Category: Uncategorized

Documentary

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 6 Comments

art one

We wove around the Old Ragsdale Building

Among and in

And like ants on the way to the fried chicken from The Pig at a picnic

We were searching for

Around a million different ways to see a world.

Hanging displayed sitting displayed  whispering shouting

Every piece at a different pitch

Perfect for its medium.

But I was there for Agnes . And I was there for Agnes’ child.

A life can take up a whole back wall of a tobacco building in its telling,

And still leave out whole parts. How many panels does it take to capture fully

Close to ninety years.

Like a camera, painter artist daughter friend

Makes permanent a life.

Elegance and wit wind around the strokes  color, pigmentation teaches in tones of peach.

Stand back and breathe in, a girl becomes a wise matriarch

Just paces down the old brick sits

An anteater eating of all things a colony of gigantic ants beside voter registration.

This is Artfields and this is what they do, documentarians of our lives,

One studied nine breasts,  documenting differences.

But I was there for Agnes and  “All The In  Between.”

To  see a hundred ways to see a world,

Yes,

But driving all this way to know the love of one,

Daughter for her dying mom.

Agnes would laugh at her juxtaposition of a life,

So close to

Well an anteater. And I know because I know

The Artist.

And the ways she sees all the in between,

The panels of a life.

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To discover more of my friend and her work, visit lauriemcintoshstudio dot com. And pick up her book Agnes’ life “All The In Between – My Story of Agnes” (Amazon, Barnes and Noble and at MuddyFordPress.com )

The Blackbird, Checking Through The Pane

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

red winged blackbird

                                                                                                   (photo credit:wikipedia/wikicommons)

If there were a list of rules for who can visit,
A book of names to let some enter into
Communion on the ledge

By virtue of his title
He’d be turned away.

But when it’s quiet
And thought has pulled me deep,
Where worry debates with faith and reason
Yanking tiresome
Pulling piece by ragged piece,
In the dusty corners where the deep grooved tracks from a  childhood
Play.
He comes alone, staring deep within my soul
Feathers meet a feeble friend.
I’ve begun to wait for him.

He sings a shrill of flats or is it sharps.
Tilts his head
I don’t know which, or what he says.
Peers through glass at me then folds a caring nod
As if the feathered feeder friend

Sings his song for me.
Alone.
There is no space for other songbirds when he comes.
His birdsong gurgles, sucks up all the space and time
With a melody of winsome caring,
checking through the pane.

Ebony and streaks of red ask
“Have you found at last your peace on matters on your mind.”

See Red Over Malaria. Bite Back

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 11 Comments

brookgreen tulips See Red over Malaria

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Ah, they are seeing red over Malaria and coming after me. They are waking up and fighting back.

They hear and read and their hearts are broken; now that they know the pain I cause. I am a deliverer of death. And they are waking up to the heavy toll I take on this world.

I am flying scared.

The souls are waking up and they are fighting mad.

And my favorite weapon is poverty. Because with poverty I can make sure a child is unable to stay protected from disease. And with poverty, I can keep the medicine out of the reach of impoverished children.

And with poverty as my agent of death  I am delivering  Malaria,  killing 655,000 people a year. A heavy heavy toll  every  365 days.

There are 3.3 billion people in the world. And because of my lethal weapon I keep half of those at risk of contracting the disease.

But I hear the tide is turing. And I hear they are seeing red. And I see the tears they weep. And I know they are coming after me. And it is a war.
When lovers of the souls in poverty, and tender generous hearts who weep at the effects of poverty wake up,  I  will have warriors of hope coming after me.

And they are fighting mad. And they are biting back.

I, the mosquito and they the lovers of Jesus, who can fight poverty, Malaria and suffering, we’re at war.

We are in a battle. And it is life or death.

I wish they would all go back to sleep.

(As told through the eyes of the mosquito)
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Compassion is fighting hard against Malaria. Donations from us, the people of hope, the light bearers and the poverty haters, we can donate a little and help a lot.

Donations provide households with treated mosquito nets. And they educate and treat those who are vulnerable, those who are in the cross-hairs of mosquito borne Malaria.

Visit Compassion’s website here to learn more and to hear about ways to give. Click here to go there.
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Consider Pinning or adding this visual to your facebook page today, World Malaria Day. Bring awareness to this deadly disease. It is small but it what I have.
brookgreen tulips See Red over Malaria

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Joining Emily and my team of writers over at Imperfect Prose where we write about redemption. Let’s  help redeem the suffering Malaria causes.

Compassion-International-Bloggers1

Taming The Dragons And Other WIld Things Under The Moon

~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 8 Comments

hb spencer saveWhen we were young
We bathed in Milne

Bears and  a boy washed away a day.

And when we were young
We sat folded up in cramped desks,
Modern twist on utilitarian form
Pretzel legged
Puzzled by
Poetry in chalky white on a plain black board

And studied Ogden,
silly was in vogue.
The sixties begged for humor, cried even
Laugh In
Rowen and Martin and very short poems
A bear and a boy and silly
grown men

Can take the edge off of a war
And your mind off of
Politicians who die too young.

Pooh slayed his dragons.
There is strength in numbers
Now as then, a friend can help
You fight the foe
together

However wild
However scary

When you cross the river
And you are two

You too may declare
“Shoo! Silly old dragons”

Because you are two, arm in arm
Bear and boy, Christopher and Pooh
Dragons go up in a puff of smoke
And disappear
Into thin air

“It isn’t much fun for One, but Two.”
When slaying demons and dragons
Strength in numbers was never more true

And wild things that go bump
in the night
are easier to fight, as two.
So after you tell the moon,
“good night”
Tuck in your dragon, nice and tight.

Check under the bed, pray and search the room.
Now you are free

To dream by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon.

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joining tweetspeak poetry for their poetry prompt this week, Dragons etc. Click here to discovery more poetry from my friends at Tweetspeak.