The week has been a full one with meetings and interviews, all manner of busy-making to keep myself…accountable? Distracted? In a false sense of purpose? Sometimes, in eras of encroaching depression, I find that making myself go through the motions is akin to treading water in the middle of the ocean. I’m not really getting anywhere, but I’m not sinking under either. All that to say, here’s some poetry. About quietness. And how loud it really can be.
In Quiet
the world is less complicated without the obligation of you
it is simple now in droning waves of sunshine and isn't that better?
no need to perk my ears to your words
no longer worrying my lips over where yours are residing
life is simpler here it's quiet like a ragged street in a forgotten city
trash caught in dead weeds and chainlink
its quiet like burnt olive carpet in funeral homes
ghosts of lilies blooming to fade in grief it's quiet
like a room with no children and a meadow with no breeze
silent like a catacomb stale and cold communion with death
I was trying to think up a topic today, within the sphere of writing, that might be new and interesting. It was then that I realized I like to fall back on my favorites. Character writing, dynamics of character interactions, emotion on the page, building tension. Or perhaps turn the microscope on myself and talk about burn out and creativity, progress without production, heart without hustle. But I feel a little bored with those topics and if you read my blog enough, you’ve probably read more than you wanted to.
So what do you write about when you’re toolkit feels a little… empty?
Well, maybe just that. I’ve long been at war with myself over the worthiness of a higher degree in the Literary Arts. Let me preface by saying in no uncertain terms: Every Degree You Get is Meaningful. Education is never a waste. And time spent learning and perfecting your art and voice and style is a worthy pursuit. But I have to add, that economically speaking, it doesn’t always give you an advantage. And…if you are at an economic disadvantage due to student loans, it can be harder to pursue a writing career.
So, what does a financially unstable writer do, when faced with the knowledge that she could certainly use a little more education and a freshening up of her skillset? Well, honestly, I could just rest on my laurels. I’ve published books and had work in different literary magazines. I’ve won some awards. I could argue I know enough.
But that would be short sighted and frankly pretty fucking egotistical. I don’t know everything. I could know more. I could experiment more. I could find a new mountain to climb, and shouldn’t we all? After all, what are we doing with this life if not learning? So, I’ll be looking for some affordable alternatives and, for any other writer who might be, like me, looking for a new challenge in their skills department, share some interesting options from down below.
Research new or unknown forms of poetry. This is my new favorite. I’m working on pantoums and cinquinta, and all kinds of weird little funness
Try an online course like MasterClass or a YouTube channel: Currently I’m taking Aaron Sorkin’s Screenwriting, and Roxanne Gay’s Writing for Social Change
Take a class or invest in a book, outside of your genre: I’m currently reading both a Screenplay book, and one called “Howdunit” all about how crimes are committed and solved.
Consider switching over to Fiction or Non-Fiction: whichever you don’t normally do
Attend a conference or workshop in your area: Despite the recent hubbub, (and it’s not in my area) I will be attending AWP with the hopes of taking some classes that can broaden both my poetic skill and my writing organization’s offerings.
Well, I hope those ideas have given you a little goose to the behind to get started on reclaiming your lifelong love of learning (or inspiring one if you lacked it).
I’ve been writing a lot of rage poetry and journal entries lately. It’s a method of processing, a safe space where my feelings won’t be chastised or be cautioned to calm down. To be told, with shrugs, that this is just the way it is. To be hounded with others’ convictions that I’m being the irrational one (or worse, the powerlessness, of ‘nothing can be done’). No wonder women go mad. No wonder we quit our jobs and our relationships in droves. I think someday we’ll all probably wander of the grid and go feral. I hope that someday our leaving destroys the grid completely. I hope ‘feral’ is a return to what we were always supposed to be. In ownership of our own bodies, part of an egalitarian community, taking care of the Earth that sustains us, protecting one another. I hope for this.
Today’s poem is part of a project I’m working on, tracing philosophically through the roots of my own rage, and the collective anger of my generation of women. Raised to believe we could be equal from a generation that was slowly learning it themselves. As such, this poem is an exploration and an ode to one of the most influential albums (and songs) of my teenage years. And to the seeds that she planted in my soul, that have found a fearsome bloom in current times.
The Jagged Little Pill (I can No Longer Swallow) (lyrical exploration of "All I Really Want" by Alanis Morissette)
All I really want is deliverance
from the maddening hold of the lesser sex’s self inflation
Do I stress you out?
to remind you that you came from a womb and still she chose to keep you even after all the repulsions she knew you would own and call power?
I am frightened by the corrupted ways of this land
when faced with pedophilic horrors and the butchering of innocence as if it were any other expendable resource men rape the land, why not us too? why not our daughters? our sons? we are fresh streams and teeming oceans gold mines and diamond fields all for the taking all for the discarding
Reel them in and spit them out
calm down there is nothing to be done let the broader shoulders shrug to end the matter
I am frustrated by your apathy
while you drink your martini and cast sunshine, between sips, that at least the stock market is finally up and I sit still, as prey praying in bushes might, cheap wine I feel guilty for and watch blood run in the gutters and remember my own, horrible 8-year-old truths while the news blares of babies being eaten or burned or buried by the ninth hole water hazard and sand trap thank fucking god the stock market is okay
the sound of pretenses falling
is louder to me but you were never listening anyway, were you? just for the sound of panties dropping be a good little girl for daddy sit on my lap and reassure me, I’m still a ‘nice guy’ right?
