Joy of Verse Escape challenged us to share our bookshelves with other bloggers. Her post about it is here http://versiscape-lifesentences.blogspot.com/2011/11/dept-of-since-you-asked.html#comments. This is all but 12 shelves (yikes – I left out lots of fiction, non-fiction, and how to write books (got 2 shelves of those, writers like to write them)). Here you’ll find fiction, poetry (most is on my Kindle and other blogs), art books, reference (though my NG Atlas has to sit on the coffee table it’s too large for all my bookshelves), mythology, and philosophy. In addition I was inspired by Joy to take a picture of my writing desk (though the notebooks aren’t usually spread out like that :)). For those of you who don’t know I am also a painter and composer/musician/vocalist. I may share my other shelves later but this feels like plenty for now. Also any book that looks raggedy is used or a gift, I am very good to my books as any self respecting bibliophile would be. Also, I don’t want to debate the books, just because I have one doesn’t mean I agree with everything that’s in it or think it’s a great book. I didn’t realize I had a problem until preparing this post – good thing my brother gave me that Kindle! Hope you’ve all enjoyed this unprecedented peek behind the curtain at Chromapoesy. Thank you Joy for giving me such a good reason to dust!
Category: Personal
I am reposting (from July) this poem for Halloween; it is my true life horror story
Protasis
Forensic ruin seeped into my life
through the doorway to my future
no one was on guard
at the arrival of the dangerous ones
some were close at hand
others I never knew would come
wedging the gate
Tragedy requires back story
a lifetime of striving
by sixteen I was
working eighty hour weeks
food service pays in varicose veins
and suicidal ideation
even in the young
by eighteen I was broken
poverty and neglect were culpable
Years of struggle and abandonment
that words merely cheapen
Sisyphus my companion
days blurred by petty change
nights spent running down concrete corridors
out the backdoor of the American mall
into empty parking lots
trying to see in the dark
Epitasis
Two years of saving
promotions, evaluations, and initiations
got me to the promise
of higher education
a private school
where students really mattered
my professors were my peers
the precious, spoiled kids
their well pressed lives
well, I didn’t fit in
My senior thesis in college
liquid nitrogen flash freezing green buds
the mortal and pestle grinding
separating into its elemental parts
strands of Deoxyribonucleic Acid
sent through gel electrophoresis to find
Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Markers
refining, comparing, determining genetic relatedness
a taste of things to come
it was a year of upheaval
a year of final tests
Joy ambushed me with an engagement
to the man across the hall
he created space,
showed up with love
grateful, besotted, and delirious
I allowed myself to imagine
white dress, black gown
two rites of passage united
emanating hope
Our congregation of families darkened
by dysfunction, divorce and illness
friends devoured themselves
and one another
a poisonous spider struck
leaving necrotic spots –
these were our wedding gifts
We planned to graduate,
get married, launch careers
create a home from scraps
broken but our own
a garden growing out of burnt earth
all these naïve shoots
were overshadowed
by the advent of murder
Weeks of accusations
of horrors and of blood
stained brown in time
a young woman’s life
obliterated by greed
her destiny slaughtered
for only nine hundred dollars
her legacy so shattered
I can’t even remember her name
We were awfully estranged
no one could be together amidst
celebration, mourning, and fighting
while the killer fled the nation
bullet pierced her brow
eradicating her last thought
Justice demanded a trial
traumatizing images displayed
prejudice tore at the jury
three days we deliberated, almost hung,
through the apathy of one,
in the end the juror
didn’t want to choose
she caved to watch her soaps
judgment rendered a life sentence
Catastrophe
Juxtapositions that made no sense
death/new life; union/dissolution
all chaos conspired
a close range shot
titrating stress hormones
each moment hard won
The surreal landscape expanded
our honeymoon a gift
spent on a hurricane ravaged
Caribbean island all the time
knowing we were ruined
never wanting to leave the
destroyed place
we felt at home in the aftershock
A breath away from homelessness
with the monsters closing in
we fought each other
vitriolic words
directed at the sky
These things I never thought I’d learn
exposed in graphic detail
the intensity of familial
and societal agony
writ large
shrapnel blown into me
The entrance wound looked clean
there was so little blood
it was the exit wound, the obscured one,
that proved the true disaster
forensic ruin seeped into my life
through that tiny hole, a portal to my future
Dedicated to the inventor of the diarized poetics form, Fred of Poetical Psyche (see the post explaining the form here http://poeticalpsyche.blogspot.com/2011/08/diarized-poetry.html)
Chinese artist Wang Qian Peony Yuan Dynasty 1271-1368
October 29, 2011. Up before the sun to snow on the ground (it’s below freezing here at 10,000 feet). I reach for the laptop, instinctively, as it’s become an extension of my mind: axons traversing the wide world, its tendrils reaching out. I check the site stats for Chromapoesy: 6,467 visits since I started four months ago, 2,427 comments and I think about all the years I went without one reader or shred of feedback. Now that I quantify my bounty, does this make me greedy?
