Magical iron
Stronger than other metals
Surviving fire
Horseshoe mythology born
Hung for protection and gain
Blacksmiths so lucky
Fire and iron masters
Able to heal ills
So said an ancient belief
Tied to elemental lore
Does fortune run out
If horseshoes hung up or down
Holy Grail of luck
Up like a cup for drinking
How strong is superstition…
(c) 2020 Clarissa Simmens, ViataMaja
IMAGE: RichardAlan Studios, Horseshoe Guitar
First saw the Ursutara*
When 3 days old
Cold night spider webs
Or dripping icicles
Over my basket
Gran setting a table for 3
Honey cake, tea
And in a broomstick drawn circle
Gran, Mama and me
Tell me a story
Of the three Ursitory
Living in Romani glory
Before morphing into allegory
3 creatures of Fate
Come to adjudicate
Lifeline to create
Each birth to celebrate
Sometimes I dream
Of that night supreme
As 3 moonbeams
Lit faces in fog-bound steam
Felt so enchanted
As each fairy implanted
Words that granted
My future garden planted
Said one: Listen my child
You are fated to be wild
And always beguiled
By a trying life reconciled
In the circle of safety
Me in a basket
3 tables with cakes
For the Ursitory Fates
Gran whispered my secret name
Viata
Said another: Listen my child
You are fated to be wild
And often reviled
Yet strong enough to survive the trial
“No” Gran recanted
But the third Fate ranted
Wanting to supplant it
With frightening cant
In a powerful scream
She stopped Gran’s scheme
The fate was extreme
No peace to redeem
No room for debate
Gran hid her hate
For this weaver of Fate
Surely a devil incarnate
There’d been no signatory
Just verbal and auditory
Surely an escape from momento mori
If they left the territory
The Ursitories departed
Gran tossed out the cake
Whispering a secret song
Taught me to move along
But all their words true
And some sleepless nights I hear them
Enchanted, chanting Fates
Pronouncing lives desolate
The Ursitory…
*Kalderash dialect
(c) 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: August von Pettenkofen,
Gypsy Girl Wraps A Baby In A Wooden Tub
Sky above
Yard below
Personal aviary
What’s that rhyme
About magpies?
Seven for a secret
Never to be told…
Past winter
Sand Hill Cranes
Soaring in sevens
So I wonder
About the message
Whose secret,
Mine or yours?
If yours, I’ll never know,
Or mine, never to reveal?
Sand Hills hanging out
At another swamp now
One with lots of water
I miss their honking
But this morning
I hear the worried call
And see a lone male
So big and tall
Frantically calling his
Missing mate
Can we be like the Sand Hills
Monogamous
Caring
In love
Guarding while the other eats
Never parted
Unless one mysteriously disappears
Or, worse, dies
Find her! I sing
As he flies above me
Tracking him with my eyes
And then I hear
A faint answer
She lives!
Wheeling
Skyrocketing
To join his one true love
They both know
The Magpie’s secret of life
Everlasting…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Sand Hill Cranes taking a break with me
scroll down for a YouTube video
Ah, so wanted to play
Performance-quality
Guitar
Right next door’s the swamp
Don’t have to walk far
Flooded this week
Put on rubber boots
Satellite picture guiding me
But tripped over some roots
Looking for the crossroads
Pictured on GPS
Swamps tend to change
When it storms in excess
My mind screamed “Anomaly!”
Because it wasn’t a perfect X
Still, I heard guitar playing
Saw Robert Johnson on his knees
Inconsistency
Two realms touched
Causing a liminality
Yet half-heartedly
I cried, “What the hell?
My soul to sell?
No, no way!”
