Tag: writing

New Color Project

Over the years I have experimented with various ways of combining poetry with either color or image. I’ve done poems on images and Instagramed them. I’ve put interesting lines of poetry on solid blocks of color as names for those colors. I’ve tried over and over again to marry my obsession with color to my poetry.

I think I have something new to try. I’m downloading free textures online and tinting them different colors. By doing this, I am capturing not only a color I like, but ensuring there is texture to go with that color to make the image and color deeper. Then I write a poem that corresponds to that color/texture. It can correspond by mood, location, subject etc. But something about the poem has to relate to the color and image, or at the very least the color.

I’m excited about this project. Periodically I like to have something new to work on. Photo editing has always been enjoyable for me, and naturally I live for poetry. Plus, new projects are good for the mind. I know my husband has been hoping I would start something new recently. He feels it is good for me to have something I’m working on. Not anything too hard or stressful, but just something to add a little oomph to my days I guess.

Eyes Red Galoshes

To the north,

isolation escaping over ice.

I was born of the crowd

to the crowd,

my mouth pasted on me closed.

I whip my back with feathers,

wear sackcloth of spun gold.

As the curve of collective consciousness

moves us closer and closer

to opposite edges.

The secret catapult

and the old rope swing

evade notice.

Except to me,

my eyes red galoshes in a

congregation of black.

Did I ever loan him a life vest

or sell him food?

We live our lives in a

stranger’s life.

He ran alongside the

multitudes until he

absorbed them.

Old Friend

Somewhere in the identified town,

an old friend who does not tire out

lights the lamp.

It’s amazing what forms he takes

when he is alone.

Indivisible shape of personal election

and sweltering affiliation.

Loyalty of nationality,

shown by unlimited birth.

Women and infants like

oil and flame.

Surrounded by the neighbors,

He lives the life he has been given,

cleaning the cleanest of plants.

Artistic Identity

No matter how busy motherhood gets, I can’t imagine giving up my creative activities. I just read an article by a woman who did exactly that. She was a blogger and photographer, and she did no work for two years while she took care of her children. She said that she needed to be more present with them. She’s not the only one I have heard of who has done that. I have friends who have done that as well.

I admire the self-sacrifice and self-control, but I can’t really imagine doing that myself. Maybe it’s good that I have to stop at one child, as much as I wanted to have more. But if I had 10 kids I have a feeling I would still be squeezing in time to write poems or to paint. That maybe I would be in a situation at that point where I shouldn’t be doing those things, but I would do them anyway.

Poetry is such a part of me that I can’t imagine giving it up. I go through spells where I primarily read poetry rather than write it. When I do that I am often soaking up inspiration and gearing up for a period of intense writing. But to simply not have poetry in my life? I can’t even imagine.

Painting and photography have become primal urges for me. I can’t imagine putting my camera down as some of the mother photographers do. I might sometimes get lazy or too busy to take out my expensive camera, but I’ll at the very least be taking photos on my phone.

Perhaps all of this is selfish or self-absorbed, but I’m not so sure about that. Everyone needs their own identity. Everyone needs something that they love to do and an opportunity to do it. Naturally your husband and children have to take priority, but you can’t draw from an empty well. If you want to give them more, then you have to give yourself something. So many women say they’ve lost their identity in motherhood, and I just can’t relate. When I had my daughter I became even more myself. I still had all the artistic aspects of myself, all the general personality traits like introversion, I still liked the same foods and movies, only I was finally fully tapped into my maternal potential. Having a child didn’t sap my sense of identity. It completed it.

Not that I think I am really at risk of this, but I pray that I never put down the pen or the camera or the brush. These things are apart of me. Without them I think I would fall to pieces.

From One to Another

Small as a pond,

You are bordered by mossy velvet.

You act like me.

Rivers do not

associate with women.

First I was a fish.

Then I was provided with womanhood.

The oars on the canoe

Love one another in Morse code.

I’ll walk under the hollow water.

My understanding of

beauty and all that you can do

flourishes like kelp,

always below the surface.