I trudge downstairs to make my whey protein breakfast; it is Saturday so I put orange dark chocolate chip sherbet in it. Wow, someone needs to clean the refrigerator! I make a mental note to organize and scrub it out today. Light will soon hit the tops of the bare aspens. I proffer a treat to my dog, Jody, still my baby girl though she’s 11. Kissing her head with a deep well of love I push aside the fact that she has cancer. Passing by the piano I see the ashes of Buddy, sweet boy who died in May, I cry again, take a deep compassionate breath, and remind myself I’m still grieving. Funny, that sentence has enough commas for Jane Austen.
Back at the computer I read Political Psyche and look for archived gems. Everyone’s in a Halloween mood. I’ve read about murder and mayhem for more than two weeks: vampires, werewolves, and incubus dreams. His cherub piece is certainly original and disturbing. I remember to click the like button for the poem with the sensuous eye-lid flittingly gorgeous word inquilinity. Then I stumble upon the post Diarized Poetry a form Fred’s invented and decide to try something new. Apologies to Fred if I butcher it in my first attempt but there has to be a first to be a second and so on.
Remembering my poetry notes about calyx I do a Google search to arrive at Calyx of Held (which sounds to me incredibly epic and poetic). I read multiple research articles on it and am transfixed by science’s inspiration. Unique one-to-one connection in auditory ventral brainstem (I get tears on my scarlet moleskin notebook, yes I’m still crying over my dog). Pray, wonder if there’s a God that embraces every living thing or if in this cold distant universe we’re simply fodder in a circle of life which makes me think about the things I do for love, seeing the Lion King in 3D with my mentee and her sister. What a massive headache that gave me though I reminisce how earlier in the day she agreed to speak at the fundraising tea at the Brown Palace. I bought her a dress for the occasion. She told me she loved me, out loud and to my face, there at the Colorado Mills mall while her sister chimed in.
I’m thinking about peonies, the Chinese symbolism, medicinal purposes, art, beauty, and can almost conjure their smell. I dry the tears still falling for my dog. The Calyx of Held connects the globular bushy cells of anteroventral cochlear nucleus and the principal cells of the medial nucleus of the trapezoidal body (MNTB) in the brainstem. I ponder, download pictures, read more about its nascent development, and investigate short-term plasticity. Plasticity is such a marvelous concept/word in Biology. Neuroscience is still illuminating the plasticity of the brain, we never knew how plastic, and magnificent it truly is. I think about poetry comments and The Invisible Gorilla, what bookshelf is that in? By the wood-burning stove and the swiveling reading chair? I’d look down from the twenty-foot balcony but it creates a shock that travels from my head to nether regions with simply the thought. Guess that phobia isn’t going to retreat. Momentary flash of the hot air balloon ride over the Valley of Kings and the Nile (did I move during that whole tortuous hour)?
