WRAPPING IT UP (photo) & THE GREAT ONION (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

THE GREAT ONION

she'd heard they were selling dolls of The Great Onion,
that young blonde girl she once was who sang and danced,
dazzling her way into the blazing eye of fame only
to burn out rapidly, a sacrifice to the gods
of accomplishment and appearance

she slowly peruses the full-color ads for this surprisingly
look-a-like doll based on her child self -- tan, smooth
skinned and long-limbed, with that butter-wouldn't-melt-
in-her-mouth sweet smile -- but she also remembers

the layer after layer after layer that wrapped suffocatingly
around beneath the surface, which no reconstruction
ever could (or would even bother) to touch upon,

those layers of clingy, engulfing translucence she spent
her adult years painfully exposing, then peeling off
one-by-one, and releasing into life's passing winds

no hint of tears rises in her once famous blue eyes
for she does not mind having been The Great Onion,
nor does she mind the vague memories of those early
years that trail behind her on sunny days, as inevitable
and inaccurate a recollection now of her on-going
becoming as a shadow


[free verse poem on a dream of 1-13-15. That moniker, "The Great Onion," is straight from the dream. I've often thought of dream/inner work as being like peeling the layers of an onion, so it's not surprising to have it show somehow in a dream. What is surprising -- and hopeful -- is the closing stanza. BTW, I usually center my poems here. However, this one's long lines look and read better left justified. Doing so, though, created other formatting problems and questions. Neither centered nor left justified looks right for the title under that centered photo. Yet left justifying that photo looks odd, too. Not to mention the different arrangements I tried looked one way in Chrome (passable), and another way (out of alignment) in I.E. Ack! So I've accepted the not ideal arrangement above as the lesser of several "evils" since I'm not willing to set it all up in an html table. That's more work than even this wannabe perfectionist is willing to do. Especially as there's no guarantee I'd be happy with the results anyway. Photo "Wrapping It Up" (6-15-09 2435v3) by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers, as the above is), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

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until next time, keep dreaming,





[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's connections & other blogs: Charter Member of the United Haiku and Tanka Society (UHTS); ROSWILA'S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA'S TAIGA TAROT; and TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.