Looking at you I wonder
Are we merely new souls
Trying to understand the
Code of life?
I believe I am the
Intaglio to your cameo
Carefully carved from
Earthen stone or
Ocean abalone
Encased in the mating of
Sun and Moon platinum
The eyes are my body totem
As yours is the heart
I so want to
Metaphorically spill blood
To appease those jealous gods
Tell me what to do…
❤ II ❤ II ❤ II
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Body Totems
(BEEN 3 YEARS SINCE POSTING MY FAVORITE EARTH DAY POEM)
❤ ❤ ❤
Despite date rapists
Feeding her chemicals
For quiet pliancy
Despite thieves
Stealing her jewels
Of gold, silver, uranium
Hidden in her
Deep, dark pockets
Despite ripping at her
Strongly skillful hands
Lovingly tending the roots
Of trees
That shelter, oxygenate, and feed
Of weeds
Intrinsic providers for healing
Of fruits and vegetables
To nourish her hungry children
Through it all
Her molten core
Fecund to the end
Like a Baby Boomer
Listening to the music
In her soul
Dancing, singing
Shouting out
“I am the mother
Of you all
And will never die!”
Because the future holds
Glorious consensual couplings
With water, air, fire
And while they helplessly fail
To protect her now
She maintains her sanity
Knowing what is right
And she will never give up…
❤ ❤ ❤
© 2016 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Mother Earth in my swamp
*Scroll down for a video by The Who and by Donovan
❤ ❤ ❤
Our Baby Boomer generation
Is outraged!
(Or should be)
Just yesterday
The boys harmonized
“Duke of Earl”
On the city corners
While we girls dreamed of
The Beach Boys,
Scratching at our training bras
And tossing our pre-teen hair
Now
How can it be we
Cannot walk fast and feel free?
I do the treadmill daily
But ugh, legs still ache
Drinking water makes me cough
Trickling down the wrong pipe
And eyes don’t quite see
What I think should be
Another birthday is all good
But oh, where is the real me?
(The cute, young one)
So, from the generation that
Ramped up the word freedom
And began love and peace manifesting
Let’s call a moratorium on aging
And see what magical changes appear
By protesting
As we mellow-yellow**
“Quite rightly…”
❤ ❤ ❤
©2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Old CS (photo taken 4-14-22)
**YouTube Video Donovan Mellow Yellow
*YouTube Video The Who Talking About My Generation
It is said a nation is judged
By the statues erected
As is a home
And the Stoics ask
“Are you living by the example
They stand for?”
Although not quite my birthday
I opened presents from three friends
And great minds certainly do think alike
<> <> <>
The first statue I received
A Merlion
Official mascot of Singapore
But I like words more
And make up my own
And so
“Merlion”
Is a lionesque version of
“Merlin”
And this statue will always be
A source of marvel and magic
To me
<> <> <>
A flamingo for my garden
How it makes me laugh
So needed in my life
Right now
It is my guide because
It’s not just a pretty face
A solar “panel” absorbs
Daytime sun
Gifting the night
A powerful light
At the press of a button
<> <> <>
Wow! This dog statue
Resembles Bandit
My Toy Fox Terrier
I sit it on my treadmill
And the next few mornings
I jump, thinking it’s real
Couldn’t resist asking
Before morning work-out
Whose spirit gazes at me
From lively glass eyes
Kali, yes, my darling
Kali the Rat Terrier
Dead these 7 years
From a killer possum
She was only four
And I’ve not ever recovered
From her death
And so, although,
I don’t intend to talk to the statue
I will send a blessing
To my little girl
Who is no longer lost
My RockStar loved her
And loves the statue
But here are the doppelgangers
Bandit and statue
And I ask you
Which one is real
Which one is Memorex…?
❤ ❤ ❤
Thanks to Madi, Myra & Arlene
❤ ❤ ❤
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Doppelgangers and Birthday Statues
Would love to take
A fantastic voyage
Through your mind
Like that old movie
Shrink down
Sailing around
The gray matter
Would I see
Alphabet letters
Forming words of poetry
Or musical notes
In memorable harmony?
Then I’d follow the chart
Steering toward your heart
To finally learn if
You are my counterpart…
<> <> <>
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Hearts
This year to celebrate
International Roma Day
I borrow a pattern
From our Asian Indian ancestors
And my wish is for us
To follow the Chakras
Power points represented by
The Color spectrum
The Rainbow
We first look to RED
Are we SECURE?
Do we earn our bread
And educate ourselves?
Next is ORANGE
Don’t waste EMOTIONS
By bickering over trivia
Save the passion for song and dance
Save it for love of family and romance!
In unity we find POWER
YELLOW is the sunny color
That allows us to greet each day
Whether indulging in work or play
Use that power to shape our lives
In an honest and caring way
Let’s open our hearts with GREEN
HEAL ourselves and others
Physically, mentally, intelligently
Then befriend many with
TURQUOISE
COMMUNICATION
Write, paint, compose
A way of greeting the
Global community
Not necessarily artistically
However way you can better
Your life and others
Now think INDIGO
And use that SIXTH SENSE
We’re supposedly so famous for
To see the truth of us
And everyone else’s integrity
The third eye that can bring us
All together
And then we are ready for VIOLET
The color of SPIRITUALITY
As we want to make Earth the
Greatest place to be
REMEMBER
Our DNA is not part of a
Man-made philosophy
Not religion
Not sexual orientation
Nor the diasporan languages
We all grew up with
Our DNA is in the RAT
The blood
No matter how tiny the percentage
We are Roma,
Sinte, Gypsies
(Say it with pride!)
