Lena Corazon

Flights of Fancy

Tag: poem

Midweek Poetry: “Face of the Sun”

 

if i could speak, i would
tell you all the ways
i have wished away
midnight
and clung to the sun.

#NaPoWriMo Day 9: “That Fragile Moment”

we’ve done it:
survived that awkward first date–
coffee in a crowded cafe, to be sure
that you weren’t a crazed psycho.
things went well enough in that
this-could-be-lovely kind of way
no room for a guarantee,
just an abundance of what-if and maybe, perhaps
and so we met again for something
slightly more real–
creatures and cocktails and science,
a chance to exercise conversation and wit,
to search for spark and possibility.

we’ve weathered strained smiles
stuttered stumbling
stilted silence
and shared those first secrets
hardly blackmail material
but truths that move just beyond
polite small talk
ones that scratch beneath the epidermis and
graze flesh, sensitive and living and warm.

and now we stand on the brink
of something tenuous and cautious, fragile
as a dewdrop on spun silk,
ripe with disaster and glory alike,
a portal to a new beginning
or, perhaps, yet another ending.

— —a breath— ——a touch—

if you take my hand
will i ever want to let you go?
or will i be impossibly tethered,
wings clipped, bound and chained
to a future interminable?

could we be a pair?
or will this flame sputter out
and die
too weak to withstand the breeze?

one false move
one tiny mistake
could cost us everything:
a sacrifice of mornings not yet lived
the death of kisses never exchanged
the loss of a million dreams and wishes
uttered into the empty night
present yet not, hovering
just beyond reach.

if love is a leap
then i have never
been inspired to jump

until this moment, with this ache
in my heart
growing ever deeper.

to leave you now would be
betrayal and cowardice both
so i stand with you
listen to the echo of your heart beat
with mine
and wait for the knowledge that this is
love
strong enough to endure.

NaPoWriMo Day 8: “Pure Inspiration”

I wait each day for the
spark
the moment when words will
trip and twist,
collide, collapse, congeal
transform from Mundane–

“I need change for a twenty”

to Profound–

“If I could change like this twenty,

shed my skin from a single bill,

wrinkled, crinkled, rumpled and worn,

into the many, the fresh, the new!,

then this life would be worth

the price.”

I search the ever-present noise
that fills the day-to-day,
scrying through the screams and the shouts
like the old fortune teller and her glass,
reading between the lines
of shrilly ringing phones,
blindly groping through Chaos so profound
tangible
it is like walking through molasses floors
an avalanche of puzzle pieces and lego bits
a sonic wasteland that destroys all thought
a minefield with no escape.

Exhaustion dogs my steps
sometimes suffocates with a hand inescapable
and if it doesn’t succeed, the litany of should-do-and-failed
will finish the job.

And still I search for words
listen with ears deafened to the glorious music
that comes from a phrase well-turned
a passage that is unflinching in its truth.
I long for the sweet kiss of a single sentence
try to wring them from my soul like blood from a stone.

There is nothing

—-yet—-

Nothing is never the Absence of Something
but the Beginning of Everything
Pregnant with Possibility
Rich with Could-Be
Inexhaustible with Chance.

So I wait
listen
grasp at words with greedy hands
cram them into my mouth
swallow without chewing
and pray for a moment
of pure inspiration.

#NaPoWrimo Day 3: “But Even Under These Conditions Man Can Reveal”

For today’s poem, I used one of Kelli Russell Agodon’s NaPoWriMo prompts:

Open the closest book to you to page 46. Count down 7 lines. That is the first line or the title of your poem.

The closest book to me was a copy of Emily Post’s ETIQUETTE; the line in question contained the wonderful fragment that I’ve used for the title, and as one of the lines in the poem itself. It opened up an interesting way to explore the question of male privilege, and how that privilege harms not only women, but men themselves.

aWZOyZ6_700b

boys don’t cry

because emotion

is

foreign

sissy-stuff

only girls–

irrational and

silly

sweet, with sugar

and spice smiles,

countless neuroses

bubbling over

feelings that

explode–

ever experience.

 
boys become men

tough

strong

softness has

no place with them.

 

and these are the lies that we are fed

the falsehoods that

entrap

ensnare

justify a world where

women cannot lead

and men cannot feel

two different species

perpetually estranged

 
but even under these conditions man can reveal

sinew and bone

muscle and tissue

a heart that

squeezes

flexes

contracts

trembles with the enormity of

love

and desire that

is more than

skin-deep

 
because we are stronger

when we can be whole

when we can

transcend

the myths that

hamper

constrain

damage

and we are more powerful

when the old dualities

male/female

rational/irrational

mind/body

dark/light

are dashed to dust

for then only

love

will remain.

