FormForAll: Clarion Sonnet • skinning genes

Being And Seeker by Elena Ray


skinning genes

Watching this happen to you from afar
is not just distressing but right on par

with not watching me when it happened here.
Caused by stress you might say but I do fear

that, like our height and our brown hair, these screams
pulsing inside us came straight from our genes.

You can choose, of course, to just let it ride
but depression can't be taken in stride--

nor the despair of the weakening soul
that searches for the elusive loophole,

nor the task of the body to survive
the booze and the pills flying this nosedive.

Come back to yourself, sweet being of Light,
before you succumb to your last midnight.

                                                            MLydiaM ~ May 2012


Written for dVerse Poets Pub FormForAll, where Samuel Peralta's (aka Semaphore1) stimulating prompt inspires us to compose a Clarion Sonnet  (please click link for description and information, along with links to other Clarion Sonnets----and certainly do not miss the one written by Semaphore himself).

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Poetics: Awareness of the Experience

Image by Walter W. Smith III

 Crosser

One of her problems
is that she is the type who will
cross that bridge
when she comes to it.
She crosses the bridge and then
turns around and crosses it again,
and then doubles back and
each time she crosses the bridge
she remembers who she believes crossed her
and she becomes unhinged, crosser and crosser.
She takes tightrope trips
over the span to scaffolding
that could give a different view of
the bridge, but her views never change.
I fear she will slip one day soon,
falling onto the tracks below,
to a place I passed long ago.
My train of thought then was as it
is now: you structure your own journey--
if you mold yourself into an I-beam
that is your cross to bear.

                                                              MLydiaM ~ March 2012


Submitted for one of the most powerful (for me) prompts ever: Poetics - Awareness of the Experience at dVerse Poets. Sheila's prompt has four remarkable images by digital artist Walter Smith and she asks us to:

• Choose one of Walter’s pieces and write a poem about how it speaks to you – what thoughts, emotions, and images it stirs within you. As you process and write, be aware of what you are experiencing in that moment, and channel it into your writing.

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just the way i am

Ghostess by Menachem Krinsky


I am by John Clare
       
I am - yet what I am, none cares or knows:
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes --
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love's frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live-like vapours tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteem:
Even the dearest that I love the best
Are strange-nay, rather, stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
there to abide with my creator God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.

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This is a depressing poem but it spoke to me, especially the middle stanza. It hit the same spot as the lyrical hip hop routine (below) did on So You Think You Can Dance mid-week.

Just checking in on myself......

And how are you doing?




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Double rainbows

The rainbow never tells me -by Emily Dickinson

The rainbow never tells me
That gust and storm are by,
Yet is she more convincing
Than Philosophy.

My flowers turn from Forums --
Yet eloquent declare
What Cato couldn't prove me
Except the birds were here!




For two years in a row, in the merry month of May, we have been graced with gorgeous double rainbows. This one appeared on Saturday evening after a particularly driving rain with hail, remaining doubled for quite awhile before changing to a single rainbow. It was wider than the one last May, the one that (I learned a few weeks later) appeared on the day of my childhood friend's suicide. Double rainbows will remind me of him always.

I am having an emotional time of it lately, with or without rainbows. Lots of rain, lots of despair . . . . . .  except the birds were here.

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In Memorium: Tommy.......be ready, heart, for parting

Stages

~by Hermann Hesse

As every flower fades and as all youth

Departs, so life at every stage,

So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,

Blooms in its day and may not last forever.

Since life may summon us at every age

Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,

Be ready bravely and without remorse

To find new light that old ties cannot give.

In all beginnings dwells a magic force

For guarding us and helping us to live.

Serenely let us move to distant places

And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us

But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.

If we accept a home of our own making,

Familiar habit makes for indolence.

We must prepare for parting and leave-taking

Or else remain the slaves of permanence.

Even the hour of our death may send

Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,

And life may summon us to newer races.

So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Tommy died on May 5, the day I posted my shots of a double rainbow. I have been in a place of inner silence since learning on May 13 that he is gone.

He was the boy I wrote about having fought over with a girl on the schoolyard in third grade. Later that year he was injured during recess and fled into the school bleeding (was he crying? I don't think so). I loved him so that I followed him and, seeing drops of his blood in a trail along the hallway, I yanked paper towels from the girls bathroom and began wiping up his blood from the old-growth hardwood floor. A teacher, looking quite puzzled and repulsed, demanded that I stop.

We were friends for so long. The summer after graduating high school we had our first and only date. It was a drive up to Lake Tahoe and we may have had a meal.....I don't remember. What I do remember is holding his hand as he drove and talking about who we each had become since grammar school. I think we each had that 18-year-old sensation that time was passing quickly now and we felt a need to tidy up loose ends, make sense of youth, take the day to dream of our futures. The friend vibe between us, so firmly established, precluded romance from blooming. As I paused to think about that last sentence my eyes filled with tears because there are no regrets--only gratitude--that we trusted in the beauty of our friendship. 

