Month: December 2017

WHERE IN THE WORLDS?

(song-in-progress/will use lots of Em, Bbm, minor all the way)

For those lost, especially during the holidays…

Searching for the road home
It winds past city trash
And wild sunflower dumps
Where rats scurry to miss
Practice shots by bored kids

Searching for the road home
House in my name
Blue collar crowded rooms
Weekend alcohol and rarely
A toke of smoke enhancing
A mood that is happy or
A mood that is fast sinking

Searching for the road home
Worked so hard but
It just doesn’t fit
Like denim jeans sewn
In a country of petites
The wrong country
For voluptuous ass and thighs
Lands where those women believe
Their US counterparts have no need to cry

Searching for the road home
Different geometric shapes
Different names for states
A jigsaw puzzle from childhood
Can’t find the right neighborhood

Searching for the road home
Swamp and forest surrounding
Approaching age spent owning
A ten-year-old car
Some musical strings
Boots, shirts, just things
No home

Can’t find the road home
There is no home
Where do I go from here…?

(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Galaxies Primordia

THE ROOT QUEEN

Re-post from 2 years ago (so we are in New Moon, not full as the poem states so the planting will take place around New Years).    Today’s pre-Christmas eve weather is 93% humidity and 79 degrees F. temperature.  Wishing you all healthy, happy, and fun holidays ❤

Embrace the heat

Of Winter Solstice

No white Christmas

Not even a cool, Florida day

But the prize is a full moon

Plant those roots:

Ginger, carrots, yams

Throw in some garlic and onions

What a goulash they will make

Hot, humid, but the Earth

Coating my hands as I dig

The sweet-smelling manure

That the dogs try to eat,

Makes up for the heat

Setting of the full moon

In the pink of dawn,

No longer high

Eyes of ginger

Gaze to the sky

Bulbs of garlic—

Vampires?

Prepare to die!

And soon there will be onions

Ready to fry!

 

© 2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Flowering ginger from CS garden

BAXTALO BITEDER RAT (Fortuitous Winter Solstice)

My annual poem about elegant customs adopted by most world cultures for a fortuitous Baxtalo Biteder Rat:

*

Vibrant clothes and lustrous boots

Honey dripping from fried melija corn

Candles glittering to light our way

After meditating in Neolithic darkness

A tranquil universe is born.

*

Chants and poems echoing

With a new moon making visible

Stars and planets joining Orion

In his nightly romp up high

Through the speckled night sky

Venus, Mars, Pleiades

(Those seven sisters smiling upon us).

*

Sacred herbs and evergreen

Red berries and dandelion wine

Crystals clear, crystals colorful

To remind us of the coming year.

*

Shortest day, longest night

A rebirth for the Earth

Reversal of the sun’s ebbing

The flow of life, a solar delight

A time to celebrate the Solstice

A word that means “Stand Still.”

*

Shuffle the Drom Ek Romani

My Way of One Gypsy cards

For guidance in the pristine year

Earth, Water, Air and Fire

Nothing new yet nothing to fear.

*

The meaning of this celebration?

A love and peace gestation

Cease all war and hatred

Send out only the kindest thoughts

Into the winter aethers

May they permeate the unity

Of the circle that is Earth…

*

© 2014 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja) Parallel Universe Cafe and Other Poems

IMAGE:  Winter Solstice, Pinterest, no attribution

 

SCHINUS TEREBINTHIFOLIUS

(Brazilian Pepper Tree/Florida Holly)

A HOLIDAY SONG FOR YOU
(to the tune of “Deck the Halls”)

Deck the trailer with Florida Holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
‘Tis the season to be jolly
Fa la la la la la la la la
Dress in sweaters oh, so tacky
Fa la la Fa la la la la la
Strum the strings, play something whacky
Fa la la la la la la la la…

(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: My mandolin and baritone ukulele with Florida Holly

SEASONAL SEMANTICS

I don’t understand

All the fuss

About Christmas semantics

Think of the holiday

A phenomenal time

For all religions

No matter the name

A time when people seem happier

Whether receiving

Or giving

Being together

Singing

Like long-ago pagans

Shivering in clammy caves

Unheated cottages

They knew

The shortest day

Heralded the return of the sun

And an easier life

With crops and colorful fields

A few months away

So those of you

Who want the Christ back in Christmas

Try to see

That it is a perfect holiday

Of love and peace

Whether navigating toy aisles in Walmart

Or baking secret-recipe cookies

For those we like

Or sharing smiles with strangers in Mickey D’s

Isn’t that Christ?

Isn’t he there?

Just stop and see

With tolerance

Don’t criticize

Don’t polarize

We all are sand

We are water and sunlight

We are invisible air

Life can be all right

Today I saw a homeless woman

Pushing her possessions

In a rusty shopping cart

A twist of red plastic poinsettia

Adorning the handle

She sees him too…

(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Season’s Decorations

A Hard Day’s Night: Solving a Beatles mystery with mathematics

Some nerd stuff to start the day!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-11-05/a-hard-days-night-how-mathematics-revealed-beatles-secret/9093348

Here’s a silly fragment of a song

(my apologies to bass players, I really LOVE bass & this is non-pejorative!)

