Silent Poem

I finally wrote a poem to go with this pic, as suggested by my friends here.

Silent


I have been taken down

like an ornament

put away

silent night


I’m going to walk away

like a senile patient

in shame

silent day


I’ll forget what I’ve learned

like keys left behind

at the lake

silent descent


And deposit rusty bones

like leaf covered litter

decorating a

silent trail

Illustration Friday: Silent



Inspired by Mary's post for this weeks topic over at IF.

Spent

Coins dropped
into a hand of rotting flesh
Character spent

An old hag strikes a deal
with a luminescent daughter
Pale and delicate
retaining white linen that
repels murky water…
and wispy dark hair that
opposes ivory skin

Preservation paid for
she slips away
Constitution bared and bled
left standing alone in murky water
holding the putrefying jawbone
of an attacking dog

Camaraderie gawks
concludes and criticizes
standing safely on dry
decaying continents
of dragons and voodoo masks

They’re happy I’ll be staying
Preserved for decadent perishing
There’s no turning back
She took the dinghy with her

Illustration Friday: Hatch

My scanner isn't working properly :[.

I was trying to write in my journal, but was uninspired, so I drew all over an old entry instead.

Illustration Friday: Entangle

handless people mesh with
wicked minded hands
entangle with wicked thoughts
actuating the hands

ineffectual dexterity
plucking anemone tentacles
from sex books strung
together like beads

feeling foreign philosophies with
acquired unstable tactility
organizes books, but
salvaging anemone is futile


only a week late, but oh well, thought I'd post it anyway.

Illustration Friday: Contained

The Caretaker

What use are you to us
When you make yourself sick
Wallowing in self pity
Won’t listen to our advice?

Because we’ve spent our money,
You have no excuse
You owe us an explanation
Nothing’s free

You are not living up to our expectations
We have given you what we deemed necessary
You have been judged to be in arrears

Now you need to return to
Your previous role!

Illustration Friday: Similar

Serenity
Poured through a sieve
Every hole similar
Nothing changes
In this room
No windows
No doors
Yet, luminescence varies in the passing
Red, yellow, green, blue
Beads in a prism
Strung on daisy chains of light
Waiting


The poem is for CPCCC's Saturday Share. The picture for Illustration Friday's Similar.

Illustration Friday: Wise

I was going to try to participate in Illustration Friday last week, but posted this too late. Maybe this week.

Not Quite Right

For Illustration Friday's Voices on 12-19-08

They all know
Everybody knows
That I'm not quite right
Their timid small talk dissipates
As I stare right through them
With empty eyes
I subvert their ease

Can't let them see
There's no control
Else I'll succumb to the madness
Concentrate my focus
Past their whispers
The worms
And the shadows

Determined to gaze long enough
For reality to be revealed
They don't realize that I understand
Perceive their discomfort
My concern with them is fleeting

Ignore the Whispers
The Worms
And the Shadows
Destroy the imagined
Before escaping past my lips
Fixate on the tangible
The alternative is a nightmare

Two months of fading
Through a disjointed world
Secrets leak without comprehension
Intellect is annulled
Desperate to fill the empty crevices
The spirit randomly dumps images
Else bereft of memory
I would perish

They all know
Everybody knows
My mother repeats the words
I once said
My memories crash in
On the crest of a wave
While hers are sucked out
In the undertow of Dementia

I watch her private fantasies
Tumble out before me
Like a play
Whose script was shuffled in the wind
Now the pages have all blown away
Nothing left to fill the empty spaces
I don't want to watch anymore

They all know
Everybody knows
My brother's uttered these words, too
"I've got brain damage", he jokes
Hoping to excuse his behavior
The voices tell him
He must lead with the right foot
The therapist stretches his mind
Twenty years of trying to see
That he needs to look away

I remember racing down back roads
He doesn't
I have to pretend it's normal
Afraid of the Whispers
The Worms
And the Shadows


Mary sent me a poem I really love called Edge Of Glass, about her mother's dementia. Check it out. You'll have to scroll down to the bottom to see the English version.

Illustration Friday: Fail and Weekly Wings Challenge 5 - Take Courage!

depression - anger turned inward
anger - fear
fear - of failure
fear - becomes failure
failure - anger
forgiveness - facing the fear


for more on this week's Wings Challenge click here

Illustration Friday: Save

Illustration Friday: Leap

Fat with life and joy,
They gracefully dance their way
Through the emotional waves
Of a sacred sea.

Reaching the heights and depths
Of spiritual thought
With each glorious leap skyward
And each masterful plummet back to the mysterious deep.

I'm being led by someone unseen,
Swimming with currents and tides
Through rocks gently flowing,
And the dolphins want to play with me.

We arrive at a beautiful resort
Tucked away in a cove
On the alee side of a peninsula,
With the other side facing the sea.

