text:
Lately I have found myself to be surrounded by negative people and, sad to say, I feel they're beginning to drag me down with them rather than them letting me bring them up. This cannot happen! So, I have decided to leave them to they're sorry states and focus more on myself being the light I need to stay contented.
And for this I will need positive affirmations.
Did you know that everything we say to ourselves in our heads are affirmations? We believe whatever we say about ourselves and it becomes affirmed in our own minds. So if we're telling ourselves we have a shitty life, or we aren't beautiful, or no one likes us etc etc, then this to us becomes fact and we believe it whole heartedly.
"The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all" By Michael Masser and Linda Creed (sung by Whitney Houston, George Benson and many more)
Why do we do it to ourselves? We wouldn't dare speak to others in the same way, so why do we think it's okay to say these things inwardly? Take a look at this French Dove advert which shows exactly the reaction you would get if you were to say those horrible things to someone else:
So now we understand what damage we are doing telling ourselves these negative affirmations, let's look at why we should be supporting ourselves with positive affirmations.
The nicer we are to us, the nicer we are to the rest of the world too. Things don't seem so dark and gloomy and we are better equipped to deal with, and bounce back, from life's challenges.
Keeping a positive mind will at first feel like a foreign concept, you will stumble and fight against it and it will drain you of energy but like anything that needs healing – it'll get worse before it gets better.
I'm going to record myself saying these positive affirmations and have it as a track on my phone so I can listen to them and repeat them whenever I need them. I suggest you do the same. I have no idea whether the fact of having my own voice playing in my ears telling me nice things will make it work better but it's worth a shot.
- I have everything I need to make me successful today, tomorrow and in my future
- I am loved and mean a lot to many people around me
- I have a wonderful and caring family and incredible friends
- I am filled with energy and joy
- I breathe easily and slowly
- My body is healthy, my body is perfect
- My mind is brilliant and thinks clearly
- I am in control of my life and decide what's best for me
- I often think of others and help them where I can
- My soul is content
- My soul is adventurous
- I have endless talents that I call upon regularly
- I have a strong, powerful voice
- I have no need for negative thoughts, they are replaced with love
- I forgive those who have harmed me and gently detach myself from them
- I trust myself with what I must do
- My relationships become stronger, deeper and more stable with each day
- I choose to be happy
- I am courageous and can achieve whatever I set my mind to
- I can easily and calmly stand up for myself
- I take up more positive habits every day
- I inspire positive change in others who look up to me
- People recognise my worth
- I am creative and find new and efficient ways to get things done
- I am organised in all areas of my life
- My fortune is growing, expanding and thriving
- I am grateful for my life as it is
- I have overcome all challenges in my life and will continue to do so in the future
- I love myself and let my confidence soar to new heights
- Tough times can last for a while but I can overcome anything
- I continue to learn from life's lessons
- I am exactly where I need to be at this moment in time
- I determine my own future and it will be perfect
- Other people's negativity does not affect me
- I radiate beauty, charm and grace
- I am filled with strength in my heart and clarity in my mind
- Fear is just a feeling that I can pinpoint inside my own body
- I have a kind and caring nature
- I am funny and easily make people laugh
- I am a good story teller and people listen with eagerness
- My life is precious and I am grateful for each new day
Don't you feel much better from just reading those through? Imagine saying these to yourself over and over again! Of course, everyone is different, and what positive affirmations work for me may not necessarily do the job for you, so try coming up with some of your own that will really mean something to you and get your brain onto a more positive wavelength.
Until next time.


text:
The Letter
Miki Byrne.
A small rock
rises from the sea
a tough refuge
for battered birds.
Perched vigil,
they salvage a piece
of austere sanctuary,
tread their tired feet.
The sea sweeps
in haste surges hard
white foam thrashes
and squawking birds,
their port flooded,
flap into the air
abandon trust.
The birds shriek,
weave in the wind
then outstretched glide
into sky.
Splash empties
back to the cold sea,
where the rock,
rising again,
Still Life
weathered and grey,
dried through years,
old hairs fixed.
Cluttered paintings
of beaches and women
beside oil paints
hardened in dust.
You used to paint
the world considered,
your strokes lit oils,
painted the new.
Now idle
by unfinished works,
you gather dust,
stare at walls.
Ion Corcos
Ion Corcos was born in Sydney, Australia. He writes poetry and short stories. Ion's poems have appeared in Lake City Lights and Zinewest. Ion loves travelling and has recently travelled to Greece and Turkey. He lives with his partner, Lisa, in a small villa by the sea at Sapphire Beach.
