Poetry, Pasts, and Lessons Learned

Posted on by sereichert

One of the things I love most about poetry, especially the words you write in the heat or ache of intense emotion, is that even when you’ve healed up and haired over, reading those words makes that moment real and bright once again in your mind.

Hopefully, when those poems and words are the rock-bottom kind, we can look back, feel the gut-sting, and thank our lucky stars that we wrote the words down instead of burying them inside to fester. Because like trials and hardships, joys and celebrations, everything in life is in constant motion. We live in flux, and especially as writers, must catch the moments on their sharpest edge to be reminded, in the dull lulls between, that life is brilliant and biting, and every moment worth being present for.

I hope you all have some dark words out there, and by out there I mean on a page or in a journal and not sitting still inside your chest. I hope you all are walking in brightness now, with a touch of perspective and an appreciation for the battles that made us stronger.

And now, this:

Spectre

Dawn breaks
and the spectre of you
lives in my chest
ever-claiming, each cell of my useless heart

I wake and you softly stir
the creature in my rib-bone cage
a wooden spoon against an empty pot
you push my blood to move
to exist
and though I so desperately fight
against the notion,
I blink

I rise

If only you’d leave me in peace
I could go
stop fighting, stop pushing
stop throbbing heart beats against
this useless existence
and tissue paper flesh.

It goes on in this way
from the rise of the sun
cresting over head
to when it crashes back down
over the western sky

Still you stay

fighting to continue
determined to survive
against ribs that long to be still
and lungs aching to be emptied one last time

Night comes like false reprieve
bearing sleep, the closest I can come
to separating my soul from your memory
a little death where I can close my eyes and pretend
the uplifting will finally cut the tie
the chain of love, I so stubbornly tied.

But dawn breaks
And the spectre of you
still wakes in my chest.

2021 Beautiful Stuff Poetry Anthology Submissions

Posted on by sereichert

From now until September 30th I will be accepting poetry submissions to be considered for The Beautiful Stuff 2021 Poetry Anthology “Wilderness of Soul”.

This anthology will loosely follow the themes of nature, growth, transformation, self-awareness and personal resilience.

Poems may not exceed 80 lines, must be previously unpublished (unless it was on author’s website), and must be the original work of the author. Please send all submissions to: sereichert@comcast.net, or via The Beautiful Stuff website: (https://thebeautifulstuff.blog/contact/) with the subject line “Wilderness of Soul Submission”

In the body of your email, please include the title; your poetry, your name, and a short bio. You may submit up to three poems for every entry. You may submit as many times as you would like, but please ensure that each submission includes different work. If your work is a simultaneous submission please let me know.

There is no fee for submitting.

Every submission will be read and, if selected, the author will be notified by October 15th, 2021 via the contact information provided.

Winners will receive 2 free copies of the anthology, promotion through The Beautiful Stuff Blog, and a chance to have the book entered into the Colorado Book Awards for 2021. Authors will also have the option to purchase more copies at a discounted rate.

You may email me or message me via Facebook with any questions or concerns you have about the contest rules and submissions. As usual, I welcome poetry along the entire spectrum of creativity (from the traditional to the strange, from the sparkly-sunshine to the darkly macabre) but will reject any work that glorifies or promotes extreme violence, racism, sexual degradation, or harm against another human being.

That’s the long and the short of it. So send me something good. Give me guts and heart, all the dark and light of your thoughts. I look forward to reading your poems and giving you a chance to showcase your work!

Have a little poetry:

CONNECTION

Photo by Martin Lopez on Pexels.com

Beats the rhythm

Inside my chest,

Shaking the tender bones of my ear

Arousing the eternal chorus

The human heart beat,

The womb of sound and voice

That speaks in vibrations to

The celestial mathematician

Caged inside my cells

How we dance,

Humans

How we shake our heads and hips

Filling up the empty dark

With the pulsing light-magic of sound

Pouring warm caramel voices

over triplet beat

Reaching into the inner primordial

Tying strings to our bones

Weaving stories through our

Muscle fibers,

Puppeteering our

hip locks and drops

In the same wave of motion

Connecting us

Without color or god.

Resonating with all

That is

Our divine.

2021 Beautiful Stuff Poetry Anthology Submissions

Posted on by sereichert

From now until September 30th I will be accepting poetry submissions to be considered for The Beautiful Stuff 2021 Poetry Anthology “Wilderness of Soul”.

This anthology will loosely follow the themes of nature, growth, transformation, self-awareness and personal resilience.

