Month: September 2017

World of Color

A world of color is rich,

is all I need in this fog as heavy as maternal malevolence.

What I need is a glass of hot pink,

an elixir of glowing purple,

a tincture of pool blue,

languid and electric.

My atrocious capsules of snow lay beside my ginger ale

on my bedside table

while a documentary on contemporary

art stabs me in shades of black and white,

Sound muted.

Clamor Clatter Calamity

Clamor clatter calamity

a huge purple spill

generous to an idea getting drunk in the corner.

I am an absence of air.

Paris writes me telling me not to come.

Many things have fallen

into the gaping O of love.

 

My sick senses stretch like a violin note over

a ghostly concert hall.

Halls are caverns.

I have a hall inside my city

And he waits there.

He has a bomb wrapped like a gift,

I the suction of quicksand.

Depression and Anxiety

I had a hard weekend. Saturday it was difficult to get and stay out of bed. Sunday was slightly better, as I was able to go out to lunch with my husband and daughter, but I still struggled with depression and anxiety all day. I haven’t been doing well since I was in the hospital, but the situation became more acute this weekend.

Now I am taking double doses of Prozac and waiting for my new antidepressant to arrive. This past summer I was on Prozac but asked to switch to something else because I felt like it was burning out. I wanted to switch to trintellix but initially balked at the price because it’s not fully covered by insurance, so I went on Zoloft instead. For me taking Zoloft is a lot like eating Skittles.

So when I realized last week that the Zoloft just wasn’t going to kick in and do anything I called my doctor back and requested a prescription for the trintellix. But to save money I’m getting it through Express Scripts Pharmacy and they are taking forever to fill it. They got the order last Wednesday and it is now Monday and they still haven’t filled my order so nothing’s even in the mail yet. So I’m just hanging out with my old Prozac, since it’s better than Zoloft, and waiting.

Everything feels like it takes so much energy when I am like this. Getting out of bed, brushing my teeth and my hair, driving, housework… The list goes on.

Beauty and Lust

Beauty has frost bite and is just

going to live that way.

The stench is aggressive.

I have been living whichever way is out of sight

from Age and Lust.

Beauty and I go way back

to a year I only remember as a pile of sugar to play in.

Skin scrubs keep Age away.

 

The truth is Beauty and Lust have never met,

though some think they are a couple.

Lust’s eyes are inverted in her face,

her longings contorted and her hearth

cold.

Goals

Sometimes I feel confused about my goals. I want to get a book published, or do I? Am I prepared to play the game of submitting to contests at $25 and $30 dollars a pop? Most presses use expensive contests now to publish books.

Maybe it would be best if I tried to get a second chapbook published, and self publish a poetry book. If you self publish you don’t get literary acclaim and you don’t get to experience the purifying process of working with an editor. You do, however, get control of your book and to release your work out into the world without waiting for a middle man that might never come through.

I guess the truth is I hate submitting my work. I don’t mind the rejection letters. I just hate the process of struggling to find a press that even seems like it jives with my work, and then writing a mind numbing letter and inane bio. I know I should do it, but when I get free time I want to write and revise, not search and submit.

Every field has its dues that must be paid, and poetry is no exception to that. But sometimes I wonder about alternative paths, like blogging or self publishing. It doesn’t hurt to try. Or do I need to buckle down and start submitting again?