The Fruitcake Lady – Wonderfully Funny
Like this:
I’m a spirit that has come {part I}
“I’m a spirit that has come a long way. Try to destroy me, you’ll find I’m permanent. I’ll live on …./….
I am the goddess of all things. I am about to give birth
to beauty, migrants, savage light of every kind. /….“
~Alice Notley, from Eurynome’s Sandals, in The Best American Poetry 2010.
I am one of those people who have strange falling-domino-like experiences in my life. I find breadcrumbs, figuratively speaking, much like those in children’s stories to help them get home; except, my breadcrumbs are usually leading me forward into an unknown. These falling-domino breadcrumbs are specific events that link together and lead me down a certain curiosity-filled path.
The experiences resemble stories of the ancient Greek Oracles, Roman Deities, the Christian God, or the Hand of Fate. Each one symbolic and representative of the human experience where an Unknown Other works to mold the destiny of man. My goal, in the next several posts, is to share these experiences with my readers.
*****
I was barely twenty-one when I experienced my first major ‘breadcrumb’ trail that felt like an otherworldly intervention. It started with the television show, Beauty and the Beast. Not the children’s cartoon, but the “monster-under-the-tunnels-of-the-city-made-for-prime-time” adult version. I watched the show during the three seasons it was on and enjoyed the storyline and the romantic episodic readings of poetry. I didn’t think much more about it until a year down the road when I was rummaging through a music store’s clearance shelves and came across a soundtrack tape of the show. I bought it and listened to it regularly. Eventually, curious about the strange and beautiful poetry, I looked-up the names of the writer’s and poet’s listed on the tape. This led me to the name of poet Rainer M. Rilke.
Now, fast forward another few months down the line: I’m standing in a bookstore looking at a book of poems on the shelf by Rainer Rilke. I immediately feel a bright “ah-ha spark” of recognition and believe I’m supposed to read his work. I bought Letters to a Young Poet and Uncollected Poems that day (with a follow-up of Sonnets to Orpheus and Stories of God a few months later). These books, quite literally, changed my life by leading me into the area of poetry as emotional catharsis and artistic expression.
****
As a child of ten, I had a wonderful experience with a poet who came to teach at my school. He introduced poetry as a fun game, which I loved. I became enthralled enough to write a poem that was eventually “published.” Poetry was fun with words for me. I was attracted to poetry for a few years, but the type of playful-fun poetry I’d known disappeared.
My teen years had their share of dysfunction, confusion, and pain; but those traumas lent themselves to essays more than poetry.I ended up writing the typical I-hate-life and the-world-sucks type of stories for awhile, but no poetry. Poetry evaporated from my daily life. My twenties came, bringing with them a divorce, the effort to raise two small children alone, and dismal job opportunities that barely paid enough for us to live – poetry was the furthest thing from my mind. And then … I met Rilke.
It really was like that when I opened Letters to a Young Poet and started reading. Suddenly, the man Rilke was a living, tender breath, talking to me through passages like this:
…love your solitude and bear the pain of it without self-pity. The distance you feel from those around you should trouble you no more than your distance from the farthest stars. Be glad that you are growing, and realize that you cannot take anyone with you; be gentle with those who stay behind. ….. Find in a true and simple way what you have in common with them, which does not need to change when you yourself change and change again. When you see them, love life in a form that is not your own, and be kind to all the people who are afraid of their aloneness. (Worpswede, July 16, 1903 – Letters to a Young Poet)
What a truly beautiful encouragement! A poetic paragraph filled with the essence of the man, his voice speaking across the years to another in search of solace, as he gently gives of his understanding and wisdom. What wonderful advice to live by during a divorce – this perspective allowing room for the differences and the understanding that things must change, but that change need not happen filled with hate and malice at its center. Instead, a way of looking at the personal element of change in a new light that holds new hope for the future.
