Poetry 7-11-2024

Posted on by sereichert

Sometimes I like to pick up random notebooks, lying around my desk (there are several) and crack open the pages like looking in a dusty box in the attic. No reference to when or where it was last filled and sealed. Sometimes I find pieces of myself that had scribbled themselves on pages. Once out of my brain, I forgot about them. Sometimes I recognize that girl, shining on the page. Sometimes I long to be her. Sometimes, I am sad for her. Here’s a relic from a random ‘box’. (I should really put dates on these things)

Celestial

Oh, the lengths of letting go
I've undergone
This sun rises and sets and entire worlds
are made and destroyed
stars I once thought I revolved around,
sure that chaos would run the darkness if ever
I left their orbit
sputter and fade into nothing

Because the power of a world is 
the power that I give it
The fire of a sun 
springs from My well
The light in the dark is borne in 
My heart
It did not exist before me
It will die without me
and so it goes
ever in the throes of change

So I'm not breathing life 
into any more poisonous coals
they can suffer and wane 
in the cold of my celestial shadow
in the passing of their time
and the Rebirth of mine

they will revolve around Me
as I am the center
they are just cold rocks,
caught in my gravity
I care not, I notice not
if they stick around 
or become lost and distant sedimentary trash
pulled away from me 
by their own faulted inertia

I continue on
always

Life and a Bit of Poetry

Posted on by sereichert

I have to be honest. I didn’t get a post written this week. I’m actually surprised I’m even getting it done the day of. But if nothing else, I believe it’s consistency that builds skill, trust, and a life in total. So here’s a slap-dash post.

First, I’ve been truly busy this week working on a labor of love: The 2024 Writing Heights Youth Anthology (Name to be revealed soon!) I’m the Youth Coordinator and every month I plan out a lesson and writing prompts and load my heart up with lots of joy and compassion to teach a free class to teenagers about writing. We have about 15 in person and virtual students and the class varies in size depending on the stresses of school and life and other activities. But the work and I are always there (see above about consistency)

So far, the group has put together nearly a hundred pages of poetry, prose, fiction and non fiction pieces about life from their perspectives and stories from their imaginations. And its pretty damn good, if I do say so. Along the way, they’ve learned how to explore different modes of writing, critiquing and editing and what it means to communicate with each other and the world. This anthology is about more than just their first publishing credit, and getting paid for words. It’s about trusting in their voices, and learning that speaking up and speaking out is one of the greatest tools they will ever have to change their world and lead their own unique and beautiful lives.

That being said, I struggle with formatting and arrangement so… the majority of my time has been in trying to get each font just right, within the proper margins, and editing those pesky lines a few more times. The book should be out in July and I’ll let you know when the big release date is. Until then, if you’re interested in donating anything to the organization, you can contact Amy or Jess at director@writingheights.com . It’ll help us offset the costs of publishing, make sure the kids are paid for their hard work, and get the good word out about the program.

Now, I’ve gotta go try to make a table of contents *shudder*. Here’s some poetry.

Reluctant Hope

Every morning I wake 
with a shuddering light of hope
in my chest

Weary from the day before
denied sustenance and light in kind
Yet, somehow...
I still wake with it

It strikes me as foolish
to hold on to this frail bird of a thing
in the dark cavern of my chest 
neighbor to the empty heartbeats 
that pump sanguine rivers
to heavy limbs

Still, she settles there
a stray who found warmth
on an otherwise rough
and dirty-guttered street

And when my eyes open
she blinks too
pulls my granite limbs up
like stringed fingers to a puppet
and whispers
a wind through grasses
from far away shores
of better days
That today
today 
this day
will be better

Shuddering, flickering,
a loose bulb swinging in a dark room
making an arched smile as she dances
we'll make today better

Poetry 6-13-2024

Posted on by sereichert 
Her List

let’s make a list
of all the things
I didn’t do
of all the tasks
still uncrossed
the boxes
unchecked
and measure my worth by them.

How it had been months
since I last dusted well
and when some fog of
depression lifted
and I stared in disgust
he breathed a sigh 
of ‘finally’ relief
and happily let me scrub them down
even seeing my obvious self-loathing

what did you do with your day?
I erased months of my skin cells
erased months of myself
with disgust at the oily build up
of what I’ve become…

but no matter how much grey brown filth
I rinse down the drain
I’m still here

were that my cells finite,
and every time I shed
I just became smaller
and smaller
and smaller
until one day
I would blink out of existence.

a last checked box
disappear, 
check.

