Who I Am

Nestling and rejigging is a documented mental health tool.  My poems sit safely in the database but also there are a few big binders in hard copy.  This week I found a craft envelope with no label and spilled out a collection of 45 poems, one per page, that had been submitted to a literary critic and on the front poem was scrawled in black ink - "nancy - these are great poems  enuff to be publishable (undecipherable word), signature, exclamation point".  That was in 2009.  Today I went through the set,  one by one and agree.  I didn't get bored going through them, but then reading your own poems is like mirror gawking and reliving.  I don't spend a lot of time back there - the poems are what save me from reliving my choices over and over.  I am a forward living person.  That said, here is one that rather punctuates that thought.  It isn't the greatest of the batch - but not the oddest either.  Working title of the collection is "Finding Strength in Poetry", because after reading these 45, I feel super empowered!  Enjoy this one.  I will post a few more as I move through this .pdf to vanity press process.  I have a feeling it will be interactive multi-media, because I like that stuff too.  Today is a good day.

The Game

During the first week of isolation I realized that my main social interaction had been running errands.  So, I decided to set goals and get at some of the projects.  That's not really happening either.  I finally was hit by a poem.  I almost had a Cohen moment in my hopes that this sense of change can open up some light on the days to come.  In the mean time, time.

Found a Rogue PNG

Writing is a long unending spiral and poems pop out at me, unexpectedly, often to be set aside and usually lost.  This one arose sometime in 2011.  As I was recovering another project from a vast yet amazingly safe archive on a dusty 12 year old PC, I found another poem I had forgotten.
Thoughts disappear.  Thoughts captured can sometimes be poems.
In my ongoing theme of metaPoetry, another for that kit - writing about writing about writers - Dale and Di.

It is a bit depressing, but writers will get it.  We cannot help but spill words through our forearms to paper or keyboard, and like the frustrated water colour maker or styrofoam snowman agent, we keep spilling this so-called art until we have a hoard.

But I love finding the odd wee treasure, long forgottens, that hit home my love of word art.

~~n  (p.s.  I found it as a .png ffs!  Have no idea where the text version went. haha)

Business

Candles are for weekends

The evenings then are special

Video is for nights before sleep-ins

And sometimes time for lemon cake

Listen to the rain while you can

Before the storm windows pin down

Leave the dried flowers on the stem

And in two hundred days

Colour

Lights off so you can walk in secret

Room to room

Windows open to the moon

Deafen to the squeaks of the steno chair

The rattle of the corning

When the fridge cuts in

And thankfully, no drips

When an enthusiastic puppy

Sprints

In small space

Rugs slide, and we laugh together.

Equinox 23/09/19

nem

Your Fenders

Oh! The times we witness!  I feel joy when I come across a like-minded soul.  Our mutual silence stems from fear, from embarrassment, from reluctance to threaten our social equity.  These are really weak reasons, but we harbour them. Nurture your courage and your belief in humanity.

Green Day

It is doubtful that October 17 will become a national holiday, but there is no doubt that it will be marked as a special day for many years to come.  People no longer have to live two lives, the secret love and sharing of social pot, and the pretentious silence of denial.  Now cannabis users and non users can walk openly, side by side.  And yes, just as there are those that have disdain for sugar, or meat, or coffee, or alcohol, or fossil fuels, there will always be some who turn up their nose and tell their children to run away.  But mostly, now the police don't have to hassle non-violent folks for no good reason.  Congratulations to us.  Happy Green Day.  #oct17 #OhCanada #GreenDay  (click on the image to better-read the poem).  Share the love.

Away Away

It seems that April has become poetry month!  Whew Knew?  I shared this one on my FB feed, and said there, "I have always liked this one, from before the turn of the century.  It gallops."  And that is what I like most about it, it is an active poem, especially if read aloud.  I still feel the intensity, the speed and purpose of the message.