Who do you think you are

Rocking hard with guitar

Get out of my face

You should be playing bass…

❤

 

TRIANGULATION

 

Searching neighborhood grids
Spreading state-to-state
Sectors of the country
Braving mountainous runaway truck ramps
Trekking through petroglyphic canyons
Primeval swamps
Gazing at city cell towers
Pulsing out your locale
Never an intimation
Move on
Over continental shelves
Navigating in Babel-ese
But still
No sign
Move on
Until
Standing on a deserted plain
Observatory open to
Moonlit wind
Telescope probing the aethers
The faintest buzz
Emits
Through navy blue
And yellow, too
Across the sky table
Looking like spilled sugar
In spiral glory
Then I hear you
In our milky galaxy
The pulse
The sign
You are mine
As you signal
From a triangular prison
And we whisper
Loneliness, be gone…

(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Milky Way, NASA

O HOLY MEMOIR
Why cry
When playing and singing
O Holy Night
I miss my high soprano
Soaring above the All City Choir
I cry for my youth
But hey
Think of that time
Tenth grade
I was being bullied in the girl’s bathroom
Bus tokens stolen
No boyfriend
Unknown autism making me
The school alien
Social Misfit of teenage hell
But that was then
And today, my voice
O Holy Voice
Gone
So I’m strumming the song
Didn’t know how to play
Ukulele in Tenth grade

But

And this is a positive
can play it now

Cracked singing
Like some boy entering puberty
High
Low
High-and-Low
Yet O Holy Night
Makes me cry
And I can’t see the chords
On the songbook by the time
I finish it
But WHY cry
Lost youth
Actually
My life is better than it was
In tenth grade
Yeah, I’m old
Yeah, really don’t do
Social niceties now or then
But a mere thousand miles away
Live my sons and granddaughter
Got enough money
To eat and dress and buy songbooks
So why
Why cry
For times past
When the truth is
Tenth grade sucked
Except for the voice
Soaring into the aethers
O Holy Memory…
(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Baritone, songbook, sunflower (planted by birds)

“TRANSIENT” IS NOT ANOTHER WORD FOR FREE SPIRIT

ONE:

I’ve been homeless
And hungry
Runaway
Merely a credit card away
From being a street person
Fortunate to have
Kind family and friends
Lucky to be
Drug and alcohol free
Favored to have volition
To retain ambition
And always remained sane
In my crazy, madcap way

TWO:

But I know
The untethered feeling
Of being alone
Unable to cope
Unable to return home
It’s like I went day tripping
To the astral plane
And suddenly the slender, silver cord
Connecting my soul to the body below
Snapped in two, severed
As I trailed the useless, dangling connection
Wanting so badly to return
But unable to do so
My mind, emotions, anger
Refused to permit it

THREE:

So I imagine
How scared the homeless may be
Like when I lived in Philly
The ones sleeping on steam grates
In twenty degree icy weather
My mom gently placing
Coats and socks
On the sleepers
While I do my part
When going to and from work
With piles of plastic sandwich bags
Filled with pennies
In the days when cash
Was the way
I would pay
And my pockets sagged from the change
One hundred pennies
Each bag
Giving to those still able to walk around
A woman wearing fake fur
Face crawling with lice
Blessed me and
I let her hug me
I don’t care what they spend it on
It’s for their comfort
Wish I could give more

FOUR:

But my heart hardened
Here in Florida
They camp in the woods
Behind my trailer
Owning bikes and designer clothes
They steal my copper pipes and
Whatever else brings money from recycling
And I feel hard
And angry
Angry with myself
For feeling cynical
About just how needy
Are these new homeless
And I think
How their living in my woods
Attracts rats
Because they shit and piss
On the loamy earth
Or toss garbage
And I say
I’m the working poor
I just want my little bit of life:
Internet, a few toys and books
And enough food and gas for the car
I never drive far
And who do they think they are????

FIVE:

So one day I’m strumming
Baritone ukulele
That sounds like a guitar
Strumming out my old folk songs
And wonder how my
Love of humanity
Wandered so far
From the days I believed
We could all live in love and peace
I feel afraid
Don’t want to leave this life
With hatred and suspicion
Enraged and spitting at others
Who are doing the best they can
To survive
What do I know of
The devastation in their lives
The people who hurt them
The cruelty of husbands and wives
Why am I judging them

SIX:

So I pull on my Wellies
Walk through the eons of fallen leaves
Find their campfire
Now deserted
I place the large plastic crate
With clothes and socks
Sleeping bags and crocks
Of baby wipes, shampoo
Soap, towels, pads
All the niceties I’m sure they don’t have
Hoping when the shelters close
As the weather warms
They will return
And forgive me my thoughts
Hope I can forgive me my thoughts, too…

 

(c) 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Behind my yard

 

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