So…yesterday was a bit of a beast. I won’t bore you with the gory details but suffice to say I rarely had a chance to sit still, let alone conjure up a worthy poem. So here you are. I’m not sure it’s worthy, but it’s something.
Good morning! It’s a busy day around here and in honor of my reader’s limited time as well, today’s VerseDay is short and sweet. (I’d say ‘like me’ but we all know I’m of average height and more bitter than sweet.) Enjoy my first haiku in a long while.
I’m still accepting submissions to be posted and considered for the anthology due out Fall of 2019, so send me your good stuff, your hard stuff…your beautiful stuff.
Here’s your verse of the day. Enjoy!
Stupid Heart
Beacon in the night, the safety of arms I know around me.
You are the dark expanse to my nebulous cloud.
What primordial gene, residual trait,
Makes my heart blindly ache?
Succumb so wholly to the stardust swirling
Catching me in its current.
This animal heart roams ever closer to yours.
I love you in gnashing ways, unbreakable
Unrequited.
A worsening disease; malignant and wild,
You are the celestial mess embedded in me.
The something deep in cells and will not be ignored.
I want to climb you like an oak and shake your leaves,
Nest in your branches. Feel the wind whipping ’round,
While I hover in your safety.
I want to touch my thoughts to yours
Have you understand how you upend me.
The ways you break me. The need filling its home where the lowest point is.
Where it’s meant to be.
Like water in a gully.
My heart, a nightingale, shooting across the darkening dawn,
Pounding breast with no purpose but to take to your air.
It cannot be explained or dissected.
It just is.
It does
What.
Love.
Does.
Aimless and reckless.
A butterfly tottering into the arms of a hurricane.
Beating paper wings against walls of wind and rock
Orange dust scattered across concrete,
Rendering itself useless through stubborn insistence that,
Hey Darlin’. Listen, I know this is a little late in the posting, but I was spending an amazing afternoon with my kiddos touring Fort Collins’ awesome Museum of Discovery and spending upwards of three hours testing out every. single. musical and weather related experiment. It was a rare moment of beauty when I could drop being the “serious parent” and play. I hope you can find this in your life too.
Today is an oldie but a goodie. I’ve hung on to this one, revamped it, tweaked it, poured over it and abandoned it in a thousand ways, so I’m submitting it to ya’ll with a grain of salt and the caveat that I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
Partly inspired by that amazing song of Paul Simon’s “Train in the Distance”, partly from the muse of young love (like I said, this one’s been around a long while because we all know, I ain’t no spring chicken.)
Enjoy.
Letting Go
Hard is the moment when your heart loses hold,
Throws you down the last stair you didn’t see.
Shakes your body, breath-catching, squawk of fear.
The impending release, a train in the distance.
Hear the canyon-rolled moan, feel the grumble,
Shaking through the bottoms of your feet.
When you thought there was time.
Time to roll the memories over your tongue.
The smell of his shirt,
the fleshy warmth of his bottom lip between your teeth.
The particular scrape of stubble against your neck.
Time to hold your lonely gravity against his charming heart
Time to hope for a chance
that his soul might settle into yours
Like some god made him just for you.
The key to your dreams.
But that damn train…
Howling as it knife-edges closer.
Until, predetermined on its track, it rolls in
and the horror hits you.
They have to go.
And trying to hold them is like holding on to madness
Except, you’ve already stitched him there,
With that unreasonable spark hope. Incredible notions of destiny.
The train pulls away; tugs at delicate threads,
Unevenly, where your heart has grown around the stitches.
(Like the stitch of crows feet around laughing eyes.
The stitch of a stolen kiss while he watched you sleep)
And you ache from the pull. but you can’t stop the train.
And when it’s billowing stacks are all you see,
When its mournful bawl is all that’s left your ears,
you look down.
To all that remains… a gaping, bloody mess.
Shredded tissue, dripping a fever
Soaking wooden platform beneath feet.
