Saw a fireball
Geminid meteor
Smashing through
The Eastern sky
Lasering Orion’s knife
Brightening the dullness of life
As the clouds cleared
And the breeze blew
Separating the trees
So I could see
Celestial beauty
In my backyard…
©2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: space.com
(another full circle poem)
1990s bought my first computer
386 (Gigs? no one heard that word)
3.1 Windows
No internet but
Bulletin Boards to meet others
Bought to start a
Secretarial service
(Was I nervous!)
Never took off
The rest is computer history
But today I’m so distracted
Light and words refracted
When trying to write
So bought a NEO
Thirty US dollars
QWERTY keyboard
Well, right shift in wrong place
Makes my pinkie go adrift
On the keypad
Still, no distractions
No playing YouTube
No downloading guitar chords
No emailing or chatting
With Messenger friends
Whose little profile heads entice me
(Do you have that app, too?)
NEO takes three AA batteries
Has one USB port
Well, it is the 21st Century
But I can just WRITE!
Me and my mind
Lumbering through time
Great American Poem
Any day now!
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: NEO Alphasmart 2
*scroll down for a YouTube video*
Magical Mulberry
Playing baritone ukulele
In stark sand instead of snow
Live Oaks sheltering
Woodpeckers and Crows
Do we get what we need?
The Stones’ Jagger thinks so
Years living in the city
Happiness was a vacation
Tent, fire and scenery so pretty
Mountains in the Poconos
Brandywine River nights
Drinking coffee and cocoa
Now I live in a tin camper
Surrounded by trees and swamp
Small, only two lots
Didn’t get what I wanted
(Victorian home with gingerbread
And secret passages to mysterious rooms)
But wouldn’t trade what I have today
24-7 camping life
What a way
To spend these holidays
On Nature’s 2-lot beauty
Rewarded in my old age…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Mullberry playing baritone ukulele
*YouTube video You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Rolling Stones
Use for #15 Temptation (new book)
Portland’s Shanghai Tunnels
Chthonic vibrations stirring hair
Survival skill remnant of our DNA
Why shave it away?
Danger
Danger
But my feet continue to trudge
Skin crawls
Pupils dilate
And despite the apocryphal stories,
Documented hauntings,
I continue down these
Historic corridors
Men and boys kidnapped
Sent to sea
Slavery
I don’t believe in heaven and hell
Devils and angels
Because angels and devils
Are here, there, and everywhere
Devils share your office space
And undermine you
Demons crash into your cart in Walmart
Shanghai Tunnels of the past
Enslaved people underground
For galley slaves like Roman days
Slaves
Slaves of every color
Vlad the Impaler slaves
Gypsy blood
Reddening the gates
African slaves tarnished by their pigment
White sex trade slaves craved for porcelain skin
In the past
In the present
In the future
Devils do their work
Angels do too
Corrupting or saving me and you
#15 The Devil in Tarot
I call it Temptation
My birth number
My lesson in life
Is to resist
With an additional caveat
Numerologically adding 1 + 5 = 6
The Lovers
Secondary lesson
Must learn to love
And be loved
Perhaps a little too late for that
But being angelic
Makes more sense
Than being devilish
So I try
(My epitaph:
She Tried)
Devils
You want devils?
Here’s my latest
Hypnagogic vision
Dancing constellations
Stars outlining tomato red
Bodies, faces
Some wearing top hats
Lots of diamonds sparkling
Or are they stars in the sky
Stars for the dancing stars
Ukulele tinkle of 1920s music
And so much red
Devils
Devils are red
What the…?
Force my eyes open
What’s with my head
I preferred the monster images
Seen most of my theta-sleeping life
From the beginning of time
Dancing Devils intertwined with strumming angels
But now, my beloved constellations forever tainted
With visionary blood so painful…
The Underworld, Hades and Persephone
Ruling their version of the Shanghai Tunnels
Keeping Eurydice prisoner
Did she also sing and strum
Like her topside husband Orpheus
Music her comfort in those dark months
Underground?
Visions and insomnia
Disordering my brain
Here’s my newest theory
About the curse of insomnia
And Hypnagogia
Oh, those wild faces as I fall asleep
Can it be
Plato’s Allegory of the Cave?
Reality as shadows
Imagine a slave
Who only sees shadows
On the cave wall
Chained underground
Until one day forced outside
And sees the real reality
Can it be the film The Matrix?
(Supposedly modernized Cave Allegory)
Confusion of reality with dreams
And me with hypnagogic
Monster images
Am I waking, all those years
Living between the matrix
And the reality of creatures
Resembling the monsters
Of my so-called
Sleep Disorder?
The newest are auditory ones
Related to Exploding Head Syndrome
But now I hear snarling
In the night
“I will look after you!”
Is that a good statement or not?
Is it like Vishnu on the
Serpent of Time
Watching Brahma
Create the universe?
Or are they Matrix aliens
Sucking the dreams
Out of our souls?
Chthonic
Aetheric
Waking
Asleep
I so want to sleep…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Portland, Oregon, Shanghai Tunnels
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hypnogogia-dreams-creativity_us_56c5d16ce4b0c3c55053de38
So sure we were meant
To be together
But when I searched,
The Book
Was checked out of the Akhashic Library
Then I knew
All true in my mind
But never yours
Never a part of
What Must Be
You were never here with me
Scratching the moss from a rock
Our names appear entwined…
Lonely fantasizers
Fighting the addiction
Like losing a best friend
No more pretending
You
Merely a hologram projection
Particles and light
Visiting me in the night
I imagined being loved
Being happy
Instead of being lost
But how can I blame
What isn’t there
Except in my mind
Me
Can only blame myself
Can only be by myself
Reclusive in reality
And in fantasy
Fantasy traded for introspection
Also a solo endeavor…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: HERMIT, non-attributed Tarot Card (Full Moon Tarot blog)
& Kapuri, Drom Ek Romani
Beauty or function?
Nature meets the dollar store
Blending together
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Dollar Store Decor in the Swamp
(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…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Smith-Waite Tarot and Drom Ek Romani Moon cards
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/ )
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)
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…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Tom Russell cover art for Folk Hotel
