A Pantoum on Anger

After I wrote *the worst* pantoum, I wrote this abstract little ditty to try to explain myself:

I've fallen to
playacting
anger.

Snap, shout, hiss
but the old
hot-edge
gone.

Once a
volcano-
dormant,
spent.

What used
to ignite
fiery torrents
now brings
inconsolable
clouds,
days of
rain.

(oh dear)
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Ok, ok, onto the truly terrible pantoum (and I do think anger cliché-ridden, that there is a repetitiveness of the trite in states of rage):

Anger is a potent force. Anger is red, explosive, repetitive. An angry person has lost their rationality. Anger is a sword of destruction, a way to hurt. Anger is red, explosive, repetitive. When the victim becomes the oppressor. Anger is a sword of destruction, a way to hurt. To hurt the way you've been hurt. When the victim becomes the oppressor. Anger is a bullet. To hurt the way you've been hurt. Anger is a fire bomb. Anger is a bullet. Anger collects furies to hurl. Anger is a fire bomb. Anger destroys what took time to build. Anger collects furies to hurl. When it erupts, it tears the gaussian blur off things. Anger destroys what took time to build. Anger is a great leveller. When it erupts, it tears the gaussian blur off things. Anger sees the mark darkly. Anger is a great leveller. The raging storm. Anger sees the mark darkly. The roaring wind. The raging storm. Tears the world apart with battering. The roaring wind. The broken homes. Tears the world apart with battering. Anger transforms. The broken homes. Loss of illusions. Anger transforms. Anger is a potent force of renewal.

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A response to Big Tent Poetry's June 11th prompt: write an angry pantoum (and where you can read the other entries in the linked comments)

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What is Hidden in Ourselves?

What is hidden in crevices, tiny tide pools, our obscure and wayward selves? Our main narrative, who we are, what we've been through, how we think of ourselves, our stories, the way we present ourselves to others, what if that falls away? Our mainstream still, empty, non-existent. Creeping out of the shadows, slithery, bat-like things, or fairies, gnomes, sylphs and undines, or a cast of characters of every shade and tenor, or visions of sublime beings composed of light? Would the inner child – of fears and magic – creep out? Would we utter pure poetry, mad phrases? Would stray, incoherent thoughts stream by, seed fluffs floating, promising blossoms? Can we surprise ourselves? Do we know ourselves? Are we open to stories of our lives that don't fit the main narratorial road we've carved out of the mountains and sand and ocean of our experiences? Can we accommodate our minorities, submerged selves, to create an inner democracy between what composes us? Listen to stray thoughts on the edge of your consciousness – what do you hear?


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I wrote this prosepoem 5 years ago, but edited it for Big Tent Poetry’s June 4th poetry prompt: where will our wild things be?

Sure... it's a rephrasing of the question posed by Big Tent's auteurs, but you can see from my piece, I understand what's being asked! ::grins::

(I've been all those things - sublime vision of light, and yes the slithery bat self -when I dare!)

The Lady and the Chimera, 12" x 9", 30.5x23cm, oil on canvas, 2010.

                                                        

A Lascivious Tray

For my housewarming you arrive with a cooler on whose ice a bottle of Moet and Chandon Brut Imperial champagne waits, and a power drill to hang my curtains.

While you hang, I toss organic baby spinach, fat green leaves, sliced large white button mushrooms, raw and thick, thin wheels of hot red onion, peeled sliced sweet mango, a handful of ground walnuts, slivered almonds, flax and sunflower seeds in a raspberry vinaigrette.

On the sectioned tray I lay ripe strawberries sweet as jam, green grapes, sinful fresh figs.

From its wooden case, I lift fresh smoked wild Sockeye salmon and lay it down.

Large green olives stuffed with garlic nestle beside the focaccia embedded with olive slices, sun-dried tomatoes, chopped onion and herbs.

Around balls of sweet honey dew melon I wrap ribbons of proscuito.

Peeling the papers from the cheeses, I uncover Isigny Sainte Mère, a creamy Normandy Camembert, Pont-l'Evêque, a soft cheese, pungent white Cheddar, tangerine-coloured rich Mimolette, and from sweet sheep's milk a soft Italian Percorino Toscan Fresco.

It is a steamy June day.

We take each other's clothes off in the enrapt way way lovers do. We feed each other with our mouths, teeth, fingers. We hold strawberries between both our lips and bite them.

We sip long crystal flutes and drizzle champagne into each other.

I'm sure I lap-dance, it's becoming a blur. Leonard Cohen's woman, that beautiful Anjani, sings soft, sultry songs of his poems.

Lust breathes us.

Later, drunk, I dance in the living room, a naked middle-aged woman.

The curtains are drawn tight.





This morning I videod my exercising, dancing, and then layered so many filters on the footage Final Cut Express says it'll take 4 days to render a 12 minute section! I'm currently trying to circumnavigate that by saving to QuickTime, but that's a 20 hour process! Oy ya. These stills may be all that there is to show of my afternoon's work. Let's just say, three years later, not naked.

It was a memorable night, perhaps our best, but our last. I’ve kept the empty bottle of champagne on my shelf since then, knowing I had to write about it. In the Winter I received a letter from his other lover and then we discovered each other, though I had ended my relationship with him not long after the evening I write of here. This is a section from a much longer prosepoem.

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This prosepoem piece was written for Big Tent Poetry's May 28th poetry prompt: aphrodisiac.


You can read the response of some Big Tent contributers and readers here: Rubies In Crystal at WordPress.

                                                        

Creative Fire

"I hope you are all creating every day according to the inner map you were born with. I know it sometimes seems that map is written in invisible ink... but you know to read invisible ink, you have to hold it over heat. Same with creative life, 'Fire, give me more fire!'"

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, from "The Creative Fire" mansuscript, this quote posted at her public site at Facebook.

where potential poems
lay like unfertilized ova

a thousand rise
new moons
on the landscape of the future

I have no chromosone
starmap to offer
or helixes of lunar pearls

I wasn't born with a vision

mapless, without signs

my fire is your fire

what bursts from this undifferentiated mass, a singular
moment, astral blossom of solarity, prism of
colour, strange sapient gloss

is a response,
a spark,
the lighting of our blazing

A composite image I composed for this poem (from public 

domain and NASA images).

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I like Dr. Estes quote very much, and am inspired by her words. I've written a poem - the creative fire like an Olympic torch alighting us. Her philosophy, though, has given me pause for thought. For me there isn't an 'inner map' that I was 'born with.' While there is inner pressure to produce, my creativity is a response. It's not about my 'feelings' or particularly 'confessional,' but sparked by something I want to address. Sometimes it can be a way to work out a puzzle. What I write or paint or produce occurs in relation to my world, the people in it, a sense of spirit, a need to discover truth, a way to connect, reflect, deflect, untangle, give, discover the depths of.