Can I combine the Calyx of Held and peonies, the rambling of my mind, into engaging poetry? I read Fred’s examples and remind myself I can always rewrite or skip the prompt (based on the clues I think it’s on conversation). If I don’t try and fail I never get anywhere. One of the reasons I write so much experimental poetry. I find a pile of cryptic notes (never a surprise) that has the phrase ‘a state of profound abstraction’ and the definition of nepenthe (so beautiful I need to find a way to incorporate it into poetry, it means forgetfulness of sorrow or something that causes forgetfulness). Thoughts flood too fast to write clearly: the Death Enters the Rooms and Deep Grief sections of my epic Mere Beasts; the death grimace of my beloved dog, Buddy (foreshadowing the one that is coming); Joy’s Poe poem about his dead wife (I must look up the name and write it down, another cryptic note to decipher later); symbolism; Ophelia floating in the river; and finally, focus and reread Fred’s notes.
Rereading the post to refocus I admire his voice and style. I begin to see how to make this into poetry. My attention is called away again to the tracks in the meadow; I take in the sun now flooding the forest with light.
How honest do I need to be? Probably I need to be as honest with you as I’m willing to be with myself. I’ve always been entranced by the romance of what goes unsaid. Who was it that said they wanted to remain a mystery to themselves? Right, Mad King George, no, the other one, Mad King Ludwig, ‘I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others …’ Yet the vulnerability of art has to be mutual if the artist & the viewer are to be transformed (as I discussed in my post about it on Chromalexicon). I remind myself to be receptive.
Shit, that essay for the blog about Socialist Realism, inspired by The Color of Pomegranates, the film by Sergei Parajanov, is finished but for the final edit! The painting on the easel, in the vein of Torn is likely ready for another layer but I have to figure out where I’m going with these glazes first. It’s a new and intriguing direction and that always takes longer. The Requiem for the Unsung I’m composing will lose its way if I don’t return to it again very soon. The gorgeous sounds of David Lang’s Requiem for the Little Match Girl are ringing in my head (but damn that computer fan is loud). Will I ever finish those screenplays? What are all the things I’ll leave unfinished in my life?
Ok, but now I’m supposed to write a short reflective poem as instructed. I laugh aloud as I see the scene from Sherlock: A Study in Pink where Sherlock’s brother says to Dr. Watson: (Laughing) ‘Yes, the bravery of the soldier, bravery is by far the kindest word for stupidity don’t you think?’ And I must ask myself: Is my writing courageous?
I am in love with the world
engagement acts as a nepenthe
as the landscape floods with light
my thoughts churn and spill over
from pencil to page I’m quiet now
yet do not allow myself fantasy
as if the thoughts send signals
of intention into the world
jumbled in a sea of interconnection
peonies bloom in recesses of imagination
raindrops gathering on nectar drenched buds
their scent, merely incanted in my mind intoxicates
potent stimulus, enough to induce vistas of flourishing
desires full of sensual and intellectual pleasures
Calyx of Held, largest synapse in the mind
nerve terminals moment by moment
receive paeans to a eudaimon life
direct one-to-one connections
co-existing in osculant bliss
yet in the external world
I am entranced by intrigue
by what remains unsaid
within my own unique and ineradicable nature
I am inexorably drawn to the cartography of the mind
therein lies freedom from fate and the tyranny of eros
where virtue is not circumscribed externally allowing
moral order to be obtained through ethical self-determination
there are roads to intellectual liberty that aren’t littered with confusion
a foundation in critically examining my culture tempered by
learning to understand and harness the motivations of the soul
experienced through the metacommunicative competence of an
evolving paradoxical ecological conception of the psyche
these bounded niches within rational structures of justice
create unity in multiplicity; eclecticism without errors
facets of my self need not be controlled by an overriding central power
social perception uncolored by projection or the prosaic cages of mental sets
resisting the equivocation of attraction and intimacy to know mutual love
syncretic encounters of the mind instruct the lyricism of the body
spinning the quiddity and hacceity of humanity around
I am not simply a woman, an embodied mind, a pneuma striving
undertones of meaningful congruence seduce like a specious categorical syllogism
tempting synchronicity and I forget Hume’s warning against pareidolia
apophenia’s joy and curse as theologically I long to believe it’s all interdependent
in a conflation of self and other, a mystic merging, an ecstatic encounter
always seeing the world’s interconnections from my first moment of self-expression
vagaries and wild turns of philosophy, theology, human failings, and love
the strange and magnificent inexplicable universe turns round
in my infinitely limited understanding it is all I can do to respond:
I nurture you, listen to your desires, and tenderly kiss you
forever entwining in an empathetic embrace
In a windowed enclosure
protected from toxic fumes
encircled by the low hum of idling cars
a sound occasionally punctuated by
the grind of an old starter
I wait.
