Poetry from Julie Jordan Scott

Self Portrait, December 31, 2009: Get Your Poem On #107 (My Final Poem of 2009)

Photo Credit: Shotgun Blast by Shane Gorski

Each time I looked at Shane Gorski’s photo at the ReadWritePoem Get Your Poem On prompt I saw more. And more. And more. And eventually I realized why I was drawn to it so much. It speaks to me on such a visceral level.

 

It speaks to me of myself, in 2009 in particular. In September I did a photo shoot with my beloved photographer, Todd Powers, and he took me to a burned out farmhouse in the middle of a field next to a railroad track a little South and a little East of Bakersfield.

 

He had a feeling I would like it.

 

I fell in love. I found myself sitting in broken out window sills next to mummified raccoon remains, broken glass and a souvenir from a tweaker who used the building to get high on substance.

 

I got high on the place in all its broken, burned out beauty.

 

Kind of like Shane’s photo.

 

Kind of like myself.

 

Enough preface, here is my poem, my final poetic act of this decade.

Self Portrait: December 31, 2009

Paradise is here.

In what is broken.

In what looks beyond

The drumbeat to

Repair the chaos,

It is Whole.

It is Sacred.

It is Holy.

 

There, in the

Rickety places

Your feet don’t

Want to walk

There, in the cracks

Where pebbles gather

 

Bend down and look.

 

Really

 

Look

 

The dirt won’t hurt.

 

I promise.

 

Take your time,

Without scowling

 

Breathe and Look.

 

Paradise is here.

 

  

Photo Credit, Todd Powers - Foxglove Photography

After Love

Last night I cried

After Love

Afraid of fleeting

Of losing

Of separation

 

We whisper of what

Troubles me – the consideration

Or not, the problematic for

Me non-hearing of his voice

I object

 

It isn’t demand for

Change that makes

Me cry, it is the

Hopes simply

To be thought of

 

And then not having

Any evidence of

Any thought

Just empty

Air

 

Last night I cried

After Love

Afraid of fleeting

Of losing

Of separation

 

Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box - Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

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Almond Eyes, Look - (Poem inspired by @emilyrlong, a fellow #CED2010 artist)

In the sleeping

I wondered, "What

does this mean?"

Rather than enjoy

your non-earthly

presence. I turned

and thought "short"

rather than revel in

the seeing

 

How like walking life

this dream was...

(Thanking Emily Long for the inspiration)

Julie publishes her ezine, the Daily Passion Activator, which includes an Essay and a Poem every week day - inspiration delivered directly into your email box - Why not Subscribe today? It's free.

Subscribe to DailyPassionActivator

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The Way the Sky Feels

This poem was written yesterday, a stream of consciousness sort of experience with only minor edits. It’s “complete” story may be found on my Julie Unplugged Blog.

 

Read about it there or simply stay here and experience this moment with me, again.

 

I wish you would feel
how the sky feels against
the skin on my face when I look up
to admire it in its blue and
white crispness

The same wind that pushes
the frog shaped cloud into
a leaping, diving, catapulting
position swoops by me and
kisses me on the edge of my nose
turning me from an

almost-forty-eight-year-old-woman
into an almost-seven-year-old-girl
who can survey the cast-off once
Christmas tree and the sequoia
of palm trees and the fingers of
the now leaf-less mulberry and

remember my friend's fear-sadness
and tap into the hope that lingers
at the tip of the pine, reaching,

the naked limbs of the mulberry
completely content in their rest
the space in between the palm
branches where all I see
is blue, blue, blue

I hope you feel it

The way the sky feels

"I See It, A Shell!" said Precious Samuel (Get Your Poem On #105)

The title of this poem comes from a moment with Samuel this week, as we waited for the school bus to pick him up. The soil was damp and we were playing one of the silly games we play which made him ask me, “Mommy, are you a kid?”

 

Sam has the gift of noticing what other people miss.

 

He noticed a tiny snail shell – like a toddler snail – not the big, bulbous snail shell but the small, coil like triangular shell (not sure if I am describing this so you can see it in your mind’s eye.)

His noticing has stayed with me and became the foundation for this wordle poem which was prompted by my friends at ReadWritePoem.

 

 

 

 

The shell pulled

The neglected moon

Off her course

While the radar

Detected the wind

 

In the trees as it

Pierced the collective

Meteors monochromatic

Diatribe and pocked

Craters in her spirit

 

Flecks of darting flame

Hit precious moments

With their gold dust

“I see it, a shell”

said Precious Samuel

 

Abiding stars satisfied

By the curling back

Of the orbit

Slowly made a shrill

Telephone call

 

It took a lengthy moment

To connect

“To safer ground,” they

Commanded, “To safer

Ground.” Samuel heard

 

The words

Through the shell

And agreed, pulling

His Mommy along

With him.

 

After Two Years

I hear the Christmas carols

Piped out of the circular ceiling speakers

My eyes scan my notes and I see

"I'm feeling nervous" Samuel said

"Today you are like a helicopter parent,"

and, sheepishly to the boy in the plaid

shirt at the desk next to his, "That's

just my Mom," he said

 

Silver Bells - he raised his hand

He answered just like all the others

The cowboy hat wearing man is

Ranting on about nothing and I

want to shake him "Silent, this NIGHT!"