poetry 5-23-2024

Posted on by sereichert
Photo by Kvitka Pipitka on Pexels.com

Gentle Pressure, Applied Ruthlessly

Watch the way, the bouncy ends of the pinyon

waver to every wind blown

see the arch of their spines, the reminder

that the pressure of her breath is constant

and unyielding

She is invisibility and discretion of power

Her presence, ethereal and it seems

mere trickery

until it is applied

day in,

day out,

to the tender aspirations of every tree,

Only then, when they are grown

in twisted sculptures

Leaned away and in piety of her face

do we see the influence

of the wind that raised them

S.E. Reichert

Poetry 4-23-24

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This is the last week of April, and so I offer a “still has that new smell” poem, straight out of the journal (so please forgive if I haven’t reworked it much). If you’ve enjoyed this month, if you’ve gotten out of your comfort zone and explored poetry, I encourage you to keep reading. Poetry is the boiled down essence of awareness and presence in the moment. It’s a straight line to another person’s soul and perspective and if the world needs more of anything these days, its building up compassion and connection between humans and fostering our common humanity. Enjoy this little off-shoot of one of my favorite songs. Its always good to have a conversation with the beating of your heart. The punctuation is intentional. I hope you can feel yours beating too.

Photo by Nothing Ahead on Pexels.com
Conversations with My Old Heart

Hello, 
my old heart.
I'd nearly forgotten that you still lived
in this tattered cage of me

until you jolted awake
with such ferocity
that I was stunned to attention,
in the death of night

. . / . . / . . / . . / . . /. . . . . . . . .

Who put a kicking prisoner beside my lungs?
Why does he fight against his cage so?

Is it because I've ignored you?
Silenced you
reprimanded you
cuffed you 
when you spoke out in knowing beats
against the electrical reasoning
of neurons and logic?

Is it because,
this time it matters?

You're quieter now

I put my hand on top of you
and feel you push against my palm
fighting . . steady . .

pay . . attention . .
or you'll miss it.

You'll 
miss
it
all . . / . . /

What am I missing?

Your . . One . . Wild . . 
and . . Beautiful . .  life . . /

There you are,
my old heart
I'm sorry I locked you away 
for so long

Why? Why did you? . . 

Because I was afraid.

Of me? . . 

Of letting you lead.
Who knows where I might have ended up?

who . . knows . . who . . knows . . 
who . . knows . . who . . knows . .

Poetry 4-18-24

Posted on by sereichert

Today is my daughter’s 14th birthday. She’s been through a lot. She’s still going through it. She’s one of the strongest, smartest, most thoughtful humans I know, and the world has put pressures on her she should have never had to carry. We can’t protect our kids from everything, but we can stand with them in the fire. This one’s for you kiddo.

Bigger

I’m taking you out on the trail today
to see if we both can heal
one step
one stitch
to close the gaping hole
the chasm between our beats

I’m taking you away
from the screams and screens
and all the voices
of a maddening world
always telling you
to be smaller

I’m bringing you into the bigger world
like I brought you in 11 years ago
back to the light and the breath
and the love and the truth
that you never have to lose
to gain

I’m taking you out on the trail
in the early morning hush
You and I
away from a million voices
Screaming we are not enough
whispers to pinch skin
and hollow out our souls
to lose the weight, to be
less, be
smaller, be gone.
disappear.

If we must disappear
then let’s do it together
let us lose ourselves in
dirt tracks
and aspen quakes
and forget the other world
exists

Let’s make it smaller.

I’m taking you out on the trail
to gain back what you have lost
to heal
one step
one stitch
at a time

Do not make yourself small
when the size of your soul
is my whole world.

S.E. Reichert

Poetry 4-10-2024

Posted on by sereichert

I’m ten days late to Poetry Month. So, in penance, I’ll be posting poems every blog this month and a few more on my socials. Because if the world needs anything right now, It’s poetry.

Here’s an odd little collection. Read, sift through, taste them on your tongue, roll them over your neurons and let them…sink in.

Poem Speaks

She scribbled me down
in the depths of anguish
The sharp lines that cut through 
conventions of writing forms
and cursive norms

uncaring of limits or margins
for there were none to her suffering
no lines could contain
the horror that poured
fresh blood on the page

She died on that page, over and over
for nights on end
awash in loneliness
visions of failure
longing for the final epilogue

and all I could do was trail behind the pen
powerless to stop the deluge
helpless to stop the stabbing wounds 
of ink and metal
I was merely the blood spattter
the aftermath

sometimes a river of words 
flooded over with her tears 
until she lay spent across the page
a traveler unable to cross that river
unable to battle the current
but unwilling to stop fighting
for safe shore

I loved her every word
her every dark thought and
the possession of her passion
that overtook those nights

Because at least when the damaged words flowed
and their messy calligraphy 
misspelled itself across the page
there was breath to her

there was fire within
and she burned bright

in the blackness of a cold world
there was enough fodder of love to suffer
to ache
to ignite

The pause of me meant the death of her 
the blank page was a heart 
too weary to go on 
a silent pen was a life ended

I persisted in the days when I was her written world
survived while she lived
in all her aching splendor

When she lies still, 
pen laid to rest against desk
I will only breathe 
if her words pass through 
new eyes, ride across new tongues
I will be the fire she leaves behind.

