Hot tea, infused with sugar white, granular, swallowed-up. Powdered creamer swirls, slips inside, a marriage of “Good Morning” and “Wake up” to me, sleepy on the couch.
Pungent warmth to tongue, to throat, to the insides…a dissipation to soothe the memories away. Some days they come.
A survivor, me? The multi-syllabic mess of me?
You have so much to offer, she said, with a genuine smile. She was a nice lady, put-together well-dressed, dignified, attractive, walking in heels up steps. Grace on stilts with a syrupy lure, to share myself…to share me?
My input, my experience my story, my chrysalis shed, to empower other women who shift in bruised realities, someone stealing their right to just be without a price tag on their needs.
Those women are the me I used to be.
I don’t feel very empowered Sitting here sipping tea. The past rises, even if you swallow it whole again and again. Insufficient distance between us for my Soul to rise up and fly free.
This poem was originally published by Blue Insights: Tea and Memories
You cast stones lift your curses high, chanting carried away, to hide and wait for you… its return three-fold? I think no goddess hears you. It is a barren place, your circle.
It is my pleasure, to wipe your sweet nectar from proboscis and pen, parts of your soul digging into mine. (I use it!) I abuse it, this loving that I must do. After all, you hate the thing that feeds you.
I am Ophelia. I will rise, collect wretched daisies and pass them out one by one, to gaping faces, sterile-hearted creatures that watch me drift downstream and know not my spirit.
But you! Stone in hand your anger rises, a fat red circle in the sky. Your blacks and greys writhe behind bulging, hollow eyes, twist inside your vertebrae. You light your candles fool! You collect your symbols… Idolatry! Curses! Hatred!
It is a barren place, your circle.
I ran into a guy some years ago who professed to be Wiccan, but his “practice” of it was mingled with mental health issues and a gross distortion of what Wicca stands for. Please do NOT consider this poem as a blast of Wicca — it was most certainly not from that place. I am a practicing Christian — and I believe people have every right to believe and practice their faith as they wish. But any time a person is using their religion to do harm to other people — this is not ok with me.
This man heard me make a comment about missing someone I loved who had broken off a relationship with me. The individual I wrote this poem about was so angry at my comment — all I had said was that I missed someone who had meant a lot to me — and this guy lost his marbles. He began calling me all hours of the day and night (I think he thought I was interested in pursuing a relationship with him and I was NOT at all!) cursing me, cursing my name, cursing my children — saying that he had placed an actual curse on me. He then had his WIFE call me and do the same. It was terrifying. They claimed to be calling on all kinds of witchcraft to damn me. He said he was a Warlock with special powers to destroy me.
After this terrifying experience, I wrote this poem as a way to cleanse myself of the anger and fear. I wanted it to be clear that it was not a slamming of any religion or belief system — but more a fit of screaming anger at two seriously crazy people who tried to destroy my spirit. This poem was originally posted on MySpace if that tells you how long ago it was. I stumbled upon the poem today in my files and thought I’d share it. Hopefully, no one will take offense — as it was not intended to be offensive.
Interestingly — I only knew this person for TWO WEEKS!!
Thanks for reading Circles and Stones. I am grateful that poetry can be liberating and help us to heal.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about writing poetry, it’s that you’re never done learning how to do it. Anytime I find a new angle, a new inspiration, or technique, it feels like my first day as a poet all over again. I pick up my imaginary feather quill, dip it in my imaginary pot of magical ink, and I write.
So get out your imaginary quill and take a few notes. Perhaps there are a few poems waiting for you to birth them. Here are a few ideas that do not come from any book I’ve read or class I’ve taken, but from my quill, and the bend my mind takes while rounding new corners to find poetry.
Let’s talk syzygy.
(Ok so I learned a new word today and couldn’t resist adding it in…)
noun, plural syz·y·gies.
1. Astronomy . an alignment of three celestial objects, as the sun, the earth, and either the moon or a planet: Syzygy in the sun-earth-moon system occurs at the time of full moon and new moon.
2. Classical Prosody . a group or combination of two feet, sometimes restricted to a combination of two feet of different kinds.
3. any two related things, either alike or opposite.
We will consider the third definition of syzygy. Two examples will help to explain.
