Poetic Creativity

A Broken Heart

A Broken Heart

What does a broken heart look like? Good question – and I, for one, don’t know. Maybe my artist friend, Moo, does. He painted this image of a Fragmented Heart the other day. Not that his heart was broken. He told me he was interpreting the words and feelings of a close friend (who shall remain nameless) who has been having the feelings associated with a heart that was actually breaking. Tough times, eh?

Rejections get me down and annoy me, but they don’t break my heart. I submitted a short story to a magazine on January 4, 2023 and got a rejection letter yesterday, May 6, 2024. It was a form letter, 16 months after submission, just to say “no”!

Of course, the few acceptances that I actually do get make up for the many rejections, as is always the case. However, there seem to be fewer of these acceptances as my thoughts look inwards and I turn from ‘poetry of play to poetry that expresses the authenticity of being‘ (Johannes Pfeiffer). In this day and age, I fear that readers seek entertainment and distraction and prefer the light-hearted to the heavy hand of deep thought and poetic authenticity. And remember, I do not distinguish between poetry and prose, as many do. For me, poetry is writing, be it in poetry or prose.

But back to the theme of the broken heart. Here are three linked poems.

Old Wounds

“The slow wound
deepens with the years
and brings no healing.”

The Minister by R. S. Thomas

How deep time’s wounds
have cut and carved,
not just in flesh and bone,
but in the embers
of that slow-burn fire
 they call the heart.

Memory and mind
have also played their part.

Some days, those wounds
don’t ache at all.

But there’s no real healing,
and a moment of madness
or a knife-edged finger nail,
careless, in the dark,
opens them up again
to bleed afresh
and remind us
of the frailty of the flesh.

I Remember

“I remember so well how it was back then.
I was lonely, my heart so broken I couldn’t
count the pieces, nor put the puzzle together,
 although I tried so hard to make it whole again.

I still bear scars, trenches dug so deep,
lines gouged into my body. I can’t always sleep.
Nightmares pave a crooked, cobbled way to day.

Some nights, I wake up suddenly from a dream
and scream the way that stuck pigs scream
when, hot, their blood comes steaming out.
Other nights, in pain and panic, at shadows I shout.

I search for someone to care for me. I want them
to understand my grief and help me forget the thief
who stole my joy and left me this life of disbelief.”

Signs of Age

What is pain, but the knowledge
that we are alive, and relatively well,
and still on the green side of the grass.

Long may it last. For when the pain is gone,
we shall soon follow. And this is age,
and age is this pain, and the painful
knowledge that we are no longer young,
can no longer bend the way we bent,
or touch our toes, or even see our toes,
some of us. The golden arrow pierces
the heart. Fierce is the pain. But when
that arrow is withdrawn and the heart
no longer feels alive, why, how we miss
that pain, how we weep to find it gone,
perhaps never to come back again.

Pain, like rain, an essential part of the cycle
of the seasons, of the days and the weeks,
and all the months and years that walk us
around the circadian circle, in time with the earth
and its desire to open its arms, and welcome us,
and greet us, and bring us our rest, from pain.

So much wisdom sewn into the wrinkled skin,
the gap-filled grin that glows with humor,
the crow’s foot signals of old age,
or merely those we associate with ageing,
and the knowledge that, yes, many
have walked this wobbly way before,
and many more will follow in our footsteps.

Take your pick – ‘poetry of play to poetry that expresses the authenticity of being‘ – but I know which I prefer and ‘still I live in hopes to see poems of authenticity.”

Prompts and Impromptus

Prompts and Impromptus

The creative process is different for each one of us. I think of three different creative modes.

The Quarry and Treasure Trove – I write in my journal every day. I have done so for nearly forty years. For me, it is a treasure trove of creativity and I can return to it anytime I want to to revive old memories and to research old moods. I think of it as a quarry that contains valuable images and metaphors that can be used in different ways to create and recreate. I also find that, as I journal, I distinguish between that which is mere dust and ashes and can be abandoned, and that which is a genuine gemstone that can be polished and published. Writing regularly helps me to distinguish between the commonplace and that one piece of gold that emerges.

