HURRICANE HELENE 9-26-24

 

Wild dog pack howling like a group reunion of Baskerville hounds. Read that here in NPR, a coyote killed a Chihuahua. So sad but wondered do coyotes live East of the Mississippi? Wiley E Coyote bombing Roadrunner with Acme dynamite. Silly, but the real thing gave me a fright. Imagination in the night not an asset.

 

Tornado Warning amidst Category 4 winds a double jeopardy. Overkill of an unwanted accessory.

 

Shadows of the Mulberry tree reached out to me until I had to stop reading the spooky novel Nevermore, about Conan Doyle, Poe, and Houdini. In the dark, felt so sure the tree was blocking the exit and I’d never be able to leave my prison Scared while those glass doors rattled so I hid under my blanket and pillow like a little girl believing in monsters.

 

Alarms blasting from my cellphone insisting I evacuate my mobile home. Why doesn’t the government arrange for more and closer shelters, earlier in the day? Or a bus to pick me up? More dangerous to drive in a hurricane in the dark doom of helter-skelter.

 

Hard to see where landfall would be, so looked up latitude & longitude. Got it backwards as usual:  I thought longitude (with the word “long” inside) meant tall or North-South and latitude (sounding like “Aw, give her a break, she’s wide but beautiful”) therefore meant East-West but no, opposite. My autism, not yours, my personal ASD confusing me. Still, I could see that landfall would be a hair away from New Port Richey.

 

So after two over-adrenalized days, with 2 hours sleep equaling four, finally collapsed when the wind followed the rain up through Georgia. Next hurricane? I’m grabbing my dogs and getting outta here. Not many motels around but don’t need a breakdown. I just need solid walls – a room with no view – and no bad déjà vu…

 

© 2024 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Hurricane Moon

 

 

 

FALL EQUINOX REDUX

 

I like the simplicity of Solar year holidays

No expensive gifts or frantic preparations

Just a basket of acorns and red leaves

Or a crust of pie dripping fresh blueberries

To mark diurnal and nocturnal spaces

Solstices signal a major change

But Equinoxes are not minor

They appeal to my Libra Rising desire

For equality, justice

Day and night commensurate

With the temperance

Of Autumn and Spring

Winter trees have their own beauty

Although some may perceive the

Deciduous ones as

Bare bones of ugliness, mortality

But look carefully and see

They are authentically

Dressed in a fine skin

Of music and poetry…

 

© 2020 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE:  Fall Equinox 2024

 

 

 

CYMBAL

 

String instruments always my true love

So never a percussionist

But who can resist the primal feeling

Of drums raising the blood?

Thinking of all my favorites:

 

Michael Shrieve soloing Santana’s

Soul Sacrifice at Woodstock

Olatunji’s Drums of Passion

African drums

Welcoming me to the 1960s folk scene

Along with Alla Rakha, Ravi Shankar’s

Tabla accompanist

Til today, love The Bangles’

Debbi Peterson pounding her tambourine

But not really Walking Like an Egyptian

And Sheila E. in Prince’s band

Her drums as exciting as Taiko

Dave Brubeck’s Take Five features

Joe Morello, making the instrumental magical

With drum strikes punctuating horns

And my Dad loved Gene Krupa

King of Swing’s percussionist

And so did I

 

A cymbal is a drum’s accoutrement

Becoming a mystery to me

Lately

When every few hours

From dawn to dawn

Heard the striking of a cymbal

Took me two days to solve

Florida Fall

Acorns freed from Live Oaks

Leaves not deciduous

But the acorns litter

My entire yard

Hitting the tin roof

Mystically striking the wok

Used to keep the wild birds dry

As they feeder-feast daily

During rainy season

Metal protection

For the colorful Cardinals

Woodpeckers and Blue jays

 

While it’s not “real” music

It’s an exclamation from Nature

Change! The seasons are changing!

So not a ghost like I thought

Just an acorn

Cymbaling itself as it sacrifices

Squirrel food while creating

Dinner music for us all…

 

© 2024 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGES: Wok “umbrella” and my percussion instruments/Cymbal acorns

 

 

 

 

 

DAEMONIA CANTO 8

 

So the question is

Am I from a long line

Of mediocre bards

Or just an imaginative family

Inventing biographies of strangers

While riding the elevated train or

Fantasizing about a better life

And forgetting to get out

Of that walking dream land?

