Poetry from Julie Jordan Scott

This week, I am backwards

I have posted two poems this week over

in my OTHER blog... usually I sendthem over here, this

week, I am sending YOU over THERE:

UNSEEN

3WW

Where are the Real Women? (Response to Three Word Wednesday)

Today's Three Word Wednesday words include: Ideal,
Measure, Teeter:

 Please know this isn't meant to be a slam against people who choose to make themselves more beautiful with the occasional botox injection or maybe have gotten a "mommy make over" after having three caesarians and want to feel beautiful again... it is more a questioning of "When is enough, enough?"... especially given the measurement women are put up against, every day... I turn the radio when the plastic surgeon doctor's ads come on, I don't want my daughters to get stuck on that "ideal" or the concept that they are not "just right" as they are, naturally... so when these three words popped up, I simply had to write.

I saw one of "those" shows the other night and was repulsed more than delighted and had quite a surprising boost to my own self image as a result. Paradox? Maybe - anyway, read on and let me know what you think.

Where are the Real Women?

I watch those women
The one on that "reality"
show and I say...

How can women who
sculpt themselves with the
aid of highly paid surgeons,
be considered "real"?
when they measure
themselves in comparison
to Barbie -

and succeed...

How can they drink with
their misshapen lips - or
kiss, for that matter -

And have they lost all
sense of feeling in
their basketball breasts,
so high they could almost
do a slam dunk in their
late 40's while standing
in place?

How can they walk,
without teetering
over and falling and
bursting their implants
open or cutting their
injected, inflated, unnatural
looking lips?

I watch those women
on that "reality" show
and am grateful to
know, intimately -
what it looks like
and feels like to be
1000% real, natural,
passionate, alive,
tangible, soulful
almost 48-year-old
and proud of it
woman

Chiara, Teach Me (Get Your Poem On #110 from ReadWritePoem.Org)

I am crabby, even crabbier now than when I first typed words just like this a moment ago.

My computer got very sick this week, so I am using my crusty, old laptop. I am mouseless on a shrunken keyboard and let me tell you, I don't like it. I keep losing things in attempts to copy and paste.

I need to find an alternative, before things get uglier.

What I said before was - I didn't want to write this...I am usually uncomfortable trying something new and I wasn't sure I "got" this brand of transliteration, but I searched for some Italian and came across a woman named Chiara Matraini. The name - Chiara - is a missing link in my life. I was supposed to have a daughter named Chiara, twice - and it didn't happen.

Stumbling across this Chiara felt like a jolt from my blood so I attempted to use the instructions to transliterate some of her lines, which was tough because everywhere I looked, English translations loomed. I only took a snippet and then played with it in a vague, transliteration-esque-sort-of-something.

Now you might be feeling my crankiness, too.

I wasn't going to post anything, but the light I saw this morning was chiarascuoro made tangible, so I had to post this, whether it sucks or not.

Forgive me, Chiara. Forgive me, readers.

in orribil visione, atra e funesta

vidi farti lasciar la mortal vesta

From Chiara Matraini

It is a vision most horrible,
before the funeral
Life, fractured, lascerated,
cloak of mortality
torn away in a flash of red silk,
it is gone  gone gone gone
gone gone gone gone

The Gods reminded you, yes?
To back up your files...
Coal black eyes flash
paradoxical yes gone yes
gone yes gone yes gone

Yes. Touch me here, laments
the dying power button, touch
me here, here, here -
Life, evaported from you
Replaced by a younger laptop
The red silk, a prayer flag

My shoulders give way
to the reality

Everything will be
mortal, divine, saved

Duh Duh Duh Duh....Get Your Poem On #109

 

This poem was born via a Wordle prompt from ReadWrite Poem.

Odd, how I wrote this poem using an old honey as the image in my mind and who do you think contacted me last night, after it was written?

It is like the power of the act of writing floated across the ethers into his awareness somehow. Strange when that happens. I almost posted a photo including his face but that seemed too mean, so here is one from his hunkiest side, except... you can't see his arms... which is too bad. They fit the poem perfectly.

 

He’s the brunt of many jokes

He never hears, this broad

Shouldered Hercules

In-his-mind, the “duh”

Between his eyebrows

Fertile soil for the intellectual

Elite to prey upon: froth

Gathers from their thighs

To their foreheads

Waiting for his clumsy

Form and even more

Awkward participation

Their brain trust sundered

From his hunky form.

The question: If he

Looked more like Urkel

Than the Governor of

California, would the

Jousting enthusiast in

Bifocals be more forgiving?

= = =

Step Out: Poem #6 in the Starting Over Mini-Challenge

I have started and stopped

And stopped and not started

 

“Coward!” taunting inner voice

Croons, a convincing scallywag

 

The better way than believing him

is somewhere beneath the wobbly rock

 

There, that mottled one on

The path, there. All I have

 

To do is step out, step on it

Start the unfinished again

Back-to-Normal: Poem #5 in Starting Over Mini-Poetry Challenge

Parenting each of my children has been an adventure, but parenting Samuel has been markedly different. The educational jig  had a steep learning curve: being a savvy negotiator while being respected and well liked is, thankfully, something I possess almost naturally. Perhaps it is a pay off from growing up in a home that felt wobbly. I used charm as a strategic tool to make my way in the world.

