LIMINALITY*

 

Liminality
Threshold is the no-time between who I was

And who I will be

Taken to the bathhouse as a rite of passage
Old man Bannik ignores us in the midnight moonlight by a lake

His job is to keep the rocks and water steaming
My Gypsy bibi—aunt--looking like a miniature of my mother
Gives me a new secret name 
I must take to my end, no one to know
Except me and she
Shivering in this empty house despite fiery water
A faceted glass of blood-red wine in my hand

This 15^th day of my 15^th year

Latin class reminding me
Fifteen is Ides like Caesar's March betrayal
Autism overcomes and I giggle thinking
Et tu, Brute

“Pay attention!” hisses Bibi Kirivi

Then says, “After spending this day and night with you,

This is what I believe:

Although you do not physically travel as we ancestors did,

You have a

Duxo Phirimasko

Wandering soul

I do not know what is different but you

Cannot learn to be like we

You are always longing for another star

Like a reaching tree

In your mind

In your soul

I cannot pass along the power to you”

 

So nothing had changed

This 15^th day of my 15^th year

The Bannik handed me a cool cloth

And I washed and dressed

A young man appeared out of the bushes

Leading us to an old car

Escorting us home

 

It was the autism, I think, decades later

An unknown at that time leaving me

No way of explaining my failure to

Carry the torch into the next generation

So was I that romantic-sounding yet lonely wandering soul

Or was it merely that chipped—mutilated--chromosome?

 

Perhaps her abandonment will not hurt as much

If I think about the sad song sung by Lee Marvin in

Paint Your Wagon

We cannot help who we are

All us lonely people

Were we all born under a wandering star…?

 

©2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Abandoned Bathhouse WebUrbanist

*MY MYTHOLOGY, A MUST-HAVE PER JOSEPH CAMPBELL

https://youtu.be/-jYk5u9vKfA YouTube video Lee Marvin

 

 

 

 

 

 

1970s REMINISCENCE

 

Cheese or chocolate fondue of 1970s gatherings

Nickel bag of Acapulco gold carelessly tossed on the table

Ersatz egos of young newlyweds bopping heads to

Morrison and The Doors’ poetry of electronic music

And strong bodies and minds ignorant of

Aging and weakness riding along on a blink

Of the blind eye of youth

 

But that was early decade days

Vietnam ended as did a president

Discovered sugar is bad so cut it ruthlessly

But oh, my drug of choice—Nicotine—didn’t end

Still, watched friends from way-back- when

Fade away with harder substances

Birthed two beautiful babies

Mothered dogs and cats along with them

Found my way back to community college

Somehow rescued my brains, worked hard

Learned how to work within the government system

By joining the League of Women Voters

And oh, yeah, feminism, like hail, angrily doused me

Recalling being fired from my job

When pregnant with my first child

And not saying a word

Anger understood from Steinem and Friedan*

Never taken seriously

By male teachers, political parties, friends

Knocking on doors to ratify the ERA*

Women saying they wouldn’t share a bathroom with men

Where’d they get that idea?

And yeah, my husband forgetting wedding vows

 

But the backdrop of music pounded its beat

From Folk Rock to Disco to wild guitars

Electrifying the passion for life

Losing my religion while writing but always reading

Virginia Woolf with Jimi and BeeGees blasting

James Joyce streaming his consciousness

His Irish Ulysses teaching me from printed words

And occasionally I’d look back

At Allen Ginsberg’s Howl

At Bob Dylan’s social commentary

All who shaped me in the 60s decade

But now I was morphing into someone new

A true-blue 1970s woman

Who began to find her voice…

 

© 2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: VW (thanks to my son Benj) & Ukulele

 

*Gloria Steinem & Betty Friedan (mothers of us fledgling feminists

**ERA: Equal Rights Amendment (most individual states passed a state version, but the national one never became an Amendment to the Constitution)

 

 

A LIFE DEVISED

 

Sitting in the tent thinking of our lives

While he practiced throwing sharpened knives

A battery-run kid’s phonograph played 45’s

And I then thought about the poem St. Ives

 

Guess I’ll never be one of those housewives

Chatting over coffee with friends feeling so alive

My life is just an education in how to survive

Sure feel like I’ve been luck-deprived

 

Oh, to have a home, garage and asphalt drive

And especially a garden with flowers, herbs and chives

But the inside of the tent’s definitely a dive

Still, my neighbors are silent trees and uncontrived

 

So the traveling life is a trade-off but revives

A feeling of freedom seen through old eyes

As a way of walking through stages of my lives

Perhaps this unpredictability is how I’ll always thrive…

 

© 2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Trees & Tent (greenhouse)

 

 

 

 

MOON BRANCHES MIRAGE

 

Between branches

A moonlight mirage

Bear glimpsed

No, a man

But too dark 

To read 

His eyes...

 

© 2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Moon Branches Mirage

 

 

BODY LANGUAGE

 

I sit with my back to the noise

To avoid the invasion

On our dusty dirt road

I sit with my back to you

And look out at the swamp

Beyond the fence

I am sitting close to my

Flamingo garden and greenhouse

Because plants are silent and yet

They give us so much

Whereas you are shouting and

Taking taking taking and

Talking talking talking

The silence tells me that

Lack of rain for months

And water shortages 

Show the dirt

On my darling pink flamingos

Like me

They are confused by

Weather and new noisy neighbors

Shabby like me

In comparison to the

New homes and shiny young adults and children

Out with the old and

In with the new

But as long as my swamp

Remains the same

I will feel confident and serene

That life suddenly tweaked

But still remains beautiful

In the many shades of green

I can't spend my days though

Sitting like this silently

But just for this afternoon

With the wind and the green and

Loving plants waving in the breeze

I will stay

Turned away

From you… 

 

© 2023 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Flamingo Garden Body Language