Poems may not exceed 80 lines, must be previously unpublished (unless it was on author’s website), and must be the original work of the author. Please send all submissions to: sereichert@comcast.net, or via The Beautiful Stuff website: (https://thebeautifulstuff.blog/contact/) with the subject line “Wilderness of Soul Submission”

In the body of your email, please include the title; your poetry, your name, and a short bio. You may submit up to three poems for every entry. You may submit as many times as you would like, but please ensure that each submission includes different work. If your work is a simultaneous submission please let me know.

There is no fee for submitting.

Every submission will be read and, if selected, the author will be notified by October 15th, 2021 via the contact information provided.

Winners will receive 2 free copies of the anthology, promotion through The Beautiful Stuff Blog, and a chance to have the book entered into the Colorado Book Awards for 2021. Authors will also have the option to purchase more copies at a discounted rate.

You may email me or message me via Facebook with any questions or concerns you have about the contest rules and submissions. As usual, I welcome poetry along the entire spectrum of creativity (from the traditional to the strange, from the sparkly-sunshine to the darkly macabre) but will reject any work that glorifies or promotes extreme violence, racism, sexual degradation, or harm against another human being.

That’s the long and the short of it. So send me something good. Give me guts and heart, all the dark and light of your thoughts. I look forward to reading your poems and giving you a chance to showcase your work!

Have a little poetry:

CONNECTION

Photo by Martin Lopez on Pexels.com

Beats the rhythm

Inside my chest,

Shaking the tender bones of my ear

Arousing the eternal chorus

The human heart beat,

The womb of sound and voice

That speaks in vibrations to

The celestial mathematician

Caged inside my cells

How we dance,

Humans

How we shake our heads and hips

Filling up the empty dark

With the pulsing light-magic of sound

Pouring warm caramel voices

over triplet beat

Reaching into the inner primordial

Tying strings to our bones

Weaving stories through our

Muscle fibers,

Puppeteering our

hip locks and drops

In the same wave of motion

Connecting us

Without color or god.

Resonating with all

That is

Our divine.

2021: The Master Plan (Also Known As: “Isn’t she cute when she gets all ambitious?”)

Posted on by sereichert

First and foremost, I’m rarely, if never, cute.

Secondly, I’m often falsely and overwhelmingly ambitious. Like my brain fails to conceptualize how much time 24 hours actually is, or that I’m a fallible human, or that I don’t live in a vacuum where I can do everything I only want to do every day. Still, consider this my “feeling cute, started as ambitious, I’ll probably delete it later” selfie.

(Thirdly: I hate selfies and actually, most pictures of myself. They’re too–static and flat–I prefer the reality of curves).

So, without further mumbling on my part, here’s the *tentative* plan for The Beautiful Stuff this year.

  • I will be opening up calls for submissions at the end of this month (January 21st to be exact) for the next Poetry Anthology, tentatively titled “Wilderness of The Soul”. Last time it was pretty much all willy-nilly and I broke book up by ‘like’ poems. This year, I picked a theme–well, because I’m all grown up and shit.
  • This year’s Anthology theme focuses on the aspects of Nature, Self-Discovery, Internal Conversations, Growth, Change, and Resilience through Hardship. I’ll be offering the exact details (length, format, bio information and all the fun legal small print) later this month so stay tuned for that.
  • Also beginning this year (also on the 21st–Jesus did I not realize there were twenty nine other days in this month?) I’ll be running a fun little slice of a novella I’ve written on every third Thursday, sort of like the serial stories one would follow in the ancient days of magazine subscriptions. I labeled it Dime Store Novel because the features are campy, light, fun and adventurous. If you are interested in contributing to this experiment, reach out and lets taco about it. Yep. I meant taco.
  • I am entertaining the idea of having guests bloggers (I have a limited number of posts available for those interested and with something Beautiful-Stuff-esq to contribute). More on that to come in February.
  • Lastly, I will be running a poem or two every month and I encourage your feedback, sharing, and comments on those. Other than that, I’m still reserving one slot a week for a writer-writing-about-writing essay to offer advice, tips, and tricks that have helped me.

And that’s my Blog Plan–I won’t bore you with the other list plastered to my wall at my desk about finishing three novels, earning my 2nd degree black belt, continuing to learn two languages, revisiting piano, and 6 to 8 14ers I’d like to climb. Like I said, ambitious to a goddamn fault.

Take care out there kiddies, start dusting off some of your poetry so we can get it published.

Comment, email questions, or contact me anytime through this site. I look forward to a not-too-cute-but-hella-ambitious-year ahead.

Happy Writing.