Only the Moon
Can translate
Words from me
Like the tides
It tries
To draw out
From lips and pen
What really needs to be said
But speaking, writing
The true plateau
Defies me and many
ASD’s*
Words tumble about
Defying gravity
Leaving out
Important meanings
Making us so misunderstood
But the Moon is patient
If only you learned from
The Moon…
*ASD = Autism Spectrum Disorder
© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Shon/Moon
Blue box
Overflowing blue and silver
Blue-Water-tides
Silver-sun-in-darkness
Blue Buddha
Medicine Buddha of Fire
Lapis Lazuli of Light*
Blue Jay feather of Air
My dissident Crow
Smirking at the words
Love & Peace
He truly does know
Maiden, Mother and Mage
Three stages of the Moon
Archangels from heaven
Lugging the key of knowledge
To decipher the Earthen gifts
Of silver saints
Matrona
Hildegard der Bingen
Mother Teresa
Healers all
Hear me
Heal me
Or bestow the
Bravery of Kali
On this silver-haired
Blues-singing
Sometimes scared
Cancer-Rising Aries
Clutching her portable altar
Night after night
In healing moonlight…
(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Portable altar
*Medicine Master and King of Lapis Lazuli Light
From Wildmind.com: (tadyatha:) oṃ bhaiṣajye bhaiṣajye maha bhaiṣajye
bhaiṣajya raje samud gate svaha Hail! Appear, O Healer, O Healer, O Great Healer, O
King of Healing!
WAXING
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
FULL
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?
WANING
Fragment of a dream
Me in helmet-less
Astronaut’s suit
Disembodied voice:
“We no longer have the
Resources to get you off
The Moon…”
NEW
Rolling through my mind
Catchy-tune theme song
From some 1960s bad TV
Expect to see
Go-Go booters
Dancing the Monkey
On colorful boxes
Piled on the stage
All that energy
Brought by the once-again new
Moon…
(c) 2019 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: NASA moon crater/Smith-Waite Tarot card/CS disk Drom Romani
(combined 2 moon poems and added two observations)
(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
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?
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Mortar & Pestle & Baritone
Living in Philly
My night sky
Was the ceiling of
The Fels Planetarium
In the Benjamin Franklin Institute
Slouched in the gray theater seats
Neck comfortably straight
While head tipped upward
I’d get chills when the room darkened
And we school kids would stop talking
And the stars would begin to greet us
Like actors slowly wondering
If the audience would adore them
And when we’d applaud
Because the show was FINALLY beginning
The stars, planets, meteors, comets, moons
And all those performers
Playing their celestial roles
Hidden to city children
Living in cement jungles
With streetlights every 500 feet
All those performers
Would put their hearts into
Brightening the night sky
(although still sunny outside)
And my heart would race
As I drifted in space
Not listening to the lecturer
Because no one could top the stories
I told myself
About the constellations
Talking to me via vibrations
For all those years
I never saw the sky
Time tempestuously passed
And I found myself sitting
With my very young sons
Also stretched and bruised
On the concrete of childhood
Their excitement matched mine
As the room darkened
And then I knew
There must be very few
In this world
Who didn’t long to stride across
The canvas of our universe…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Fels Planetarium, Ben Franklin Institute (Rittenhouse Astronomical Society) and My Ukulele and Stars
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…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: QUANTUM EQUATION ELSEWHERE / QUANTUM AMULET
Alone in my bed of memory foam
Sole indentation
Barely registering
Tossing and turning
Sweating in unremembered dreams
Furrowing small hills and valleys
One day you are there
Imprinting your length and width
Tossing and turning
Altering the structure
Of my memory foam
Changing my dreams
Calming the foamy sea
Strengthening
Improving
Memory
Sharing lust and love
Laughter and moon lunacy
Pure luck for me
Meeting and repeating
A concavity of love…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Full Moon Rising by Heather Awen, author
Steel Bars, Sacred Waters: Celtic Paganism for Prisoners.
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
Re-post from 2 years ago (so we are in New Moon, not full as the poem states so the planting will take place around New Years). Today’s pre-Christmas eve weather is 93% humidity and 79 degrees F. temperature. Wishing you all healthy, happy, and fun holidays ❤
Embrace the heat
Of Winter Solstice
No white Christmas
Not even a cool, Florida day
But the prize is a full moon
Plant those roots:
Ginger, carrots, yams
Throw in some garlic and onions
What a goulash they will make
Hot, humid, but the Earth
Coating my hands as I dig
The sweet-smelling manure
That the dogs try to eat,
Makes up for the heat
Setting of the full moon
In the pink of dawn,
No longer high
Eyes of ginger
Gaze to the sky
Bulbs of garlic—
Vampires?
Prepare to die!
And soon there will be onions
Ready to fry!
© 2015 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Flowering ginger from CS garden
poeturja 