Perhaps the greatest element of Rilke’s work is his ability to find compassion for the self and others, and to then transmute that ability to his reader. He is a timeless voice of wisdom speaking across the years and cultures of the world:
I want to ask you, as clearly as I can, to bear with patience all that is unresolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were rooms yet to enter or books written in a foreign language. Don’t dig for answers that can’t be given you yet: you cannot live them now. For everything must be lived. Live the questions now, perhaps then, someday, you will gradually, without noticing, live into the answer. (Worpswede, July 16, 1903 – Letters to a Young Poet)
Reading Rilke is like stepping off the end of the earth, falling through the noise of modern life, and then landing in a cloud-like place of whispered mists and delicate beauty. This timeless quality breathes in all his work be it poems, letters, or stories. The presence of the poet Rilke is ingrown, deeply twined throughout the words and writing, his spirit defying separation. The work is Rilke and Rilke is the work – this is the red meat and open entrails of the poet as he speaks his truth in a moment of existence. His creation out of chaos bringing prophecy and immortality together in a few specific lines:
God Speaks
I am, you anxious one.
Don’t you sense me, ready to break
into being at your touch?
My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings
Can’t you see me standing before you
cloaked in stillness?
Hasn’t me longing ripened in you
from the beginning
as fruit ripens on a branch?I am the dream you are dreaming.
When you want to awaken, I am waiting.
I grow strong in the beauty you behold.
And with the silence of stars I enfold
your cities made by time. (The Book of Hours I, 19)
Rilke explores the Unknown Other that we all try to define in his poetry. Forsaking an effort at definition, Rilke delves into the actual presence and characteristics of the Unknown Other. His work doesn’t try to fit the artistic experience with labels, rather he walks with the deities and gods, allows them to speak as they will, asks them the questions we all want to ask: what does it mean? Why am I here? Are you real? His questions pay homage to the vast possibilities within the misting chaos while accepting the audience, the reader, as a fellow traveler in search of understanding.
This is the heart of poetry, the conjoining of poet, poems, and audience into a simultaneously gigantic and tiny wholeness. The poet speaks intimately with us and we with him, but in a mystical way he can also speak to all and we can hear the all giving its answer. Poetry, at once present and modern, also lingers elsewhere in a primordial state of rawness and blood.
*****
It is in the oddly mysterious falling-domino breadcrumbs that I find amazing things waiting just on the other side of chaos. And, maybe it’s simpler than what we imagine, maybe it happened just as the Pelasgian creation myth says it did….
In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos….
*****
Have you ever had your own “falling-domino breadcrumb” experience? Would you like to share?
How do you see poetry? What does it mean to you in this moment of time?
Have you ever read Rilke? What are your thoughts on his work? Favorite passages?
Artwork EurynomeJanto.jpg courtesy of www.paleothea.com.
For more information on Eurynome, please visit: www.paleothea.com or Eurynome at Wikipedia
For more information and/or to order books by Rainer M. Rilke, please visit the following sources:
Rilke Bio at Poets.org Rilke Books at Amazon Rilke at Wikipedia Rilke at PoemHunter.com
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- Rainer Maria Rilke “Letters to a Young Poet” (honorehonorhonour.wordpress.com)
Like this:
Ten Ways to Say Nothing
One day a wolf came.
Two – many people turned blind eyes.
Three eyes total if you count intuition.
Fore Score and Forever are meaningless taken out of context.
Five boys meant more than
Six days of penance would cure.
Seven is the number assigned to God>
Eight has no special meaning, except now-and-then it’s
added to One and becomes Nine – One less than
Ten. And then, Ten is just beginning again!
~November 2001, talking without saying anything! For fun!
Like this:
Father Time in Dementia
Posted by Marissa in Poesye, postaweek2011, vis~a~vis on November 25, 2011
Who will save us from
this shifting dance within his mind?
This rapid movement, changing beat,
confusing tempo . . .
Tell the garden fairies
to cease their screaming
halt all gyrations until we find
the answer: What is this now happening,
this rollicking-flow-movement within his mind?
Run fast, young lad, and tell the praying ladies
at the universal parsonage . . . increase your praying
and someone call the doctor –
we may need medication this time.
The gypsy ladies must come
dancing to tambourines and golden chimes.