Parallel Syzygy Poem
The first example, I call parallel poetry writing. In this technique you will follow this equation:
Equation: an object, a living being, or a train of thought + an action = new poem
Rule:The first item, being, or thought will be the actual topic of your poem but you will borrow imagery and descriptive words from the action you have chosen. The two will be similar in some way so that the comparison isn’t too forced, uncomfortable, confusing, or stark.
Here is an example of a poem that I wrote using this method:
thoughts of a child + swinging on a swing = Yesterdays
As you can see, there are easy similarities to be drawn between a child and the action of swinging and the two are easily pictured in the same scene.
Here is the poem for quick reference:
Yesterdays
Why don’t you climb inside my braids and sing me a song?
swinging out over the grasses our feet stretched so high the chain-link grinds as we rise toward sun
Why don’t you open up your freckles and let me inside?
I need to know where the June bugs hide in the winter when swings don’t swing and the night stands still
Consider the first stanza; these are the silly things you’d find bouncing around inside of the head of a happy child, lost in imaginative play. This theme carries throughout the poem as this child contemplates freckles and friendship, June bugs and their wanderings.
The action of swinging is evident as expressed in stanza two. Listen to the sound of the chain link grinding on the pole as this child swings. There’s also an interesting twist to this poem with regards to the structure…swinging out and back in with the line lengths, to mimic the pattern of swinging.
Juxtaposed Syzygy Poem
Now for the second example, I call juxtaposed poetry writing. You will, again, follow this equation:
Equation: an object, a living being, or a train of thought + an action = new poem
Rule: The first item, being, or thought will be the actual topic of your poem but you will borrow imagery and descriptive words from the action you have chosen. The two things will have very little, if anything, in common.
Here is an example of a poem I wrote using this method:
thoughts on being a poet + the cleaning of a fish (butchering) =The Poet Cleaning
Here is the poem for quick reference:
The Poet Cleaning
Ripped from the belly of the sea pregnant with vowels our tails slap hard pendulous swings, our eyes are benign, panicked moons, fibroadenomas sitting inside our heads.
They must be plucked out.
We climb outside ourselves, hold the knife steady, scrape against the grain, shedding our silvers until we are clean, carve a canoe-slice across our necks another, neck to belly, our insides slide free.
This poem is about the vulnerability of being a poet. The poet must open up parts of themselves, sometimes very personal, with raw honesty. Now consider the action. Have you ever seen the cleaning of a fish? If you have not it is a violent really kind of gross thing to see. The knife scraping the scales away (called the “silvers” in this poem), and slicing off the head, cutting the length of the belly the fishes guts spill out in a slippery glub. The panicked eyes are wide.
I described the writer process using the terminology, visual images, and description of a fish cleaning process to show that opening process the poet does while writing. We dig pretty deep when writing poetry — our insides slide free.
One would not normally think of these two things at the same time, but the metaphor sits well in this poem, giving it richness, depth, and provokes an emotional reaction in the reader.
Now, anyone want to give it a try?
Choose either of the above methods and write your poem. Link back here so I can see what you create!
“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
― Anaïs Nin
Christina Ward is a poet and aspiring author working on her first book, a piece of literary, mainstream fiction, and is a columnist for the Observer News Enterprise newspaper. Her poetry has been published in the Cameo literary magazine, the Arrowhead literary magazine, Vita Brevis Poetry Magazine, and in Wolff Poetry Literary Magazine.
Beneath this earth so many souls. In this ground right where I stand, my bare-heeled ache on the grit; do they linger here?
Do their solemn hazes pass me by as my breath drifts me one day to the next? Am I aware of that chill, that pressure in the air shifting, disturbing, a moaning whisper to my human ears? Does it shift me?
I turned on the light I asked you to leave
In the pierce of afternoon sun an oak; a bleak, towering, ivy-choked oak. An angular ghost. The last leaf fell long before I appeared, a shifting soul, nowhere to go. I contemplate its lean.
When comes the terrible fall? When comes the violent creaking that will rip me from my sleep?
Sudden noises — squirrel-gray antics on maple boughs, on living, bending boughs or dead bark-bare and bony limb; no difference to them, with their inexorable ramblings all toenail and chatter. They gather and they gather.
How soon will I sink into worm-foul and rot?
They will scurry across my grave. They, or their generations of they.
The dead tree refusing to fall… These wiry-tailed rodents’ gatherings… These shadows of souls carried quietly by… and I? Barefooted, sore-footed I; standing in the dirt left to ponder it all.
