My kids let me sleep until 10:45. Seriously. 10:45!!! For the past twenty minutes, I’ve been stumbling around in a state of bizarre wakefulness. (Is this what “rested” feels like? For real? Then why on earth do you bother walking down the street, when you could be swinging around the light posts like Gene-freakin’-Kelly? “I’m siiiingin’ in the rain! I’m SIIINGIN’ in the rain! Okay. I’ll stop.)
Anyway, after the immediate panic that ninjas had breached our domestic fortress and carried off the royal heirs, and the overwhelming guilt experienced by any over-sleeper with an endless to-do list, I fixed a coffee, opened my laptop, and….
Yeah, about that much. I’ve got a connecting scene for The Project that needs writing, but not today. My kids gave me almost three extra hours of sleep, this morning, so it would be bad form to check out on them, now. My daughter thinks it’s hilarious when I become The Writer Zombie. My son? Not so much. Some posts I’ve read recently about parenting, race theory, and quiet activism would ordinarily have inspired me to write my thoughts on the subjects, here…. But, again, no Writer Zombies allowed. Not today. So, instead, you get the fifth (and likely last) poem I have written in my adult life. I was doing some experiments with metre, trying to capture the stilted rush of forced disclosure without compromising flow (hah!). It was for a school assignment, and… yeah. Here it is. Laugh at will. I’m off to take the royal heirs to the swimming pool!
My Self in Red
Thick petals close
Over memory barbs,
The rose kisses sweet
On my neck,
My skin, desperate
For love like air.
I pull tight and safe
A bud smooth and new,
Unbruised.
But it slips through my fingers,
Lost.
Thick petals fall
Over tumulted earth
I tremble, exposed
In the briar.
Rose thorns seduce me.
Bright pain beckons
Me follow and hide
And crouch here imprisoned,
Enslaved.
But I push my way through them,
Free.
I am a rose
With memories barbed. Their
Thorns kiss souvenirs
On my id.
But love marks my stem,
Veins my petals,
Fills my scored heart with
Crayon bright red.
Enfolded
In love, within and outside,
Fragmented whole
I grow.
© Desi S. Valentine, 2012
As you can see, I am so not a poet. It was a fun experiment, though, for whatever that’s worth. Happy Sunday, everybody!
Can’t tell you much about poetry (not even in Spanish), but I can tell you I like the way it sounds. Not much of an opinion, I know.
Say hello to the royal heirs – by the way, it’s a beautiful picture there in your avatar. Congratulations.
Thanks, Gustavo :-) You’re a sweetheart.
Reblogged this on 19angwenyi's Blog.
You’re a writer, Desi. Poetic license reigns–
arrange your words to suit your muse. To paraphrase Vonnegut,
write to please yourself…
I agree with you, Lindy Lee. We all need to write to please ourselves, which makes me question the utility of writing courses. I’m learning!
Does anyone ever get enough rest, I find being in a state of ‘peace of mind’ is better than rest but it to wanes.
Memory barbs, dam!
I know nothing of flow, structure or of poetic devices in general nor do I care to. I do know, so I tell myself, about: imagery, every emotion under the sun as well as proxy feelings, truth, lies, love, easiness, anger, fright, scar tissue, sin, sinful ….to infinity, To me this reads, speaks to ‘separation’. Of being separated from expectations, or wants and desires. But that’s just me. ……….memory barbs, dam!.
Peace of mind is much harder to come by than rest, which basically means I’m doomed. I’ll take what I can get!
When I write story, I hear the narrator telling me what happened, until the story draws me in and I can feel the feelings and smell the smells, and my skin is their skin; the storyteller’s too. When I write poetry, I hear music. I hear bodies stretch and fold. And peeling away their coverings, one staff or bar at a time, feels like a violation, you know? I’d rather just have the music, dressed however it’s dressed, and write it in, where it fits, in the storyteller’s story. If that makes any sense. :-)
It makes sense,
Think am the opposite. I never know where it is am going when I start nor what the end will bring or if the end is the ‘wind’. But, then again everything I do is sketchy scribble. Besides nothing is every what it is meant to be.
Opposite but similar, I think. I never know where it’s going, either, but while I’m in it there is nothing sketchy or scribbly about it. The trick, for me, is to get all that lurid depth and colour out into the words. Tricky, that. Almost as tricky as finding my way back in, once I’ve had to come out to laundry, or some equally ridiculous terrestrial necessity. I don’t think we ever get to know, ahead of time, or even when it’s done, what it is meant to be.
Real rest is disorienting. I got to sleep in one morning and I told the husband I felt like I was tingling. I think it was my body rejoicing :)
I know, right? And I regained skills I’d thought were gone forever, like remembering where I’d put my keys and the names of all of the characters in whatever Geronimo Stilton spinoff my daughter is reading, right now. Trippy….
My darling, your prose is deeply poetic. Don’t kid yourself: you’re a poet even when you’re ‘not trying’.
xoxo
((hugs)) Thanks, Kathryn. I like metaphor. I like imagery. But I’m apparently allergic to poetry. There are worse things, I suppose. :-)
you know that you have seeded ‘singing in the rain’ into my brain and now i am going to be humming it ALL NIGHT LONG!!! thank you writing zombie mama! c
Awesomeness. More people should sing “Singin’ In the Rain”. It’s impossible not to smile while you’re singing it!
I’m impressed. most of my poetry is about farting inanimate objects and gassy birds.
Hahahah! I think a poem about feathers and flatulence would have been more entertaining!
This is awesome. I do the same thing when I can’t think of anything to post. Poems are like my back up blogs. Nice post and cool blog.
Thanks! I don’t write poetry, as a general rule. I’m so much more comfortable with prose. But, hey, it was there, and the swimming pool was waiting, so why not, right?