The photo here is us at our 20th high school reunion, twenty years ago. His wife took the shot with their young ones nearby. She and I exchanged Christmas cards for some years afterward, but in the days before email and online social networking it was easy to simply drift apart from friends. We never thought it was farewell.......until it suddenly was.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-TALK (8255)

selected translation of Hesse poem from this site

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The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears.*

What's the rush? -- you might be asking yourself.

First of all, I'm in a hurry to get out of the funk I've been in for some days now. Enough of this, I tell 'ya. It is, however, often times easier wished for than accomplished. Sometimes you can do it on your own, depending upon how dark your mood. In the lighter shades of a slump I can actually help myself simply by acting as if I feel energized, positive, hopeful. And there are therapists, gyms, music, hobbies, toys, drugs and alcohol, eating, reading, sleep, yoga, animals......many, many things to help get depressed people out of their depression, some more viable and reliable than others.

On Saturday morning my therapy came in the form of a cheerful email with attached photo from my friend, Nancy. Ours is one of those former co-worker friendships that actually has withstood the years since we both left work.

Some years ago, she and her husband moved to central Oregon over the mountains, and there Nancy has her horse Oakie, a beloved female being indeed. Nancy is artistic and in her email she said she has recently added knitting to her skills. She made these two hats for herself and had her "kid" model them for this shot. She wrote that Oakie "tolerates a lot" from her! They are quite a pair....... and I'm not talking about the hats (although I do think the hats are great).

Today I'm celebrating the special bonds of friendship that help us through our lives. Among those, surely, are the treasured relationships we have with our pets. It's coming up on time for me to post another picture of my cat, Willow, who is simply the light in my life right now........


But today is Oakie's Day at Writerquake!



So how sweet is this? Worth rushing to see, most definitely.



* quote: Arabian proverb
graphic: tinypic.com

Peaceful Flip Flops

My, oh my. If the results of the following two tests are accurate how I have changed in eight years!

Two years before I left the office I was in a miserable state, very stressed for multiple reasons. Time came when I sought our family physician's help. When I explained to him that, in the center of my forehead just above eyebrow level, I felt like a frown was developing inside my cranium and struggling to burst out (remember the scene in Alien when the creature plows through the astronaut's belly?.....something like that), he said simply, You need help. So Prozac came into my life.

One week after beginning the medication a co-worker pulled me aside into an empty coffee room and asked if I was "on something." For reasons concerning job preservation and because it was absolutely none of her business I denied it, then asked her why she wondered. She said that I had always been so intense, but I'd changed suddenly, a wonderful change.
Hmmm, I said, how interesting...


Test #1

What Your Flip Flops Say About You

You are super laid back and peaceful. Not much disturbs you. You're content with what you have in life, and you can't stand feeling worked up. A lot of good things tend to come your way in life... You're not too busy or stressed to let an opportunity pass you by. Your ideal warm weather place: Hawaii

The Flip Flop Test

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Test #2

You Are 65% Peaceful

You are a very peaceful person. All is good in your world, no matter what's going on. Occasionally you let your problems get to you, but you generally remain upbeat. Your inner strength is inspirational - much more so than you may realize.

How Peaceful Are You?

Thoughts in a Bottle on the Ocean

I have a friend who needs support right now who is far away, in real distance and, I fear, from hope.

You know it is you. Swim into this poem and return to your life refreshed.

-Lydia



This is a moment when we all might pause to pray for, and offer meditations on behalf of, those who need our love and concern right now. I am specifically thinking about my friend, my older brother who had heart surgery in Duluth this week, and the cold young bird that snuggled in our window feeder last night at dusk.



Darkness
by Kirsti A. Dyer


My light and my life
provided me hope for a future,
a reason to live
and the strength to exist.

Suddenly extinguished,
taken away without warning.
I was abandoned,
left in the darkness
trying to survive
searching for any glimmer
on the distant horizon.

I stand precariously
on a piece of solid ground
barely large enough for my feet.
Around me, a vast expanse
of desolation and emptiness
for as far as I can tell.

It waits
with extending arms
to engulf and surround me
in a permanent shadow.

I remain tenuously balanced
on this small bit of solid footing
Providing me the last vestiges of hope,
Unsure where to turn
or how to find an escape.

No path in sight,
it has decayed into the abyss.
No light to guide my footsteps,
it has been withdrawn.

In complete blackness
I close my eyes
waiting to fall.

A light appears before me
no,
from within me.

I discover
a brilliance inside
An internal source of strength, power
and illumination.

This force surges through my body
filling me with courage.
I open my eyes once more in the darkness
finally lose my balance,
and descend
into the eternal night.

But in falling, I discover
that I possess wings.

With new courage, my own light,
and wings to save me
from the everlasting darkness
I take flight
high above the waiting chasm
towards a faint glimmer
far on the horizon
and hope.

-- Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS
Journey of Hearts, Domain Designer/Creator