VerseDay 2-28-19: In Honor of The Feminine Divine

Posted on by sereichert

So I was feeling uninspired when I sat down to write today’s verse (a frighteningly common occurrence these days) and I found a voice that has always inspired me laying in wait in the back of my mind.

So in honor of March (it is tomorrow after all) being National Women’s Month, I offer this tribute to one of the great female voices of our time, Ms. Maya Angelou.

May your words and thoughts continue to inspire us to rise.

 

 

Phenominity

 

She says she is not swayed,

By transcendental bullshit

No one clips her wings

Or guides the undulations of her hips.

 

She says she cannot be cut,

A skin so thick

It holds the fire,

So nothing gets in, and nothing burns out.

 

She says she made the world,

And shines her womb in darkness.

Where lesser beings cower, confused

She plays the fear of life divine.

 

She says no man will change her

Erase her, degrade her.

She is stronger than mountains

More fluid than sea.

 

She rises like hot mercury

Cresting metallic and fluid,

A danger to hold.

A beaded, magnanimous being.

 

She dives, not falls, precise and sublime

Small but mighty with peregrine speed

A dazzling twirl of feathers and blood

The small bones crushed, all down plucked clean.

 

She says she is no token, no check mark

In insufficient boxes of guilty consciences  

She is a pale rider, a dark horse coming

And Her rendering of justice won’t satisfy your quota.

 

She is no one to own, and no body to claim.

She is envy and apathy, lust and indifference

She is all things, undefined and free

Phenomenal you. Phenomenal me.

Turning Point

Posted on by sereichert

No one likes to be rejected. Well, I can’t generalize, maybe there are those that get a kick out of it. Maybe for some, it serves as a driving force to continue with even more fervor. Maybe they’ve never had a problem with self-esteem or feelings of inadequacy.

I’m not one of those people.

My rational brain knows that there’s nothing personal meant. My rational brain knows that it’s just one opinion in a sea of possibilities. But day after day, letter after letter, even the most devoted to their art have to ask…did I miss my calling as a waitress?

Or a forensic anthropologist, or an archaeologist, or a pilot, or a teacher, or an EMT, or…ANY other job that doesn’t require me to put my heart in the hands of someone else to be judged and weighed to justify doing what I love?

Wouldn’t it be nice to just go into a nine-to-five, perform some task that doesn’t have to have any of my heart in it, go home, and get a paycheck and possibly health insurance if I’m lucky?

Writers…man, we’re a strange breed.

Rising in the dark early hours, still up at dark late hours, scribbling on napkins and notebooks. Our mental faculties always distracted to some degree by the dialogue in our heads. We write, we pour out, we mull over, and edit, and form, and shape, and create. We fester and brood. And when it looks, to our over-thinking eye, that it might be something worth sharing we throw it out into a world that’s saturated with thousands of other ideas worth sharing.

And we wait. And we hope. And we fester some more.

So it should be a relief when we get the rejection…the thirtieth or first, because now we know. And It’s better to know.

Isn’t it?

So you can go back to the drawing board and change your heart all over again. Mold it into something someone wants to read…make it something that’s acceptable.

Sometimes, you do everything they ask and find you hardly recognize your own voice afterwards.

So one has to wonder; if we take our hearts and cut them to fit the trend of the market, how much of us are we really offering to the world? And is it worth selling out to get our name on the front cover? And what makes that any different than a nine-to-five, heartless job with dental?

Except there’s no dental…

So much time, effort, and tears spent trying to tell the world a story, or explain the feelings of our hearts only to be told it isn’t enough. That if we change our story, that if we change our hearts we might be able to garner a $2.50 royalty someday.

Sounds like madness to me.

Sounds like unchecked mental disease.

At some point, don’t we have to admit, that maybe, our thoughts, our stories, are just not good enough, and maybe it would be less painful to just stop trying.

After all, life’s plenty painful enough on its own.

Verseday 2-20-2019

Posted on by sereichert

A belated Valentine’s verse.

She is small, but fiercely sensual. Enjoy.

 

Amorous

 

Mirror me the methods of seduction

from centuries long past

The age of human desire, shifts and sways

yet it’s lustful stripes remain unchanged.

