This is for the Elusive Trope’s Magnetic Saturday challenge. It’s already a challenge to order the magnets into recognizable phrases. I hope this one is existential enough to suit Albert Camus. I realise I’ve lost the last screen shot, the one with all the words in…
Brother or angel,
Marble or dirt?
God could die
and I’d bring flowers
to give to your ghost,
when red stars
haunt the morning.
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Jane Dougherty Writes 
IT IS OFFICIAL
This is my FAVORITE you have written!
I love this SO much! I wish I could think of something clever to say but I’m just staring with my mouth open.
SUPERB SUPERB SUPERB!
Brava lady! *doffs my hat* I feel like never writing again because truly you have written everything here! (What a terrific title for inspiration).
The magnets come up with some good lines. Have you ever tried using the magnet poetry thingy? I’m glad you like this one. It’s a bit out of the ordinary. The oracle was sending a very strong message this time.
Is it an app or just simply using the magnetic words you buy in the store and arranging them and taking a picture? I would like to try. (Your oracle seems to favor you it must be said!)
It’s an online thing. You can buy it or play with it on the screen.
Click on one of the kits and make your poem. If you need more words (and you will) there’s a more words button on the bottom right.
http://magneticpoetry.com/pages/play-online
Wow – this is great I had no idea. I shall try – thank you for this recommendation my friend. (Possibly may become addicted) .
I am. I’m thinking of just noting down the rough ‘message’ and working it up into a poem. The magnets never give you enough ‘s’s or prepositions ๐
ha ha ha much like life then!
Never enough of something or other.
I do believe we should appreciate the NOW and what we have, so much more than we do, but life’s ‘tempo’ urges us to rush through the important smaller things and focus on big things that are not important at all. The old saying being, when you’re on your death bed, will you really lament that you didn’t spend another day at the office?
I asked my children one day when they confided in me that some beauf of a parent d’elรจve had said that I was ‘folle’ which they would prefer, a mother who was known to all and sundry for having the cleanest toilets in the street, or for writing the best books?
Gosh given the choice the latter ANY day though France is particularly grim toilet wise so you could earn quite a reputation for the former ๐ (bet the other parents are jealous)
I’ve given up worrying what people think. The French love to pigeonhole and we don’t fit into any that have yet been manufactured. They sniff around, as if we’re new dogs on the block, decide we’re neither rich nor well-connected, not sociable, no time for coffee, apรฉros, dinรฉs soirรฉes. No money for theatres, days out, no car, can’t ferry children about and generally risk being more of a liability than an asset. Worst of all, we refuse categorically to give free coaching in English to their offspring.
This is good. I want to get to the place you are at, where I can honestly say I am immune to what others think. This is my goal, it is a worthy goal and I envy that you are already there, because I am not. Yes you are right, the French do pigeonhole, in a different way to the English and it’s hard when you do not fit in with others, through no fault of your own. I feel that way here in the US also so I can profoundly relate to that feeling of being the cuckoo. It’s absurd that if you are neither rich nor well-connected (such a small minority) people may not be ‘as’ interested in you. Frankly I would not wish to be friends with someone who had this world-view. I’m not terribly sociable but at times I wouldn’t mind having more local friends but it’s easier said than done, this I know too. Bravo for not being free English coaches! A shame as they miss out on knowing such a wealth of talent and creativity. Their loss definitely.
I wonder sometimes how we’d have turned out if we’d fitted in and been accepted, made friends and kept them. Hard to imagine. The only people we’ve ever been friendly with have ended up messily divorced…
There is still time for that. Sometimes things do not happen for a while then they do. And if they do not, maybe it’s because you’d waste that precious time on socializing of no consequence when instead you write and that’s got more value? Else, it’s that they’re all a bunch of asses and you’re better off shot of them ๐ I feel much the same, I don’t really know many people in the city I live in, though more in other cities that are not very close, so I spend quite a bit of time wishing I had closer friends but I think this is a real modern world problem too with technology and the lack of neighborliness that used to exist and sense of community, immigrant or no.
I think you’re right. People collect friends like some kids used to collect stamps. They have no value in themselves except to swell numbers. When the pool was more limited, and you actually had to live with your friends, maybe people were more circumspect about choosing them.
Exactly. Facebook being a classic example. As a kid I used to collect friends but it was facile. Now I like quality over quantity. Some would say I’m bitterly saying this but it’s really true, give me one good friend over the minions any day. Now finding a ‘good’ friend isn’t easy but that’s because people are very insular in a selfish way (I am insular but I strive not to be selfish) I also agree, people were more circumspect about choosing them, not so much based upon income and their popularity or connections. Though I suppose Vanity Fair would say otherwise, that was only the upper echlon now everyone is like that.
We don’t actually need a whole mass of close friends. I don’t think it’s possible to be ‘close’ with many people. There are too many divergences, too many other circles of friends are involved that might not be to everybody(s taste.
Exactly. Plus if someone has too many friends then they inadvertently neglect others. I myself have only finite room in my list of connections to give, and more than that I would be useless.
You need time for friends. I don’t have much of that.
(too busy creating worlds / not a bad excuse!)
Love love LOVE! I would bring you flowers if I could! Bravo Jane! โค๏ธ
I’m glad you like this, Kat. I was thinking of the quote from Camus, the antithesis of the ‘my country right or wrong’ idea, and this is what the oracle sent.
It is deep, insightful and a tad ironic. I like your oracle. ๐
We see eye to eye on many things ๐
Camus would approve. ๐ Getting down into the weeds, the poem only ponders the death of god as opposed to a nihilist view that god is dead (if god existed at all in the first place). Moreover, it humanizes god by opening the possibility of god being mortal like us.* The opening two lines giving two choices (do we really have a choice?) and then presents the voice which rebels against them all with the simple, but powerful, gesture…the individual not ony faces down a universe (world) in which its unfolding remains a mystery, but rebels even against death.
*now I have Joan Osborne’s song “What If God was One of Us” on a loop in my head. ๐
It was a funny sort of a poem, as these magnetic poems often are. I liked the idea of it not mattering in the slightest whether God is there or not. What I do and what I feel is my affair and nobody else’s.
I don’t know the song, but I probably better not listen to it nowโtoo close to bedtime.