Meet a wonderful poet: Joni Caggiano #guest post #poetry

My Dear Readers,
It is my pleasure to introduce to you a wonderful poet: Joni Caggino.

Joni has been writing since she was very young as a way for her to express her feelings while growing up in an alcoholic household. She believes herself to be an old soul and gives any credit to her ability to write words that others may enjoy to God. Joni’s home is in North Carolina with her husband and two dogs. She is the author of the book, “The Path Towards the Light,” and her blog is the-inner-child.com. Her photography and poetry have been featured in Thefinestexample.home.blog. Her poetry has also been featured in Spillwords Press NYC. Please visit Joni’s site for more beautiful poetry.

Chuck-will’s-widow
written by Joni Caggiano on May 5, 2020

Hand-painted flowers slide off plates for two and dance
Daylilies and impatiens caress the porch with sweet aromas
Spring peepers and crickets sing a lullaby for baby wrens
Beautiful is the angel covering the table with feathers
Candles weep, crippling their size with passionate notions
Stars create a canopy in the skies, ornamenting the lively table
Whiffs of tasty food flood the senses of neighboring animals
She smells of gardenias, her long crimson hair adorned
With Moonflowers whose white blossoms open only at night
The chuck-will’s-widow sings a sorrowful but lovely tune
Greyish moss hangs low in wise oaks as wishful reminders
Her dress clings to her soft shoulders like a lover to a glance
Skin smooth like stones washed for centuries and as soft
As the foot that falls on fresh snow on the Appalachian trail
Waiting until candles cry no more and the food turns cold
Lovingly with arms outstretched, she blows a winged kiss
Gazing as it flies upwards toward the playful moon and stars
On this our tenth anniversary, how I miss you, she whispered
I will wait for you, my love, until God calls us to dine again

Photo credit: Piera Jill

And.. thank you to Joni for her magnificent review of my book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings available on Amazon here.
Below please find an excerpt from Joni’s review. You can read the entire review on Amazon.

“Her pages fill one with thought and provoke all sorts of new meaning to the finding and holding onto love. It is difficult to pick a favorite as each poem has something unusual and magnificent to offer. I found myself feeling every word of her poetry in Wooden Bed. She gives us a glimpse of beautiful memories, and the instructions left for the one she loves but will leave behind as “guards are coming my wrists will be soon stamped – yours forever, from a concentration camp…. Each poem is a journey that is unsullied with the writer’s brilliance. This book is one that will be cherished and read again and again throughout the years.”

Thank you.
Love.
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

Dear All,

I am delighted to introduce Eric Daniel Clarke – whose book, ‘Shorts – a take on poetry’ – will be published by Potter’s Grove Press on May 12th.

I met Eric in our world of blogging two years ago. Eric is a brilliant writer. He is an English gentleman and a true friend. And … Eric has the coolest and the most endearing hat I’ve ever seen. I am in love with Eric’s writings and with his hat. Please visit Eric’s blog Believing Sight Unseen.

Eric Daniel Clarke in his own words:

‘Shorts – a take on poetry’ the first book of my transition from scientist to writer will be published on May 12th by Potter’s Grove Press. Writing poetry came as a surprise to me. I’d a novel in mind, ‘Believing Sight Unseen,’ it still is; competing hard with the immediacy of poetry.

I started writing late, creatively, that is. Until 2012 I wrote disciplined non-fiction, lived a scientist’s life of peer review and publication. I worked at boundaries; of the physical and life sciences, of industry and academia, of research and mentoring, of observation and extrapolation. 2012 to 2017 the transition made, not easily, not smoothly, easing out of science, finding my way to write.

Turned out my approach to writing not so different to the way I did science – a little unconventional – using words in place of molecules to explore boundaries; real, imagined, of my mind and yours. In short, PowerPoint bullet points became verse – I like to keep things tight.

You can pre-order Shorts on Amazon here.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

My book – Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings – was published.

Thank you to all my followers who’ve supported me. I wish I could make the sky rain blessings on all of you. I wish I could heal all wounds with my words. I wish I could send you a rose hidden in whispers of love every day.
I will try. I will never give up. You’ve showed me love. I’ll return your love. Every day I’ll try to give you more than I take. That’s my promise to you.
Yours
Gabriela

Shiver (a poem from my book)

A full moon weeps cold fragrant oil on my face.
Shiver.
The cicadas’ song penetrates the membranes of the space.
On one of my arms a purple mark sighs and then falls asleep.
Looking for prey a snake’s tongue splits the time in two.
I feel the bite.
You.