Sing a song of ever ending, hurry,
let’s slay the ghost of Father Time!
Quick! Young lady, bring a silver dagger
and a gold pocket watch five minutes fast
along with a bottle of Ambers whine.
Quick! Sing the song of fast correction
Hurry, we all know he’s lost his mind!
That was close – Yes!
That was close Sir, the clock
has stopped at quarter to nine.
At last we’ve ended the wild devastation
of raging, aging Father Time.
~November 2011
(Just for the fun of it!)
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- Calling God “Father” in Times of Anguish-by Mark D. Roberts (trinityspeaks.wordpress.com)
Like this:
magnitude to microcosm
~for J
We are talking
miles apart
on the phone, as if
change never
happened, as
old friends do
from time to time.
A conversation
about truth –
(elusive fiend)
and I can hear
you wrapped
in sadness
for all you never
found, felt
you should
become, believe
you should have been
You say
you have
let the world down.
I say
it’s too big to notice.
Break down
the feeling – from
magnitude to
microcosm.
At that
cellular level
we are born, re-Born
every day.
Truth hides
in the quiet
shadows – It knows
that everyday
you are busy
re-Becoming
who you are.
~November 2011
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- Solyndra: A Microcosm of Market Intervention (rogueoperator.wordpress.com)
Like this:
Borrowing Without Asking
Looking out
the kitchen window
at the yard
next door
abandoned.
Grass
grows taller
old laughter smiles
a lost echo.
The birds
are unaware.
Singing
they fly down
to steal lunch
hidden in the grass.
Unaware of
property, ownership,
human rules –
They take liberties –
perch on the front
porch swing, borrowing
without asking –
Singing the day
away, perched
on the last
sad item
previous owners
left behind.
~November 2011
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Like this:
for Luck
We have walked these
paths a hundred
times – since my little legs
first stood, learned movement,
learned to walk beside you.
The path,
actually two – defined
in a way that speaks
of distance and history. We
will walk the path well-worn
or
if you indulge me
the one slightly overgrown,
briars lining the edges,
large towering stalks
blackberries in season,
if the day is right.
This path – the second one,
less used, steeper,
with jagged rocks
buried in the dirt
of what is now more gully
than walking path. But
this is where
Grandpa and I checked
rabbit gums for a catch,
he letting me
slide the little door,
up and open,
to peer inside.
This ground grew
my love of rabbits –
I never understood,
never equated the
bait-caught prey
with an animal dying.
The rabbits foot,
for luck,
a joke, because
death
had no meaning to me then.
~~November 2011
Like this:
Epitome Filial
Posted by Marissa in Poesye, postaweek2011, vis~a~vis on November 9, 2011
When you are
gone, there will be
no one to fight,
struggle, rebel against.
Instead
only the blank space
where the wall of you
once stood – the line
drawn, marked,
painted red – the fight
a devouring effort
between us. But
when you are gone –
Death will let go
that loud cackle,
slap his thigh,
and crow our names –
There will be only
the blank space
hollow-cold
empty from your leaving
against which
I push
and when you
are gone
there will be
no one to stop me
from falling.
~November, 2011
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Like this:
winter morning memory
Posted by Marissa in Poesye, postaweek2011, vis~a~vis on November 5, 2011
~for my grandfather
He is waiting, sitting
quietly beside the small wood stove –
today, burning coal,
turned roaring-orange red.
Two old and wrinkled hands
hold a little girls dress,;
being warmed by the fire
that he built – kindling, coal-
stoked for good measure.
He’s been up for hours
by the time I slide from bed,
go to stand by the stove –
slip on the warm clothes.
Every winter morning –
this act of quiet love,
repeated as ritual
Until spring comes again and
the stove grows cold.
