Checkbooks Roasting

by Nancy Scott (sing to “The Christmas Song” melody)

Checkbooks roasting on an open fire.

Credit going up in flame.

Balance minimums are down to the wire.

Collection people know your name.

 

QVC and HSN are much too willing to

help you spend more than you make

and they’ll ship all your goodies to you

so everyone’s in on the take.

 

They know that you can’t help but buy

the clothes and jewelry and food and not ask why.

Appliances and lock and locks

you just can’t wait until you receive your next box.

 

And so I’m offering this simple tale

to warn you not to be in debt.

Make gifts or just buy them when they are on sale.

Happy giving. You bet.

 

Nancy Scott, Easton, PA, is a blind essayist and poet. Her over 600 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries. An essayist and poet, she has published three chapbooks. She won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. Recent work appears in Breath and Shadow, Contemporary Haibun Online, and Stone Voices.

Creative Person of the Week

Frances Jane Crosby (March 24, 1820 – February 12, 1915), usually known as Fanny Crosby in the United States and by her married name, Frances van Alstyne, in the United Kingdom, was an American Methodist rescue mission worker, poet, lyricist, and composer. During her lifetime, she was well-known throughout the United States. By the end of the 19th century, she was “a household name”^[1] and “one of the most prominent figures in American evangelical life”.^[2] She became blind while an infant.

Best known for her Protestant Christian hymns and gospel songs, Crosby was “the premier hymnist of the gospel song period”, and one of the most prolific hymnists in history, writing over 8,000,^[4][5] with over 100 million copies of her songs printed. Crosby was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 1975. Known as the “Queen of Gospel Song Writers”, and as the “Mother of modern congregational singing in America”, with “dozens of her hymns continu[ing] to find a place in the hymnals of Protestant evangelicalism around the world”, with most American hymnals containing her work, as “with the possible exception of Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley, Crosby has generally been represented by the largest number of hymns of any writer of the twentieth century in nonliturgical hymnals”. Her gospel songs were “paradigmatic of all revival music”, and Ira Sankey attributed the success of the Moody and Sankey evangelical campaigns largely to Crosby’s hymns. Some of Crosby’s best-known songs include “Blessed Assurance”, “Jesus Is Tenderly Calling You Home”, “Praise Him, Praise Him”, and “Rescue the Perishing.”  Because some publishers were hesitant to have so many hymns by one person in their hymnals, Crosby used nearly 200 different pseudonyms during her career.

Crosby wrote over 1,000 secular poems, and had four books of poetry published, as well as two best-selling autobiographies. Additionally, Crosby co-wrote popular secular songs, as well as political and patriotic songs, and at least five cantatas on biblical and patriotic themes, including The Flower Queen, the first secular cantata by an American composer. Crosby was committed to Christian rescue missions, and was known for her public speaking.

 

(Excerpt taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Crosby )

Bazaar

by Nancy Scott

I seek ingenious recycling and brilliant bargains

between the smell of sauerkraut and talk of fudge.

I  hear about crocheted dishtowels buttoned most-needed close,

gift bags folded from scraps of gold wallpaper,

plastic-canvas memo holders that hang on doorknobs.

 

The hunt for givable taste and good intentions is palpable,

priced to tempt and to sell.

Proceeds benefit the Senior Center.

Circles of minds and hands have plotted since March.

Christmas calls “hurry” in suddenly-cold November.

 

The prayer rocks pull me.

I buy four weighted blue cotton bags,

find instructions attached by red ribbons:

“Place on pillow to tap

the heads of those too comfortable.”

 

On the last table, feathered angels wait.

Their wings billow slow lace but they have no faces.

They need only second sight.

Most people pass by their truth.

I need to buy only one.

 

Nancy Scott, Easton, PA, is an essayist and poet.  Her over-500 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries.  Her third chapbook, co-authored with artist Maryann Riker, is entitled “The Nature of Beyond.”

 

Orchestra

by Darragh the Poet

Bliss is this to me

Steam setting softness, mystical memories melding

An orchestra glances notes of love

All worrisome infections healed from harmony

This is bliss to me.

Darragh became totally blind after a head trauma in 2004.  He says that a lot of his writing has his visions as a blind person that he sees in people or dreams.   Darragh has a poetry website of his own at www.welcometodarragh.blogspot.com.