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings contains new poems, poems published in various venues, and a few excerpts from my manuscript “Glass Lovers.”

Click Here to View Publisher’s Announcement

Order PAPERBACK Here!

Order Ebook Here!

@Gabriela Marie Milton

my dress is red
your heart is pounding
your passion
matador de toros
bleeds from your arms into my veins
your eyes flame every soul in Salamanca
your fight is dance
your body burns
the bull is raging
flesh is cracking
roses from my hair fall on your wounds
stars are deaf
eternity is stopping
…
now I scribble words in lonely Sundays
echoes of bullfights in Salamanca
….
fragment/draft

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, my poetry book, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

image: Fresnel; Shutterstock; [link]

My Dear Readers,

A stunning piece by two magnificent writers: Rachel and Watt.
I am thrilled to have them as my guests today.
Below, please read their comments on collaborating with each other, and their piece All’s well that ends well.

Rachel: regarding Watt and I’s writing, it has always been a remarkably easy process. We both admired each other’s writing, and in his words: “It’s easy to tread each other’s tracks without losing our own essence. When we write together, inspiration seems to brush shoulders with us like it might with an old friend, and words gather themselves effortlessly and travel to the mind.”

All’s well that ends well

Over time, real time, life has segmented me in sides and faces with very vague definitions. I sense that there are things about me that are routinely yet obscurely fed to a vending machine which gives me newer passions, different interests in return. Maybe I can trace it back to “when” but “why” is draped in nights when I lay awake with a dream in mind, and the next morning seems to blur it into a background that slowly fades into wallpaper that needs to be torn down because it’s just not as pretty anymore.

The ‘why’ is so much harder than the ‘when,’ but December raises the downy hair of yesterday on the back of my neck. No embrace for the girl of that calendar month, just a sigh of resignation and despair that rustles all the other pages of the calendar. My eyes see a whole year of good intentions and failed dreams that cling so desperately to that wall and under my skin. It’s like the realisation that last New Year’s hope was just an impulsive mistake and I forgot to make any brightened resolutions.

And it becomes an yearly abstraction, a push that plummets fractions, breezeblocks, out of an otherwise linear tower of reality. I look back at the lost pieces, and with what may be an illusion of growth, smile. That ache seems so small, unimportant, and what I have now seems okay for a minute. Maybe longer. Depends on the length of the song I listen to, and the longevity of the setting sun.

I can only say it in a whisper but this year has magnified the aches that have lingered for a lifetime. There’s a desperation in looking for the missing pieces in the fading colours of the sunset. In the hungry chaos of noisy gulls, I try to collect my crowded thoughts into groups of words that might ease my chapped lips and pour my coffee in the morning. I string them into necklaces and charms made of sentences – poems of moonless Septembers and melancholy Sundays. That way I can at least look at tomorrow without shielding my eyes.

There is something about words strung together in a sensible philosophy. Its incomparable to have had times in your life that sharpens its blunt edges and cuts into parts of you, refreshes everything somehow, and becomes strange to look at. Like gawking at your reflection on the mirror plated wall of a hair salon, while the barber keeps trimming your hair in a really bad way but all you can do is investigate your face and strike your eyes with a gaze they obviously meet. Just to realize, that it’s all there what needs to be, what isn’t, will grow back with more original strands and fibres. There’s always a road to walk towards everywhere, and since ‘all roads lead to Rome’, why does anybody worry.

Please continue reading on Rachel’s site here
or on Watt’s site here

I truly hope you enjoyed their magnificent work.

A gentle reminder that my book, Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

In a flash my mind shows me a thousand streets tormented by loneliness. These streets – once the grand wine-presses of human bodies and cars – are now haunted by sickness and eaten by desolation.

It’s spring. The ocean’s water is warm like a country bread. I can taste it. The crisp crust, the sweetness of grains and earth melt on my tongue.

I miss you and the chestnut tree from that pastel afternoon when we first kissed.

Why did I love you? Of course, you were handsome, but it wasn’t that. I loved you because you could not have been conquered by the tricks with which a woman conquers most men. Why would I even want a man that any women with lipstick and stilettos can have?

I am digressing, am I not?

