Hey, hey, Patti Bee
Thanks so much for telling me
To use erasers as picks on the ukulele
Bought a pack at the Dollar Tree
With small fingers picks go flying
So embarrassed, feel like crying
Erasers are large, can grip without trying
Love these playing tricks and I’m not lying
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
My ukulele and erasers used as a plectrum
Essential post (thanks to my friend Heather A) to read if you have an interest in neurodiversity, autism, feminism, thinking in a different way…
Here’s What Neurodiversity Is – And What It Means For Feminism
poetryatlas.com is mapping the world using poetry. Here is a link to my poem River Ramble and photo of the ibis along the Pithlachascotee River. Please contact Poetry Atlas if you have written a poem about a place or if you like a famous poem about a place, anywhere in the world! http://www.poetryatlas.com/poet…/poem/4851/river-ramble.html
I’ve been homeless
And I’ve been hungry
Often thought, “If only”
Mostly, I’ve been so lonely
Useless as Lantana
Although for many years lived on nuts and fruit
Would never refuse meat hunted for food
My life spattered with many regrets
Loneliness the result of relationship upsets
Dream house never a reality
Drove broken-down cars or rode subways
Clothing from thrift stores helped get jobs
Been so alone, my music merely unending sobs
Where is my home I often wonder
Spent too many years searching for love
Lonely, unwilling iconoclast
An abandoned, forsaken, outcast
If you think, though, I’m depressed
I’ll tell you my secret through the years
A self-reflective sense of humor
Has saved me from being a gloom-and-doomer
I’ve been homeless
And I’ve been hungry
Often thought, “If only”
Mostly, I’ve been so lonely
Useless as Lantana…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
F/Wanna crawl C/inside your Dm/body
Am/Crawl in C/side your D/mind
F/Bask in C/side your Dm/emotions
Am/Your sacred C/spirit to D/find
CHORUS (in couplets)
C/Oh for our F/dark eyes to D/meet
C/life F/berry-pie D/sweet
C/Oh to taste F/and finally D/feel
D/Baby let’s F/make it C/real
F/What are the C/magic words Dm/I need
Am/To make you C/part of D/me
F/Just want you C/real and Dm/solid
Am/Not some C/hell-sent D/fantasy
(CHORUS?)
(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Walmart in the morning, damp & rain in the afternoon, exaggerated dreams of composing but still, it’s a nice way to end the day!
Palm-sized
Box of mystery
Found half under the bed
Swollen with humidity
Slid the lid with effort
Crystal number nine
Prismed from fake light
At first I smiled
Thinking of John Lennon
Intoning “Number Nine Dream”
But then hesitated
What can it mean?
The Tao Te Ching says:
“To retreat after a job well done
Is heaven’s way”
Did you leave?
Was I your well-done job?
The I Ching says:
“Small influences
In a receding tide”
How similar the two are
No doubt now
You are gone
One last chance
The Tarot says:
“Nine is the Hermit
Only alone can one seek
The answer”
No! I know the question
Only with you could I find the answer
To hide the staring emptiness
I flick the light to dark
Left-handed waning crescent
Barely illuminating
Our once moon-struck bedroom
Safe starship buoyantly braving
The fourth dimension
But time’s clock stopped at nine
And now you are gone…
© Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Ten p.m. drapery of fog
Mere inches ahead
In an obscured backyard
Now unfamiliar territory
Feeling freaked
And not reassured
By my dogs’ growls
Peering through concealing mist
Goliath-sized creature
Wings slowly lifting
Smudging the sky
I close my eyes
As it ascends into the dense ceiling
Almost hearing the futile pounding
Of the waning crescent
On its stubborn Impenetrability
Dogs begin a low protest
Crescendoing into a shattering howl
Live Oaks dwarfed
By what can only be
A dragon in the fog …
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Image: The Mist Dragon, Andre Ma, Deviant Art
Privately told
To you solely
Arcane instructions
Involving an
Idiosyncratic
Grimoire
Lost on a local airline
To my chagrin
A puerile flaunting
Appeared in print
Revealing the location
Of the long-sought scroll
Do you now feel manly
And in control?
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Lambenore Grimoire White Magic
Mooding a song
Melody in place
Words sliding out
Letter by letter
Floating along
Rainy rivers of dreams
Residing in my cloudy mind
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Image: Sky over my swamp this morning
I.
Women keening
Seemingly without meaning
Here I am at eleven
Beloved grandfather
Sleeping in satin
Soon to be under the earth
Family gathered
For a solemn funeral
II.
When suddenly
Two of my aunts
Dad’s oldest sisters
Begin an eerie lament
These unobtrusive women
Wailing into the darkened morning
Teetering dangerously
On the grave’s edge
Covering the noise
Of the hydraulic mortuary lift
Lowering the coffin
Like lowering a car at the mechanic’s
III.
Eleven year old me
Trying not to cry
As their voices tore
The fabric of the sky
Suddenly the aunts
Throw themselves atop the coffin
Screaming in their native tongue
Their husbands and brothers
My dad included
Pulling them away
And here is me
Suddenly
Beginning to giggle
A nervous hiccupping
Trying to stifle it
Before mom sees and slaps my face
She, however, face buried in lacy hanky
Shoulders shaking in grief-struck crying
Looks at me
And I saw her eyes
Through dark lenses
Eyes crinkled in her own nervous laughter
And we hold hands trying not to laugh
Trying not to cry
We are a disgrace
But nerves care not who has died
And the machinery and keening and prayers
Drown out our insane sadness
Because crying and laughter
Are twin emotions
IV.
Later, dad says
I hope you laugh at my funeral
Much better to laugh than cry
But I think he didn’t understand
Despite his kindness
That keening wasn’t only a shrieking
But an ancient emotion
Tangled in female DNA
Tears or snorting laughter
Hysteria, like the word
Hysterectomy
A double X chromosome
Related to reproduction
Love, birth and death
V.
And some years later
Listening to Janis Joplin
Wailing at Monterrey
My neck hair tingling electrically
As I recognized her keening
For lost love, a lost man
And decades later
As Brittany Howard
Let out her wail
Not wanting to fight no more
I recognize that chain
As I keen with my sisters
Crying
Laughing
Singing
To release the pain
Of female loss…
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
poeturja 