Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Chosen
    Chosen
    Chosen
    Ebook151 pages1 hour

    Chosen

    By Michael Lee

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “Chosen” is an anthology of 76 of the most compelling poems the poet believes he has written to date, containing descriptive, philosophical and spiritual works from three collections, “Space-time walking in the age of the African diaspora”, “Sense of Essence” and “Stars and tears of many years”. The power of poetry lies in the blend of sound and suggestive meanings creating songs which stimulate the imagination and challenge thinking and perception. This selection includes the poet’s brief commentary on each poem, explaining the poetic effects he tried to achieve and sketching the autobiographical context in which they were originally written.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael Lee
    Release dateMar 10, 2013
    Chosen
    Author

    Michael Lee

    I was born and raised in a small town in Indiana called Muncie. After publishing my first book "The Crossroads of Jacob Kingston" in 2011, I spent most of my free time mentoring and taking the lead as a chairman at my older brother's non for profit mentoring/community development organization, Guiding Light Inc. After the birth of my child, I was inspired to come back to the world of imagination and write a children's book that would allow parents to pray and spend more quality time with their kids before bedtime. I am very passionate about spreading the word of God to the world through singing and writing and aspire to help as many lives as possible

    Read more from Michael Lee

    Related to Chosen

    Related ebooks

    Literary Biographies For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend

      Jun 17, 2020

      Hello Darkness My Old Friend
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lay Of The Land

      Aug 27, 2021

      TARA K. SHEPERSKY YOU WOULDN’T know how to get down here without someone to point out the path. You wouldn’t know there was a public beach at all. From the road, signs are few. An eclectic scatter of homes, distorted wave-speak rumbling from thick ra

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nothing Prepares You For The Impact Of Africa.

      Jun 30, 2021

      Strange sights, new sounds, unfamiliar smells. It is a total assault on the senses, like being a child again and seeing the world afresh. Once you have been there, breathed its dry air, watched distant storms trailing across its immense horizons and

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Stars Are a Comforting Constant: A poet blends the personal with the cosmic.

      Dec 1, 2016

      The first time I saw a meteor, I’d slipped outside to lie in the grass after everyone else had gone to sleep. The daytime commotion of my cousins’ and siblings’ games and my Poppop’s blaring polka music often drove me to tears. As an introvert, I wan

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Peace Of Mind

      Jan 30, 2019

      Peace Of Mind
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In The Thick Of It

      Feb 23, 2022

      In The Thick Of It
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Sacred Place

      Nov 22, 2022

      A Sacred Place
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Evaporative Losses

      Sep 15, 2020

      Breath travels. Our mouths are broken-open places—a house where only wind lives, searching the cupboards and closets. I replace your missing mouths with those of jars, mines, graves. What is gathered and dissipated by mouth? Once alternately filled a

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Remains Of The Day

      Jan 11, 2023

      The Remains Of The Day
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mosi-oa-tunya

      Jun 30, 2021

      Mosi-oa-tunya
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tripping The Light Fantastic

      Oct 18, 2023

      Tripping The Light Fantastic
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      In Bloom

      Mar 1, 2019

      To attract congruence wavelength to sine reachingvirtue scented rosy blushing to blooma metaphor more than metaphorpurple to red adaptableleaf or blossomstem or spindlecotton floss guided through eyepressed through fabric stretched onto frameeach sti

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The World Beneath Our Feet

      Sep 1, 2020

      The World Beneath Our Feet
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Triangle of Light

      Aug 25, 2022

      Triangle of Light
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Tale Of Two Christmases

      Dec 17, 2020

      A Tale Of Two Christmases
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Wild silence

      Jul 11, 2024

      Wild silence
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Africa’s FOOTHOLD OVER ME

      Oct 7, 2022

      Africa’s FOOTHOLD OVER ME
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘Cantoras’: Featured Fiction from Carolina De Robertis

      Sep 3, 2019

      The first time—which would become legend among them—they entered in darkness. Night enfolded the sand dunes. Stars clamored around a meager slice of moon. The post ‘Cantoras’: Featured Fiction from Carolina De Robertis appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mountain Time

      Jan 1, 2021

      In the air you don’t know who you are or where My own self feels it is in wind being born These are currents a man made one eighth of smokeless fire fears but chooses A path south from Anchorage to a Mountain House Ungovern the northern land to pass

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Book of Hours

      Nov 25, 2022

      A Book of Hours
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From Beyond The Somber Station

      Jun 22, 2022

      From Beyond The Somber Station
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      How slow is all of this dying? Across the county linea fossil in the making, off-road exhaling last lightin nightmud. A small cat in a steel trap. Pendulous sparrows preen. Holding on for the last bluedark nightwe ate fruited scabs off each other’s m

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      I learned the world through the bottoms of my feet, barein the creeks of summer, stepping on pebbles, the squidgeof moss between my toes. On hot asphalt, the hop and skipover cracks, feet already toughened by bramble, dirt, the pricklyground of pine

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TEN POEMS Translations of Rafael Alberti

      May 1, 2024

      Throughout the centuries,through the nothingness of the world,I, without sleep, search for you. Behind me, imperceptible,without touching my shoulders,my dead angel keeps watch. Where is Paradise,Shadow, you who have been there?I ask silently. Cities

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Awakening

      Aug 2, 2023

      EVEN after 500 years, the relief of the medieval prayer-writer on seeing dawn is touching. The uncertainties and phantasmagoria of the dark hours banished, done; the sanctuary of a brand-new day revealed by Homer’s ‘rosy-fingered dawn’. As the world

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Storytellers

      Apr 28, 2023

      The Storytellers
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Chosen

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Chosen - Michael Lee

      Ark

      Flowers are faces of the cosmos.