#NaPoWriMo Day 1: “Tales Twice-Told”

Happy National Poetry Writing Month! For all 30 days of April, Flights of Fancy is going to be filled to the brim with poetry, and I cannot wait to get stared. I adore prose, could write short stories and novels forever, but there’s something deeply visceral about stripping back language to its bare bones, slashing away till there’s nothing left but feeling and emotion. As poet Mina Loy once said,

“Poetry is prose bewitched
a music made of visual thoughts
the sound of an idea.”

That being said, for this first day of #NaPoWriMo, I’m toying with bridging poetry and prose, using poetry as a tool for fleshing out character and backstory. Today I draw inspiration from Tempest Dumont, the heroine of my steampunk tale, TELL ME NO LIES. While Tempest spends most of TELL ME NO LIES recovering from heartbreak and trying to track down a crazed killer, “Tales Twice-Told” explores a bit of her past, chiefly her chance meeting with a rakish, dashing, and an all-too-dangerous airship pirate. 

“Tales Twice-Told”

 

He told her once

that Home was prison

and she believed him

because Love had never grown

between the four walls where she had been born.

 

“Home is the Coward’s last refuge,”

he said,

“a fortress to hide from Nature and Neighbor.”

 

He’d found his Freedom in the skies

untethered

untamed

He answered only to the Elements

and thrived on their Chaos.

 

He called to her,

a Man freed from Fear,

and promised a life that could be her own:

“Clouds will line your Parlor;

stars will be

Blossoms

in your Garden,

the

Heavens

themselves will be yours.”

 

He gave to her

wings of Bronze

strong, stealthy and true

born from

Genius

and the need for escape.

 

She left the World of

too-weak

too-scared

never-good-enough

stole away

in his winged Chariot.

 

For the first time in her short life

she found Happiness

that was neither lie nor pretense

but was as real as the

Coal

fed to its Furnace,

the massive Gears that tilted and

whirled

in its Engine,

the scalding Steam that poured

from its Pipes.

 

But Dreams are not all they seem:

The Heavens can be cold

unforgiving

and Freedom from the world

may be a Prison in disguise.

 

The most dashing

Hero

can be revealed as Villain

and Tales

twice-told

may not always be True.

 

 

 

Midweek Poetry: “Recalled to Life”

Over on Poets on the Page, the wonderfully creative Morgan Dragonwillow posted a prompt that caught my fancy. The theme is “Wild Self,” and includes a passage from one of my favorite books, WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

“The doors to the world of the wild Self are few but precious. If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door.”

The poem I’m sharing today is an old one, written in 2012 after I first read WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES and was learning to listen with my wild Self. Given how the chaos in my life has overwhelmed and choked off my creative output, the central message continues to resonate.

white door

white door (Photo credit: lamont_cranston)

“Recalled to Life”

 

I.
a wild woman beats at my door
(connect, she says)
i ignore the call
    too busy too rational too damned busy to listen
       theory beckons
       there's a thesis to write
       nothing left over for her.

(come to me, she cries)
i refuse
    too much grading too many emails too much reading to give in
       academia devours and when it doesn't
       friends need healing
          happy hour therapy sessions
       nothing left over for her.

II. 
a wild woman wails at my door
(do you know what you have become?)
i bury myself in objectivity
    waste away shrivel up bones dry as dust
       all the water in the world can't save me
       nothing left over for her, nothing left for anyone.

(listen to me!
    hear me!)
i am hollow
    no defenses no barriers no strength to resist
       the empty dark is all i know
       a sightless soul my only companion.

III.
a wild woman breaks down my door
(i have never been polite)
i cannot turn away
    she surrounds me overpowers me illuminates every shadow with light
       no longer the socially awkward academic
       a lividly beautiful goddess is all that remains

(look at what you really are!)
for once i see
    the reflection is true:
       winds and water at my command, elemental fury
       creation and order birthed from inhuman acts of chaos
       pen wielded as scepter and sword, rod and staff.

(remember this, she whispers)
i listen.
i follow.
i write.

This is a blog hop! Click the link below to view the other participants in this month’s poetry challenge.

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Midweek Poetry: “Muse”

My muse has been a relentless, pushy bitch of late, demanding that I write, throwing ideas at me with the force of a hurricane, poking and prodding every time I try to fall asleep, screaming for my attention whenever I decide I’d like to do something mindless, like zone out in front of the television screen or play a video game.

