A Little Poem to Remind Us

25 Apr

Today is Pay It Forward Day. Some may pay for another’s lunch, a coffee or maybe a mortgage payment. We have free poems for you to print out and give away, too. (Click the Pen It Forward Poems tab for all the files in various formats.)

PayItForwardBillSometimes the paradox of humanity overwhelms me. Bombers and heroes, destroyers and healers within the same Boston block. Strangers making miracles, tying off veins, sharing their homes with strangers. People can be heart-breakingly kind and selfless. Yet daily the media doesn’t let us forget our capacity for cruelty and utter selfishness. Every day seems an opportunity to give up on humankind. And yet, there’s that word: kind.

Whether you hand out a poem (or fifty) or none tomorrow, remember this: we’re all in this together. None of us gets out alive. Our kindness is the best thing we have going for us.

Love to all, kind humans.

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Pen It Forward Poems: Ready for Download

22 Apr

With four days before Pay It Forward Day (Thursday, April 25), we’ve added a new page: Pen It Forward Poems! Hundreds of 14-word poems are formatted as .doc, .rtf and HTML, and we’ve added colorful templates you can use to write or to print your chosen poems.

Check back often to download additional poems before the 25th.

Loving kindness to all!

PayItForwardBill

 

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Pay it Forward with a Poem

12 Apr

or a teeny-tiny-micro story. Yes, 14 Words for Love’s next big thing, Pen It Forward , is going strong as a Facebook event PayItForwardBill

Join the fun there until April 25, when we’ll take some or all those creative lines and gift them to the world.

We’re so very grateful to Liesl Dineen for sharing her immense and multi-faceted creativity with us. Look for a new page here within the next two days. On it you’ll find different file formats so that you can download our communal currency. Yeah, money’s okay… but a 14-word creation on our play tender can feed a lot of souls.

Save the Date: Pen it Forward on April 25!

10 Apr

With the unimagined success of 14 Words for Love on Valentine’s Day barely behind us, we are shifting gears into our next 14 Words project: Pen it Forward.

Of course, you can use pencil or marker or paintbrush or vocal chords. The only “structure” — and as you know, we’re really all about the art and giving it away, less about structure — is that you write a 14-word poem or story or song and pass it forward to someone. Anyone. More than one person, even better!

Pay It Forward is Thursday, April 25 this year. It seems like a wonderful day to send your 14-word creations into the world.

Check back here for a 14 Words for Love template — a really cool and colorful piece of currency you can print and “pay” forward!

 

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Penultimate Preparations for LOVE

13 Feb
A sampling of 500 I plan to give away tomorrow

A sampling of 500 I plan to give away tomorrow

Tomorrow is the day!! Between virtually cutting and pasting more and more beautiful, tragic, silly, hit-you-in-the-gut poems (I swear, they get better and better so go to the Get Love Here tab and see for yourself) into electronic files, I’m glueing like a boss!

Of course, there’s no need to make valentines in order to give out some love… the poem files are in three formats (.doc, .txt and html). Slice and dice however you’d like. Even if you only have time to print out a page, cut them up or make them into labels, consider passing some out. Pay it forward. Give something with no expectations.

In addition to news reports, there’s plenty of private pain out there and in our own homes. Sometimes it’s just one small gesture like a smile or a 14-word poem. (Did I just make a 14-word poem?)

All love to you! Report back with stories, photos and video!!

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Cutting and Pasting Old School

10 Feb

DSC_7984DSC_7985

Many of you have asked for the 14-word poems so that you can print them to distribute in your communities.  Thanks to my husband’s skills and generosity, you now have them in three different forms. Go to the Get Love Now tab for .doc, .txt and HTML files.

As I thought about how to hand out our poems, I remembered how much I enjoyed making a heart template, tracing around it and cutting it out of pink or red construction paper. Given that I plan to hand out around 500 poems, I bought pre-packaged (perfectly-shaped) hearts at a craft store.

As I began to set things up, I realized that cutting and pasting 500 poems was a little more time intensive than I thought.

Again, family to the rescue: My eldest daughter offered her assistance and that of her two older daughters. My teenager helped without being asked.

How can I thank my family enough? I’ll post a photo of them, heads-down, serious about this thing called love.

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