The squishy-cool green beneath my feet meandering before me, a path between trees. The bright arms of the sun reaching down, fingers of light, bringing growth to the ground.
I can no longer get lost this way.
I have come again. I wander again through the moss-strewn aisle in gripping fear and anxiety-laden… I know they’ll be lost if I wander awhile.
I have been here too often.
The moss knows each tentative step each catch in my breath, I gift my tears falling softly from my chin, a tender sprinkling of salt drains away my fears.
The trees creak with the breeze, interrupting me, reminding me of the cellular world, uptake of nutrient the vascular world outside of me.
I stoop and take note of basidiophytes, all dome-topped and mysterious, the feathery gills underneath each whisper-soft and musty fungus.
Worry melts from me as I picture beneath them the faeries and gnomes in secret they watch my bare feet pad by giggles on breezes drift up from their homes.
They remember my name. I am sure of it.
I find a cool spot to stretch and to lay my back in the moss, a bryophyte bliss works its way through my bones, my skin prickles and settles, I’ve so missed this.
This tender release.
If I lie here for a moment in sweet rest, in soft sphagnum hug, with the sun shining warmly… with whispering friends, meandering bugs.
I’ll rest and release, breathe in, out… the world will make sense to me again.
I had a vision. A pole; horizontal, unmoving. Suspended from it — carrion in varying stages of decomposition;
One, freshly hung drips its life blood free drip…drip…drip…
Another, rotting begun, its surface writhes with maggots and flies.
The third is rot-worn black, a carcass shell or its former self.
The three hanging there just out of reach, as are most things when you are hungry.
A bear, standing on two legs angrily reaching one sharp-clawed swipe after another roaring swipe menacing arcs cutting the sky just out of reach, just out of reach.
I don’t want to be this bear.
Sad thing. Always reaching for the depleting, the constantly wearing, disintegrating, withering dreams cut short just hanging there… dreams dripping in the sun. No, that is not for me.
I do not want to be this bear, pathetic hungry beast reaching for the despaired, decaying and wormed away by the negative and the bleak, gnawing, stealing, tearing dreams disappearing, eaten away in the sun.
I do not want to be this hungry animal reaching for the rotten, the black the ghosts of dreams the illusion of dreams the dreams that used to exist.
I want to be a different beast. A noble, beast of wanderlust and curiosity, broad-shouldered thick-backed and wiry and feasting on berries plump with juice and seed paws-full gathered in the bliss of the sun and breeze. The work is of no mind. A belly can be filled with the small, if there are many.
want to chase after the living, the sprinting and darting deer, eyes frozen wide with fury and fear… devouring the fresh flesh-dream full of muscle and blood pumping full of organic desire, of opportunity racing, raging into life, unabashed.
I had a vision, or perhaps a vision has me. A sharp-clawed roar impels me.
Deep in the North Carolina wood nestled between steep mountainous rises, a gorge, through which run waters, crisp and cool and clean.
A bench waits there for my soul.
The waters run clear, cross rock and moss, with dribbling sounds and meandering thoughts of the distant seas. The canopy hangs over.
Shady oasis of quietude waits for me to climb into its folds. A genteel hug whispered through green to wrap me up in wonder once again.
A hike for a day, I must go.
I’ll climb on the rock, spread my wings to gather the sun rub my toes in sphagnum hear the cool-water melody flow…
Oh, Carolina, you are good to my soul.
Let the breeze sway and creak in the pines! May the babbling waters find their gentle way and the mockingbirds ramble song to song, let your nature carry its secrets on.
Fruit trees drop them one, two, three…we twist some free. Flesh-juice skinned; we wipe the sugary dribble from our chins.
Time melts flesh from the fallen in weathered decay, seed to earth to green in the flowering seasonal swing of things life continues still.
Pine trees drop them one, two three… serotinous and resin-rich, pregnant with seed, Flame sets them free! Bud scales open petal-wide, exposing knobby core.
Life springs from ash, the earth peeled clean blackened trunks rising like pillars of ghosts, awaiting wing and chirp and beak. Some birds prefer to nest in post-fire trees.
Time heals the scorched, the black, the white-ash grays to leak green and leaf forth in the wake of flame growth anew and spirit churning Life continues, still.
Chirstina M. Ward | Fiddleheads & Floss Writing Services 