S.E. Reichert
Tiny Speck Wanderer

Hey, tiny speck wanderer,
no more than a bird’s heart beat
A flutter of space dust,
careening out of control
headed into the black abyss
along with all the other 
stardust heart beats.

What’s one head of a pin
drumming on a thimble mean
to a galaxy of celestial beings?

Don’t you ever feel small?
No matter to your matter, at all?

The moon takes up a quarter’s space
to those tiny bead eyes
Jupiter—the mighty giant
just a hole in the dark night’s skin,
pricked by needle tip.

Yet there you spin, 
the world in orbit around you
The cares of your heart
the temperature of your feet
the hunger or fullness
weight or lightness in your belly.
The love worn or tossed away,
Suddenly the concern of the cosmos.

Tiny speck wanderer
The universe beats for you.
in the petite coils of your
Underrepresented brain junk.
A flutter of space dust—
with universal ego.

S.E. Reichert
Untitled 1-24

I swing from suicide
to bird song
in the hair-breadth
of a star

one shade dark
now light
but...

When I have purpose
the pendulum halts
the need for center
a string of balance hangs
my sanity
and...

When unrequited and impossible love 
teases the fluttering edges
of this tattered heart
I forget that I want to jump 
off a bridge
in the small moments of 
polite conversation
so...

Even when
its all just illusion
the empty purpose,
and impossibility of love
the light from a star
billions of years ago
now dead and gone...

They are the precarious 
threads of hope
from which I swing.

Poetry 3-14-24

Posted on by sereichert

In honor of spring, I’ve dug this little gem out of one of the many unmarked-but-filled journals in my desk. My poor children will one day find all of these scratchings and will have to make sense of them, or they may chose to burn them (I will be gone and won’t offer protest). I hope some of my words survive. So they know the normalcy of a heart, wild-raging and how undefinable a life really is.

Sown

I am wakening
though this small seed planted
seems stagnant
and it is cold and dark 
the surrounding day
so dense and ungiving
but the seed is planted
and every seed has 
potential
for awakening

And this seed...
I know her concrete shell
her impervious coat
you think the darker,
the colder,
the absolute absence of love
would kill her
dead pod in ground
served justice for even thinking 
of blooming on her own

But you do not know this seed,
no one does
except me.
I knew when I plucked her 
from my heart in the solitary depths of 
lovely dispair, and whispered
incantations of self-worth
of imperviousness
of an unbreakable shell
an unkillable flame
the magic was set and 
it no longer needed 
what living things needed 
to survive

because she is survival
and her words will tendril
into the hard pack of your indifference
and she will feed off of your apathy
and she will shoot forth
arms to the sky 
that you cannot hold down
with guilt or obligations
or crocodile tears

because she is the boundless
and unshakable irreverence 
of me, 
and I will awaken 
in the absence of your love

Poetry 2-22-2024

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I know its still Winter, but these are the gray months that beg my mind wander back to the comfort of knowing Spring will come again. I don’t really know how many more Springs the world has left. It’s all so complicated and teetering on death, isn’t it? We take so much for granted, we kill, and destroy, and maim and use up…as though there is no other fate left us, no generations in our wake that have to live in the wake of our destruction… How ridiculous and short-sighted humans are. We absolutely deserve everything Nature throws at us.

Photo by Alesia Kozik on Pexels.com
Spring Beneath

The shudder of new leaves
arriving to a world 
in its heyday of destruction 
is such bitter sweetness

Life, searching to be, 
striving to find its balance
even when we've already tipped the scales
too far
    for hope

I mourn these spring petals
littering the ground,
beauty fallen to lifeless concrete
and wonder, 
what she ever did
   to deserve us.

Poetry 2/1/2024

Posted on by sereichert 

Obstinate

My mind is obstinate today
though the sun is well past up
and the traffic is growling 
on soft streets
like wild animals rejecting suburbia

my lights have gone out 
and I'm wrapped in gray
struggling through the muck
of a thousand demands, 
mostly self imposed
to keep me from slitting my wrists

I am obstinate today
walled up against progress and productivity
I scarcely believe there is blood 
in my veins to let out
not in the tub
not on the page

I am obstinately hollow
and feeling undeserving of the titles
"woman" and "mother"
aren't these strong, unshakeable elementals?
I am not either today

I'm simply
obstinate