Bought a flag from Amazon
Hung it on a branch
Here in the corner of my yard
Up against the swamp
I claim you mine!
The dogs wouldn’t cross the border
To them, I’m the nurturer
Not an Alpha
So it’s just me, the Flamingos
And my loyal noisy Crows
I claim you mine!
And name you
Flamingoland (how original)…
© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Flag of Flamingoland
Backseat guitar
Limp in humidity
Who can love them
Music twangs
Instead of sounding
Sweet
But it loyally lies
Waiting
Ready to steady me
When I need a break
When my head feels the
Whomp
From the 2-stroke roar
Of an ATV
Cutting through my swamp
After midnight…
(c) 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Backseat guitar on cycle
Ghost of a song
Echoing down dirt lanes
Ectoplasming past my tin home
Dead-ended in the swamp
Classical Spanish music
Evolving into Flamenco
Three in the morning
More dangerous than midnight
Traditional Chinese Medicine
Proclaims it the ruling of lungs
Emergency Medical Services
Named it the heart attack hour
Both are right
Call and response
Tenor guitar slung on my shoulder
Wisp of a ghost, maybe two
No fear from me
I strum with the shadows
Exercising my lungs
In the dark, I sing
That moment
That moment one’s percussive heart
Keeps time with the melody
Music taking wing
Jolted by the strings
Controlled by invisible fingers
Chords seducing their
Gaggles of ghosts
Who suddenly surge
Down the road, into the muck
Last Quarter Moon glimmers
Through a pellucid sky
Glitters on wet swamp earth revealing
A crucifix, dirty yet untarnished gold
Wipe it on my long black shirt
Treasure forced to the surface
From heavy rain
Overflowing swamp
And I see a long line led by
A history book explorer
Hernando DeSoto, I’m sure
Once memorized for a test
In a long-ago inner city school:
620 men from 9 ships
220 horses
Priests, farmers, soldiers
Up from Tampa Bay
Hiking through Safety Harbor’s burial mound*
To the Weeden Island Cultures’ mound**
A few miles from me
In New Port Richey
Mound to Mound
Looking down on the ground
Kicking with my black combats
Scattering pottery, human remains
Two skulls head to head
Holding hands
In moldy bed
Since 1539
Buried in a swamp of time
Forbidden love?
Oh, yes
In the shadows
An armored man
A doe-skinned woman
Holding hands
As a priestly spectre
Waving a crucifix
Shouts heathens must die
And they collapse
To the tune of soldiers’ muskets
Loudly exploding, drowning out the music
And the lovers become history
In a piece of Florida swamp
Encroaching on my future backyard
As earth is kicked over
Hiding the pair
Guitar notes evaporating
And the moon silently wanes
After a final wail
From wraiths
I pale
Among ancient bones and faded gold
Alone and not dreaming…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja), Blogetressa: Shambolic Poetry
IMAGE: Hallowed Swamp and Tenor Guitar /DeSoto’s map 10-1-18
* http://seesafetyharbor.com/Philippe-Park/Indian-Mound/
** https://www.pascocountyfl.net/1193/Oelsner-Indian-Mound
*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
DEDICATED TO DENISE FLETCHER & JAMES CORBESIA
Resonator road
Tin shack swamped
Sinking beneath
Vines and moss
Dueling guitars
Electronic sizzling
Thrift store treasure
Shoulda stayed there
But it competes against
Lightning spears
Searching the ground
In a wet backyard
Here’s the star
My acoustic tenor guitar
Smug and safe
No connections with
The storm
Although thunder roars louder
Than metal strings
But electric unplugs
Acoustic wins the
Aging game
With a hot patch
On osteo knobs
And now the music
Under the aegis of
Modern medical heat
Allows delicate fingers and tendons
To play and sing
For at least an hour
Lost in the bower
Of the space time forgot…
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Dueling guitars
Picking my way through the swamp
Stomping in useless suede cloth boots
Sand spurs sticking to tights
Shouting to warn unbrumating snakes
All for the picture
And the metaphor
Of seeing the palm tree
Juxtaposed with the Queen Anne’s Lace
But by the time I hike into the
Out of control greens and browns
Hang up my guitar for the arty effect
The photo just isn’t there
At least not by phone camera
That I swear has no zoom-in
The sun hovers between East and South
Washing out the white flowers
If I move forward
The deep swamp will suck me down
It’s not really evil
Just has a sense of humor
And I seem to be the only one fascinated
With its loveliness
So I make it two photos
But the poem in my mind
Is gone
The metaphor was
The convergence of seasons
Palm tree
That never lost its greenery
Because of the warm winter
Queen Anne’s Lace
So Philly and Jersey summer
From my youth
The only flowers
Besides the Sunflower
That I’d occasionally see
In the concrete city
North meets South
Spring meets Summer
No, better go
Before the Water Moccasins
Slither over
And in May
The gators walk all day
Looking to mate
Bad enough a Blue Jay
Almost crashed into me
On my elliptical
This morning, outside
Pedaling to
Of all tunes
“Florida”
(c) 2018 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: My guitar on the swamp palm tree and quasi-invisible Queen Anne’s Lace
No one approaches
The edge of the swamp
I, alone
Am the sojourner…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGE: Edge Of My Swamp
(photo from FB Memory set me off about leaving on Thursday)
Morning
Exhausted
From little to no sleep
I’m a mass of
White-pink-gray-blue
Brains or intestines or
Pile of pythons
Primal soup solidified
Try to untangle
Thrown into the void
Falling
Dogs desert me
As I hurl myself to safety
Thoroughly awakening
To what type of day?
