Author: VJ

Permission to write, paint, and imagine are the gifts I gave myself when chronic illness hit - a fair exchange: being for doing. Relevance is an attitude. Humour essential.

Life is Like This

Biting, the sun’s brilliance,
nestled in a cornflower blue sky –
competition for mustard gold,
tangerine orange, and chartreuse –
leaves shimmering this Autumn morn

The vividness of colours too sharp
for just awakened eyes – begs retreat.
I contemplate this vision, think:
life is like this –
too beautiful, at times for words;
glorious perfection.

In a blink, the sky changes
white clouds forming a backdrop,
Autumn wind tossing the tree about,
branches dipping, pull apart,
and the harmony of the last moment
is gone, and I think:

Life is like this –
turning without notice,
what once was balance, suddenly lost,
and we are left spinning.
I can hear it now – wind rushing
against the windowpane, taunting:
Change! Change is coming!

I know what it speaks is true, for
life is like this: ever fluctuating, and
the reminder is bittersweet,
my heart, reluctant to let go of Summer
knows it’s okay: it’s just the way of life.

(A rewrite of a rewrite. Image my own)

Deluded

A window opened
I climbed through
forgetting…

October’s window
filled with promise,
just beyond the pane

Denial is a weasel
leads me towards
the edge…

Those madmen thoughts:
ambition, self-importance –
life has humbled me,
yet again…

(Poem first appeared on Twitter. Art my own)

Lorraine

Remember how we fought
at four and five –
over whose turn it was
to push the baby buggy?

Your Campbell soup baby face
locks curlier than mine;  
eyes a brighter sparkle

How you withdrew from me with age
ashamed your mother was an alcoholic –
I did not care, carried my own secrets

How you chose drugs to cope,
while I went straight – the line
too wide to cross, it seemed.

You were my roots, dear friend
the rock I needed to ground me
Life, back then, never easy

Secrets tore us apart – projections
of judgments never actualized
somehow, I never measured up

I see you now, shrouded in the mist
of my own grief, understand that your turmoil
ran deeper than I had known, and one day

when we meet in Heaven,
I will embrace the whole you
and we will laugh at how secrets

whose very disclosure would have solidified us
kept us more and more distant – so little
did we know of love at the time.

(Lorraine died at the age of 26 – complications from drug use. After her death, I learned that she was a lesbian, a secret that she thought she could not share with me at the time. She had not known that I would not have judged her. Sadly, we never had the chance. I loved her so.)

Mastery

Happenstance welcome,
dreamer that I am

Loyal to memories
and committed to progress

Professional ambitions unrequited,
I seek new avenues…

Failure a nag
provokes hesitation

Let me be!
I am independent!

This path is unique
and while I dwell
in contemplation of what ifs

I recognize my challenges,
the unreliability of illness,
expect no encores

Easier to focus
on what I can master
today.

(Watercolour mine)

Forgive the Dance

Please forgive the dance,
but it is what I do –
one step forward,
then slide back,
shuffle and lose the rhythm
and start again.

Always reaching forward –
heart securely tucked in place –
but there is something embedded,
cellular – that invites the struggle

and so…I dance –
yesterday a warrior,
today the fool,
tomorrow only knows

multi-faceted,
roughly cut,
a gem
of an undefined hue,
I will always try again.

(Forgive the Dance first appeared on One Woman’s Quest II, September 2019. Image my own)

Visible, Yet Hidden

I am visible, yet hiding –
balancing a vitality-blocking
disorder that renders me
inanimate, repulsive –

Who doesn’t flinch
in the face of deviancy?

Creativity obsesses
grasps hope that courage
will annihilate the beast,
that resourcefulness
is all it takes to overcome –
Hold on!  it cries, nestled
deep within the grief –

Oh, you think you see me,
but I assure you, my friend,
you do not – I am rebel,
lost in isolation, vulnerability
fantasizing revolution –

Resolve trapped between
the exaggeration of infinite
possibility and the unremarkable
defence of compulsion to survive –
thrive even, if spirit was not
so aghast at current setbacks.

(Image my own)

Nothing is Lost

The garments of past successes
are not lost in life’s shuffle
but reapplied with new panache

What once served to polish presentation
now accentuates gained wisdom –

service is service
whether salaried
and noteworthy
or humbly given

I apply my passion to a higher cause
and am rewarded with space to grow
and companionship along the way

Discovering that life experience
bears worth – a liberating
and empowering awakening.

(Image my own)