Colin Dardis
Daughters and Doughnuts
No, I don't think our ancestors
look down from the night sky,
you heard that from a movie, not me.
Stars, those are just bright stars
and they don't have eyes. But, yes,
I do think wisdom falls from heaven
like snowflakes...
or powdered sugar on waffles;
sprinkled lightly to be discovered
only after it's been tasted. It's an
enhancement sort of thing. But, no,
I don't think everyone shakes
the glass, holey-topped jar
over their fresh baked life. It's a:
separate, beat and then fold in
your egg white, sort of deal. Not everyone
knows how to do it. And, yes,
pie crust can be difficult. And rewarding.
Unlike doughnuts, especially, the ones
made with potatoes, no delicate shake there,
the dense cake-fluff is fried, then rolled
in nib sugar, It might look good
but most of those pearls will fall off
before they touch your tongue. And, no,
grandma didn't know how to bake. I taught
myself, read a lot of books when I was young,
but mostly, I learned by tasting.
The dream of pink boxes and pearls
The subject line simply said: "Paris?"
And the geometry of rooftops,
statue-edged brown boulevards
with rain-slick sidewalks shone
under a hundred French feet.
In a red awning cafe we drank
with a man who guessed your name
was Ben. Played spin the bottle
with a vintage postcard of the Eiffel Tower;
once trapped under the glass top
of our table, you smuggled it away
in a pink pastry box. We ate pearls
of sugar outside the Louvre, and chalked
out life's muddy angled meanings
on the concrete stairs.
And still I believed
your message contained magical content.
A Trivial Pursuit
It is like Scrabble at every exchange
each one of us checking
what we have in our hand;
adjusting, re-adjusting, switching
things around to fit into the high maintenance
interaction. Determined to link
only on a vowel, always preferring
to silence the recently laid E, especially,
if one of us has left it open
and dangling, vulnerable,
near a triple sweet spot.
It takes concentration to appear
not to be bothered by the time you take,
or the ugly words you use
as you seal the board like a traffic jam
just so I can call you clever,
or about your smile as you tally up
the little numbers on the bottom of your tiles
to show me you will always win.
Suzanne Jean Johanson
Suzanne Jean has been participating in the forum workshop at www.poetsgraves.co.uk for five years. Her work appears in their anthology Making Contact and also in Antiphon.
In an attic
the size of a
single bed,
Jasper, 89, simple life,
dips his Oreo cookie
in moist oatmeal and milk.
Six months ago
his driver's license
between the onset
of macular degeneration
and gas at $4.65 a gallon,
life for Jasper has stalled out
in the middle lane
like his middle of the month
social security check, it's gone.
There's nothing academic about Jasper's life.
Today, the journey is the stepping stairs
spiraling downward to the mailbox
in the corridor area.
Midway, he leans against the cool
walls for breath with his oxygen tank,
no rails to hang on to.
The Chicago Cubs are playing on the radio,
and Jasper reaches for his cigarettes
in his top left pocket.
Michael Lee Johnson
Michael lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era: now known as the Itasca, IL poet. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, photographer who experiments with poetography (blending poetry with photography), and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois, who has been published in more than 750 small press magazines in 26 countries, he edits 7 poetry sites. Michael is the author of The Lost American: From Exile to Freedom (136 pages book), several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems. He also has over 69 poetry videos on YouTube.
Links: http://poetryman.mysite.com/. http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/
Follow Michael Lee Johnson On:
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/
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MySpace.com: http://www.myspace.com/
Clocks tyrannise. Faces
implacable, long tongues
lick away the hours.
Time is all they know.
Obsessed, they talk
of nothing else.
But here at the turnpike –
short on change, but long
on breath – I watch the sun
bounce like a dropped ball
in the long grass between
solstice and equinox.
No one likes a hospital. Mortality
accommodated, pain as price or penalty.
Heartbreak hotels, all jangling traffic -
white antibodies pushing trollies
through flapping rubber doors like valves,
knackered doctors, heads on desks.
So when, this Christmas, it's my dad
I'm visiting, I step into the antiseptic fug
with more than usual trepidation.
Spat out by a peristaltic lift, I shuffle,
fruitless, flowerless, down the bed-line.
Jones, J.C. (k.a. 'Jack'), the scribbled notice says.
But in his place there lies half-
submerged beneath a glacial sheet,
an ice-warrior. Some arctic wind
has drifted snow against his bones
and now ghost-whispers come down time
within his slight breathing. December
in his veins, and in the evening sky
against the windows. I'm at the bedhead,
watching the reptile pulse in throat
and eyelid, the icicle drips of glucose
ticking silently. I am a stranger
in your world of white light, filaments
and dials. I am invisible: its customs
disregard my useless love. Its ministers,
purposeful and sure of their ground,
occupy the space between us, lifting
and settling like nesting birds. You hibernate,
safe within your cage of branches.