They follow me with enthusiasm,
Because I'm the emissary
Of an unusual food that expands
When doled out to feed many.

To a worker at the resort, I say,
"Because of their ability to speak to nature
Feed the dolphins first,
These are the instructions I carry."

"Next feed the native people,
Because they are part of nature,
Then feed the locals,
Because they transplanted freely."

"Last, feed the outsiders,
Their needs won't be ignored,
But priorities must be set
In order to live together peacefully."


I cheated on this picture... the dolphins aren't my photographs. The rest is. I don't have any photos of dolphins. I wish I did. Hopefully one day I will, but in the meantime, I wanted to work on this dream. I think I might redo this one in pastels.

Illustration Friday: Multiple

Illustration Friday: Theory

The snow drifts of desire
are embellished with footsteps of fire.
Fire and ice provoked a placid sky to crumble,
and through shards of belief systems you stumble.

Theories of possibilities
make issues realities.

How do you put out the fires
without melting the desires?
Can the sky be made whole again?
Can a theory of abandonment help mend?

Illustration Friday: Choose

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." -Rush

This is about being stuck in an uncomfortable comfort zone. Inspired by Anonyrrie's "Venturing Beyond". Do you think to dream of greatness is a form of greed, or a desire to fill an insecure need, or a sign that you have the ability to succeed?

Illustration Friday: Blanket

Illustration Friday: Horizon

Today is the one year anniversary of my blog. It also happens to be the one year anniversary of my very first post with Illustration Friday.


This was my first post. The topic that week was "Peace". I thought it appropriate to use the doves again in commemorating the anniversary, only this time their eyes are open and on the horizon. The reason for this is in keeping with the theme of this blog, which is about changing and growing creatively. I didn't "metamorphose" as much as I was hoping to this past year, but I believe there are a lot of changes on the horizon for next year. Right now I'm undergoing a lot of changes in my personal life. I've left my job and will be starting a new career. I'm also in the process of moving out of my home and my comfort zones. It's all a bit scary for me, but necessary. Because I've been so preoccupied lately, I haven't spent much time on blogging or creative things [the fact that my camera broke again hasn't helped]. Unfortunately, it may not be until February before I find the time for it again, because I will be spending most of January up north with family taking care of a relative who is dying. I hope to be back soon, and participating regularly in IF again.

Illustration Friday: Grow

Illustration Friday: Extremes

PMS. Extreme mood swings.

I missed out on Blog Action Day for the Environment. If it weren't for the extreme mood swings I've been going through lately, I might have found out about it sooner. So, I think I'll take some time to complain about the pollutant of our environment that is irritating me the most right now. Hormones.

There have been studies for a few years now about how the hormones being used by the cattle industry are affecting us. Some scientists believe that they are responsible for the premature physical development of young girls. There are also studies on how "the pill" is having an impact on our environment. Apparently they are afraid that because water treatment plants don't filter out the hormones that women who are on the pill excrete, the population of male fish are declining. So, not only do we have an unnatural amount of hormones in the food we eat, but it may be the same for the water we drink. Since unusually high levels of estrogen are responsible ailments like PMS, endometriosis, fibroid tumors, and breast and cervical cancers, these scientist also believe there is a link between the increase in these diseases and the hormonal pollutants.

Most women are hormonally imbalanced and estrogen dominant by their thirties [pregnancy temporally relieves that by increasing progesterone levels]. It's now considered the norm for a girl of 12 years to start menses. It's supposed to be at age 16 or 17. I'm a victim of this kind of pollution. I was full grown at the age of 13. For thirty years now I have suffered for close to two weeks of every month. Every year gets worse. As the endometriosis and fibroid tumors get worse, my chances for ovarian cancer increase. What do the doctors want to do to help me? They want to put me on the pill! I want to slap the next doctor who suggests it. I hope I'm PMSing when I do.

How can people make a difference? Well I think most people already know... buy organic, like organic meat and dairy products.

Illustration Friday: Open

When I was 9 or 10 years old, I took sculpting lessons from an artist by the name of Tracy Guthrie. A year or two later I remember my mom pointing out one of his pieces in a local mall. It was a life size sculpture of some kids playing on a swing. The chains of the swing went straight up to nothing. I remember thinking, "wouldn't it be cool to have a swing like that, that hangs from nothing."

As a teacher, he sparked my imagination. Anything I wanted to make, he would find a way to make it possible and then show me how to do it. For example, I wanted to make a bird flying. He said, "how will you display it?" I hadn't really thought about it. I just wanted to make it. So, I said with the little wheels in my head turning the way they do with children, "maybe tie some string to it and hang it from something." He thought of a better way using a piece of wood and a bic pen. He drilled a hole in the block and then showed me how to balance the bird on the bic pen. He never said, "pick something a little easier." I think that showed in his work. He inspires me to this day.