No.
I won't speak these lies any longer my lips have been sewn shut needles in and out the thread of anger trapping unsettled bees in my throat and handcuffed wrists bleeding as I fight against the radiator of the American Dream
why are you so petrified of silence?
does it make you hear the echoes of your own dissonance? A good man who still sometimes objectifies his high school students and calls it ‘American Beauty’
And all I really want is some peace a place to find a common ground
but we aren’t standing on even ground never was there equal footing from the day I spilled out of my mother my knees have been broken by the bat of masculine ‘protection’ my voice scalded with the shame this system gave me for a body that nature knew and named as more divine
A bit more Hallow’s Eve than New Year’s Eve…but this came from a poetry challenge a few years ago and I thought it was interesting.
Corvidae
Black oiled beauty needle claws to grip solid to my eye sockets no longer needed by me
I'd rather be your throne
and you can be my new eyes and continue on in this dark world light glinting and soul exposed in the off feather sheen and firelight behind your beaded eyes
ever higher, above the madness that ended me you will be my wings and I will be your resting stone your peaceful, calcified nest of respite
you will be my freedom from the fog of earth the stains of so many moments now rested in the dry and brittle grass
we are a pair dark wanderer above the grief of an impermanent world together in easy camaraderie until your bones rest atop mine
the world will go on, in wreck and ruin growing up through our silent jawed beaks until we are stones in the grass nothing and everything more
On this day you shouldn’t be checking your email. I hope, instead, you are watching holiday movies, and still in your pajamas, and drinking coffee, and finding joy, and calling your loved ones, and eating one more cinnamon roll, and picking up pieces of taped wrapping paper, stuck to the floor, and feeling…feeling…feeling, the light and warmth of the season. Feeling that you can finally settle down. Feeling that this is the day to rest and think about nothing in particular. I’m here with you.
On this day you might also be mourning, and seeped in a kind of loneliness that feel worse than on any other day. You may be trying to keep hurtful memories at bay, or separated and far from the people you love. You loved. Maybe this day you are begging for it to be swift and end quickly, because you cannot bear to be told to carry joy when pain is taking up all the space inside your chest. I’m here with you too.
And so, here’s a little poem, nothing your brain needs to work too hard at. Nothing as important as honoring where you are at, and being gentle to whatever is filling your heart. I am here with you.
Flight
a fallen feather is a piece of grounded soul aimless without a body to lift a reminder of once great heights no longer attainable
she is a sign from the gods that even the most perfect designs lose elemental fragments along the bumpy ride and every fragment shed is an updraft not caught
still, I think they’re pretty and I tuck them into books and pin them to walls and read in them messages in the timing of their arrival along my path on my right means yes, left is no even when a question hasn’t formed yet
maybe if I collect enough I can build my own wings someday maybe leave this place, a curtain of elemental fragments lost pieces of soul, to lift
Good morning. Wednesdays are what I affectionately call “Therapy Thunder Dome” (would have a better ring if it were “Therapy Thunder Dome Thursdays” but we work with what we have). So since my little peabrain will be too tired to blog well (as if my rested brain does it ‘well’) I’m recycling an old poem from a supposed former contributor. Here’s what I what once wrote:
“Today’s poetry comes to us from a former and continuing contributor to The Beautiful Stuff’s Poetry Anthology. Ms. Byrne has a knack for gripping the guts with her poetry and, as an almost graduated student at the University of Boulder, she is finding her way with a powerful voice in the world.
Elliana spends her days reading (sometimes for fun…most times for class), daydreaming, and writing. She studies English Lit and dabbles in short stories and poetry when possible. She enjoys life best curled up with a good book and her cat, Gil. You can read her work in last year’s anthology “No Small Things” (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1692331558/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1“
The truth is that I am Elliana Byrne. And I used the pen name because some of the poems I had written felt too visceral to put out into the world. But after having gone through this last year, I’ve realize life is nothing but visceral and I don’t have a problem trying to hide the gory truth of what it sometimes means to be human in all of our messy failings. So…please enjoy, and think about what masks you’ve worn, and if maybe, in light of these lives of ours being unbelievably short, if it’s time to take them off, and just be unapologetically you.
And now this:
Clean Slate
I want to wipe away the grievances of your skin and its heated strokes against mine and darken the unforgiving universes of your eyes that know and do not know me
But the treasonous mind casts wayward glances, over shoulders turned cold and the love and ache of wounds that should be healed over still echo in weakening heart beats
this disloyal heart casting out lines into currents that have battered the boards of my ship and sunk it deep, where it now lies desolate and quiet a tomb on the ocean floor waiting, in vain, for a tug of interest
treacherous and dissonant soul vibrating in time to the sound of yours even when the harmonic waves shake my teeth and dislodge my brain and seize my nerve endings
I will sit in this heavy deep and wait for reason or worse divinity to tell me how to clean you off by needle or by blade I will close my eyes, turn my back and huddle in to the shipwreck of me and cut lines until i bleed clean again
I don’t have much to say about this one. Today we’ll be in the hospital. Next week, a new world. In a month? Who knows. Every season feels like fall these day, minus the comfort of repose.
