Month: November 2018

MOON (MINOR CHORD) WORK IN PROGRESS

(another work-in-progress for my Major Arcana series)

I’ve seen men walk across your face
Stabbing you with red-white-blue
Waving on a pointed pole
I’ve seen you cloud-white in a daylit blue sky
I’ve seen you fat and thin
I’ve seen your sallow skin
No matter how dark the nights
You’ve wrenched blood from my body
Sanity from my sometimes struggling mind
Caressed the beach with your tides
And been my poetic muse while I cried
You are so familiar, iconic
But you always retain the magic of your name
My Moon…

SINGLE-STORY TOWER

Entropic trailer
Humidity-swollen floorboards
Warring with Recluse spiders
Who pay their rent by
Trapping mosquitoes and flies
But don’t get them angry
Or you can die

Though the womb room is intact
Climate controlled by air con
High speed internet switched on
Futons piled with sleeping bags and quilts
Walls lined with musical strings
Feng shui excellent
Especially when you look out the glass doors
From shack to avian wilderness
Just slide the magical portal
Enter a mini terrarium
Micro-environment with
Bird feeders and Oaks
Palms and Aloes
Wild red and white Trumpets
Orange and pink Lantana
Potato Vines and Spanish Moss

Oh, yes, The Tower scares many
People hurtling off the parapet
Sky electricity crackling
Implosion!
But look at the lightning
Flashes of insight
Lighting the way
Easing life’s problems
If you are thoughtful and solemn
And safely surrounded
By swamp and woods
No neighbors to judge
No visitors to begrudge
Just me and the roomie
Dogs and wild birds
Feral cats and slinking possums

Entropic, inanimate wood and tin
Versus harmonic organisms
Music and compost and smelly well water
Yes, a lightning-struck tower
Crumbling
But fortunately
I am aging and
It will outlast me…

(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Red Trumpets in the fog & The Tower (Smith-Waite deck) & The Crow Tarot
(Margaux Jones https://www.facebook.com/crowtarotdeck/ )

MOMENT OF IMMINENT ACTION

O, that moment of imminent action
When a confluence of worlds intersect
All is possible
Like The Death of Socrates
as he reaches for his hemlock
Iconic cup of forced suicide
What will he do? Recant?
It would change history
But the speechifying continues
Outcome clear
“Don’t!” I shout to the painting
As if there is no known conclusion
Might as well scream at the hero of a horror flick
“Don’t go down the cellar/up the attic/outside to the shed”
And now, in modern times
I find myself screaming at the dumb teenager:
“Charge your phone!”

O that special moment
Time etched on canvas in paint
And the Universe holds its breath
As I hesitate
And then say, “Sure, we might as well get married”
Maybe not as important as Hector
About to be murdered by Achilles
Can he surrender and live to fight
Another day?
And why do I
Focus on marriage?
Surely I regret giving up
Guitar, writing, tarot
Perhaps it’s just feeling Blue
During this Red, Green and Gold holiday
But junctures appear, innocently beckoning
And I so wish there had been
A painting depicting that imminent action
Something I could have studied and thought about
Before opening my mouth
And just maybe
Unlike Socrates and Hector
That moment could have been deflected
A lone laser point harmlessly careening
Into endless space…

(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Jacques-Louis David, Death of Socrates (public domain)
Peter Paul Rubens, Death of Hector (public domain)

FOR MY FOLLOWERS, FRIENDS & FAMILY

Happy Thanksgiving Day
This is important for me to say
Social Media is our folk hotel
Visiting daily, we share and retell

Showing pictures of our dog and cat
And our granddaughter the acrobat
Yummy recipes make me hungry
Love the chance to sign petitions about the bumblebee

Wonderful to hear about your son
Life is tough but they still have fun
What amazing writing and crafts so handy
Thanks for accepting our modus operandi

We huddle together when tragedy does come
It visits us all and we succumb
But having loving thoughts sent our way
Soothes us like a spiritual bouquet