~November 2011
Like this:
of Broken Rooms
~for P
{Art: Isolation by Ina Mar (c) Adagp, Paris}
There is deep silence here ~
Forlorn-magic once spoke
whispered kisses, your name
crossing my lips, a breath only
against the skin – soft, taut, strong skin
of your neck, arms, chest. In
the dark shadows of broken rooms,
building a home of – destruction first. Then,
building a home of hope of – the sheets were clean,
the warm-blood-wood walls
holding secrets, ours and earlier, generations before us
these walls were closing in on the hearts beating rapid,
percussion, the sounds of fluttering clicking time
in a dark house beside a church. Sacrilegious – passion
burning, life burning death — in the graveyard
at the edge of a hill – a ghost-memory whispers, soft
edible cries, choking, sobbing – whisper, whisper
of wings. Forlorn-angels once walked
in the soft dew-grass, wet droplets clinging
to porcelain animals, mysteries, dead flowers.
This sweet-heated moisture, muscle, brushing
of skin against skin – the sheets were clean,
destruction, chaos building – building
into ecstasy, into orgasm, into ending.
Our secret,
our bodies – so deliciously warm, wrapped, entwined
in a space of time
where forlorn magical angels sing, wing-beats
lifting our names above the graves.
There is a deep memory here ~
~October, 2011
Artwork: Isolation by Ina Mar (c) Adagp, Paris. Please visit her website at: http://www.redbubble.com/people/ina-mar/works/6081284-isolation
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Like this:
Water I
Posted by Marissa in Poesye, postaweek2011, vis~a~vis on October 20, 2011
This one whisper
of a soft morning sunrise
belongs to you. Dew on
the grass, a trembling essence,
suddenly gone.
Water rules the world
one drop at a time.
This one memory
of a cold winter sunset
belongs to you. Ice slides
across broken earth,
filling the cracks
with crystals clear.
Water rules the world
one drop at a time
Hush……..Hush! Listen,
this water belongs to you,
rules the world.
We are only salt, spirit, spark, water –
and we are
pouring our lives out
into everything and nothingness
one drop at a time.
~October 2011
Artwork: Rain Princess by Leonid Afremov. For more information about the artist and to see more artwork, please visit here.
Like this:
Yesterday
~for my Sister
The door
to yesterday opens –
creaks at the hinges.
In another time
we are sitting, playing
in burnished sand –
barely-born, fresh presence,
two toddlers, laughing
into growing, into years later
we will run
past the familiar
in search of more.
***
The dilapidated bridge –
the one we walked
across into freedom –
still stands.
Straw-thatch, mud-glue
built across
dangerous-deep
ravines of memory –
We agree
never look down
never look back
march forward
Forget
those long dusty days
when we
were still children.
Forget
every smile we lost
every tear we cried.
It’s only water across skin,
nothing more.
October 2011
Artwork, Final Destination, by Photodream Art. By Den Bosch, Noord Brabant – Netherlands. Please visit here to see more about this artist and to see other artwork.
Like this:
nom de Plume
I’ve been thinking about my “name issue” for a few months,wondering how to deal with it, and if I should write a post about it. I’m home from work today, sick, and feeling terrible. So, of course, it seems like the perfect time to address the issue. Who am I – why do I have so many names – and which name should be on my Facebook Profile?
I’ve been a published writer in some form or fashion for the past 18 years. I started writing during my young “hate the world and everyone in it” period that I think most writer’s go through. My writing was good, but often filled with a violent aspect or harsh edge that sometimes involved living family members (the dead ones didn’t worry me so much). I decided to write under a nom de Plume (pseudonym, or Pen Name) during this time to avoid accidentally hurting or embarrassing family, friends, etc. that might read the work and recognize it’s source.
I wrote under the pseudonym, Orianna Tierney, for the first year or two. It was a good experience that allowed me to write in a free, unrestricted manner without self-censorship. I believe a pseudonym was necessary for me to actually step outside self-censorship and write honestly during this time. And, I remain an advocate of using a pseudonym as a means of reaching into your deepest, darkest self to find the honesty for the page. I still believe my writing and growth as a writer are better because I initially chose to write under an un-recognizable name. My first intense, multilayered works were written and published during my “Orianna” period.