I’m trying to read Natasha Trethewey’s
Native Guard, listen with my inner ear
to the sorrow of sleeping through your death
intimated in her ‘Myth’ when
I’m startled by reality’s intrusion
as the long armed steel barrier
hits the thin walled enclosure
propelled by my car
here driven by the attendant
Thwack! be in the now!
She finds me, with frantic eyes
concern painted all over
seeping into the tiny crinkles of her young face
in her apology she intimates
I may want to strangle her
for the collision of steel
there’s violence in both acts.
I think: whatever for?
shocked by her suggestion of harm
accidents happen
(inner ear attuned to the echo of pain)
(flashes of memory)
if she knew me she’d know
I mean this.
She is tentative, contrite
shoulders hunched forward
and then a hoarse whisper
I have to lean in to hear her over
engines and customer chatter
perhaps punitive retribution is required?
no, I don’t want to speak to her boss.
With her livelihood at stake,
shaking from the impact
her form folds further inward
she is on the verge of tears
or flight, now louder ‘I am so sorry.’
And so am I –
how did we get to this place?
I’m not angry
I want to touch her,
assuage her fears,
to reach out and reassure her
and I’m standing so
close to make sure I can really hear.
But we’re in a box –
an employee and a customer
at Air Care Colorado
it’s 8:00 on a chilly morning:
is this done?
I decide to do it anyway,
to embrace her
she sighs, I sigh.
We both want the reassurance
that what separates us is so much smaller
than what connects us.
As I manage the details
we hug again
I hear nothing in that moment.
She thanks me for being human.
I am grateful to her for the opportunity
to share love and compassion
in the sacred space of our commonality,
amidst all the noise
surrounded by what could so easily kill us.
Written for a prompt Wordsmith Wednesday found here http://liv2write2day.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/wordsmith-wednesday-sensory-description-hearing/
Refusal To Be Cast as the Observed 2008 18X24 Acrylic and Pigment Stick by Anna Montgomery
for Camille Claudel
Mode de vie
‘Men have expelled you
from the world of symbols…’
born of the culture
knowing eyes ready
to absorb aesthetic influence
caught in gender’s ontological ruse
cast as muse
Le artiste (le future)
‘and yet they have given you names…’
Rodin’s model, mistress
influencer, collaborator
sculptor, painter, a creator
but never equal (non pair)
Le mûr age (fermeture)
‘They say the language you speak
is made up of signs that rightly speaking
designate what men have appropriated.’
poverty and obscurity
now cast out these are
your gifts from society
one that finds no place for
‘a revolt against nature:
a woman genius’
you work, you destroy
anger spirals inward
La fatalité (destinée)
‘They say the language you speak
is made up of words
that are killing you.’