 

"Do you know, sir, how little your turbid

dissertation matters?" A toddler wearing

hooded pink chatters about ketchup and

is infinitely more interesting than the

gravel pronged ravings of the

marijuana and peyote laced talk in

the booth adjoining hers

 

It matters to you. Not the "it" but

having something to say. Now, ordination

and ten commandments march from his

mouthful without pause

I shake my head, I listen, I realize

 

After two plus years, Sam deemed Normal.

Detour

 

I started writing a poem this week, a standard practice. I pump out at least one poem a week in quieter poetic times as well as usually a haiku at least once a day.

 

I take living a poetic life seriously.

 

This week I was on “prompt assignment” to write a specific style poem from my friends at ReadWritePoem.Org. From writing with their prompts, I have written about all sorts of subjects which would not normally be my taste which is one of the ways I have grown through participating at this website.

 

I have written political poetry, social justice poetry, silly poetry and lately, a lot of bittersweet poetry.  Next week I have committed myself to writing something lighthearted. I am tired of being angry by the time I am finished writing, because I don’t think that is what poetry is about for me.

 

Or is it?

 

Poetry is first and foremost about feeling both emotionally and through the senses and then putting those feelings using the most fitting, and for some most musical, words possible.

 

If there is no feeling either in the writing of it or the reading of it than it is hardly worth the bandwidth or paper it takes to read it. “Poof!” it disappears as it barely scratches the mind’s surface, not at all like the simple haiku line

 

“Blue surrounds the clouds” which one of my readers says she will never forget.

 

Gustave Flaubert says, “Poetry is as precise as geometry.”

Mark Flanagan of About.com says “Poetry is the chiseled marble of language; it's a paint-spattered canvas - but the poet uses words instead of paint, and the canvas is you.”

 

Emily Dickinson says, "If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire ever can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only way I know it.  Is there any other way"  

 

Paul Valery says, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

 

And it was at this point I realized, my writing had completely neglected my main point – so now I will point you back to the original path after I ask a simple question… and thank you for reading…”What did you learn along this detour? In what ways does this detour relate to the rest of your life?”

Her Umbrella

Which part of this poem is Fact and which part is Fancy?

 

Part of the joy, I think, is in the unknowing. I haven't written any hints of erotic poetry in a long time. Now I want to explore more images. This photo, though, is a recent favorite.... a collaboration, naturally. I figure if you don't like the poem you may at least get some inspiration from the photo.

 

 

 Her Umbrella

 

Watch out or you will get drenched

When you finally notice your husband

Has been stolen by the most improbable

 

Unwench possible for when gazing at the

Perfection of you – dewrinkled though

Injection and expensive doctor visits

 

Instead he is being stroked by the perplexing

likes of.. can it be true?

You can close your umbrella now

 

Your clothes are ruined with your stench

Of unwillingness to take him inside

From your quest to control or quelch

 

Whatever bravado he held she served him

From her mouth, her lips to his and

His to mine they left you outside

 

Torrential downpours between them

Thunderclaps and slaps of want and

Tangled legs and arms and auburn

 

Tresses tangled in his strong fingers

Need met when she opened and welcomed

She pulled him inside her first layer

 

And into the second, secret lair

Above him she watched his pleasure

Arching up, consuming him

 

They turned and switched

And her heels surrounded

His waist, his back, she fell

 

Surrendered, gave herself

Over as you never would

Free from her mask she cried - -

 

We wept, we felt

We knew, we knelt

At each other’s altar

 

And now, in the later

You smirk as you hand me

Your umbrella

 

 

Mini-Challenge Day 3: Where are they?

I wrote this one in memory of the women who volunteered their time, effort and energy for people who have had a baby die. Each holiday season we (I became a supporter a year after my daughter died) put together an event to remember our children. The holidays, that focused time on family, is among the most difficult times of year for people who have lost babies.

 

When we stop being involved, it feels unsettling at first. What happens when we stop being the helpers?

 

Life changes and the focus moves elsewhere.

 

I remember today as I settle back into memories of holidays past: how I loved, how I coped, how I lost and how I laughed – all fodder for poetry.

 

Where did all those women go:

Cathie, Mary, Kathleen, Sheila, Where?

Do they read my name in the paper,

These support group lady volunteers

Forever tied by death and loss and

Beige colored bows tied onto a tree –

Do they tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk remembering

The lead footed, rambling allegations

Woven with jealous rage and white lights?

 

It was the tree of light which showed

Me the way out of the icicle barnacled branch

Filled room – away from the always

Evergreen – released from the ribbons

And bows and names read and tears

And boxes of tissue paper shoved into

Shaking hands and gasping for breath

Voices. The branches pointed me home.

 

Poetry Mini-Challenge Day #2 - Crabby Julie Writes Pouty Senryu

I was ambitiously procrastinating. I didn’t want to share any more poems for the challenge – I am being a childish brat. Instead, I turned to the volume of World Book. It was the one I bought yesterday to use in my Art Journal.

 

“Writing”, says World Book, “is a system of human communication by means of visual symbols or signs.”

 

“Poetry”, says World Book,”is one of the most challenging and lowest-paying types of writing.”

 

Wow. I am excited to write my next poem. On a topic that is on my nerves.

 

So why do I do this?

To grow, my loves to grow…..

 

Holidays here we go…(a senryu – haiku – micropoem call it what you want…)

 

 

I don’t want to go!

Please don’t make me go there, please?

- - - I will remember