      Mountains are architecture.

      A blue sky is God’s smile.

      Running water is the kiss of life.

      Trees are art.

      Sunshine is love.

      Planets are plaster.

      Our eyes are gates of eternity

      and infinity broods over space.

      For a philosopher, everything has a place.

      For a philosopher with peace, everything’s in place.

      My body is a temple

      and a train for my journey of spirit.

      An ark for catastrophes.

      For the four forces of the universe never slumber.

      The universe is portrayed in a series of poetic statements as living art, revealing a spiritual dimension of existence interwoven with our material world. The tone is assertive, offset by some soft imagery.

      Dayland

      The sun speaks its light over our hills.

      It breathes day into the land I love,

      dropping slow, carefully, into earth,

      rising up the old azure,

      its quiet heat life-giving,

      glowing high above detailed existence:

      sheep with wool bright white in its light,

      lambs by hot nipples in mothered slumbers,

      a rich energy soaking into their blood,

      cud munched by cattle in contentment,

      the maze of roads spreading everywhere

      carrying people in endless motion

      and choreographed change.

      Clouds etched on the high air

      challenge immense stillness.

      Then jets, higher still,

      soar through sound

      old villagers cannot understand.

      Then down and gone from the dayland too soon,

      the greater is, the more missed.

      The world becomes a stranger

      arriving in a spell of uncertainty.

      But in an unsure dusk

      the sun simply recharges,

      storing its relentless nuclear vitality

      for another childlike day.

      One of the first poems I wrote when I was a teenager, Dayland articulates my love of sunshine and how it drenches objects in lucid daylight. The strength of the poem lies in its physical descriptiveness. The power of the sun as a provider of life pulses and throbs in the lyrics. As it is read, a poem re-enacts the writer’s voice, transformed in the process by the reader’s inner voice into a duet of sounds and meanings, a co-produced silent song which aims to be sufficiently melodic to make for a satisfying imaginative experience.

      Autumn tumult

      Clouds from the sea

      woven in the mystery of water

      veil the Cape

      secretive at the season’s turn

      cherishing elegantly cool relief

      in silvery shade

      under its parasol.

      The era of butterflies

      breeding near shimmering dams

      under a soaring sky

      in drowsy long hot hours

      (the insects sing about)

      is over.

      The universe is a magician’s hat

      and his wand has been waved.

      Wait: darker, deeper, colder, blacker, windier.

      Not just the day is ending.

      Wild hooves of winter sound over the horizon

      of an unkissed land.

      Then boom! bang!

      People start scampering into their superstructures

      clutching broken bits of black umbrella

      all city lights flicker

      like particles of moonlight

      on a tormented sea

      and a poet tosses his gift of sight

      into darkness

      turning to face its anarchy

      and heaven gropes for breath

      in the drowning of the sky.

      After its passion, earth is soaked.

      Its celibate, lonely ground,

      parched in isolation,

      has been consummated.

      The lofty season of satiation

      has disappeared into mists

      of a fresh time.

      In Africa where heat is great

      water is like a miracle.

      The cataclysm of first rains

      has left an aftermath

      wrapped up

      in mists of moist air.

      I walk up a grey street

      transfixed in after-rain stillness,

      it’s dripping,

      autumn’s crucified colours

      stuck to the ground.

      Snails cross cold old stones

      coming from lost homes

      trailing extended grey tears,

      searching for a new start.

      Rain has deepened colours

      and blackened altars

      of moss-clad branches

      arching over paths of leaves

      into earth itself

      near a river

      breathless with freshness.

      Cape Town, 2011

      Changes of season are times of atmospheric transition when everything is charged with readiness, a heightened alertness. I’ve spent most of my life in Cape Town which has a passionate Mediterranean climate subject to abrupt shifts and largely unpredictable swings of weather. I tried to depict the Cape’s energetic Autumn in the poem, conveying its distinctive sights, sounds and moods.

      Sands of Zanzibar

      An azure ocean brushes over Zanzibar’s burning sands

      where dragonflies flit at the island’s edges

      riding on the day’s warm rhythm

      as the sun dips down

      distilling a turquoise sea

      into glistening silver.

      Rows of faded, grey dhous moored to a freed sea tilt together

      in a breeze crackling in supple long coconut palms

      lifting scents of spices and smells of cooking

      from poor villages nestled

      in time-fabled

      forests.

      Black gulls rest on boats and on backs of cattle

      come to sleep on buoyant beaches

      resonating in crystal air,

      a bloodied sun

      bursting molten on

      the horizon.

      On Zanzibar’s burning sands, Africa, Arabia and India kiss

      as low tide draws long lines of fisherwomen

      draped in saris and headscarves

      to fetch fresh, free fish

      to feed their families

      in an anointed sunset.

      Zanzibar, 2011

      An exotic scene on one of Zanzibar’s northern beaches, lapped by the Indian Ocean, is described. The economic realities prevailing in this poor island community in East Africa are included but woven into a relationship with nature. A time-tested way of life in those parts, which hold a special affinity for me, is evoked.

      Karoo cameo

      Desert wakes and holds its breath for dawn.

      Stars glimmer in a gloomy underworld dome.

      Planet tilts, a little white lightens

      a vague sphere of dust starlight still brightens.

      Night hides behind a gnarled hill from the sun

      rising to reign over an orange horizon.

      God closes the page of stars; Venus

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1