So keep on posting and let me know
How life is, just say hello
Know I think of you although I don’t say
You’re always in my mind on any day

Love & Fun & Happiness to you and your Crew…

LEPUS (HARE)

UNTITLED W-I-P FOR UPCOMING BOOK

Red starry show
Orion struggling in a sea of blood?
No! Just the red glow of
Hind’s Crimson Star
Alpha Leporis
Fourteen times the mass of sun
Drawing all eyes to
Constellation Lepus
Rabbit
Hare
Easy to see
The mythology
Of Orion’s dogs
Canis Major and Minor
Pursuing this incandescent body
But thanks to Ostara
Goddess of Spring
She is granted swiftness
And once a year
Will appear
On the Moon
After traveling 1300 light years
Syncretizing Eastern myths
With Western ones
Bringing eggs to the
Moon Rabbit who is
Fiercely pounding
A lunar mortar by pestle
Grinding out the Elixir of Life
An Asian Philosopher’s Stone for
Immortality
Mystically produced
By the mating of the
Hare and Rabbit
For is not reproduction
A form of immortality?

VETERAN’S DAY MEMOIR (Happy Birthday, Dad 11-23-1925)

No one selling poppies
At this Veteran’s Day festival
Dad always bought one
Somehow, the symbol
And socializing with soldiers
Anesthetized the buried memories
One way to survive war:
Thinking of the good times
Alcohol, gambling, jokes
The next day I inherited the flower
Droopy but delightfully blood red
Aries child’s favorite color
Poppies, to me
Conjured up the Wizard of Oz
“Sleep, sleep…”
Said the Wicked Witch of the West
As the camera panned along the
Endless fields of fallen flowers…

FLIGHT

Survival of the fittest
Political temperatures dictate
Fight, flight, freeze
Been frozen for a few years
Chronologically too old for fight
Adrenal glands choose flight
Travel with jars of natural
Peanut butter and jelly
Crackers withstanding staleness
Jugs of water
Rolls of toilet paper for trips
Behind hedges
Baby wipes hygiene
Oh, why did I
Get rid of the travel trailer
Can I live on 4 wheels with 3 dogs
And a driver?

Icy dawn heading north
Wind whipping long hair
Through minute window cracks
Canine scent-sense tells me
When we pass salty or loamy aromas
The truck a speeding bullet
Of movement
Until yawning stars give way
To a cloudy dawn
Where have I gone?
Flying away to safety
Bicameral brain
Merely a strain
Logic says no safety in denial
Creativity says
Draw, write, sing SAFETY
Until it is real

The sky is falling
How do I make it right…?

NEW BOOKS!

TWO DELIGHTS IN ONE DAY! Florida State Poets Association anthology is now on Amazon. My poem QUANTUM JAUNT ELSEWHERE is included. They also selected one of my photos for the back cover. If you look at them you’ll have no trouble knowing which one is mine (since I post that photo every few months ) The other anthology is Women’s Anthology: Carrying Fire, now in paper (I had announced that last month when the kindle edition was published). This book is to benefit the Endometriosis Foundation. I have two poems included: ALLMAN BROTHERS OBVERSE and KHELEL: WHY GYPSY WOMEN DANCE ALONE. There are many poems and short stories you will enjoy in both books. Amazon links below https://www.amazon.com/Cadence-2018-Associati…/…/ref=sr_1_1… is for Florida State Poets and https://www.amazon.com/Womens-Anthology…/…/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1… is for the Women’s Anthology: Carrying Fire

TRANSITION

(fragment of a larger poem-in-progress)

Already begun the process
The return to the Earth
As wildness
Wraps me in Nature’s
Grass skirt, floral cape and leafy hair
Doorway to the
Evolutionary passage
Of conjecture and mystery
Chording my name…

	poeturja on GENERATIONAL CURSES
	Steve Simpson on GENERATIONAL CURSES
	poeturja on MEMORY SPOONS
	poeturja on CRYSTAL DOG VIBRATIONS
	Steve Simpson on CRYSTAL DOG VIBRATIONS