Impromptus – Some people, like the cat above, wait patiently for inspiration to come. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, they blame Writer’s Block or something similar. While you can sit and wait for inspiration, using the methods outlined in The Quarry and Treasure Trove you can ‘go out and make things happen’. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will open. Now that’s inspiration for you!

Prompts – The creative writer can also use prompts. I have used those that appear in Word Press, but only in sporadic fashion. I do not use them everyday. In fact, I have been a bit down and otherwise engaged recently, and my visits to social media have been very limited. I apologize to my friends – we few, we happy few, we band of siblings.

One of my best friends has been helping me through this rough patch. She has been putting together a book of creative prompts. She converted that into a webpage called  judyandco.com and I highly recommend her work to anyone who, like me, gives up the ghost for a little while, and then wishes to regain the creative spirit. As she wrote to me only this morning – “there’s a bunch of free stuff on there” -.

So, for those who need a kick start for their creativity, try clicking on  judyandco.com – I am sure you will find inspiration there.

A Masked Ball

Masked Ball

After a two-week lay-off, the Dance of Colors returns. What caused the lay-off? Absolutely nothing. I grew tired of posting, of writing, of throwing my paint on the waters of the web and waiting to see what, if anything, happened. Well – nothing happened.

Steven King, On Writing, says “Paper your walls with rejections.” And I have done, pages and pages of them. The secret is ‘never surrender’ – ‘never give up’ – or, in the language of the WWII Prisoner of War Camps – Nil carborundum illegitimi. You can Google the meaning, if you can’t read Latin. It is a euphemism for ‘never despair’.

Rejection is one thing. Silence is something else. When I check my notebooks I find submissions, some sent several years ago, that are still unanswered. There is simply no response. It is as if the writer – submitter – does not exist, is not even worthy of a form letter.

I ran into that wall of silence during this two week lay-off. Does it matter? Probably not. The creation of art is as much a monologue as it is a dialogue. Bakhtin calls it ‘a creative artist’s dialogue with his time and place.’ I think of it as ‘this creative artist’s monologue with his time and place.’

Footsteps – I leave them here, I leave them there, you can find those footsteps anywhere. But beware the footsteps left on the beach at low tide. You will not find them on the beach the day after you leave them. The tide will have risen and washed them all away. In spite of that, some footprints are here to stay.

Which activities make you lose track of time?

Daily writing prompt
Which activities make you lose track of time?
View all responses

Which activities make you lose track of time?

I guess it depends on how you define activities. Sleeping certainly makes me lose track of time. But sleeping is not an activity, you say. So I say, what about sleep walking? A track to walk on, and sometimes sleep walkers lose track of themselves, and hands of the clock lost in the dark ahead of them, on they go, tick-tock, little clockwork soldiers marching until someone or something wakes them up. Where am I? They ask. And what time is it?

Watching my fox terrier chasing his tail as he runs round and round in circles, never quite catching it, but never giving up his high hopes of catching that little rat-tail of a tail that dangles there behind. And round about and out and in all day that silly dog did spin, spinning in prose and spinning in rhyme, until I lost all track of time.

Same thing happens with that little electric railway that ran on a single loop around the kitchen table. Diddle-da-diddly-da, just like a real train, except no smoke, no puff the magic dragon, no sense of a schedule or arriving and departing on time, when circular time is meaningless, as are the numbers on the sundial when the sun isn’t shining, or the hands on the clock when the numbers are missing, and you don’t know whether you are looking in time’s mirror or are standing on your head in the Antipodes and all the while the clock hands are marching round and round, tick-tock, and there is no track by which time can be tracked. And the runaway hands went round the track and the ghost train hooted whoo-hooo, as it vanished into the timeless tunnel of darkest night, and then exited. like Rip Van Winkle, the engine driver with a huge beard, and the carriages all covered with cobwebs and skeletons peeping out of the compartments and sitting beside some of the travellers as they snore on their seats.

And wow, the activity, if it be an activity, of walking my fingers over the keys has just made me lose track of the last ten minutes. And now it is time for me to drive to hospital, have a needle stuck in my arm, and allow a nurse to draw my blood. And the moment from the first sight of the needle to the moment it is withdrawn from the end is e-n-d-l-e-s-s and takes an eternity.

