Tag: poetry

The Direction of Choice

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There was a time
The universe expanded before me
Choice was a luxury
Youth my companion
Direction meaningless
Lost in the sparkle of the stars

Lately the vastness of that universe
Has shrunk before my eyes
The galaxies of choice
Have turned to
Cold hollow moons
Planets of necessity

Funny how small
My world has become
The luxury of time
Exists on fewer and fewer
Planes of existence
In this world and the next

The choices are not the same
As in the days of
Gauzed-wrapped visions
Candy-sweet dreams
Jobs and friends and goals
Now have razor edges

Options have narrowed
Doors once open
Now request verification
Of paths followed
And stars wished upon
In duplicate form

I can no longer shuffle the cards of
Destiny and Delusion
The games have been chosen
Hands have been dealt
Bets are hedged
The world is keeping score

I must play the hand dealt
Watch the glow of dawn
Twist into curls of dusk
Time no longer my friend
Its shadow the scent of musk
Choice is mine no more

My vision has become blurred
Memories have faded
My heart has been broken
By limitations of my body
And the changing of the guard
As they march into the fog

I never forget my heart
The journey that brought me here
I love and I cherish
I live and I learn
But cannot go back
To the land of never was

Even though hope fades
In the emptiness of dawn
And space of my soul
Reality bounds from the sky
Our star’s blinding glare
Reminding me of the truth

All I need to do is breathe
The universe, the stars
Will point the way
And the world of choice
Will open its doors
Once again.

                   Claudia Anderson, 2013

Happy (day after) Poetry Day!!

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If you miss the bus, don’t worry — there’s always another behind it — that’s the one I’m usually on

 

By Reason of Insanity

I write to share

I write to dream

I write to entertain

I write to celebrate

I write to release passion

I write to create passion

I write to escape

I write to explore

I write to feel better

I write to feel

I write to clarify my thoughts

I write to understand my thoughts

I write to understand the world

I write to escape the world

I write to find an outlet for my emotions

I write to make sure I have emotions

I write to encourage

I write to invigorate

I write to bring a smile

I write to bring a tear

I write to cover my inadequacies

I write to deal with my inadequacies

I write so that I never forget

I write so that others never forget

I write to be understood

I write to make others understand

I write so that I will understand

I write because

I am a writer

Another Wonderful Share

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I must be in a sharing mood this week! I don’t follow a whole lot of bloggers, but the ones I do I really love their work.

Brenda is one of those poets whose words remind me of windchimes. Maybe she and I share a “Friendly Fairy Tale” connection, but there’s something musical about her poems. Do go and visit her website and be enchanted like I am!

 

Gathering in the sky are low, heavy mists: snow clouds shaped by Zeus and Thor.

via Star Swords — Friendly Fairy Tales

Write What You (Don’t) Know

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anne-rice-novelist-quote-i-do-want-to-go-another-way-to-writeUnder the stress of writing for both business and personal, I am experiencing something that I have encouraged others to do for some time.

If you’ve ever read any of my work (and maybe I should just start a new page and SHARE something once in a while), my style is much like my blogs:  easy going, sassy, fun and a test ground for obscure vernacular. I usually stay in the same vein,  the same comfort zone. Middle-aged heroines, slightly evil protagonists, a little mystical, a little macabre.

But now and then I take a stab at writing things that make me uncomfortable — things I don’t do well. Murders, politics, modern day drama. I do this because it’s important to push my comfort zone just to see if I can adapt. To take a step on the other side of the fence.

I find myself doing that at work lately. Emails and FB posts about products are a lot more cut and dry than free form poetry. I can’t use too much humor or any sarcasm, lest the readers get the wrong impression of the company. Which is how it should be.

But writing these straight-laced entries is more of a challenge than I thought. It seems I’m almost too straight-laced. It has been suggested by my work mentor and friend that Facebook is more a social interaction, and that I can promote products while keeping it fun.

Can you be a different writer for different situations?

Have you ever tried to write third person when all your life you’ve been a first person kinda writer? Have you ever tried to write research findings with a straight face while letting loose with sex scenes in your current novel?

It’s not as easy as it appears to be.

We all have a personal slant to our writing. Throw a bunch of papers from different writers on the table and most times people will know who wrote what. That’s good from a reputation standpoint. But what if the group wanted you to throw something strange and different into the mix? Could you?

There are so many different worlds to try out. And in the privacy of your practice room,  nobody has to read your writing but you. Try a story from a different point of view. From someone who grew up in the Old South. Someone who lives in an isolated village in Norway. From someone who has been abused. From someone in the 1800s who had to go to work in the mines at age 9. From a serial killer.

It is good practice to get into other’s heads besides yours. Even if you’ve never been to Norway, a little research goes a long way. Surely you’re not a serial killer, but what about their justifications?  The point of these exercises is not precision — it’s practice.

I’m about due for a wrong-way-turn short story. I’ve written about places I’ve visited or driven past, my characters are half-visions of me, and I feel safe in my middle-age-heroine cocoon.

And writing descriptions about sheep clippers and paint brushes just doesn’t take me far enough away.

 

From Chinese Food to Poetry

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d76daf8a-bffe-3e49-a6fb-5a9cc47065f5I was sitting in my favorite Chinese restaurant, waiting for pick up, and was struck with this fun idea for a blog about the Chinese language and their people and traveling and visiting foreign villages and…

And then I came home and opened WordPress.

