Elemental Paper Cuts
I know we are busy people here on the Hive blockchain. So much scrolling and upvoting to do. Maybe you don't have the time to read, but perhaps you have time to listen, while scroll or even work on your own post. To be honest, I think the audio blog is a much richer experience. So click on in and see if I can distract you from work, work, work. Click here to listen. Or click on my face:)
Tic-Tock-Tic
Days pass
a hundred whispered words
teardrops
and unanswered wishes
Months pass
a thousand whispered words
teardrops
and unanswered wishes
Tic-tock-tic …
Seasons pass
a million whispered words
teardrops
and unanswered wishes
Tic-tock-tic …
Years pass …
Well, you see where I’m going with this
Tic-Tock-Tic was the first poem I wrote outside of grade school. Yes, I had suffered a romantic disappointment and was a tad bit shattered by it, at the time. I know hardly enlightened, but it was what it was, and I learned from the experience.
The poem was meant to represent the chronic suffering that the pining of unrequited love can wreak on an individual. It was also meant to make fun of my seriousness over the whole matter. It really was time for me to let it go. This melodramatic piece of word play was not just my first poem, but my first poem on the way to many. many more; it was also step one to healing over the said romantic disappointment.
It wasn't just the rejection that hurt, sure that hurt a lot. But as the seasons passed, I never actually ever got to years, thankfully, But as the seasons passed, poetry claimed me and through verse, free and otherwise, and with more than little bit of meditation, I freed myself from a fascination that really wasn't worth it and discovered a creativity I had no idea existed inside me.
Become Elemental
the red dress is a cracked bell jar
the vacuum seal on your psyche split
fraying ends and swaying swathes
crumble and become one with transient sands
there is no waiting
there is only decay
incidental transformation
will you free yourself of this vestment
abandon thread-bare hope and passions
or be ground down, join the desert tides
there is a blue beauty to the melancholy
you have his memory, your lunar emotions
you have the dunes of bitterness and longing
to shift between, to erode and sand-blast
what is left of your youth
still and listen
a finer earth calls to you
above it all is an oasis
only those that have abandoned cloaks
heavy and empty illusions
can transcend to
shed the red dress
cross the coarse abyss
let the wind nourish your limbs
dissolve desires to energetic balm
dissipate hurts to myth
the red dress is a hair-shirt
his memory a millstone
free yourself from the heavy thorns
of time and regret
bare yourself
become elemental
I once had an an online critic tell me my life sucks. I was feeling pretty good at that moment, and so I asked him how he possibly knew this. He replied he had read my poetry. So there I sat teetering between being grateful that someone had indeed taken the time to read enough of my word to conclude I was living a miserable Sylvia Plath-type existence; and also wanting to explain that no .. the poems he'd read were just a slice of my emotional range, and that most of the time I do not walk about like a heart-sick emo, my blue suede shoes splotchy from my own tears.
Rather poems are emotional snapshots for a poet, for this poet anyways. Poems tell the reader how the writer was feeling at any one given moment. They do not tell you how a poet feels all the time. Not even close. We tend to immortalize the more heightened emotional moments in our writing. A whole collection of the most forlorn, unrequited love poetry can be composed by one jolly happy-go-lucky individual, whenever he is not stabbing at his own heart with his metaphorical quill.
Poetry can brings out our deeper emotions and some of them are sad, and even dark and desperate. A poet's job is to be truthful about her emotions and thoughts, to be vulnerable, but that doesn't mean we are constantly morose. But it does mean we have to brave enough to be seen, if only through our words, to be truly seen and to be brave enough to be examined.
Still Life and Paper Cuts
placed on a platter for your enjoyment
flesh and fowl, a feather or two
papyrus and quill
goblets fill from a myriad
of my flowing paper cuts
drink up the scene, eat your fill
take your leave, don’t bother with farewells
thank you’s or even a bow
in your pocket, smuggled cartilage
some stolen cutlery
saw the wishbone down, smash it to dust
whitewash your chambers with mealy debris
ink pots fill from my flowing paper cuts
drink up the scene
Still Life and Paper Cuts is one of my favorite poems in Domesticate the Heavens, because when I write a poem and put it out to the world, to love or hate, to judge, to be judge over; I hope I laid it all out, offered a banquet of my thoughts and emotion. Yes, I admit. I had to have felt sad to write a poem like this. I admit I love and when that love is lost, so to speak. Love is never really lost, but it sure can feel that way. I admit to truly missing another human being.
But guess what, I felt a little less sad after having written Still Life and Paper Cuts. Actually a lot less. Poetry, like our dreams, meditation, and prayer is mind medication.The poem you write, regardless of how it is received, or what others assume about you because of your words; the poem you write will heal and enlighten as long as you do your best to fill your verse with truth. Writing to express yourself and create. You truth.
There is room for all kinds of poetry; there is room for all kinds of creativity. But one thing for certain, poetry and art create a little more room in you, your mind.
81
To the minimalist
The word mars the purity of the page
To the creator
The story could never be long enough
Nor the page
The Tao is infinitely immense
She has space and time
For both the creator and the minimalist
The master
When called upon to defend her teachings
Has nothing to defend
She is likely to remain silent
For in the act of defence
She is no longer a master
The master does not possess
What needs defending
She does not desire what needs winning
She embraces the Tao
The Tao encompasses all
The master possesses all by embracing the Tao
When you embrace your own creativity and a nameless faith, go ahead and name it if you must, but remember, you can't define it, for it is the root of all creativity. How can that be defined? But when we embrace creativity without expectation, we inevitably find truth, beauty, and healing along the Way.
So put that pen to paper and write yourself some poetry and let the world feast on it as it may.
***
Words and Images are my own.
Tic-Tock-Tic is published in Strays. Become Elemental is published in Monsters, Avatars, and Angels. Still Life and Paper Cuts is published Domesticate the Heavens. 81, is published in 81, Poems from the Tao. and the Wisp are available in paperback or digital through amazon and your local libraries and bookstores. Click on any title below to further explore and support my writing.
Excellent poetry selections in there today. I guess that critic did take the time to read your poetry and decide that your life must really suck! lol I think it's remarkable that you still have the poem you first wrote just out of grade school. I would have a hard time finding anything of mine from those days.
You're great at what you do, and are great at expressing emotions in words. Not something I've ever been very adept at doing myself!
Thank you so much. It was quite a few years out of grade school, but the first poem I ever put online. If it wasn't for the critics whatever would we talk about:)
Another great poem you had shared, I much more feel the message of the poem when you are the one author reading it to us.
Thank you:)
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Congratulations @prydefoltz! You received a personal badge!
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Whenever we read poetry and listen to it, we go into a different world. It's much more interesting and I like it.