Confetti
Fall afternoon where asphalt splits the glory of some reticent nature apart and the contrived quaintness of our street twenty years-lived sits picturesque and soft
our voices are silent and our thoughts are loud and we are so alone, next to one another each a leaf fallen even as the confetti of mountain ash dances down like glitter the aftermath some big show we've just missed the end of a celebration we held no part in
Tomorrow we run more tests, tomorrow they measure you again to see the failure to thrive and the insistence of dying thin rather than living with anything over your bones but shivering skin
and the dark bark of trees reaches up to claw the blue skies and I hear you giggling from your stroller at the leaves of confetti just somewhere down our street
it echoes, this joy even as you stare sullen beside me, alone
Hey kids. My life has been a bit of a shipwreck these last couple of weeks. Transitions, seemingly impossible battles, lost luggage, and forgotten obligations. I am not feeling my best self, though I know I ought allow myself more grace for the days that are in a constant state of upheaval. So my grace today is in recycling an old poem. Because my mind is too on fire, and yet still disconnected, and I do not have the space for much else today.
My River
My river runs deep and walks shallow into the porous nature of bed-rocked layers the clay and sand and above to deer-perked ears silent hoof prints on banks sunk in
My river is the tumble of rock into sand and foamy puffs in swirling whirls quick eddies of frantic joy released and the unforgiving relentless call to keep moving
My river begs spotted trout slip through the icy fingers of its burbling caress wet swells against the willow banks and plays below the soft wings of mayflies dancing round poles of half-sunken timber
My river is the mirror a night of stars the giving dark splashed with milk and splattered with a forgiveness of perspective in light years of still thoughts and letting go things too far away, too long gone to be mine
My river is the blood hushing through veins the secrets in history the timeless genomes and photographs carrying ghosts with no remembered names but they have my eyes, the rise of cheekbone the propensity to carry all this grief in the generous swell of my hips
So…this was written on a train (if the title doesn’t somehow give that way). Somewhere in the wilds of Norway, which still feels like the beating heart of my home. Some yearnings remain. After years, after miles, after all the weights we carry and let go. We still remain. Remember your wild heart. Yearn a bit more. Worry a bit less.
Thoughts from a Train
the gnarled and yet not-aching-to-be-straight aspens, forever reaching up while tethered to their roots below the largest organism, still seems so alone, standing on the draping hills and keeping a respectable distance from one another
a rushing river teases between trees and gives the snowy foam of passion a rise and climax as it dances across unforgiving rocks on the edge of a desire fluid against hard surfaces rutting in season and calm placation when the urgency subsides
I’m still trying to see through the trees to find the rushing sound
hard rock faces, lining the tracks to dark tunnels where the rush of entry changes the pressure of my body and eyes flutter close the dark and light dappling through my eyelids and I feel the butterfly brush of lashes to cheeks you’re lying there in the sun, now shade, now sun beside me
I am sitting with all my desire, laying in warm beds faraway from here and the ways it will never reach me, never catch up to me through windows along miles in this cold space next to strangers known and unknown
I am heavy in obligation weighed, like black holes contracting around the reality they consume
but in my heart still beats the wilderness and still grows in brambles, and still peeks through evergreen thick to remind me that a river always rushes cold and powerful ever cyclical and returning between my crevasses and to the lowest points of all the lovely roots of this, my human desire
Hey there. Last week was a series of battles between work, life, and a newsletter. It was a growing time, a time of transition and time to try and wrap my head around the growing responsibilities in my life and what that means for my writing. It was also a time of softness. Moments of respite, and fostering some connections that felt good and expansive to my heart. Life is a wobbling balance act, and lately I’ve felt more wobbling than balance. So here’s some poetry, from both ends of the spectrum.
Meditation on Old Wounds
See how turbulent winds blow sweet words away sand on black top sand on black top clouds in blue sky the blue sky where nothing good sticks where every promise comes with an emergency life vest, and when I get scared, I can pull the cord explode the meaning dismiss it for a lie another half-truth sugar sweetness to worm their way in and nothing is true but the stink of my rejection and love is a dark cloud I must constantly clear away clear away to empty blue skies lest I be caught in the storm once again battered sand on black top why do I continue reaching for the chance to be seen to be known in all my stormy dark when I am unknowable I will wiggle my way out of any noose of supposed love it only hurts it only hurts it only hurts
except when it doesn't
Reawaken
Feel this ancient rumbling shake and tremble below what was once barren ground the river springs to life from the soft and patient rains bubbling up from the forgotten cradle soaking the ground feeding the forest until it overflows warm and crashing over banks mountainous peaks above hardened in cold breaths and warmed with praise, of god-like hands and the land settles into its rhythm of pulsing electric joy
Sarah Reichert Author 