She had been hurt once, chasing after things that were never meant to be chased

Climbed through the nearest window, and fluttered off the edge – believing she could fly

Everything spiraled downwards

The king had to pick her up and nurse what is broken,

And he decided to build a wall.

She longed for the outside –

The birds, the bees

The leaves that danced with the trees

She yearned to waltz like they did

To spin up to the stars and feel the wind lift her and caress her

The sun was her lover,

Seducing her as it set over the rolling hills, far beyond her walls.

She longed for warmth.

The king didn’t let her, no –

He had seen damsels in distress climb over these walls

Saddled on a black knight’s horse

Only to come back bruised, even more distressed –

Broken

He knew that if she climbed over the walls and chased the sun

She would be burnt by its hot gaze

Her fair skin blistered in pain.

But one day,

The whitest, purest of knights had requested shelter.

He too was broken,

Wounded from fighting battles against dragons and witches and demons alike,

And he needed to be nursed back to health.

The princess helped him, and he taught her how to fly.

He told stories of long journeys,

Crisp, cool breezes,

A vast, glittering ocean,

A kingdom beyond her own where he resided

A kingdom that she could call home

The king felt the walls begin to crumble.

Would he let it? Did he have a choice?

The knight gently helped her outside.

The wall cast shadows on them,

Creating patterns on their skin

The princess looked up and smiled,

And like the knight had said,

Her skin turned a golden tan –

No blisters,

No burns,

Just a rosy, sun-kissed glow.

And the king allowed the walls to crumble,

Because if the princess was happy,

He knew that one day, so would he.

Writing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the first time in 92 days, I didn’t post last night.  I let my life get in the way of my writing.  The intention of this blog was to make time for writing each day.  Usually I post at night, when the rest of my household is asleep or otherwise occupied.  For 92 days, I managed to write no matter what happened.  Until last night…

It wasn’t anything tragic or surprising that kept me from writing, just a date night.  I knew it was coming and I didn’t plan ahead.  It is the same old routine that kept me from writing in the past.  I just didn’t make my writing a priority.

I woke up this morning feeling a desperate urge to get to my computer.  I needed to make penance or apologize. (To whom? I’m not sure.)

Does this happen to anyone else?  Are there any tricks to putting “time to write” at the top of the priority list?

Related articles

• Resistance is Futile: A Poem about Writing (joeberhardt.com)
• excuses! Excuses! EXCUSES! (thejottersjoint.com)

A Cold

Nose is stuffed, blow some more

Eye is weeping, throat is sore

Weak and tired, no end in sight

Sweats and chills, up all night

It turns out, as you can read in the article here, that the librarian in a school about twenty minutes from my parents’ house has ‘discovered’ that thanks to the World Wide Web itself, schools had been duped into believing a poem entitled ‘Two Sunflowers Move into the Yellow Room’ was an example of William Blake’s famous 19th Century verse. Now, I’m no expert and wouldn’t describe myself as a huge fan of this literary era, but I did study a fair chunk of Blake during a university poetry module and I have to say I’m baffled that a rat wasn’t smelled a little sooner. Check the poem in question below:

“Ah, William, we’re weary of weather,”
said the sunflowers, shining with dew.
“Our traveling habits have tired us.
Can you give us a room with a view?”

They arranged themselves at the window
and counted the steps of the sun,
and they both took root in the carpet
where the topaz tortoises run.

Hardly an example of the Victorian eloquence and delicateness with which Blake delivered his poetics, is it? Having only just stumbled upon the poem this morning, I can safely say that having attributed the bumbling, clunky, GCSE style techniques used here to none other than Blake himself since, the BBC article suggests, as far back as 2001, concerns me just a little. I’ll admit, I’m looking at this through the goggles of a cynical English graduate who can’t quite believe her eyes, but I think I’ve got a point.

‘Ah! Sunlower’, an actual Blake poem, seems to be the original inspiration for Willard’s ‘Two Sunflowers…’

A quick Google search has revealed that while numerous sources, both educational and otherwise (here, here, here and here for example) are citing the poem as an original Blake,  equally as many sites (here, here and just about everywhere) are fully aware that the poem in fact comes from a Blake inspired collection of poems from a 1981 anthology by Nancy Willard. Inspired by Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Willard’s book is, similarly to Blake’s, an illustrated children’s book with a vintage feel.

An illustration from Willard’s A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers. Retro yes, 19th Century, no way.

More concerning than how the two were ever confused in the first place, however, is the treatment Willard’s poem has been given in some of the many lesson plans for ‘Two Sunflowers…’ that are floating about on the web. Many cite the fake poem as one of the most beautiful examples of personification to be found in English poetry. A 7th grade lesson plan even reads ‘Notice how the sunflowers speak, arrange themselves, and count — all human abilities. Rather than being outright silly, the poem is whimsical.’

So how did this poem become so easily mistaken for a Blake by teachers, academics and lit enthusiasts? Thomas Pitchford, the Hitchin Boys’ School librarian that broke the news of this monumental mix-up, blames the internet for the misconception, saying that people readily accepted the poem as a Blake after searching for his poems online, rather than going to the library shelves for a primary source. He says ‘We just accept too quickly.’