 

Sam had a kindergarten experience I wouldn’t wish on any child. This was before I knew the phrase “autistic spectrum” and I thought children with autism were doomed to lives rocking in a corner, untouched and untouchable. I didn’t know autistic children could also be like Samuel, teaching himself to read and type and decode life before he even walked through a class room door.

 

The educational bureaucrats didn’t bother alerting me to any possibilities beyond… well, the poem tells the story in a very summarized form….

 

Kindergarten was

Before “Not Normal:

He was maladjusted

Badly parented

Spoiled, unlikable child

 

(I’m scared)

 

Third grade is

Back to Normal

Carefully crafted

Methods and supports

Mainstream, Gen Ed 100%

 

(I’m scared)

When....Day 4 of the RWP Mini-Challenge - Starting Over

I was delayed by the weekend (as I tend to be) and I apologize for my delayed posting. This poem flew off my fingers like it was waiting for me to come back to my desk. "Write, write ME! Come on, Julie... write me!"

So here is a different kind of starting over.

Not a happily ever after but a simply what is so....

When

“When did I give up

Caring about you?”

I wonder as we sit

Silently, connected

Across miles….

 

I wonder if you

On your end are

Thinking I am having

An emotional, soulful

Moment when what it is

 

Is curiosity about when

I got bored with your

Use of meaningless words

Like lovely and your penchant

For opinion laced witness –

 

“Is it a lovely day there?”

I vaguely hear you ask as

I look into the cold, wet fog

“Yes, it is a beautiful day.”

I tell you

 

You chirp back to me, reporting

“Here everything is green!

Here, there, it is 73 degrees!”

Which is, lovely, I suppose

As is my view, my skin, as

 

I pull my blanket around

Me, shiver silently, and

I try on the question

Again, “When did I give up?

Caring about you?”

 

Mini-Challenge Day Three - The Return of the Top Ramen

Today Emma the Sad,

Never-Seems-to-Get-it-Right

Almost burned down

The kitchen trying

To make top ramen

 

Not wanting to

Freak her out more

Than she was, I quietly

Put out the flames and

Opened windows

 

To let the collected

Smoke stream forth

Praying my neighbors

Hadn’t called 9-1-1

Like they once had before

 

Forty minutes later,

I asked, “Do you still

Want Top Ramen?”

And made it for her

myself

Zip Zap Zopped @readwritepoem (Poetry Mini-Challenge, Day 2)

My friend we’ll call Nameless

Repeated conversations like

Cable repeats movies

Over and Over and Over

Again we zip zap zopped

And rolled our eyes

“Story #392!” we would sneer or

Mumble “#145th time I heard this.."

as we shut our minds to the

redundancies

 

I’m not sure when I fell in love

With my friend and in abhorrence

With redundant conversations

I’m sure I abrupt the words with

A handflick and a refusal to sit

Still, over and over and over

I zip zap zop and sometimes

Choose to love, anyway

Silly.Me.And.Silly Me: @readwritepoem January Poetic Mini Challenge Day 1

The process to this poem was laughable and laughing one.

 

First, I started a stream-of-consciousness list to the myriad number of things I have started, abandoned, and scooped up again later. It took me a while to get the most obvious one… in this case my return to the stage after a more than thirty year hiatus.

 

On Sunday night, I won a Best Supporting Actress award for my work at a local theater. This is a big deal to me, especially given my story. I gave up theater because I thought it and I weren’t valuable enough to matter. So, as is so often the case, out went the baby (me) and the bathwater (me) and it wasn’t until years later that I learned what it all boiled down to, part of which I reveal in this poem.

 

 

Silly and me

 

Rejection isn’t.

Risked when.

The call.

Isn’t picked.

Up.

 

How long?

Ten years too

Long? Twenty?

Thirty?

 

Radio signal.

Pure static.

Static. Call.

Not. Deciphered.

 

Rejection.

Goes.

Unrisked

 

Until

 

Can’t make up for lost time.

No one cares and who cares that they don’t?

“Normal” people don’t do this

Applause is for weaklings and

Act like an adult and

Bones suck and sometimes they

Aren’t bones at all

 

My tail and tale wagging,

Excitedly “Thanks thanks thanks!”

Somehow moved into a chapter

Where I stood and said a speech

And people applauded and later

 

I heard

 

“I am so glad you won”

“I was pulling for you.”

“I am so proud of you.”

“Your award was definitely deserved.”

 

Rejection.

Risked.

Love.

Received.

 

Sometimes that looks

Like accolades and

Sometimes that looks

Like friends and sometimes

That looks like smiles

Shared and softened eyes

And tears, one-on-one