And I looked around
Thinking
Get me out of here
Snake City
Don’t want a gator committee
On my way
Wish me home
In pre-dawn dark
Heard Papa Legba laugh
Closed my eyes
Willed me safe
Woke up in bed
Grabbed my guitar and played
Sounded like dead lead
But that’s ok
It’s fun
Turns the rain into sun
I’m done
Crossroadin’
I think, while I strum…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Santee swamp over my fence/Me on edge of swamp
YouTube video Robert Johnson, Crossroads https://youtu.be/Yd60nI4sa9A
Ground fog floating
Accenting a
Full to Dark Moon
Dangerous Waning magic
Carpeting the acreage
Concealing turnips and potatoes
Carrots and rutabagas
Allium onions
Ginger and ginseng
While deep down
Garlic bulbs blindly
Outstretch their
Mossy corpse fingers
Reaching for the sky
Or whatever walks by
Summoned alive
Seduced by a bloody scent
From those fated to die
Earth’s crust of a floor
Disguised underworld door
Since Time began
We sacrifice to
Hades and Persephone
In their Eminent Domain
As we attempt to refrain
From the romance of late night horror
On the black and white screen
Of childhood dreams…
(C) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
image: moon over garden
DECIDED TO ADD ON A ROUGH DRAFT OF WHAT WILL BE THE BODY OF THE SONG:
Year after year
Our lives so dear
You disappeared
Taking my heart
We’re forever apart
As you stay locked
In the wood of the tree
Never to be free
Lost hearts of Palm…
Playing one day
Polished obsidian ball
Our two faces reflected
Happiness and perfection
You invented words
In a foreign tongue
I laughed, joined in
We chanted, having fun
Suddenly gone…
You are suddenly gone
Suddenly gone from me
Never did I dream
You’d be so close
Locked away in wood
Brown and gray
I thought I’d dreamed you
And then awoke
Until one foggy morning
I heard your voice
So far away
And yet so close
Heard your voice
Calling my name
Found an axe
But you shouted “No!”
The bark, the leaves, the heart of palm
Part of you
Found that old obsidian ball
Polished, washed, sun drenched
Held it next to my heart
Whispered my love
Nothing, nothing
(Please, please)
Silence from the swamp trees
Words, what words
Did we say
That terrible day
I ask, but you no longer answer
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Two views of my palm tree 2015 & 2017
(it sure did grow/as if it holds the key/to my happiness)
*scroll down for a Joan Baez YouTube video*
A friend did send
An article about
Thracian deities
Thrace part of
Bulgaria, Turkey, and Greece
Just south of Romania
My father’s birthplace
My friend did send
When I complained
That her Celtic gods and goddesses
Were so much more interesting
Than the Romani ones
Of course, the Romani ones are from India
But there is the Eastern European part of my blood
That calls out to other deities
So being a Fire sign
I was interested in the Fire goddess
Later to become St. Marina
Daughter of Domna (Queen)
Who comes with her own folk song:
“Oh, Domna, Domna, Domna queen!
Domna queen and swallow!”
And the nerd in me
The wannabe folksinger in me
Can suddenly see
Can suddenly hear
The high trilling of none other
Than Joan Baez
Singing and strumming
“Dona, Dona, Dona, Dona”
A song claiming to be a Yiddish folksong
Even though the words
Match up with the Thracian mythology
Of a black sheep being sacrificed
To the Domna
And a swallow, like the swallows
Of San Juan Capistrano
Are elements echoed in the song
“On a wagon, bound for market
Is a calf with a mournful eye…”
And
“Why don’t you have wings to fly with
Like the swallow so proud and free?”
Most interesting of all
After the Eastern European countries shifted
Joan Baez performed her song in
The new country with
The old name of Czechoslovakia
Many of the people saying they were
Long-familiar with the myth
So I apologize to some of you
Wading through my nerdy piece of blogetry
But hoping that my fellow nerds
Will feel the delight
Of discovering cultural insight
Of history repeating itself
But in a lovely way
Not a doom but a boon
Of the beat going on…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Swallow (Pinterest, no attribution)
https://youtu.be/BqzGZ5AaeSs YouTube video, Joan Baez singing Dona, Dona, Dona (spelling changed to Donna somewhere along the years)
(Full Solar Eclipse 8-21-17)
Although no Rhesus monkey blood
Flows through the byways of my body
I feel fragments of fear
Originating from ancient landscapes
Of fern and endless flora
And I am there
Looking for the hidden animals
Absent from the water hole
Watching my tribe
Grunting over skins stretched tautly
Being beaten over enormous gourds
A chant arising
From useless fire
Reaching for the circle of what is now known
As the sun
While a shadow claims dominance
Wiping out daytime firmament
Bringing dusk to the home savanna
Behemoth swallowing the familiar fireball
Leaving us shivering on the ground
Grunting, crying, drumming
Scrying the water
For instruction on how to retrieve
Our celestial canopy
Bright and hot
We rock back and forth
In darkness unexplained
Crying in pain
Until the Feathered One
Points to the sky
With a club as high as he
We will not die!
The monster shadow is vanquished
By our chants
Our spilling of blood
Our promises to be good
And the raging fire
Once again
Rules the bright blue plain
Stretching silently above
A sea of heads
I was there
I remember
As today
Wearing a #12 Shade welding mask
I watch
The eclipse fade…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: prehistoric rock-Pinterest
Here I am wearing the welding mask, watching the eclipse:
ANNUAL REPOST FOR FATHER’S DAY: My father loved telling stories, so although this starts out as a poem about him, it turns into one about me. No doubt though, it was his predilection for oral history that influenced my love of writing (especially loooooooong poems).