It’s spring. The water is red. Under the light of its pearls, flowers open like fresh young lips.

I avert my mind from the memory of your arms which tries to drag me inside an abyss of naked love; a love blessed with the force of the mistral and the sensuality of linked fingers under the moonlight.

The earth and the waters are one.

Yet the pain is heavy and filled with fluids like the chest cavity of a dead animal hanging up-side down.

I can see your boat. It’s beautiful.

The world is sick.

If I say I love you will you tell me what I can do to heal it?

Please read my Spillwords Author of the Year (2019) interview here

My thanks again to Kevin Morris – a wonderful poet – for interviewing me. Please read Kevin’s interview with me here.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

Heaven and earth change places.
The core of the earth shines. Rays pierce waters, beamed from below, springing from the phosphorescent floor.
Dark corridors open in the walls.
I put my hand in the water.
My hand metamorphosizes into bright silver.
Noise. A nymph?! Oh, that pristine beauty which always dethrones Aphrodite’s pagan looks.
I don’t want to leave. This is the only place I’ve known where any remembrance of human neurosis dissipates like morning fog.
“Clara we can’t stay here. We need to leave.”
“Miguel, I am not leaving. You said everything for me.”
“Clara, they don’t sell the damn grotto. If they did, I’d buy it for you. We need to leave.”
“I am not leaving.”
The light from the water floats inside his eyes.
How beautiful.
How seductive.
Is he angry with me?

(excerpt from the manuscript Glass Lovers)

Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings, my poetry book, will be available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

@Gabriela Marie Milton

image: Timur Kulgarin; Shuterstock; [link]

forbidden fruits
gestate on the trees’ branches
shades of green invade the veins of earth
between your dreams and mine a creaking door
temptation
adulterated wine
a naked breast

Breton’s mad love had no forbidden fruit
my love has you
the anarchy of flesh crawls in the alphabet
the repertoire of mornings’ unmade beds
a naked ocean
my bruised hands
strawberry red

My poetry book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings: available for pre-order on April 14th; publication date April 20th.

Love and good health to everyone.
Gabriela

image: Pagina; Shutterstock; [link]

Will you vote for me again? My poem “the biblical sense of the know” runs first at Spillwords Press NYC

My Dear Readers,

My poem the “biblical sense of to know” runs first for Publication of the Month at Spillwords Press. Will you please vote for me again?

You can vote here under Publication of the Month, after Author of the Month.

You can read the poem here.

You do not need to have a Spillwords account to vote though it is easy to open one. You can vote with your Twitter or your FB account.

Publications are nominated 100% based on the popularity within the last 30 days
The voting will begin on the 26th of each month at 12:00am Eastern Time
The voting will last for 4 Days

There are several authors nominated for author of the month. If you like any of them please vote.

Thank you for your vote and congratulations to all nominees.

Yours

Gabriela

@Gabriela Marie Milton

My poem “It’s March” published by Kashmir Newspaper.
In this difficult time may God and the beauty of poetry protect us all.

Gabriela

it’s March and in the flower garden the time breaks into gigantic fire balls
moths rotate around the golden light like mustard seeds in the cool air
my hair grows long until it touches our naked ankles
I set the food on our wooden table
inside your eyes the spring sets scents of narcissuses and daisies
the valley blooms mauve tulips, eclipses of the heart,
by our mountain which is taller than the sky
love moves between your chest and mine
you kiss my cheeks
my hands tousle your hair
a smile from our non-existing past gazes at us
it smells naan and aromatic lamb
my dress is white, your shirt is dark,
I build from flowers our past until I cannot find its end
barefoot I stumble on old tears
are these the tears that you’ve cried?
an evil eye gets tangled in my hair
I hardly breathe
the evil eye now cuts my hair
in your arms,
you carry me on terraces made from your wildest fantasies
my dress is red, what happened to my dress?
your lips taste like mulberries,
mulberries from a tree which grew from the same root as my childhood
there is pain somewhere between the two of us
is this what we call our past?

it’s March and in the flower garden the time breaks into gigantic fire balls
moths rotate around the golden light like mustard seeds in the cool air
you say I love you
my dress is white
your kiss is forged in fire and black passion

it’s March
the March of our future and that of our past

Read more of my poetry in KashmirPen
marry me
spring floral certitude

My book Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings:
available for pre-order on March 30th.
publication date April 30th.

@Gabriela Marie Milton