Category Archives: quote

February 28, 2021 · 3:07 pm

I knew – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: found at slideshare.net

“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” ee cummings

I Knew

I knew it was the only way to go forward
to something gentle, something deeper,
awakening slowly in that tender place,
beyond the mask that fails to hide me.

To something gentle, something deeper,
letting go the image I hold in my hands,
beyond the mask that fails to hide me,
dissolving into a vulnerable softness.

Letting go the image I hold in my hands,
the most endearing self-deception of all
dissolving into a vulnerable softness,
falling into myself for the first time again.

The most endearing self-deception of all,
awakening slowly in that tender place,
falling into myself for the first time again,
I knew it was the only way to go forward.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 27, 2021 · 2:01 pm

Dreaming – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Image: found on quotesgram.com

“You can have anything in life if you will sacrifice everything else for it.” J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

Dreaming

Once,
when I was a child,
I saw outside my window
a world unbroken as if it
would go on forever and ever,
that Wendy and I would defeat
Hook and make Neverland into
ever land for good where 
nothing would break or be
endangered and everything was
safe to be itself.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 26, 2021 · 3:28 pm

But Her Smile – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Peter is hosting Meeting the Bar with an invitation to write a poem that changes mid way or at its end.

dVerse Poets – Meeting The Bar – Middles and Turns

Photo: static8.depositphotos.com

“All things truly wicked start from innocence.” Ernest Hemingway

But Her Smile

She played
everything in a minor key,
a high pitched dirge
for Sunday sins,
her primness a badge
of spinsterish anxiety
and determined moral
salvation wrapped in tweed
and ancient hairpins,
no one saw it, but her smile
belied her Friday nights
of wanton vixen over pints
and chips and sly thigh,
her ancient shiver of sigh.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 25, 2021 · 2:18 pm

Hungering – poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJ’s Weekly Challenge – Waves

Photo: pixabay.com

“Ecstasy is a glass full of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.” Alexander Pushkin

Hungering

Day's hours slowed to soft sand and
she marked the moments of deep longing 
for sunset by the cool, summer shoreline,
breakers crashing the encrusted rocks,
punctuated by the scree of grey gulls,
she turned to him again, hungering,
greedy for the waves to wash over her
and carry her to the crest of ecstasy.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 24, 2021 · 1:06 pm

She Was – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Laura is hosting Poetics with an invitation to paradox using inspiration from two sources, my choice is Paul Dunbar.

dVerse Poets – Poetics – Beyond Meaning or The Resolution of Opposites

Photo: st2.depositphotos.com

“I am the fool in the morning, thou art my slave in the night.” Paul Dunbar (The Paradox)

She Was

Dressed of innocence in the light
she revelled as mistress by dark,
when maxis gave way to minis in taxis,
water surrendered to whiskey, and
walk gave way to strut and swagger
of rounded hips, explicit though hidden,
between cotton and leather, though
lace was ambivalent and undecided,
her breathtaking purity as decadence
or sultry vamp as coy as a maiden,
she was as enigmatic as any code
yet unbroken though known.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 23, 2021 · 1:57 pm

To Go – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse De is hosting Quadrille with an invitation to use some form of the word Go!

dVerse Poets – Quadrille – Going, Going, Gone Poeming

Photo: Sam Carter, at unsplash.com

“Without reflection we go blindly on our way ….” Margaret J. Wheatley

To Go

To be or to go,
do I need to go,
do I want to go
anywhere at all,
the mountains in the 
distance called me to 
their high places, but I 
preferred to go to the 
valleys of my heart
and dwell in presence.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 22, 2021 · 3:21 pm

What Of Imagination? – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo found at coydavidson.com

“There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.” Antoni Gaudi

What of Imagination?

Form and function,
I begrudge its pragmatic,
aluminium deep beauty in
set squares of predictability,
all bold sheen and shine,
face set firmly against attrition,
leaving me wondering,
what of imagination 
that ground of soul's delight,
that sets all birds free in flight?

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 20, 2021 · 2:36 pm

Contented Confusion – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

Photo: shutterstock.com

“What’s past is prologue, and the world awaits.” Lisa Mantchev

Contented Confusion 

I wanted to embrace the little spark 
of curiosity that surfaced in my mind,
unmasking the text of your eyes
betraying the deep waters of uncertainty,
seeking what is evoked in unseen hearts,
written in solitude, such tortured
language of soul creating images of
possibility, drowning in doubt while
reaching for the stars that speak to 
you of letting go.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 18, 2021 · 3:06 pm

Only We – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

VJs Weekly Challenge – I’m learning (together we grow)

Photo: Adina Voicu pixabay.com

“Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.” Rumi

Only We

Even together we are incomplete, incongruous,
unlikely conspirators in the mystery of life,
betrayed by a singularity poised by suspicion
and a boundaried protection of all that is sole,
the furnace of time smelts a truth of other 
in the wrestling and wrangling of all that is plural,
where the sense of oneness is shared in other,
and where autumn leaves and summer sun, tiny wrens,
moments of wonder, kisses and home truths, shared 
dreams and existential questions would hold no 
meaning, besides, with who would I share these
seeming pathetic vignettes, only we make meaning
of these ordinary treasures.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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February 17, 2021 · 2:15 pm

I Wanted To Shout – a poem by Paul Vincent Cannon

At dVerse Mish is hosting Poetics with an invitation to write about an aspect of colour. dVerse Poets – Poetics – True Colours?

Image: wallpapersafari.com

“Black is like a broken vessel which is deprived of the capacity to contain anything.” Leonardo da Vinci

I Wanted To Shout

Who coloured the rules of perception
and mood, that we should believe,
my mind ran to blends and melds as
we prepared to lay him in the ground,
his widow insistent that her black
mood of absence paint the sky that
day so that we could feel her abstract
soul while I wanted to shout spectrum
across the air of sorrow that hung idle 
and impotent over us, choking the very
soil awe stood on, and I wanted the 
freedom to breathe a homemade
palette nuanced for all my feelings
rushing like a train.

©Paul Vincent Cannon

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