committing you
doctor’s try to convince
Paul to let you out
he refers to you
in the past tense
lying in a communal grave
no one claims you
Camille Claudel public domain
Notes: Camille Claudel was a French sculptor and painter. Art critic Octave Mirbeau called her ‘a revolt against nature: a woman genius’. She was a genius destroyed by the concept of gender and her society. ‘Men have expelled you from the world of symbols and yet they have given you names . . . . They write, of their authority to accord names, that it goes back so far that the origin of language itself may be considered an act of authority emanating from those who dominate . . . they have attached a particular word to an object or a fact . . . . They say the language you speak is made up of words that are killing you. They say the language you speak is made up of signs that rightly speaking designate what men have appropriated.’ is from Les Guerilleres by radical French feminist Monique Wittig. Camille Claudel’s surviving masterpiece which dealt with the dissolution of her relationship with Auguste Rodin was called by several names: The Mature Age; The Destiny; the Way of Life; The Fate. After her break with Rodin she fell into poverty and obscurity. Her younger brother Paul had her wrongfully committed to a mental institution where she eventually died and was buried in a mass grave.
The Emplorer by Camille Claudel
Linked at dVerse Poets Pub for Open Link Night #12 – please join us http://dversepoets.com/2011/10/04/openlinknightweek-12/
-
- Jody Graham (my grandmother)
-
- Anna (Graham) Montgomery
-
- Sarah Reynolds (my cousin)
Mnemosyne, grandmother,
whose many names
are older than memory itself
enfolds herself within a Magpie spirit cloak
and spins forth a world where her
Muses bear daughters
She flies from her home
where I am forbidden to travel
Blue Lake upon Taos Mountain
through the Pueblo at the mouth
of Red Willow Canyon
Calling her two eldest granddaughters to her side,
a pilgrimage to Conifer Mountain
three Horarctic Magpies
hudsonia here in the Rockies
forage in the blue-eyed grass
walking along the grey fox-trod path
pat down by elk hooves
Good morning Grandmother, I am singing today
Juniper bush patches
quilted with kinnikinnick
orange paintbrushes dotted with
columbines rise above
toadstools and ferns
black bear stalks the wood pile
She begins to mend what is
broken but her own
we are broken but her own
They’ve never come this far
this high upon the mountain
alpine yarrow beneath the
ever changing light, a forest of aspens,
blue spruce, and bristlecone pines
she nurtures and connects
intimating a heroic form to life
Magpies are inventors via
expansive executive function
insightful passerines
‘catch me if you can’ tricksters
who create their own tools
to dig up the truth
Black beak burrows damp earth
Grandmother is making cache holes
while aspen eyes keep watch
she buries a writing tablet,
aulos, veil, dual faced masks
scrolls, cithara, globe, and compass
flashes her eye grounding memory
leaves her true gifts and looks me in the eye
Grandmother your granddaughters are waiting for the time of unearthing
The three begin to
sing one another’s songs
preparing to fly home for
Magpies, like their sisters Ravens,
recognize themselves in the mirror
A moralizing speech
We are too far removed
from the initial awe
crusted information
over processed
analyzed, interpreted,
evaluated
D E C O N S T R U C T E D
The initial brilliance
of the encounter,
engagement is lost…
The trick is
don’t allow
previous interpretation,
WISDOM
To cloud your own
intense, primal,
visceral, and unique
encounter with the world.
Because I didn’t know any better
Silly things I believed
when I was a very young child:
the world was black and white
until they invented color film;
the earth rotated but clouds
were fixed in the sky;
that if you experienced pain in dreams
it was because you were hurt in real life;
in mythic furniture called chesterdrawers
(because my parents had Oklahoma accents
and never said chest-of-drawers);
when I died my spirit would be able to travel
into every space on Earth,
down to the Mariana trench,
over the Himalayas,
through Victoria Falls,
within the molecular structure of atoms –
wherever I wanted to go*;
and finally,
eventually with education and attention
everything would become clear.