And all this POETRY fell out!!

So my Chinese/Italy/England fantasy will wait. I want to share the beauty of poetry and the worlds they come from.

 

Friendly Fairy Tales ~~ The Elves Must Go  img_0111

 

 

 

img_20160608_00010-1Katzenworld ~~ Purrsday Poetry: The Cat on The Green Bench

 

 

 

Back Yards and Alleys ~~ A Closer Look  20161110_105725_resized

 

 

 

The Feathered Sleep ~~ Water    the_pursuit_-_nudes_swimming

 

 

 

Leaf and Twig ~~ Buche de Noel  dsc038291

Business in Rhyme ~~ Poetic inspiration: Poetry is Art poetry_art1

 

 

 

Maxima ~~ Once We Meet   dscn5602

 

 

 

This is just a thimble of the wonderful writers I follow. WordPress, the Web, is full of poetry bursting at the seams. I didn’t realize I enjoyed listening so much. Please check out the above poets and discover some of your own.

Let the music tickle your ears.

Astronomy — the Song, not the Science

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giphyLike lesser birds on the four winds
Like silver scrapes in May
And now the sand´s become a crust
Most of you have gone away

Come Susie dear, let´s take a walk
Just out there upon the beach
I know you´ll soon be married
And you´ll want to know where winds come from

Well it´s never said at all
On the map that Carrie reads
Behind the clock back there you know
At the Four Winds Bar

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Four winds at the Four Winds Bar
Two doors locked and windows barred
One door to let to take you in

The other one just mirrors it
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hellish glare and inference
The other one´s a duplicate

The Queenly flux, eternal light
Or the light that never warms
Yes the light that never, never warms
Or the light that never

Never warms
Never warms
Never warms
The clock strikes twelve and moondrops burst

Out at you from their hiding place
Miss Carrie nurse and Susie dear
Would find themselves at Four Winds Bar
It´s the nexus of the crisis

And the origin of storms
Just the place to hopelessly
Encounter time and then came me
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!

Call me Desdanova
The eternal light
These gravely digs of mine
Will surely prove a sight

And don´t forget my dog
Fixed and consequent
Astronomy… a star [repeat indefinitely]      ~ Blue Oyster Cult, 1988

 

This is a blog that wraps around my friends the poets.

I have written poetry — I think everyone has. Beauty is in the eyes (and ears) of the beholder. Some are just better than others at it.

I was listening to oldies music at work the other day and I pulled this song out of my flash drive repertoire. Listening to the words made me curious, so I Googled them, and here they are. And I wonder.

What do they mean?

There are lots and lots of songs (especially from the 60’s) with psychedelic melodies, lyrics, and mushroomed foundations. I suppose when you saw God from another planet anything was possible. And there are lyrics far more cryptic than those above.

But, like abstract art, I don’t get it.

I am not a scientific, linear thinker. Far from it. My stories include time travel, magic, computers that write their own stories, and women who follow shadows. But I suppose I always need one foot in reality, or else nothing will make sense.

The lyrics of songs are just as powerful as a sonnet, a haiku, or free verse. They can say so much, so little, be deep or light or anything in between. It’s just harder when it’s ME that has to figure out what it all means. Like modern art, I know there are things I’m supposed to figure out on my own. Like a Jackson Pollock painting or a Craig Haupt sketch. There is a feeling, a meaning, behind its creation. Sometimes, if the artist is alive, I can plain ask (like Craig!) Other times, if the artist is long gone, I’ve got to either figure it out myself or Google that, too.

In the end, I guess I just liked moondrops and astronomy.  And that is meaning enough for me.

****

P.S.  I just looked up the meaning of the story…I like my own imagination better.

 

A Poem for the End of October

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dreamlike-autumn-forests-janek-sedlar-22__880October is for Dreams

 

Poetry, like short stories, novellas, chapterbooks, and song lyrics, are music to the ear. Whether that music is a symphony, a hum, rap, an Irish ballad, or a rock band guitar solo, matters not. Something about the rhythm, the cadence, the meaning of the words transports us across time and space to a place that brings a smile — or a tear — to our face.

Born in 1788, Lord Byron was one of the leading figures of the Romantic Movement in early 19th century England. A poem he wrote 200 years ago brings to heart the crossing of the dream world and reality. It serves up nine stanzas, but the first is the one that caught my eye — and my ear. Like a symphony.

Here is to October, to Dreams, and to the music of language.

The Dream

I

Our life is twofold; Sleep hath its own world,
A boundary between the things misnamed
Death and existence: Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality,
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They take a weight from off waking toils,
They do divide our being; they become
A portion of ourselves as of our time,
And look like heralds of eternity;
They pass like spirits of the past—they speak
Like sibyls of the future; they have power—
The tyranny of pleasure and of pain;
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by,
The dread of vanished shadows—Are they so?
Is not the past all shadow?—What are they?
Creations of the mind?—The mind can make
Substances, and people planets of its own
With beings brighter than have been, and give
A breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
I would recall a vision which I dreamed
Perchance in sleep—for in itself a thought,
A slumbering thought, is capable of years,
And curdles a long life into one hour.