A Carrie Retrospective

[champagne1982]

Why I Write

I must explode with words and choices
before I learn to listen for them
and when I write, give over
to the incendiary devices when they
ignite the stone fence and destroy
the false barrier to expression and I melt

The molten lava flows across the waste
that sometimes is desolate but more often
filled with impressions and images
that burst into flames as they are touched.

The smoke curls against my olfactory nerves
and with a reaction as violent as a sneeze
my emotions spatter against the page
written in indelible ink so that now
they're out cannot be easily covered
and never erased no matter how invisible
they become.

I feel so much that the only relief
from the suffocating weight on my chest
is to write it away.
To write it lighter.
To write it invisible
even though it never disappears
so I can breathe.

 

[champagne1982]

Inner Dancer

What if today was the one day when dancing
naked was duty and you are always dutiful?

Would you sway, slow and sinuous
in your mind even though your body
can't make those moves anymore?

Or how about shaking and shimmying?
Let the tremors move your folds
and quake your flesh until you ache
from unaccustomed inertial resistance.

Let's celebrate the glory of living
with no more judgement
or distaste at a person who sees life
differently than we do.

I can not remove the ravages of time
from my skin. The rolls, scars, and softness
mark me in ways I should be proud of bearing,
and not shamed by the ideas of a beauty industry
that tells me there is only one way to look.

My hair is not full of melanin and bounce,
this is the colour of maturity and is glamourous
in only the way an older woman carries glamour.

My face is not smooth and fresh
with the dew of new. These furrows and folds
explain the depth of emotion and reaction
that only a life of sorrow and happiness,
worry and relief, regret and accomplishment can draw.

Revel in your imperfections and enjoy life.
If that means you need to change to feel good,
make the changes! If you are glad and ok
being who you are, then explode with the joy
of knowing this is you. No matter what you seem
and what you show, just for today, dance.

Dance those steps that make you remember being human
and how lovely that humanity makes you.
Be more than the blood pounding in your veins!

Now when your heart syncopates with the drum,
the earth shakes at the beat of your feet,
while you paint a tattoo of bass notes and happiness
just for today, because today, no one judges how you dance.

 

[champagne1982]

Beautiful Betty

And I wonder where you wander
when winter gusts without respite
and noises of the windy whine
presses frost against the threshold

Don't wither now because you've left!
I want your damn near a century
to matter to pop culture, to history
for more than 100 years.

You were so close to saying goodbye
to our terrible year of broken
promises and hopeful change,
instead you broke against the breakwater;

splashing all of your wit and experience
on the masks of struggling epidemiologists
and burnt out caregivers. You took the exit
rather than over-stay your encore.

The light burnt out, and footlights
extinguished when the orchestra
fell silent into a puddle of the old year
passing, and then the curtain came down.

 

[champagne1982]

Holy Hannah, I've been here for over 20 years. What the hell?!

 

[Tzara]

Holy Hannah, I've been here for over 20 years. What the hell?!

What the hell, indeed. Been here seventeen years myself. My thanks, Champie, for helping to make that interesting.

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

Twenty years or seventeen?
Who counts those past poetic years?
I arrived in zero three unseen
and green, full of poetic fears.
Finding Champ and Angeline,
learning, laughing, even tears.
Newer writers, poetic queens
and stately kings that treated ears
to stunning works that made me lean
on elbows, amazed and close to tears.

 

[champagne1982]

What the hell, indeed. Been here seventeen years myself. My thanks, Champie, for helping to make that interesting.

Twenty years or seventeen?
Who counts those past poetic years?
I arrived in zero three unseen
and green, full of poetic fears.
Finding Champ and Angeline,
learning, laughing, even tears.
Newer writers, poetic queens
and stately kings that treated ears
to stunning works that made me lean
on elbows, amazed and close to tears.

Awww, I really need to come and check in more often.

There's a magic in finding
a place where judgement
is suspended, though advice
is often offered, a poet
can choose to ignore it,
though a wise one will
heed the good bits.

 

[butters]

ah, this thread..

*contented sigh*