I friggin’ love it.

So in honor of the creative chaos that is now my brain, I thought I’d share this little poem, which I wrote the last time my muse went on a rampage. Enjoy!

oil on canvas

“Danae” by Gustav Klimt (Photo source: Wikipedia Commons)

“Muse”

i shut the door on you 
‘cause, christ, sometimes a girl 
          needs a little peace 
    and quiet 
without words flooding her head. 

but you are crafty, sly 
and you know how to insinuate 
    yourself 
through the most narrow crack in the plaster 
the sliver in 
                  the wall 
like zeus becoming rain of 
      gold 
to envelope royal danae— 
though instead of impregnating me with a demigod 
you fill me with poetry and tale 
till i 
overflow 

words drip from my fingers 
ooze out my 
      nose 
fall from my eyes like fiery 
                tears 
scorching all they touch. 
and, fuck, i’d like to stop the deluge 
but i inside i crave it 
could never turn it away. 

it’s addictive, this raw rush of creation 
and i write 
      write 
   write 
                  write 
with the mania that forces the girl 
        and her red shoes to 
do the dance-to-death 

i write, though my body is racked with 
exhaustion 
i write, though there are blisters on 
my fingers 

for there is nothing else i can 
                do 
no defense to save me from 
your shrieks and cries 

i was born to hold this 
                            pen 

i will die clutching 
          it 
still
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Midweek Poetry: “The Old Ways”

There is something about Ash Wednesday that always makes me nostalgic for my childhood. This shouldn’t come as a surprise–I was raised Catholic, and went to Catholic school almost all my life, from 3rd grade through college. These day my religious beliefs are best classified as “complicated.” Still, I’ve come to accept that it’s next to impossible to undo all of the beliefs and traditions instilled in me as a child, even if they don’t quite match up with the ways that I have evolved as an adult.

This poem came, rather unbidden, a few months ago. As Lent begins, and as the world grapples with Pope Benedict XVI’s historic resignation, it feels appropriate to share it with all of you today.

English: Ash Wednesday, watercolor, 78 x 113 c...

“Ash Wednesday” by Julian Fałat (Photo source: Wikipedia Commons)

“The Old Ways”

the ancients ordered their lives around nature
     patterns of stars, paths of planets
     movements of the moon, transitions of tides.
i order my life around the academic calendar
     and so i measure the rise and fall of time by midterms and finals,
     the too-short spring break,
     the never-long-enough summer vacation.

but there was a time when the year began
     with the lighting of the easter candle, and the swirl of incense.
     when the washing of feet
          the carrying of a cross
          meditations on death, sacrifice, loss
     preceded rebirth and transformation,
          ushered in the start of a new cycle that would be better than the last.

there was a time when the advent calendar
     with its hidden chocolate treats
     and a candlelit wreath—
          three purple candles, one rose—
     stoked my anticipation for christmas
     when we marked the birth of the babe in the manger
     with midnight mass and voices raised in song.

and there was a time when we set aside forty days
     to walk in the desert.
     oh, we giggled as kids
          gave up silly things like candy and soda and television
     but we wore our ashes with sober pride
          spoke our confessions with sincerity.

that was when school days were ordered around prayer
     when we thought the rest of the world worshipped as we did.
but i left all that behind
     turned my back in favor of practices more humane
          less corrupt
     practices that allow for love in all forms,
     preserve women’s control over their own bodies,
     protect the most innocent within the flock.

and yet…
     and yet.

i miss the old mysteries, the old stories.
i long for a whiff of that sacred incense
the glow of the ever-present flame
and i wonder if change is even possible
     if “reform from within” is more than a fairy tale
     if i have a responsibility, a duty, to try.

because mother church, no matter how i struggle against her,
     is my home
and when i try to let go, her saints, her teachings, all her beauty
     haunt me still.
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Embracing the Dangerous Weird

corazon-lampshade

Nothing says “quirky” like running around with a lampshade crown.

In October, I participated in a wonderful poetry celebration known as OctPoWriMo. One of our early prompts was to write a poem inspired by the word “eccentric.” The creative process remains a mysterious one to me (and probably always will), but through whatever machinations of imagination and muse, “The Dangerous Weird” is the poem that emerged.

I wrote it thinking of all the wonderful people I know in my life who have weathered the storm of being seen as different, odd, less-than-normal. It’s a celebration of that amazing, dangerous weird within all of us, something I think that my online community of creative folk can appreciate.