Dad was a great story teller
A bard who hoarded words
And plots, heard in the kitchen
Where he slept on the ledge of a stove
In old Romani slave quarters
Surrounded by the rich earth
Of what is now Moldova
Somewhat drunk by the wine
The children consumed
Because the water was poisonous
And it was thirsty work to be
Stomping grapes for the winery
Where he was born
Grandson of a slave
Free yet not
***
His favorite story
Was about the Sojmo
The Hawk
Also called Turul
A Hungarian word
Learned from his cousins
Who migrated to Roumania
Turul, the shamanic hawk
Perched on the Tree of Life
That strongly-rooted tree
Connecting Earth with the skies
And the Netherworld
Turul, who saved the Hungarians
From Attila the Hun
And other conquerors
Making them a powerful people
My dad liked the name Hun because
His name was Huna
His mother said he
Approached life like a savage
Like a conqueror
And Huna felt proud
***
Sojmo has been a part of my life
For many decades
I never saw one while living in Philly
But once I moved to Florida
Nature claimed me as a personal fan
And I observed birds and trees
Plants and clouds
Lightning and rainbows
So lonely, though, for a friend
Although I worked daily and met
Good people
So lonely for a man
One day, sitting by a lake
I cried out to the universe
A hawk flew at me
Sitting frozen, mesmerized
At the last second it swooped up
But we had read the eyes of the other
And I knew all would be well
A few months later I met a man named
Hawk
***
Years passed
First good
Then very bad
Then better
Then simply years
No expectations
Simply years
***
Life’s happiness
Feeding and watching
Backyard cardinals,
Woodpeckers, blue jays
Mourning doves and finches
Feeding and watching the antics
Of my dogs, sitting by the graves
Of older dogs who
Crossed the Rainbow Bridge
Then the crows came
Korako
And ate the fledglings and eggs
While I shouted, while the dogs barked
And one day they disappeared
Never returning
Occasionally circling the yard to remind me
So I imagined
That they have the power to return
And destroy the backyard birds
***
Envision my surprise
When instead of korako
I heard a whistle and saw
Five hawks
Sojmo
Repeating the savagery
That korako displayed
Last summer
Half-heartedly I shouted
Banged the metal trashcan lid
With a Live Oak branch
Fallen on the ground
From the wind and rain
The previous evening
The dogs half-heartedly barked
The man named Hawk
Refused to chase them
Siding with Sojmo
Because, I guess,
They are his totem, after all
***
Ah, do I make anything out of this?
Just birds of prey following their instinct
Looking to feast upon birds well fed
From my feeder?
Or is the appearance of Sojmo
The other bookend
The other end of the promise
And now the taking
None of the five hawks
Flew toward my face
To look me in the eye
What do I make of this
Mind-tableau
Sojmo sitting on a Live Oak
That could be the Tree of Life
Reminding me of the connection
Of the Earth and Sky
With the Netherworld
***
Sojmo
Ending another chapter
Of a life…
© 2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
(some of my wonderful friends are worried that I was bitten by another Recluse Spider. This is my poem from 2014–not my best–but want you to know, no worries)
What is the message of the spider?
Open invitation from the resident
Into a pesticide-free home
Spaces in floorboards
Irresistible to the neighboring swamp
Despite the equalizer AKA feather duster
The spiders come in the night
They always nip me equally
One on each arm
Unless it’s a Recluse
She gets me in a circle of eight
The secret antidote is plantain
Or even aloe for the minor stings
I’ve been injected with venom so many times
That one day I expect to point my wrists at a wall
While cobwebs shoot out
Enabling me to scale the side of the tallest building in Florida
But I know there is a message
I used to fancy that I was SpiderWoman of folklore
Weaving my tales
My fantasies
My fantasies came true for others, not for me
What was the message there?
Observer and recorder of life
But never a recipient of those richly imagined dreams
We Romani are always looking at portents
The Sinte word for the spider storyteller is
“Shpina Paramichari”
She is telling me that the one nip on each arm
Represents balance
Be consistent in life
Be moderate while living
No important revelation
But a painful one
Just weave your life symmetrically
In order to function in harmony
I tend to forget every few years
Guess I need a reminder…
(c) 2014, 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Recluse Spider Web, creative commons
poeturja 