No doubt, at this very moment, academics are cringing at their desks. Blake specialists will be banging there heads against walls that something like this (can I call it ‘Blake Gate’? Is that a thing?) ever came about. But for anyone else, this serves as a stern lesson in research skills and raises questions over how many more situations like this we might see in the future, thanks to the good old internet’s unfailing lack of reliability.

Ανταπόκριση

jutting out at odd angles

like a tree trimmed too early

bent against the unforgiving wind

and struggling towards a sun

that may just be too bright

I hear the clouds roar
They are yearning to pour

Hauling thousand of secrets in themselves
Consenting to let them spill and not keeping them in shelves

Liberated, with the flow
Anticipating a better future, a glow

The drops descend
With each other they blend

The azure sky alters
Leaving no signs of any falters

Passion swells
Oomph dwells

Effects, sounds and faces
Presenting contrasting traces

The laughter, the crackle, the bubble
As the rain cleanses away the trouble

Despondently, I open my eyes and find myself in a flood
Which reminds me of a stream, of colorless blood

I look up and watch as the sky bellows to be
In its ordeal, it tells the tale of no-one but me…

When you have done all you could and still nothing happens, walk.
When you worked harder than you ever had and there’s no appreciation, walk.
When you’re alone in something that you shouldn’t be, walk.
When you’re tired and feel no purpose in what you’re doing, walk.
When there’s nothing left to hold onto, walk.

The human’s wants and needs are forever insatiable because that’s the way we are.
We are never perfect.
We are never satisfied.
If we seem to think that we are, most likely we’ll find a way not to be.
I know this is debatable because I myself believe otherwise.

When you feel like failing and falling back, soldier on and move forward.
When you feel like losing grip, hold tighter.
When you lose purpose, find a new one.
When you feel tired, recharge.
When in the end of the day all is lost, remember that there’s always tomorrow.

But you should always remember when it’s time to walk because if it’s meant to be, it will be.

I think it’s time for me to remind myself to at least stop over and enjoy the process—-enjoy this journey.

Yes life is not just a piece of cake but in our lives, or let me say, in our adventures, we must manage to enjoy every moment of the journey, its process and its route that even though the final destination might not up to our expectations, at least we had appreciated the simple pleasures of everyday life that all seem more meaningful and worthwhile.

Let us live our lives in a more interesting adventure rather than a difficult and tiring journey.

You know, tonight I look back on the long, dark road where our cell phones were carcasses- reception bars usually disappeared by the time we saw a farm- and can’t help thinking we were artisans of the dark. Carving parchment out of bark, you left your signature mark in the left hand corner, a metaphor for how you’d marked me on each iteration of the former.

We drove by the metaphorical mortar guns of boredom. Each town that succumbed in our wake only served to strengthen us. Every gas station long devoid of patrons is now a black hole on the map, where the highways and back roads intersect under the corpses of ghost towns, white buildings browned, soulless.

Unfounded civilizations could not survive the Sunday drives through them.

It was in these mists I married us, ferried us to your hometown, little buildings barely visible past the biohazard signs. What’s a little radiation poisoning when the bombs are dropping daily? If anything, it was the government failing to adequately keep us out of the green horizons, surmising we were not smart enough to go willingly to our deaths.

And you know the rest of the story as well as the black clouds over our heads. You’ll feel sick but you’ll be gorgeous. With my last breath, skin peeling from my neck, I’m ever so fortunate this torture has a payoff, unlike certain mushroom clouds preceding the shroud
threatening
cathedrals.

We’ll make our senile,
final pledge
to illness and health,
poverty and wealth,
in exchange for
consummating
our own
piece of
Hell.

(Airplanes above
us crash.)

You only may
have seconds to
decide.

(Sirens in the
distance
evaporate, and the
old church begins swallowing
its pews.)

Sir, do
you take this
woman to be
your bride?

(Final flash.)

Yes, why,
yes, I
do.

I like what I like. Weed or not. I like color and I like chicory. My family will tell you that from an early age color bewitched me. My penchant for defining a color by its name is legend. Terra cotta red. Celadon green. Warm blonde. Cool ash. Cornflower blue or chickory blue.

The soft almost blue violet of the roadside chicory blossoms inspired the long linen skirt worn by my bridesmaids. I purchased blouses, scarves, chenille throws, pillows, and dresses—all because they bore the color.

I never tire of it. By most accounts it is a roadside weed.  Chicory is one of the earliest plants recorded in literature. In the south its roots are roasted and ground into a coffee substitute. Weed or not, it has always been a sign of summer—a welcome reminder of being a girl running my hands through waist high chicory lining the country roads.

Today they say, is refugee day

So the world remembers us, or so they say

When the only one thing soothed, hugged and told “it’ll all be alright”

Is their conscience.

Must we have a day

In your calendar of goodwill?

Striking in hunger for those millions of empty plates.  Lighting candles in vigil for 7 nights straight.

Until the matchbox is empty. Until a toast to success is due over a fancy dinner reservation.

Until your next cameo

Sorry, I meant, your dedication to eradicate my cause for sorrow.