Electronic doors discharge me, unprepared
for these old lands made strange. Raw
wind pulls rain across the car park ;
hope shreds, like the clouds. I drive through limbo.
Blurred, dissolving in my rearview mirror,
the hospital tips and sinks like a ship of lights.
Poem without words
Sometimes a poem just happens in plain air.
Mute, like mimes, the actors shimmer briefly
and are gone, leaving their outlines etched
in light, wordless but entire. Consider this:
the cemetery fence, the graves beyond;
the balding man, late middle-aged, who walks
towards the fence; fresh blooms against
a tombstone and dead flowers lobbed towards
the dump; the arc they make; the boy with Downs
who stumbles, weeping, close behind. The man,
the flowers and the boy. The air that framed them
and the light that picked them out.
R A Jones
Richard Initially wooed by the First World War poets and then seduced by the Beats, Dick Jones has been exploring the vast territories in between since the age of 15. Work has been published in a number of magazines, print and online, including Orbis, The Interpreter's House, Poetry Ireland Review, Qarrtsiluni, Westwords, Mipoesias, Three Candles, Other Poetry, Rattlesnake and Ouroboros Review. In 2010 Dick received a Pushcart nomination for his poem Sea Of Stars and his first collection, Ancient Lights, was published by Phoenicia Publishing in 2012. A translation of Blaise Cendrars' iconoclastic epic poem 'La Prose du Transsibérien…', illustrated by Natalie D'Arbeloff, is due for publication by The Old Stile Press in 2014.
As daily occupation he does the school run, the shopping and the cleaning while his partner earns the money. And for fun and modest profit he plays bass guitar and percussion in a blues roots-and-shoots trio.
A Renter's Lament
I should have moved out twelve years ago
when the pipes burst and water cavalierly cascaded
onto my freshly laid wooden floors
ruining the finish and
my perception of the upstairs neighbor
as a decent guy who would help a fellow in a fix.
I should have moved out after that
when the bar below the lobby opened
and loud lewd intoxicated smokers
poured onto the sidewalk
shrieking shit-faced obscenities to each other
and to no one in particular at four in the morning.
I then should have moved
when the building manager absconded with the rents,
when the commuter trains began blasting their horns
in the station across the way,
when the bedbugs invaded from a mattress left in the laundry room,
when my wife said get me out of here or I'll go crazy.
I worked thirty-four years
at the same place before being excessed.
Could of left earlier,
should of left earlier,
would of left earlier
but the devil, you know.
Martin H. Levinson
Martin is a member of the Authors Guild, National Book Critics Circle, and the book review editor for ETC: A Review of General Semantics. He has published 8 books and numerous articles. His poems have appeared in The Potomac Review, BRICKRhetoric, Occupoetry, Specter Magazine, First Literary Review East, Boston Poetry Magazine, and Mindset Poetry. He holds a PhD from NYU and lives in Forest Hills, New York.
I sucked on a chocolate lime and zig-zagged
amber leaves while Mary-lou whittled
a headstone from the door of an old sideboard.
She's bold with a chisel and a mallet but shy
when it comes to deodorant.
I could see all the way to the bottom
of her garden through the hole in her ear.
Her newly dead boyfriend's blue vest, cold
and full of bird shit, draped over the remnants
of not his best poems. A worthy pall
for a piss poor poet who rolled his dick
out like a red carpet onto pelvic floors
of bad mannered girlies with drunken lips
and names he never bothered to ask.
Spanish hips
My Spanish hips have woken from their siesta
and are busy entertaining the wrong sort of hombre.
I want to dance for you but you're not here.
Insincere apologies float amongst melancholy fruits
in warm sangria and disappear
down the throats of random borrachos
taking advantage of forgotten rules.
I tango with unfaithful gringos
beneath a piñata of good intentions,
which sways above my tipsy judgements
like God wagging a disapproving finger.
Tomorrow will I suck my dehydrated
recollections between my teeth,
and apologise?
Por que?
School runs, dancing classes and football matches have consumed Pauline's free time for the past thirty years. Along with domestic duties, Tesco runs and taxi rides. Three of her four kids have now flew the coupe and she has have whipped my pinny off, stuck my hand down the side of the family sofa found her long lost love of poetry and Art.
I sucked on a chocolate lime and zig-zagged
amber leaves while Mary-lou whittled
a headstone from the door of an old sideboard.