I was writing daily after the Orianna years and my writing quickly grew along with me as a person. The works, primarily poetry and essays at this time, started to grow and change. I understood the development of technique and the expanding substance of my work. The work became more serious and important to me as did the name under which I wrote. I adopted Marissa as my pseudonym in 1995. It was a creative re-visioning of my true first name, Margaret, and my true last name of Owen. So, Marissa Owen evolved as a nom de Plume that felt more real than my real name sometimes. (As an aside, I often contemplated legally changing my first name to Marissa, as I much prefer it, but decided to keep it due to family connections and memories.)
Writing as Marissa felt totally natural, and I came to see the writer side of me as Marissa. Most of my first, truly important publications were under this name. It was the name my writer and poet friends knew, and the one I went by with my editors. And, it was the name used for all my literary efforts. So, in an age before technology, living as a divorced mother and a writer, life was going pretty good and I was content as Marissa.
Then, three years later, in 1998, I met and decided to marry my current husband. It was my first real “problem” with the name, but this time is was about my last name rather than my first. It took a lot of soul-searching to take my new husbands last name. I went through several months of arguing with myself on whether, and if so, how, to integrate last names. I debated on the, then popular, dash-hyphenating the two last names. After all, my children both had the last name Owen, and all my writing was published under the name Owen. In short, it was a pain-in-the-ass decision.
Eventually I made the decision -love and my desire to always be moving forward won the day. I became Colleen Mullins in real life and Marissa Mullins in my writing circles and and on paper. I had reached the place of perfection, no need to change pseudonyms ever again … and then, ten years later, along came Facebook.
I was introduced to Facebook in 2008. Suddenly, I was pulling my maiden name of Steadman out of the closet and dusting it off. How else would childhood schoolmates be able to find me? It was amazingly strange when I set up an account with my maiden name in the middle – I gave that name up at the age of 14 and never expected to use it again. Again, a very surreal experience.
Many people from school, family members, and old friends have found me on Facebook. It’s been a wonderful experience and I’m very happy to be “reunited” with so many people. BUT, in the last 4 years there have been some changes that lead me to question my use of Name on Facebook. My writings (those submitted for publication in hard-copy and those on the web) are under Marissa. I’ve become addicted to Twitter and am part of a large literary group there under the name Marissa. So, what name is it to be?
Since I would answer to the call of Marissa as quickly as I would answer to the call of Colleen, and since the greater part of me at present identifies with Marissa over Margaret and would never use my maiden name anywhere other than Facebook…
I’ve decided to combine the two, while combining my world of old friends and my current world of writing and life in the automotive realm, it just seems logical for me to go by Marissa Colleen Mullins on Facebook and link all my accounts! There, it’s done! My Facebook is name updated and now you know why! Blessings to everyone – regardless of by which name you know me!~
~What about you? Do you write under a pseudonym? Have you ever thought about it?
~Are your Facebook and Twitter linked? What do you think of Social Media?
~Any amazing stories of Facebook or Twitter out there? Something amazing or uncommon?
~Keep Writing!
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Like this:
One American Soldier (I)
I am writing this a few minutes after midnight on September 11, 2011. The tenth anniversary of an event so tragic and destructive that it is known worldwide simply as “9-11.”
Almost everyone has a 9-11 story to tell – a pivotal moment when their personal life came to an abrupt halt and suddenly collided with universal differences, political-religious ideologies, and intentional terrorism.A simple fall day, colored by the blood of family and friends, now defines a generation and its place in American history.
The events of September 11, 2001 – the meaningless destruction, overwhelming loss, intense sorrow, amazing courage, riveting compassion, and dark anger – play through our minds like a Technicolor movie. That day remains frozen in the slow motion replay of my memories just like all other Americans. But, this is not about 9-11 and my memories of that day. This is about one American soldier.
1986: Laser Light Show at Stone Mountain, Georgia
I was listening to the radio a few days ago when the Lee Greenwood song, “Proud to Be An American,” started playing. My eyes misted in tears as a vivid memory from twenty-five years ago played through my mind. In the Summer of 1986 I was sitting on the grass lawn at Stone Mountain, GA with my then-husband, my two-year-old daughter and my 9-month-old son waiting for the Laser Light Show to begin.
