Happy Poetry Month, Creatives! I Hope you are enjoying the Me time of spring! My poems placed as a semi finalist in The Mary Shay Ballard’s Chapbook Poetry Prize in 2015 and 2016. Although I didn’t win the coveted prize, I felt and still feel strongly that poetry is cathartic, much like the healing hands of a nurse’s compassionate touch. So, as a special treat for my readers & critics alike, I’d like to share some of my work that forms the heart of me. And no, this work was not included in the competition.
I Am Sometimes Left to Wonder:
The more things change the more things stay the same-
The more she tries to leave behind what’s hiding in the cornerstone of her being- the more that un-named thing seems to languish on the plateau of her subconscious mind.
When one tries to keep the past in the past; there it lies in the crevices of our deepest dreams; nitpicking at the core of who we want to become-
I have this ethereal relationship with what some suppose is ‘art’. It’s meshes with a worldview that oftentimes forms in the creative center of my brain, failing to connect the dots that will perform its call to duty. In poetry, words easily slip-slide away from thoughts formed by my conscious center to be overtaken by human emotions.
Empathy takes ahold and goes about unearthing truths hidden inside personal pockets of space. This empathy calls me. Calls itself POETRY.
I love the ambiance of sitting alone in the presence of an almighty entity that becomes a shadowy figure of which I envision the most high. An Otherworldliness I feel the need to believe in and give reverence to in the center of my writing angst-
Deliver me Oh Lord! For I am blinded and cannot see the gifts that you have given a mere creature like myself. I am annoyingly frustrated. I am a questioning being- imperfect but willing to try. And so I continue offering contributions to other human beings.
The time came for me to put away the thought of opportunities and possibility in the realm of poetry. But, as I stand in the stillness of nature’s beginnings where birds chirp, bees swarm and the sun is shining down on the green grass growing beneath my feet- I wonder and my fingers itch to create something of similar beauty to share with the masses.
Something feels sorely lacking and I walk away from what could be, to concentrate on the here and now and use my gifts and the skills and talents I have honed to set my eyes on the prize.
I heard it said once that women poets make for great pastimes. Are women only passing time in their writings? For those women penning poems who should doubt their gifts, I say look to the works of Nikki, Maya, Sylvia, Gwendolyn and so many creations from women warriors who have penned their truths onto a mocking blankness that lay untouched before them. I don’t know about other women poets in answer to the whys of their desires to pen poems, but to me-
Poetry should feed the soul. Flow like the swiftness of a soaring eagle’s wing upon the blank page and keep your nimble fingers moving in synch with the rhythmic flow of the unconscious mind where the need to create something worthy in the eyes of your colleagues and readers and others who call themselves “poet” and “poetess” and creators of expressed expressions-awaits to delight in and even judge its merit.
I write poetry not like Gwendolyn or Maya or Nikki or anyone but myself, and so I must rely on my own merits and pray that my work could even stand alone, let alone see favor in the eyes of the true effortless artists who reign from poet laureate and champions the woman voice in defining what it means to be “Artist.”
On My Work:
I don’t have a name for it. It has been called “expressive” and “Intuitive”.
It has been widely accepted by others with their own labels and I have swallowed the response I wish to utter, but I let it go and wish to stop the torture that calls to me, sometimes at the most inopportune times.
I will try to keep this need for this thing in check because there’s no time to play when my mind is focused on doing the work that keeps me fed, protected from the elements, my expenses paid and clothes on my back.
I wonder about the starving artist syndrome and I fear there is a semblance of truth there, and so I accept the need to pen words into images of life lived, in evidence of struggle and achievement against all odds, including being a woman poet who writes poetry as a great past-time and is often left to wonder if people can identify or comprehend. xoxo
I Want To Feel His Presence
In the presence of God’s work
the world is alive
Mother Nature’s green
grass
Trees, ponds, birds, wasps and bees
Sounds that whispers
I’m here
alive, watching, hovering about
in the presence of God’s
work
your spirit sings
Truths
of who you are and whose you are-
Sitting and watching and listening to the
sounds in
whispers
in colors and in movement,
gentle winds rustle fallen leaves from
bountiful ushering of Mulberry trees
Offerings that shade from the sun
while you become one who sits in awareness
And
in
Understanding of the benevolence where
you are chosen to witness
the beauty and significance that is God’s work…CF
Clara54 Writer's Blog 