Oh, no, I’m going away
From the swamp
From the ginger
From the dogs
From the music…
What makes people
Want to travel?
Is it easier with
Sister or Brother
Friend or Lover?
I’m used to being alone
Will eventually feel okay
Do wish, though
There was someone to hold onto
While wading through strangeness
And strangers
Oh no, I’m going away
From the swamp
From the ginger
From the dogs
From the music…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
Image: CS from FB Memory 2014 with ginger
Through two decades
A dead Live Oak
Stood upright
Perch for families
Of Florida Black Vultures
What sights I’ve seen
On that stage
Young buzzards courting
Males competing for
The belle of the bough
Married couple kissing
Passing food between beaks
Here they are with baby
Showing him how to perch
And search
For newly-made swamp corpses
Other days watching them
Wings outspread
Drying out stormy feathers
One day the mom and dad gone
Baby sat for three days
Finally the smaller one returned
Maybe dad creamed by a car
While cleaning up the road kill
In the middle of city streets
Then the other day
A muffled crash in the swamp
Perch finally fell
And here I go in pursuit of my “art”
Worrying about Water Moccasins
And other snakes
As I wade through the grass
Snap, snap
On smart phone
That does no justice
To the thumbnails of Nature
Suddenly recalling last week
Vulture in my yard
Broken wing
Hopping around
Looking for a way out
I opened the gate and tried shooing him
But he didn’t get it
He did find a pile of tables and plants
Climbed up over the fence
Relieved he escaped
Yet what are the chances
A bird will live safely
With a damaged wing
Birds
Trees
Life yet death symbols for me
And I recall sitting under
Another Live Oak
Many years ago
And it splitting
For no good reason
Phone ringing, me running
My mother’s voice funereal
My favorite uncle died
The trees never lie
But do I think a tree
Can actually be
A psychopomp?
Birds play that role for me
But would a bird
Lead a bird
To the afterlife
Or does the tree’s soul
Take control?
After all
They were friends for so many years…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Live Oak perch fallen in my swamp and FL Black Vulture on the perch in my swamp
Air potatoes in indistinct moonlight
Like modern Winchcombe Grotesques
Fortifying the overgrowth of summer vines
Chills in the heat, dancing along my spine
Monstrous night
Dogs plastered to the fence
Growling at an undone rope
A rope unwound
Hanging on a spindly tree
Gulf Coast wind winding up to
A shrieking Banshee force
Is it the 3 a.m. heart attack
Or a dream
Can’t recall rolling out of bed
Sliding through the glass door
Suddenly soaking suede cloth boots
I think, Well, that feels real
Surreal similarity of when I was four
High on my uncle’s shoulders
Defying the Atlantic Ocean
Then slapped by a wave
Drowning
But still breathing
Under the sea
Thinking
Well, this is it
Then feeling him find me
Scoop me up
Carry me back to Atlantic City sounds
Of ice cream men walking the beach
Of children shouting, alive and laughing
All a blank after that, like now
And I fall on sleeping red-ant villages
On the beach of my back yard
Mosquitoes glued to skin welting up
My smallest dog jumps onto my back
As if we’re in bed
And suddenly my head
Clears in the darkness
Despite humidity and drizzle
It’s real, I rise
Clap my hands demanding the dogs to follow
Maybe they, as nocturnals, belong here
But no place for me
At three
In the unearthly morning
Of moon madness
Brought on, I surmise
From OD-ing on chamomile tea
And vomit-smelling valerian drops
All in the name of at least
A good two hours sleep
But back in the cool air conditioned bed
Insomniac thoughts reverberate in my head
How’d I get there without remembering
And, most importantly
Who hung that freaking rope
Who hung on it…
© 2017 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)
IMAGES: Rope in my swamp, medieval Winchcombe Grotesque