We are one…
❤ ❤ ❤
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Chakras along the swamp
After 15 years
Finally accepted
The need for new tires
Found a mobile installer
But he wouldn’t drive down
The dirt road
Wouldn’t work on
Anything but asphalt or cement
Luckily
He agreed
To meeting roomie and me
In the Winn Dixie parking lot
Tuesday morning
At the end of the lot
Sat on a curb
Under some Live Oak trees
With a low humidity
And wild sea breeze
While he worked
Wind blew my hair so much
Had to braid it in order to see
And the dumpster-diving
Seagulls
Cawed and flew
Way above
Until I closed my eyes
And surely heard the surf
Only 3 miles coming from the Gulf
And decompressed
As I got dosed
With negative ions
Oh, who thought
I’d enjoy
My Tuesday tires
So much?
And drove home
Feeling like a queen
Almost as tall as the gulls
First chakra thanking me
For adding this security
To my 15-year-old car
And once home
Me, the sleepless
Slept for 2 hours
Waking up to gentle showers
Of baptismal rain…
❤ ❤ ❤
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Tuesday Tires
An old al-gaed door
Hides message reality
Difficult to see
Faded flower reflections
Interpreted many ways…
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Algaed Door
IT’S AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER (ASD) AWARENESS MONTH! As you know, we are all different on the Spectrum but many of us have a feeling of alienation because of the diverse way we think (neurodiversity) causing us a struggle to fit in socially. I have written many poems about my particular problems including sound sensitivity (although I can blast my radio in the car when a great rock song is playing); not seeing things (my first husband was enraged that it took me a month to notice he shaved his moustache) and my roomie was upset that I didn’t see the huge pile of fencing poles blocking the front door despite my walking over it (“Huh? asked I, “What wood?”). This poem is short, about my noise sensitivity and my love for Quantum Physics although I don’t really understand it in a Scientific way. Anyway, we’re out there, Homo Autisticus, as I’ve called it in the past. It’s all okay, right? xo
QUANTUM JAUNT ELSEWHERE
<> <> <>
Road trip through the Route 66 of space
Wending my way among
Suns, Moons and Stars
A need to escape
My once-quiet swamp
Now juxtaposed with a mini-highway of
Muffler-less Harleys
Road rage screech of auto horns
Sirens
Sirens
Sirens
Want to move
Maybe to the Multiverse
Sensory deprivation needed
At least two hours a day
Move somewhere
Where
E=MC squared
Multiplied by good fortune
Equaling
Poet Laureate of the Galaxy
Might as well throw in
Grammy winner
But I’ll take anything new
To escape the
Schrodinger’s Cat feeling
Of not knowing whether
I’m alive or dead
An atom
A photon
Existing in multiple states
So with pack on my back
Seeking the secret of being
A social maven
Needing a place
In way-out space
Perhaps on a planet where
Autism rules…
<> <> <>
© 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Quantum Amulet
<> <> <>
So here’s one I posted in January that expresses the ASD that I know and love…
JEWELED KALEIDOSCOPE
(another autism poem)
ONE:
Autism represented by a jigsaw puzzle
Because we’re difficult to figure out
But I say we’re kaleidoscopes
While Neurotypicals are like a telescope
Seeing the acceptable reality
Many of us Neurodiverse
See patterns of light and darkness
Mirrored in endless combinations
The Autism Spectrum
Like the Color Spectrum
Diverse, yet part of the Universe
TWO:
So me, I’m in the middle
Not like the Rain Man
Caught in a world of apartness
Not like Temple Grandin or Elon Musk
Geniuses in their chosen fields
Just regular me
Able to see who I am
Yet must confess
Like the Rain Man
And maybe Musk and Grandin
I share the loneliness
THREE:
Familiar with Sabian Symbols?
Autism, for some of us, is like
Aries 7:
“One who is successfully
Expressing herself
In two realms
At once”
Of course,
Like the kaleidoscope,
A flick of the wrist
Changes the broken pieces of
Colorful glass
And a new reality is born
A Sacred Geometry
Of angles, circles, lines
Reflected in the mirror
Showing the signs
Of what can be
Or sadly
What cannot
FOUR:
Kaleidoscope
Derived from the
Greek words
Meaning
“Beautiful form to view”
And so true…
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Kaleidoscope inside and out
Three in the morning
Siren screaming from my phone
Emergency
Tornado Warning
Wind whining
Found myself spinning
In a mortar, steering with a pestle
Me now a younger Baba Jaga
Landing in a meadow
Full of wild blooms
Of every color
And there
Amidst the herbs and spice
You, singing something nice
About love and loneliness
I join you in song
Nothing can be wrong
When we are together
And the wind
Quits its violence
And from above there is
The silence of love…
❤ ❤ ❤
© 2022 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Baba Jaga flying her mortar
poeturja 