Category: creativity

Self Portrait In Colours

Found an old diary –
days when I painted myself white,
prayed to angels, believed God
cared about personal forever after –
painted myself pathetic.

Took me back –
days when I painted myself pink,
altruistic heart committed to indifference,
yearned for the unrequited, sacrificed –
painted myself foolish.

Read between the lines –
days when I painted myself yellow,
so desperately co-dependent,
projected sunshine, risked it all –
painted myself delusional.

Wonder that I’d survived –
painted myself broken,
found strength, moved on,
made better choices –
painted myself indigo.

(Self Portrait in Colours originally appeared here in August of 2016.  Edited.

 

 

Advocate for Wonder

I know what infinity means:
it’s one hundred plus one.

Voice of innocence
serene her sense of self
of life’s complexities.

Should borrow from her,
embrace that confidence,
but worry intervenes.

How do we preserve
the wonder of youth,
save her from cynicism?

That it is! I reply,
my smile a warm hug –
vow to be forever advocate.

(I submit this poem, inspired by my six-year-old granddaughter, to three challenges:
Ragtag Community’s, serene;  Fandango’s advocate; and Reena’s Exploration challenge.  Image from personal collection.)

The Queen Is Missing

She’s not in the kitchen
presiding over preparations,
thriving amidst the chatter,
tutting away thieving fingers.

She’s not in the classroom,
mastering subjects,
upholding order,
ruling with charitable hand.

Nor is she at social affairs,
head bent in rapt attention,
smiling cordially,
gracious with compassion.

The Queen is missing –
the poise and composure
that marked her carriage
has vanished without a trace.

Don’t ask the old woman
tottering down the lane,
stooped and stumbling –
she’s not all there.

Her mind’s a trickster,
her ego a petulant child,
unwilling to concede wrong –
she’s merely the court jester.

(The Queen is Missing first appeared August of 2015.)

 

Dear Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Yellow Wallpaper)

I have examined your wallpaper,
discussed the scholarly attributes
of shades of yellow, traced the edges
of your unravelling with my mind,
argued the merits of Gothic horror;

marvelled at the brilliance of wording,
the courage to define the nature of
feminine madness, the boldness to
highlight inequalities long before the
establishment of a Person’s Act.

Forgive me, but I need to set aside
this keyboard for a moment, for I tire
easily, am suffering from an exhaustion
that is systemic and calls for elimination
of all stimulus in favour of rest, you see

I share your sentence of confinement,
isolated to a room with windows, my
mind wandering to ancestral gardens,
contemplating shadows and movement
cognizant of underlying forces, creeping.

My husband has just left, dear man, having
checked on me, taking on my burden,
concerned that I am not sleeping at night
thinks that by reading and rereading your
words I am only fueling an already over-

active imagination; begging me to be still
as the doctor has recommended; but I am
burning to tell you that time has no
relevance between us and that you and I
exist simultaneously – a secret we dare

not confess – how correct your impulse
that there was more than one woman,
that we are many, barred by the designs
of society, papered over by irrational,
outdated shades of yellow, lacking

symmetry, or sensibility, suffocating
our creativity, tortuously contorting
ourselves to been seen, accepted.
It is the smell of our discordant souls
that pervades your consciousness

the rotted withering of  a stifled
existence – a yellowed existence –
once hopeful, sunny, now molding
mucous, desperately torn away
at the edges, pleading for escape

How grateful I am that you see –
may I call you Charlotte – that you
have smelled the angst, witnessed
the struggle, are willing to tear at
the sticking places, to set us free.

(I wrote this in the throes of severe M.E. – sleepless nights, coupled with systemic exhaustion and endless confinement to bed brought to mind the short story :  Yellow Wallpaper.  I submit it here and am linking up with Brave and Reckless’ challenge based on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s piece)