That’s what letting go feels like;
Dripping blood, hot on your toes, shadowed by the fading
Welcome to the joyride, ya’ll. Today is the the first Verseday of the year and I’ve chosen a simple little thing I’ve dusted off from a few contest entries ago.
Remember to send me your poems, and/or thoughts and comments on what you’re reading here. I’m so excited to begin!
I threw naked in there so you’d read this. There’s really no nudity…but you might as well continue on, because there’s some good stuff here.
This week I’m launching a new project. Wednesdays will continue to be a weekly rant about writing, and life, and inspiration, and all the strange, obscure references to pop culture I can muster while still being relevant to the topic (it’s an art form people).
But every Thursday I’ll be starting a new post series called Verseday.
I’ll be posting a poem each week that I’ve written either recently or dusted off from some old file folder. You’re welcome to contribute your criticisms and comments.
In addition I’ll be hitting up some of my talented and nimble-worded friends and colleagues for poetic contributions. This whimsy will continue until I gather a good pool of work and I’ll select the finest pieces, mine and yours, to publish the first ever Beautiful Stuff Poetry Anthology (I’m thinking of a snappier title as we speak).
So if you love poetry, if you write poetry, if you’d like a chance to be a part of a gathering of words and ideas, drop me a line.
The only requirements for entries are that they have to be yours, previously unpublished, and be something you’ve sunk some part of your soul into. Humorous or dark, nature-inspired or industrial driven, pious or chocked full of the f-bomb, I’ll look at them all.
I’ll set up a Facebook page to more easily contact me specifically for VersedaySubmissions. Not every poem will be selected (there’s only 52 weeks in a year after all, and I want a little of the glory too) and if you send me anything that’s horrifically violent (shockingly awful gore etc.), racist, or otherwise unjustly hateful, you probably won’t be hearing back from me.
With that in mind, keep an eye out here at The Beautiful Stuff and on my author page (S.E. Reichert on Facebook) for links to the submission guidelines.
This week’s blog was taken up by a lot of hoopla for Verseday but I want to spend the limited time left talking to you about HOME.
Home is something we humans have an odd sense of connection to. Home is where your heart is. You can’t go back Home. Home for the Holidays, Hearth and Home. Home Sweet Home. Home alone. Home again. Homeward bound. Home safe.
For some home is a physical place, for some it’s a person, some it’s a meal or a smell, or a sound. For some, it has negative connotations, a place where they suffered fear or abuse. For some it was a place that moved with changing guardians. For some it was a grandparent’s arms, or a roommate’s couch. For every person, there is a different sense of it and some of us still haven’t found it.
What does home mean to you? Is it a place you can close the door on the world and take off your bra and relax? Is it the person who’s smile and voice lowers your heart rate and washes you over in calm? Is it the wiggling furry body of a dog, anxiously excited to see you EVERY SINGLE TIME you walk in the door?
This is Clyde’s excited face
Is it a church, a synagogue, a mosque? A quiet corner where you meditate or yoga your little heart out?
Is it turkey dinner? Is it Sunday football? Is it the smell of fresh cut hay, or campfire? Is it the sound of a river rushing down a mountain’s craggy side? What makes these things home?
I’m inclined to believe that we build home at the first instrumental moments we are aware of a sense of place, safety, and worth.
When the pitch of your sister’s laugh is the same as your own. When the smell of Swedish meatballs cooking on the stove came with your mom’s hug after a tough day.
When, in the midst of personal crisis, spiraling depression, and loss of self and worth, a mountain takes you in and shows you how meaningful and symbiotic you are to the world.
Home is the lightness and comfort that settles into your heart when you don’t have to question or fear that you belong.
Next week, I want to touch on this again, and am looking for comments and replies about your version of home, and what it means to you. Good and bad. Warm or ugly. Tell me all.
Relentless
Sarah Reichert Author 