Real People

Real People

They lie there, lifeless, in their little black coffins.
They refuse to pick up their beds and walk.
Powerful as you are, you are powerless now.
You are unable to grace them with the gift of life.

Listless, disappointed, you turn away. Don’t look,
but now, while you are not watching them, they move.
A gesture here, a wink of the eye, a tiny smile,
a broken tooth, a scar from a dog bite, and they come alive.

Now they stand before you, dressed in the clothes
you wove for them, from their own words.
When you listened, they spoke. They didn’t want
to be forced into falsehoods, forged from your fake words.

True to their own natures, they now walk and talk,
naturally, in the words you heard when you let them speak.

Words

Words

Words grow like flowers, invasive,
cruel, beautiful, cutting, and when cut,
they wither and fade, like flowers too.

Catch them while you can, I say.
Catch them, hold them tight,
press them to you heart,
for time is voracious
 and will soon devour them,
 swallowing them in the black holes
of forgetfulness, carelessness,
and memory loss.

Shine a light on your words.
Underline them, grace them with stars,
think about them, carefully.

And remember, the word
once spoken or written
can never, ever be recalled.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
Words

To be a writer (Revised)

To be a writer
revised version

To be a writer ….

Those who would true valor see,
let them come hither.
One here will constant be,
through foul or fair weather.
There’s no discouragement
will make her once relent
her first avowed intent,
to be a writer.

Those who beset her round
with dismal stories,
do but themselves confound:
her strength the more is.
No blank page can her fright,
she’ll with a sentence fight,
and she will have a right,
to be a writer.

Rejections nor false friends
can daunt her spirit.
She knows she at the end
will a book inherit.
So critics fly away,
she’ll fear not what they say,
she’ll labor night and day
to be a writer.

Click here for Roger’s reading on Anchor.
To be a writer
revised version

Comment: I first wrote this poem in January 2021. It is, of course, a rewriting of John Bunyan’s hymn / poem, To be a pilgrim from Pilgrim’s Progress. In the original version, I kept the male pronouns. However, after collaborating as the only male participant in [Quick Brown Fox] Brian Henry’s Advanced Writing Group of 13 fantastic women writers, I realized that the female pronoun was, in so many cases, the most appropriate one. I therefore made the necessary adjustments. You can find the old poem at this link – personally, I prefer the new version! https://rogermoorepoet.com/2021/01/11/to-be-a-writer/

Self-portrait with flowers

Self-portrait with flowers

I walk past the Jesuit Church
where the shoe-shine boys store
polish, brushes, and chairs overnight.
I walk past the wrought-iron bench
where the gay guys sit, caressing,
asking the unsuspecting to join them.

Nobody bothers to ask me for a match,
for a drink, for charity, for a walk
down the alley to a cheap hotel.

The witch doctor is the one who throws
the hands of all the clocks into the air
at midnight, in despair.
He’s the one who leaves this place,
and returns to this place, all places being one.

The witch doctor sees little things
that other men don’t see. He reaches out
and flicks a fly away from my nose.
“It too has lost its way,” he sighs.

I think I know who I am,
but I often have doubts when I shave,
rasping the razor across my chin’s dry husks.
The witch doctor, my lookalike, my twin,
stares back at me from my bathroom mirror.

Three witches dance on the waning soap dish.
One spins the yarn, one measures the cloth,
one wields the knife, that will one day sever
the thread of I, who the same as all
poor creatures, was born only to die.

You too must one day look in that mirror,
oh hypocrite lecteur,
mon semblable, mon frère.

Type on this link for Roger’s reading.
Self-portrait with flowers

Comment: My thanks to all those who click on earlier poems and express their liking for them. I am particularly pleased when an earlier poem lacks a voice reading. Then I can revisit it, rethink it, rewrite it, record it, and speak it aloud. Here’s the link to the earlier version of the poem Charles Baudelaire. Fast away the old year passes, and we must renew ourselves, our thoughts, and our poetry for the new year soon to be upon us. To all my readers, old and new, welcome to that world.