*As a child I imagined that when I died I’d get to go everywhere in the world, see the hidden places. In my dream world it was all beautiful, breathtakingly freeing, a monumental liberation from the constraints of embodiment. It was always without people and I never imagined anything terrifying or disgusting. It was part IMAX helicopter shot mixed with invulnerability. Spiritual bliss attained through natural beauty.
every imprecation falls
lips spit cacology
Lamia’s grief devours
fin de siècle kerfs
with rusty halberds
sharp crack of violent intent
rustling crash
the forest felled
thick rubber crushes
the squirrel’s spine
No! here it plays out
clamp my ears
pantomime an oh
too late I realize
pour concrete in my eyes
there my brother skids
across the pavement
vehicle a weapon
extension of her vacuous mind
culpability resides with the lusus naturae
triggered memories
image is trapped
burning into me
elaborative encoding dance
accomplices have run
serologic atonement
Matthew said speak and if they listen
deeper yet, understand in Greek
you regain them
But why must I be the one?
if they don’t give a fuck
about the preventable destruction
how could they hear my lament?
no use bucking to prevent binds
empathy turns a blind eye
zoonosis, variola major virus
can’t kill what isn’t alive
maculopapular rash
fluid filled pustules
they promise it’s eradicated
hyaloplasm fights desiccation
ground substance inclusions athwart
I assault my eyes with chainsaws
embedded with diamond grit
this is the power it takes to clear sight
Notes/definitions:
imprecation: curse
cacology: bad diction
Lamia: in ancient Greek mythology she was the Queen of Libya that had an affair with Zeus and bore his children. Hera, Zeus’ wife was so jealous she had the children murdered (or in one telling forced Lamia to consume them). Either way Lamia was driven mad with suffering and was transformed into a horror that ate children.
fin de siècle: has several association one is the end of the century (it’s meaning in French) a time of great upheaval, mourning, and fear; a particularly sophisticated kind of suffering; an art movement in France especially the Symbolists and expressionist paintings like Munch’s The Scream.
kerf: slit or notch made by a cutting tool
rusty halberd: two-handed pole weapon used in the medieval times – it was often allowed to rust so that even if the initial wound inflicted wasn’t fatal the resulting infection (usually gangrene) might be.
vacuous: having or showing a lack of intelligence; empty
culpability: Culpability descends from the Latin concept of fault (culpa). The concept of culpability is intimately tied up with notions of agency, freedom and free will. All are commonly held to be necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for culpability. In explanations and predictions of human action and inaction, culpability is a measure of the degree to which an agent, such as a person, can be held morally or legally responsible. Culpability marks the dividing line between moral evil, like murder, for which someone may be held responsible and natural evil, like earthquakes, for which no one can be held responsible. – from Wikipedia
lusus naturae: a monstrosity; person or animal hideously deformed
elaborative encoding: psychological term pertaining to memory. In order to remember something well, whether an autobiographical or semantic detail elaborative rehearsal occurs when you associate new information with something you already know; you encode (store) memories by repeating this information. Strongly reinforced encoded memories are more available for retrieval (or recall).
serology: is the study of blood serum and other bodily fluids
atonement: reparation for wrongs committed
Matthew 18:15-20 New Standard Revised Version of the Bible: 15“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.16But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.17If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.18Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.19Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.20For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”
bucking: process of chainsaw cutting the felled tree into logs; if you buck correctly gravity helps prevent binds
bind: when the chainsaw is at risk of getting stuck or is stuck in the log compression – an unsafe situation
zoonosis: is an infectious disease that can be passed between non-human animals and humans and vice versa
variola major virus: Smallpox in its most deadly form with a mortality rate of 30-35%. The disease was declared eradicated in 1979 by the World Health Organization.
hyaloplasm: medical term: the clear, fluid portion of cytoplasm as distinguished from the granular and netlike components. Also called ground substance.
desiccate: to dry out completely
diamond grit embedded blade: chainsaw blade required to cut concrete
This is in response to the Poetics prompt on silent film @ dVerse.
Note: Spoken and written language, numerical skills, reasoning, and control of the right side of the body occur in the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is responsible for control of the left side of the body, music processing, emotional thinking, and perceiving visual-spatial relations. The two hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum.
Chromapoetica 