What words stole breath,

What visceral aches prevaded?

How did Romulus lay the captive Sabine lover?

How Andromeda on rocky outcrop chained?

How beckon come hither, Aphrodite? With such plentiful bounty?

To set the trap,

What sweet bait

Ensnared the lover to tumultuous beast

What hook begat line,

Sinking knees, penitent, to ground.

Tender tongues and trembling thighs

Shiver of universal pulse,

How does the mere mortal set tap to your celestial vein?

By what rounded needle do we spread the skin?

And draw out the life of love incarnate?

Book Review: “Before Understanding Life, Love Yourself: 101 Acrostic Poems Reshaping Words Used by Bullies”

Posted on by sereichert

 

If I could tell you one thing that I know to be true it’s this: Words are power.

Words have weight.

Words matter.

What we say to others will shape not only their perceptions of themselves, but also their perception of us and the world at large.

 

The old adage of sticks and stones breaking bones but words as ineffectual, is dangerously incorrect. Physical wounds heal over. But harsh words, implanted on the heart and brain of a young, impressionable human last and can shape the way a person’s brain is formed.

 

As a parent and mentor I can tell my kids in countless ways and repeatedly why others sling these arrows and try to reason with them that the hatred and hurt is a result of the bully’s own feelings of inadequacy. But it does little to sooth the pain.

 

In the higher stakes of a social-media driven society, words are slung at a faster pace, with a farther reach then we ever had to deal with as kids. Farther than the playground, and in more permanent ways that have lasting and sometimes deadly consequences.

 

So how do we change these verbal arrows from something potentially life-altering, into something that can offer hope and let the victims of bullying take back their power in the situation?

In Dean K. Miller’s latest poetry anthology, “Before Understanding Life, Love Yourself: 101 Acrostic Poems Reshaping Words Used By Bullies” he utilizes acrostic language to change the most common words used by bullies into more positive, life affirmations.

The time he spent analyzing these words and what they could be changed to is evident and Miller offers us a bright light in an otherwise dark topic.

As he says:

“Through the use of acrostic poetry, my goal is to reshape the words used by bullies into positive pictures, thereby creating new lists of a thousand words that spark upbeat feelings, inspire positive self images, and defuse the stress associated with bullying words.”

 

In “Before Understanding Life, Love Yourself”, Miller takes the worst and most cutting words and breaks them down into ideas that can, hopefully, offer an alternative way for victims to think about the word. Like taking a tarnished penny and turning it over to reveal the untouched copper shine, this poetry anthology gives victims of bullying a tool to reshape the negative words into positive ideas.

 

If you’re familiar with Mr. Miller’s work, I don’t need to gush about his poetic prowess (though I could if you had a few hours). If this is your first time hearing of him, I urge you to check out his work. Miller is a master at crafting poetry that resonates and paints images in your mind.

 

If you are a teacher or in another profession that holds responsibility over the health and wellness of our kiddos I highly recommend you check this book out.

 

You can even contact me and I’ll offer it through The Beautiful Stuff at a discounted rate.

 

Here’s the link on Amazon:

 

“Before Understanding Life, Love Yourself: 101 Acrostic Poems Reshaping Words Used by Bullies

 

Also, I highly recommend that you read some of his other work:

 

Dean K. Miller Poetry on Amazon

He does excellent work and programs for Veterans with the use of poetry and the outdoors as therapeutic methods.

 

 

 

 

VerseDay 2-7-19

Posted on by sereichert

 

Promise

 

I promise these words are worth the weight

And not to waste your time

with useless pleasantries, talks of weather.

I promise, these words carry their own storm.

 

I promise,

Just spare me a moment, undistracted and connected

Where I can sink into your soul, by hairbreadth and angel width,

and get under your skin, if only for a moment.

 

I promise I can move you,

To hate, to love, to think, to want

With nothing more than warm syllables on lips

or cold letters on page.

 

But you have to sit still with me.

You must take pause.

With me.

Even when you’re afraid to.

 

Is it me that frightens you?

Is it the words?