Must we have a week

In your calendar of goodwill?

In October you shall brandish in pink

A Band-Aid disguised as a placard disguised as an act that will make people think

And then you move on

To November where you paint a mustache on your face

Eyes skimming past the victims to the likes on your Facebook page

Must we have a month

In your calendar of goodwill?

Remember the Nakba! You wash your keffiyah clean

In your deceptively viscous stream of our diluted dreams

For the fallen soldier you hang a half-rotten garland on a stone engraved

And then walk away, the sentiment dying with the flowers. And not with the stone.

Must we have a day

In your calendar of goodwill?

So please take this empty day, this wretched week,  this month that you say is mine

And give us a lifetime of promise in exchange for your crocodile brine

Where the paper cut as you turn the page doesn’t distract you from my pain, nor does the sprain in your wrist as you click the page closed

Take your loud-mouthed philanthropy and fund-raising irony

And tell me your heart truly bleeds for me, and not for the photo of your pearls on the front page of society

That all these charts, these stats, these figures in blood, are drawn from your veins. From an arm voluntarily brandished, where no one else can see .

As you happen to stumble across the day, you shout from the throat to the world to remember, and then x the date

Another job well done

Lather, rinse, repeat

As I stumble alone across a land unknown, I shout from my anguish for the world to truly hear, and then stand in line for your crumb of mercy

Another day to hope

Lather, rinse, repeat

You and your feel-good x’s in your calendar of goodwill.

This day isn’t really for me is it?

It’s for you.

I tried for dead
and didn’t make it
coming up close
several times to the sty
at the end of myself

Yet the coming between
walked me home
just to the distance needed
and you came running
wildly outstretched to give us
back to both our wanting

This desire for more than life
when I didn’t even
know how to live

The White Rabbit

the chains broke and Alice flew towards
the giant keyhole. Her wrists were blistered,
bruised, her kitchen-blue dress was torn
above her knees and there was dried blood
matted into her ribbons.

She had lost her voice, somewhere in the dark,
the White Rabbit checked his watch and paced
about the Burrow in his tailored waistcoat.
his thick-framed lenses made his eyes bulge
as he drank from a green bottle.

 He found Alice sitting between two fat boys,
wearing hats and holding broad sticks.
She raised her head just high enough to see
the whiskers twitch and watch drop to
the floor, “you’re late.”

I am late to bed.

Already my alarm clock is hurtling

towards morning.

But I can’t stop

longing

That was as far as I got.

It’s a love poem in case you’re wondering. I long to fall in love — is that obvious? Last night I found this amazing blog and my heart kept catching on the poems. And I felt inspired to write a love poem of my own to my (unknown) beloved (which might actually make a good title for this poem: unknown beloved or firedasher — I can’t decide which.) I’m going to finish that poem now, but I’ll leave you with Andrea Gibson in the meanwhile.

His mindset buried in time

Probably not worth this rhyme

Mentally unbalanced and existentially challenged

Emotionally callous

and fixated on his phallus

Dreams of fame and money led this guy in one direction

Satisfying carnal desires

with uninspired apprehension

The emptiness inside finally ate on through the surface

You could see it in his eyes

This guy was living with no purpose

Anger tweeted him so he reacted and retweeted

Afraid to start all over

He got drunk and #hashbag weeded

Conceived a plan of domination where he was still the victim

Attacked someone for being there

Where all could see and listen

A simple mind procrastinates and waits for it’s reward

grows angry at it’s failures while

The rest of us grow bored

This guy believed the lies of fame and easy money rants

Never took the time to use his mind

Fixated on his pants

I first heard it as I watched the linked video and freely admit that there was something about everyone sitting around the table, playing their instruments that brought me back warmth and camaraderie in old school pubs of  Ireland.  For a long time a town had a church, a post office, and a pub.  While pubs are a place for drinking, that is only an aspect of their purpose.  They are a place to bring families to eat out, a place to gather and join with friends, talk or not, and listen to music.

“What’s like behind those eyes

That watch the weary world go by

Unnoticed, unrecognized

Unbowed, uncowed, unbroken

Pandora’s box wide open

Hasp and hinges broken

Pandora’s box wide open

Amid the braying of the herd

And the steady fraying of the nerves

The din of a million million words

Better left unspoken

Pandora’s box wide open

Hasp and hinges broken

Pandora’s box wide open

When everybody has a say

When any dog can have his day

No leash to keep the beast at bay

No muzzle to get in the way

The measured words of discontent

Quiet voice raised in dissent

Wheels of justice badly bent

Bent and all but broken

Pandora’s box wide open

Hasp and hinges broken

Pandora’s box wide open
It’s what I see, I can’t deny

The evidence of my own eyes

Man exalted, man despised

Man all bent and broken,

Pandora’s box wide open

Hasp and hinges broken

Pandora’s box wide open”

I’m lost, misguided, forsaken.
Familiar feelings feel like alien pains.
The mirror is a stranger.

Through broken signs and disjoint times 
I recede into icy haze,
                                  growing darker…
Growing into a dead, dim inanity.

I’m a vacuous laugh.