She's bold with a chisel and a mallet but shy
when it comes to deodorant.
I could see all the way to the bottom
of her garden through the hole in her ear.
Her newly dead boyfriend's blue vest, cold
and full of bird shit, draped over the remnants
of not his best poems. A worthy pall
for a piss poor poet who rolled his dick
out like a red carpet onto pelvic floors
of bad mannered girlies with drunken lips
and names he never bothered to ask.
Spanish hips
My Spanish hips have woken from their siesta
and are busy entertaining the wrong sort of hombre.
I want to dance for you but you're not here.
Insincere apologies float amongst melancholy fruits
in warm sangria and disappear
down the throats of random borrachos
taking advantage of forgotten rules.
I tango with unfaithful gringos
beneath a piñata of good intentions,
which sways above my tipsy judgements
like God wagging a disapproving finger.
Tomorrow will I suck my dehydrated
recollections between my teeth,
and apologise?
Por que?
School runs, dancing classes and football matches have consumed Pauline's free time for the past thirty years. Along with domestic duties, Tesco runs and taxi rides. Three of her four kids have now flew the coupe and she has have whipped my pinny off, stuck my hand down the side of the family sofa found her long lost love of poetry and Art.
Upstairs on the bus
the buzz of conversation
briefly spikes:
a mix of male-voiced threats
and shriller female umbrage.
High heels hit the stairs.
While the bus draws breath
an older woman's voice
as warm and soft and level
as Caribbean sand
drifts along the aisle.
"I'm old enough to be your mother
so I ain't afraid of you;
and I'm tellin' you you never
ever answer someone back that way.
No matter if they give you grief.
Y' hear me now?"
She gets no response.
Only when she leaves
(outside the hospital
where she should be a Sister)
can there be a consultation
with a mute lieutenant.
"That's a plate of humble pie she served me.
It ain't easy eatin' humble pie
even when you're hungry."
"Yeah, but what does she know, anyway?
She don't see the stuff I got to take:
you don't judge books by covers."
"I'll tell you really why she came up here:
to get a chance to be close to my body.
Those old ones – they're all beggin' for it."
Two spiral stairwells simulate enormous aural cavities
funnelling a hymn, piano-pounded, from a floor above.
The sturdy rhythm stirs a twitch in muscles:
they recall a summons to assembly,
a dread of being late.
Corridors in hospital behave like nasal passages
amplifying smells. A dark-brown reek of institution stew
has switched on memories of lining up
for lunch at school, expecting thick vile gravy
and hoping for a choice.
Two choices are on offer at the top of an oesophagus:
struggle to provoke a cough, and hope to make a quick escape
the way you came; or give in to the system
and simply trust your exit will be sweetened
by perfumes of soft soap.
Thomas Ovans
Although Thomas has a background in technical writing he has been reading poetry for a long time.Lately Thomas have been doing some reviewing for London Grip and have even published a few poems of his own in that magazine as well as in Smiths Knoll and Message in a Bottle.
Times Gone Bye
I remember when old was as good as new.
When nothing was pristine.
Not even the light, which wasn't white,
But embalmed us in a sepia hue,
Blanching the wallpaper
That peeled at ceilings- the paint flaking around sash windows,
Hung rather than swung casements.,
Back when things lay on shelves rather than stood,
And lampshades were cocked with pictures slanted,
Hanging from nails, themselves hanging from the plaster-
Though not the mirror, which had to be hoisted into position
Until it would only ever come down with the wall itself.
With its round toggled light switch.
With the landscape poised above the corbelled mantel-
Strewn with memento's of special occasions all evident in the clutter.
Back when the aroma of the room held pipes and polish,
And the Sunday roast lasted until Thursdays stew.
Back when we had pantries instead of cupboards,
Cupboards instead of wardrobes.
And sideboards were more prevalent than telly.
Where we viewed the weather from the back door barometer,
Scuttling back and forth to the coal house with the shovel for the fire
That spat cinders, singeing the carpets,
Worn to threads
Then thrown down stairs-
The treads and risers exposed at the sides
Creaking with the floors and doors.
The clinking of keys clanking in their locks,
While ticking clocks amplified the silence,
Echoing songs that people sang
To entertain each other rather than themselves.
And taking us back to times when old was as good as new
And new was never old.
Anthony Ward
Anthony tends to fidget with his thoughts in the hope of laying them to rest. He has managed to lay them in a number of literary magazines including The Faircloth Review, Message in a Bottle, Shot Glass Journal, Turbulence, The Autumn Sound Review, Torrid Literature Journal and Crack the Spine, amongst others.

subset: commoncrawl