’angoisse et pas d’amour,
Notre enfant pleure avec une tristesse, et pas pour trop de rire
Pourquoi tu as écrit notre histoire comme ça, mon amour
Sans aucun sentiment, comme un nerf mort
Brooke Hailey
Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Bihotza James-Lejarcegui
Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La Peur de L'autre)
Quel nerf! Mes yeux ont
pour pleurer comme ça.
Un son si laid,
pour les oreilles à consoler.
Peut-être je devrais
journal.
Mais ça n’apaise pas ma
tristesse.
Au lieu,
je bat mon sentiments,
jusqu’à ce qu’ils brouillent hors de moi,
craignant pour leur sécurité.
Des mots poinçonné
sur une page,
comme les larmes poussé
sur mes joues.
***
En marchant au bord de la mer,
J’ai remarqué un cri fort.
Le son se propage vers le ciel.
C’est une baleine qui a battu un pauvre garçon,
A tel point qu’il a rompu un nerf à la main.
Il m’a écrit les mots dans l’air,
Et j’ai couru vers lui pour lui aider.
Karen Dordor -- Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Mes nerfs tremblent alors que j'essaie d’organiser mes pensées
Mon cerveau jouait une cacophonie de sons et ils ne me lassent pas
Rester seule; j’écoute mes insécurités qui crient “Tu ne vaux rien”
“Personne ne veut entendre ce que tu as à dire”
Pendant que j’essaye de battre mon propre esprit,
Je commence à écrire et je me sens mieux.
Isabella D'Ottone
Cours de littérature française du Professeur Lionel Cuillé (FREN 325 "La peur de l'Autre")
***
Headline image: Sutira Budiman via Unsplash