BLUES IN THE AFTERNOON

To live with no regrets
True translation:
To live and take
Responsibility
For those incidents
We do regret
There is no time machine
No way to return
To the scene of the shame
So easy to forgive others
Hard to forgive ourselves
Especially if we were children
Helpless
And victims of family
Out of control
Eventually attracting
Friends, spouses
Ripping apart our soul

Maybe three in the morning
Is heart attack time
But for me
Three in the afternoon
Is when I sing the Blues
Blood sugar down?
Morning high
(Brought on partially by coffee)
Has fatally crashed
Blues between noon and dusk
My heart’s an empty husk

Not much natural blue
In Nature
Rare birds
Rare flowers
Blue reserved
For sky and sea
Morphing to Indigo
A representation
Of Third Eye Wisdom
Along the chakra rainbow
Fourth House of the zodiac
Home
Capricorn in the Fourth
No easy way to say this
Not an easy natal moment

I so hope I can struggle to my end of days
In self-made love and peace in a glorious blaze…
(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Picasso’s Blue Period, Old Guitarist

RED SONG-IN-PROGRESS (memoir)

Red Rover Red Rover
For Red to come over
Childhood game
When our blood did flow
Scrapes and red-tinged bandaids
With young bodies
Pulsing like Native drums
At American pow-wows

Red
Blood
Life
Flood

The beat goes on
The heat pulsing the blood
And then one day
It changes…

Flirting and hurting
Judged, loved or hated
Trying to walk dignified
Through teen years as the
Moon monthly controls
Female tides
Red flow meaning
Safe another month
Slut-footing past the boys
Pulsing like Gypsy tambourines
At doo-wapping City corners

Red
Blood
Life
Flood

The beat goes on
The heat pulsing the blood
And then one day
It changes…

Sleep with legs straight
So blood will circulate
But I awake
In a tight fetal state
With that artery
Behind my left knee
Pulsing like Santana drums
At Woodstock

Red
Blood
Life
Flood

The beat goes on
The heat pulsing the blood
And then one day
It’s gone…

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Red#1

WHITE POEM 1

Saw a ghost last night
Not a woo-woo one
Saw a man by a white piano
Banging away
Every once in a while he’d say
“This one will go platinum”
Looked like Lennon
But his iconic face
Was off a bit
Surreptitiously glanced around
For a white bed
Nothing
But out of the corner of my eye
Was a bit of a white mini
Long black hair
And wondered
Ghost?
Time Travel?
Parallel Worlds?
Listened to the song
Knew it wasn’t one I’d ever heard
Knowing all John’s songs
Bopped my head
Played air ukulele
Yep, this one would go platinum
But hey
Suddenly back in my bed
Bottle of hemp oil
On the night table
Near my head
And wondered….

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: WHITE 1

(Working on a new book about chakras. True, white isn’t a chakra but then,  white is what we see when all wavelengths of light are reflected off an object)

 

FRAGRANT RELEASE

When days are dragging me down
People seem made more like daggers
And I’m saturated with sadness
That leaks onto the grass and dirt
I have my ways
Of relieving the pressure

There is music, of course
Reading, writing, chocolate
But a forgotten feeling
Resurfaced when the FDA
Became involved with herbs
Raising prices
Banning bottles and jars
Of alternative medicines

So after a few days of
Rejection and feeling
Like invasive vines
Are creeping all over me
When my people skills suffer
From autism
When once again I become
The mistress of the
Inappropriate remark
From autism
When no one will tell me what I have done
I crawl into my magic center
That has room for only one
Closing my eyes
Until a vision appears
And I hear
Triple, triple
Make a ripple
Pour and stir
Blood Root and Myrrh
Plantain and Golden Seal
And other herbs so ideal

It is New Moon
And I add 100 proof vodka
And daily shake the jar
Extracting Earthen properties
In watery medium
As wind stirs the contents
And fiery moon distills and augments
Relaxing as I add and mix
Handle and sing
Wondering
How I could forget the peace
Brought by the release
Of endorphins