This community is one that inspires me and encourages me towards all sorts of mischief, like rambling about my love of Hugh Jackman and sloths, or dancing around on tabletops with a lampshade on my head (as seen at the last #myWANA Twitter party). The chance to be fully myself, knowing that I’ll be accepted, is an incredibly rare one, and one for which I am truly grateful.

So this one’s for you, gang. Enjoy!

“The Dangerous Weird”

i am eccentric
     you
          say
because color tastes of
          sound
because history is
          my dwelling place

i was a child with a calligraphy pen
     my mother's borrowed
          cameos
     a collection of teapots
a girl enchanted
          by amulets
     faerie
          unicorns
imagined elven revelries
worlds that exist only in my head

acne-cursed chubby sally-jesse-raphael-bespectacled awkward child
     too smart
          too ambitious
     teased and tormented for the dangerous
          weird
     (because idiot child bullies can't pronounce "eccentric"
          and don't trust the abnormal)

but i am a forward-thinking girl
          despite the obsession with dusty antiques
adulthood was my ticket to survival
and i
          waited
     honed and polished my weird
          shined it up like the best silver serving set
     to put on display for
          rare souls
    that understood
          (password: "kindred spirit")

today i find the peculiar ones 
     those 
          grownup off-beat children 
     catch them running through the rye 
together we make a mountain of 
          weird 
a paradise of 
     strange 
to us, the song of color 
          the taste of word 
     is to be savored 
time is neither linear nor measurable 
and the world 
          is 
     our playground 
eccentrics one and all

For Those Who Have Ever Been Afraid to Speak: The Poetry of Audre Lorde

1980, Austin, TX. I took it in very poor light...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My October celebration of poetry, sparked by the wonderful October Poetry Writing Month challenge, continues on. Today, I profile the great and wonderful Audre Lorde (1934-1992).

Lorde is an inspirational and illuminating figure, a scholar, poet, activist, and outspoken feminist.  She is notable for a million reasons, not the least of which was her lifelong battle against social inequalities, inequalities that she identified as endemic and embedded in the very structure of American society.

Race, gender, and sexuality were ever-present in her work, as were her scathing critiques of the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, which she decried for perpetuating a single definition of “woman,” one that took whiteness and heterosexuality as the norm. In refusing to acknowledge difference, Lorde argued that feminism could never reach its longed for goal of gender equality, for it would continue to reproduce other forms of inequality.

When it came to individual experience, Lorde also explored the dynamic of multiplicity that we encounter in our own selves.  A self-proclaimed “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” her poetry and prose explored her struggles with reconciling the various aspects of her identity.

Lorde’s work on identity, inequality, and difference has resonated with me since I first encountered her as an undergraduate. It is her writing on silence, fear and courage, however, that truly inspires me. Silence, she reminds her readers time and again, is seductive. Silence is easier, safer, than speaking out, but that is both false and dangerous.

For Lorde, silence is tantamount to death. In order to live, we must speak our truth. Fear never fully fades, but as she wrote in her memoir, The Cancer Journals,

When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.

Although she died from breast cancer in 1992, her work continues to live on. This clip from “A Litany for Survival” (hyperlinked in case the embedded video doesn’t play), a documentary on Audre Lorde’s life and many contributions, illustrates her intense passion and creativity.


I end with with poem for which the documentary is titled. “A Litany for Survival” is, in my mind, the perfect expression of Lorde’s fierce exhortations to live, to write, and to speak.

-oOo-

A Litany for Survival

For those of us who live at the shoreline
standing upon the constant edges of decision
crucial and alone
for those of us who cannot indulge
the passing dreams of choice
who love in doorways coming and going
in the hours between dawns
looking inward and outward
at once before and after
seeking a now that can breed
futures
like bread in our children’s mouths
so their dreams will not reflect
the death of ours:

For those of us
who were imprinted with fear
like a faint line in the center of our foreheads
learning to be afraid with our mother’s milk
for by this weapon
this illusion of some safety to be found
the heavy-footed hoped to silence us
For all of us
this instant and this triumph
We were never meant to survive.

And when the sun rises we are afraid
it might not remain
when the sun sets we are afraid
it might not rise in the morning
when our stomachs are full we are afraid
of indigestion
when our stomachs are empty we are afraid
we may never eat again
when we are loved we are afraid
love will vanish
when we are alone we are afraid
love will never return
and when we speak
we are afraid our words will not be heard
nor welcomed
but when we are silent
we are still afraid

So it is better to speak
remembering
we were never meant to survive

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