It was our first trip to Stone Mountain Park, following a move to Atlanta the previous year because of a job transfer, and we had a wonderful day visiting the park features and nature trails with the children. We settled down on a blanket on the lawn in front of the mountain and watched a beautiful laser light show (which was a big deal back then!) accompanied by a soundtrack of various songs.
The song, “Proud to Be An American,” began playing, the American Flag appeared on the side of the mountain, and fireworks exploded over our heads. It was a beautiful and inspiring end to the show.
My eyes filled with tears as I looked at my daughter, asleep beside me on the blanket, and then looked into my son’s eyes as he was nursing. I expected the fireworks to scare him, but they didn’t. He kept nursing and staring into my eyes as I sat there with tears rolling down my cheeks. I was overwhelmed by the joy in my life and the patriotic pride I felt as an American. I would never have imagined that, eighteen years later, my son would join the Army and go overseas to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan as a soldier.
On August 31, over seven years after the war in Iraq began, President Obama announced the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom with a withdrawal of combat troops. Obama emphasized that U.S. domestic problems, mainly the flailing economy and widespread unemployment, are more pressing matters to his country. The U.S. will continue to be a presence in Iraq, mainly with civilian contractors but also with a smaller military contingent of approximately 50,000 troops. The remaining troops are scheduled to leave Iraq by the end of 2011.
Read more: Iraq War Timeline, 2010 — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/iraq-timeline-2010.html#ixzz1XfYUxRyw
Artist: Lee Greenwood
Song: Proud To Be An American
If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I’d worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.I’d thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
‘ Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can’t take that away.And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there’s pride in every American heart,
and its time we stand and say.That I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.And I’m proud to be and American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
‘ Cause there ain’t no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.
Fact Sheet: Iraqi War
- Length of official combat operation, Operation Iraqi Freedom: March 20–May 1, 2003.
- Deployment: More than 300,000 coalition troops deployed to the Gulf region: about 255,000 U.S., 45,000 British, 2,000 Australian, and 200 Polish troops.
- Post-conflict peace-keeping forces: About 130,000 U.S. and 11,000 British troops were stationed in Iraq following official end of hostilities, May 1, 2003.About 49 countries have participated in some form in what was called the “coalition of the willing.” At its strongest, the coalition provided a total of 25% of the troops in Iraq. About 13 countries have withdrawn their personnel as of March 2006. Coalition forces remaining in Iraq in March 2006: Albania, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom
- U.S. casualties: Deaths March 20–May 1 (official end of hostilities): combat, 115; noncombat, 23; total, 138. Deaths March 20, 2003–Nov.9, 2006: combat, 2,275; noncombat, 562; total, 2,837. 134 civilian contractors were killed as of June 2006.
- U.S. soldiers wounded in action: 21,572 (Nov. 7, 2006).
- American POWs: 8 (6 captured on March 23, 2003, in Nasiriya; 2 pilots shot down on March 24 near Karbala). All were rescued.
- Coalition casualties: Britain, 119; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 17; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, 6; Slovakia, 3; El Salvador, 3; ; Thailand, 2; Estonia, 2; The Netherlands, 2; Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, and Latvia, 1 each (Oct. 24, 2006)
- U.S. cost of stationing troops in Iraq: in the first years, it was estimated at $4 billion per month, by 2006 it was $6 billion per month1
- Iraqi civilian deaths: over 55,000 (according to Iraq Body Count in Mar. 2006)
1. U.S. government figures
Sources: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), CNN, BBC, U.S. Dept. of Defense.
Read more: Fact Sheet: Iraqi War — Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908900.html#ixzz1XfpJ0xL8
Today we remember the victims of the 9-11 assault on our shores. Let us also be mindful that the number of deaths resulting from 9-11 continue to grow with each passing day.
It’s been ten years – it’s time to bring our children home!
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Like this:
Why, Yes, I Probably Do Have Misophonia, Now Stop Chewing Like That!
Finally, a name for the noise sensitivity that many of us have. Wonderful piece, funny and informative. Are you sensitive to noises??? Please go read the article! (Quietly!)