Then, when
The moon is a silver medallion
Metal more precious than gold
I sieve and save the healing liquid
Add melted beeswax
Breathing loving words
Passing along the peace
Inside tiny jars
That will hold
An ageless recipe
Of earth, water, air and fire
Ingredients working together
Like a vocal range in a choir
A mystical tether…

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Herbs and Dogs and Strings and Things

RARE AIR

A picture makes it worthwhile
To read a thousand words
But it’s hard to reconcile
Phytoplankton
Tiny marine organisms
Cranking out the oxygen
In Earth’s atmosphere
Good things come in small packages
Mom said when I complained about
Height, or the lack of it
Maybe
Maybe if Mars
Or some lone planet
Light-light-light years away
Would have life
As we know it
Tilling the dirt
Salting the seas
Firing away the ice
Scenting the sky
With an invisible aroma
Of after-rain cleanliness
Or pre-lightning electrical fire
Maybe
But for each positive theory
A negative one exists
Science has discovered
Oxygen can now be generated
In the absence of life named
“An alien imposter”
Maybe it’s not a pretender, though
Maybe like me
Suffering from Imposter Syndrome
(Am I really a poet, for instance?)
But it can be
Merely an alien phytoplankton
We all wear masks
Whether aware of them or not
So I say
Let’s give it the benefit of the doubt
So what if they were produced
Abiotically
(Like that word?
Or am I being “pretentious”
As some say?)
Abiotically in multiple simulations
“Simulations”
Phony! Made up!
My laywoman’s thought is
You may produce oxygen
But what side effects will occur
In years to come
Life as we know it may surely be alien
The real false positive for life
Phytoplankton forever
Keep your simulations
Give me the sweet air we sometimes can see
Through your polluted sky
And nurse the phytoplankton
Making sure they do not die…

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Phytoplankton, http://www.racingextinction.com

MARCH MADRIGAL

Ides of March
Caesar’s dead
St. Patrick’s Day Druidic snakes
Killed or fled
Mardi Gras music and tasty food
Women’s Day international history renewed
Aries influence on the 21st day
Spring Equinox awakens our lost sense of play
Many family birthdays
Around the full moon
What were the parents doing
Nine months ago, that previous June
March is fun but April’s best
‘Cause it’s my birthday’s
Once-a-year chocolate fest
Can’t wait!

(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: SPRING SWAMP PICNIC

American She-Poets (34): Clarissa Simmens, A Passion for Shakespeare

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Clarissa Simmens

“I adore social media.  FaceBook and WordPress have been incredible avenues of not only reading the words of poets world-wide, but also gaining friends, virtual but real  . . .The poets are people like me and you who want the same thing: respect, a safe and healthy environment for family and friends, and the freedom to have fun without being hurt or harming others.  I think the great [William Shakespeare] would have loved the world-wide web…” Clarissa Simmens

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A couple of weeks ago The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt was Spinning With Shakespeare. Readers were challenged to write a poem using phrases from Shakespeare that have come into general usage. It was fun. The poems were great. You can read them HERE.  Meanwhile, it happens that Clarissa Simmens has a passion for Shakespeare, so much so that she does a yearly poetic homage to WS…

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THANK YOU MAGGIE KUHN

Happy International Women’s Day! Here is one of my heroines…

poeturja

“Stand before the people you fear and speak your mind – even if your voice shakes” –Maggie Kuhn, Founder of The Gray Panthers

At age 34
I sat in the Women’s Congress audience
Enthralled by this old lady
And everything she said
Seemed meant for me
An older student
At the university
I couldn’t even speak from my desk
Without shaking
So although her words performed no magic
At the time
I conjured them up
When I really needed them
Stars and sparkles wreathing my face
Sneezing a bit from the moon dust
And for the next few years
Speaking in auditoriums for my career
No trembling, shaking, or fear
Just Maggie Kuhn’s words
Transforming me two decades later
Now I am old enough
To be a Gray Panther
(Although I was completely gray
By age thirty-seven)
And when once I wanted to be
Abby Hoffman, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez

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