Or is it what your heart might do,

When faced with such brutal transparency?

 

Didn’t I tell you?

I would make it worth the weight?

That only the before knowing

Would seem the time your life was wasting?

 

How Dark; How Frightening

Posted on by sereichert

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” 
― Elie Wiesel

 

 

I’m back after a short hiatus.

I could bore you all day with the details of how much mucous I’ve been producing, and how little sleep this incessant cough has left me. The sinus pain, like a vice grip against my cheeks and teeth. How little the pills, and vapors, and natural cures have cured.

But there’s something darker that reared its head last week as result of this bug.

I’ve suffered a lot of mental hiccups. Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and all the twisted coping mechanisms that come with them, have been the monsters in my closet for a while now. But something else slunk out, ironically, in the midst of my attempts to get well.

Apathy.

I’m not talking about your general and passing lack of fucks to give.

I can’t explain to you how frightening it was to feel nothing. To have no care. Ordinarily, this might be a good thing for me, a way to let go, if you will, of the petulant details and relax for once. But this kind of apathy left me in a strange state. I wasn’t hungry, and didn’t eat. I stopped caring that I wasn’t sleeping. I fell into a lull wherein the idea of quitting my job, retreating from friends and relationships, and even throwing myself in front of a truck didn’t seem like such a big deal.

I just didn’t care. I felt so utterly numb that I didn’t recognize being in my own body or  the life that surrounded.

And it scared the shit out of my rational self, who sat locked in a store room in the back of my brain during this apathy’s hostile takeover.

It was like having my mind overtaken by The Nothing. You remember, don’t you? The Nothing?The Nothing2

Maybe, if you’re into more modern day SCIFI/FANTASY you could say it was like the Alliance Conspiracy on the planet Miranda. Nothingness. A utter and complete lack of care.

Miranda

 

What made this feeling worse than other things I’ve felt, was its lack of any dramatic or shocking arrival. It was only a calm letting go of everything–so easily laid over me that it seemed nothing ever really mattered to begin with.

Worse than black. All was gray.

Then I stopped taking the little clear pill that was supposed to suppress my cough. And the gray receded, like a wave pulling back from the shore. Just enough, that I remembered to take out the trash. That I felt hungry enough to eat something. That I cared enough to engage in my children’s lives again, and get the mail.

It took me a while to understand what had happened. That a combination of lack of sleep and fighting a virus, and the pressures of life, my hairbreadth distance from depression, and that little suppressive pill were like a team of anti-heros that kidnapped me for a few days.

I started to wonder if maybe the things that drive us to fight so hard (or even cough), even when its a stupid and pointless battle (and sometimes pops your hernia out or makes you pee yourself), shouldn’t be suppressed.

Because maybe the instinct that makes us react to even small things is a switch that could turn off our fight for and against the big things.

I don’t know where you are in your life, in your creative process, in your flu season. But I wanted to offer you a few key things I learned in hopes they can help you fight off any oncoming Nothingness in your own world.

1.) Stay grounded. With something, anything, that is important and true in your life. Maybe your family, or your job, or your art. Maybe it’s something as simple as your breath. Just keep yourself tethered to that one true thing. So you don’t lose sight of all true things.

2.) Know your body. I get a little head heavy on this blog, and that’s ok, but remember that our brains are organs too and when the body is out of balance and we’re throwing weights on either side of the scale, willy-nilly, things can get out of whack really fast. Listen to your body. It’s okay to be tired, its okay to rest. But it’s not okay to be consciously asleep with indifference.

3.) If you suffer from a mental illness, you should probably make sure your doctor knows before they prescribe you anything, even a simple expectorant. I’m not sure if my reaction was common, or just a fluke, but I’d hate to think what could have happened in a more severe scenario.

4.) Be better than me. When you feel this, if you feel this…please reach out to someone, hug on your babies, go to coffee with that friend, reconnect even when you don’t see the point. That little rational slice of brain locked in the cleaning closet will recognize it, cling to it, and hopefully use it to pick the lock.

That’s all I’ve got for this week. Heavy stuff. Leave your comments, questions, experiences below. I look forward to talking to you again…soon. And I mean that.