Why, Yes, I Probably Do Have Misophonia, Now Stop Chewing Like That!.
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Like this:
The Note
What can you know at thirteen
of letters of love, soft words
of declaration – pouring forth
gushing admiration for
a high-school Adonis?
I was vulnerable, feminine,
soft – everything you’d expect
from a girl-child in love.
Too sappy, sincere, honest,
she told me –
He’ll show it to everyone – No,
not this note. But…
sad-broken humor
the only way to avoid ridicule –
You MUST
play the jokester,
not the lover, she said.
(I acquiesced.)
Later, in dark rooms,
I re-read
the first note
that would have told you
I was enamored, in heart-felt awe,
of the boy-man you were becoming.
I thought of old stories -
how we laughed together
as children. Side-by-side,
uncommon neighbors,
toddler playmates – until
the time-memory slipped away
and We were gone.
~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~
Apology was the first step
those few years later – us
technically grown, adulthood -
failed marriages, our own children,
lessons learned and learning –
Living in dark places beneath
burning turmoil, we were Us
for a millisecond, a moment.
– Then, the dark night shifted
fell from place –
The Muses laughed,
threw complication
into the mix, Fate
danced through the shadows
bumping into Us
jostling Me and You — then
the time-memory slipped away
and We were gone.
~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~ * ~~~
We speak without voices –
typed-letters on a screen,
new notes
written twenty years later
in real time.
Now we are friends
as we were playmates – some
strange connective-bond built
in a sandbox –
before we could know
the game we live in,
the jokes Life plays
and the roads we would choose
to follow.
And, I am still thinking
about the note
I should have given you –
September 2011
Artwork: Chiaro di luna by Escha Van den bogerd. You may find more about the artist and other works here.
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Like this:
beginning
There’s a heavy, dark voice asking: What are you seeking? Why are you here?
My response rings through my ears, screams from my daily movements – I am here to find something I lost. I am looking for the beginning in the end.
Like this:
Wisdom
The Red Sun
blazes some new
truth – you fill
yourself up on
its hot-wet flow.
Turn, to walk away – wise
as your skin peels, flakes
away – like ash – nothing
but extra weight, you say.
The hair
on your head singes,
turns dark blue, slips
from your scalp,
strand by strand. Nothing
but aggravation, you say.
Your lips
start to tremble, puff
like popcorn, drop
away – nothing,
useless anyway, you
think. You have gained
wisdom – Everything
anyway, you think – Until
a cold voice blows by you,
moves you with a truer truth.
Nothing — it’s nothing – says
the shivering whisper
as you watch the red sun
fall dark from the sky
and the keeper of wisdom
laughs
aloud in the air,
the
world
becomes dark,
and you melt
into ice frozen
with knowledge.
~August 2011
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Like this:
The Art of Seeing
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. ~Jonathan Swift
If I were going to select one thing that makes the difference in a poet and their poetry, or in the daily life of an average man, it would be the vision with which that person looks at himself and the world around him.
Jonathan Swift, a prolific writer, (best known for the prose masterpiece, Gulliver’s Travels, and considered the foremost prose satirist in the English language*) gives a near perfect definition of (artistic-spiritual) vision when he says it is “the art of seeing what is invisible to others.”
The poet’s true gift is his ability to see these invisible elements and then translate them. An excellent poet will see deeper than the average person. He will use this deeper vision, take in the essence of truth before him, and then use the medium of language to translate what he sees with intense emotion and minute detail. All great and poignant poetry is about vision, translation, and audience.
Poetic Eyes
Imagine yourself as a child opening a birthday gift – you tear the paper off the box and find a large magnifying glass inside. The very first thing you do is go look at all the things you’re interested in with your new glass. You will see everything as before – but then, in a new way as the tiny elements of these things grow larger and clearer under magnification.
Now, imagine the poet, looking at everything in his world through a magnifying glass. He is already looking at the world around him, but he learns to tune his vision in such a way as to see deeper – as if he were holding a magnifying glass up in front of everything that catches his attention. This is how the poet “sees the invisible.”
