SOLITARY DINING (photo) & LICKETY-SPLIT (free verse dream poem) by Roswila

LICKETY-SPLIT

“Happy talk keep talkin’ happy talk,
talk about things you like to do,
you’ve gotta have a dream,
if you don’t have a dream
how you gonna have a dream come true”…
so, this is the answer I get from my dreams
when I yell to them for “H-E-L-P!!”?
and sung in your voice, no less?
of all the men my dreams could’ve chosen
it had to be you, that dear man I crushed on,
all those years ago, who’d often laugh lightly
as we’d spend some precious
and rare time together,
and say “You are so gullible!”
sheesh!
just how was I to take that back then,
just as now:
is what you or my dream said true?
does my hunger lead me to swallow whole
what I shouldn’t, am I fully at the mercy
of what I hear?
or should I (as has often been my inclination
anyway, and my sorrow and pain
when I don’t follow that tug)
remember I should take everything
with a grain of salt,
and like some malnourished deer
return lickety-split to that salt-lick
deep in the woods of my instincts


[free verse poem on a dream of 11-13-19. This was an actual man out of my long ago … I almost typed “youth,” but it would be more accurate to say “ early middle-age.” BTW, he did call me gullible often enough. The song lyrics are from “Happy Talk,” from the musical South Pacific. I don’t have the time to go into all the associations I have to that song/show. Suffice it to say, they bring up a host of additional “messages” in this dream. However, for the purposes of this dream poem, I’ve chosen to go with the “message” triggered for me by the contrast between the song lyrics and the man. Photo “Eating Alone” (7-7-09 3436e) 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 or contrasting 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), 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.

* * * *

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 other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

BREAK OUT (photo) & THE ACCIDENTAL GIFT (non-dream free verse poem) by Roswila

THE ACCIDENTAL GIFT

may I never forget that time you glanced toward me,
not expecting to find me standing there: the brilliance
of your smile flashing quickly across your rugged face
-- as if I were a sunrise after an abysmal night,
or the moon, when not even its appearance
felt guaranteed in a world gone awry --
and vanishing as quickly as if it had never been,
but not before I’d caught your accidental gift
and filed it away in joy; today, I pass where we
stood briefly that afternoon and am delighted
that in a world in which nothing has felt,
or been right in years, I still recall
this heady highlight of my old age …
hell, of my entire life


[non-dream poem written 11-11-19. An actual precious memory. Which right now, as I post it here, is beginning to calm me after a major melt-down. Photo “Break Out” (3460e[2]) 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 or contrasting 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), 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.

* * * *

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 other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.

Old Photo of Patricia; & SOMETHING OTHER (non-dream free verse poem) by Roswila

SOMETHING OTHER

even decades ago, when she sat, eyes shut, warming under
the sun, even then when she was that much younger, she was
trying to burn something off, almost always a hangover;
in the later years, food bingeing replaced those attempts
with drink to control the accreted layers of asphyxiating
emotions; but now, just as back then, it is and was about
so much more than any one excuse for a binge; they
imprisoned her early, wrapped her ‘round, again and
again, with pain and trauma, and by who or what, she barely
knows anymore, if she ever did; all the stories she’d been
handed or told herself about her tangle of shrouds bleed
now into each other liked a drowned water color portrait
she keeps trying to restore; but today she forgoes habitual
navel gazing, quits fussing at what never loosens up
or offers any clarity, and gets back to this pleasant
and lazy attempt to allow a burning off under
the autumnal sun; content, for once, to be
focused on something other than
the smothering cacophony within


[non-dream free verse poem written 11-10-19. Meh! I like some of the images but it doesn’t really work. It’s that confessional aspect, I suppose, that I’m not liking. So much of my work, of course, is in that vein. ("Confessional poetry" is looked down on in some writing circles. But just think. e.g.: Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Not that I would compare anything I've ever written to any of theirs.) In fact, I’d originally cast this in the first person, but liked that even less. It also smacks of self-pity. Yeah, but ain’t that the truth of it? I’m tired of being told (either outright or in some manipulative way) to “buck up.” And I complain hardly at all to other folk. Imagine if I did: they'd probably muzzle me. BWG [big wry grin]… I just had an image of a buck, leaping up, over and over, smashing against the walls of its prison cell. Only so much of that I’m willing to tolerate. I.e., I feel bloodied after a day of “bucking up.” For me, “bucking up” is just another name for denial. Yikes! Should I even post all this. What the hell, I’ve probably posted worse over the years here. And (self-pity alert!) who reads this blog anyway. PHOTO above: me in my teens, recovering from a hangover at a lakeside in the sun; my hair looks darker than it was, before it went all white (many, many years ago) it was a natural mix of dark blonde and light brown, that was readily bleached lighter by regular sun exposure (and eventually by me).

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 or contrasting 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), 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.

* * * *

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 other blog (dedicated to her photos only, i.e. no poetry or other writing; daily post); TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.