Here is an example of detail from the poem, Death in Leamington, by John Betjeman:
She died in the upstairs bedroom
By the light of the evening star
That shone through the plate glass window
From over Leamington Spa.Beside her the lonely crochet
Lay patiently and unstirred,
But the fingers that would have worked it
Were dead as the spoken word.And Nurse came in with the tea-things
Breast high’ mid the stands and chairs –
But Nurse was alone with her own little soul,
And the things were alone with theirs./ …..
Betjeman uses a variety of poetic techniques in this excerpt, but pay special attention to his translation into imagery with meaning.
The death in Betjeman’s poem is recorded in slow-motion, each detail carefully carved in the readers mind, each small thing translated to perfection. We see the scene as the poet sees it – with the shared depth of sadness the poet experiences. He brings the moment to life in a vibrant, deep way which changes us, the reader, as we move through this episode with him. We see through his eyes.
Poetic Translation
The following poem is an example of a poet’s ability to use the smallest details, along with connotation, to create a vivid picture and joined experience with the reader. Robert Hayden is a master of experience translation in Those Winter Sundays:
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Hayden sees the past with his father in the new light of his own maturity. The poem explores the coldness (ingratitude) felt as a child and creates a mirroring effect with the coldness of the house.
The reader sees and feels the sadness, the understanding and regret, as the poet drills-down to the simple weekly experience. The poet is, at once, both child and adult speaking to us, telling us his story in a way that brings us inside of it with him. The words are translated into an experience for the reader.
Poetic Audience
A poet writes for himself to large degree. However, he writes in a fixed time and place – each decade belongs to the lingering poetic voices which have named it. This means that a poet must always be conscious of Audience.
The poem cannot exist away and aside from audience. It speaks from a place and time where others live, where history occurs, and the future becomes the past. In thinking of audience, we must bring time and place to the table, and also class, status, country, and world-view.
Audience, in the larger sense, is demonstrated perfectly by Allen Ginsberg in this excerpt from the poem, America:
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I’m not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there’s going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I’m perfectly right.
I won’t say the Lord’s Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven’t told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.
Ginsberg is speaking in and from a particular time in American history. His poems resonate strongly with people of that generation sharing similar experiences. They resonate now in a more general sense or as an example of defiance and rebellion to the status quo for people of a different culture or time.
Culture is a part of poem and audience alike. The following excerpts, by Gwendolyn Brooks and Sterling A. Brown speak with a strong voice that is both living in and speaking from a particular culture:
We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks
We Real Cool
The Pool Players
Seven at the Golden ShovelWe real cool. We
Left school. WeLurk Late. We
Strike straight. WeSing sin. We
Thin gin. WeJazz June. We
Die soon.
Excerpt from Riverbank Blues by Sterling A. Brown
A man git his feet set in a sticky mudbank,
A man git dis yellow water in his blood,
No need for hopin’, no need for doin’,
Muddy streams keep him fixed for good.Little Muddy, Big Muddy, Moreau and Osage,
Little Mary’s, Big Mary’s, Cedar Creek,
Flood deir muddy water roundabout a man’s roots,
Keep him soaked and stranded and git him weak./…../
Brown’s poem about the Mississippi River speaks of a local, rural culture that lives with the good and the bad of the river. His poem tolls a warning while speaking generally of danger and oppression, yet deals specifically with the danger and oppression locally in relation to the River.
A “good” poem is hard to define. There are variances, personal preferences, and socio-political elements that make definition impossible. However, we can see that the hallmark of good poetry – poetry that lasts and brings a voice to it’s people, culture, and generation – is a combination of poetic vision, translation, and audience. The poet writing with strong abilities in these areas will be heard. ~
“A culture is made – or destroyed – by its articulate voices.” ~Ayn Rand
ARTWORK: Red Rose by Karen M. Scovill, courtesy of www.fineartamerica.com. You can find out more about the artist and view other works here.
*from Wikipedia.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Please cite using (c) Marissa Mullins at Paucis Verbis, with a link to original content or page. Thank you!Identity
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