 

My name is Iris Versicolor

I have a sister named Belladonna Atropa

And the youngest are twins

Arsenica Album and Arnica Montana

We’re all Jacks of all arts

And masters of none

Singing, playing instruments and painting

Not good enough to earn money

But we have fun

 

Anyway, if you’re wondering

We are all named for poisons

Mama was an herbalist of sorts

Living in a dream world

But sometimes she was scary

And although she never poisoned us

Or anyone we knew

Wouldn’t put it past her

‘Cause some of the stuff she grew

Sure looked like the namesakes

Of me and my sisters

None of us were interested in herbs

I liked the cards

Belladonna the tea leaves and coffee grinds

And the twins understood

All those lines on the palms of hands

 

Mama had a clutch of brothers

With their own families

Yet they supported us monetarily

Although living far away

Didn’t know our Daddy

We lived by the stony creek

Making up our own language

We claimed was Greek

But we never needed anyone else

 

As the oldest

I, Iris,

Shoulda remembered Daddy

But me and my sisters

Were each a year apart

And after a roaring fight with Mama

When I was four

He left and we grew up

Like a mirror of the Brontes

Writing, reading, singing, painting

But never quite as talented as them

 

In our mid-teens, suddenly an apocalypse

Separated in the chaos

Alone, discovered my latent talent

Growing poisons

People were crazed

Dazed from the lack of electricity

No gas, no cars, no computer or TV

Nothing to do or see

Just make babies and war with former friends

People wanted to hurt people

And they discovered me

The poison grower

 

Built myself a fortress

Miss my sisters

Don’t know who’s alive or dead

No Facebook to search

Wound up on a mountaintop

With an icy creek of fresh water and

My made-for-ballet legs

Good at squatting in the

Primitive water closet

Traded some Mercury

For a small cauldron

Cooking goulash of rice, beans and wild herbs

Just ate the same food three times a day

Traded some Hemlock

For notebooks and pens

Found fishing line for the

Baritone ukulele strings

And rescued a pup

Now taller than me

For protection

I grow cayennes for chili

But also traded card readings

For children’s water pistols

Creating a weapon to shoot pepper spray

Keeping those zombies away

 

Met some good men through the years

But they’re always searching

Forming gangs

Life a never-ending pissing contest

So me, I stay with the trees

The men come and go

(Not talking about Michelangelo

How I miss TS Eliot’s poetry!)

Governments are forming

They’re all shams

Descendants of the Knights Templars

Living in bunkers with electricity

Pulling the puppet strings

Making us dance

Well, not me

I’m alone and so far FREE

 

One day a man shows up

Hair starting to silver

Says he was a private detective

BA, AKA “Before Apocalypse”

Traced me here

Handing me a letter written by my sister Belladonna

I’m happy but scared

What kind of footprint did I leave

That this man can find me

Hundreds of miles from my home?

 

He accepts a bowl of my chili

And drinks the creek water

With much appreciation

Telling me that the cities

Are unlivable now

But he can’t make a living

Working out in the country

Bella is ill and now has three children

She begs me to come and help her

But I don’t want to go

Asking him if I can pay him

To bring her and the children here

Because what is the sense of living

In a post-Apocalyptic city

With dirty water and no sewers

He counters saying he couldn’t travel with

A sick woman and three youngsters

Without a gang of men

Or his horse and wagon would be stolen

Much easier to put me on the back of his horse

And travel that way

What can I say?

I inquire about my sisters the twins

But he claims no knowledge

Mama, of course, died the year

Before the war

 

So there is only me

Iris the Elder

Leshii, the man

Says he will nap

And I can pack

Assuming I will go

With him into Hades

Like a mirrored Eurydice

Following Orpheus in the opposite direction

 

When he sleeps, I wander

Through the path I’ve worn

Over the years

Call it instant karma

Or paybacks are hell

But I always knew

Growing poisons for others

Knowing some would use them

For healing, like Foxglove for digitalis

But most to kill perceived enemies

As ammunition for guns

Quickly disappeared

But the urge to kill

Exponentially increased

And I, in order to live

Played a part

Despite my oath

NA POVREDA

DO NO HARM

Losing its importance

When my life felt threatened

 

I cannot make myself leave

But how can I stay

I walk around this safe nest

The Clash song

Should I stay or should I go

Echoes through my mind

Passing the overgrown portal

But not going anywhere, anyway soon

Always turned my back on the doorway to

Daemonia

What will I do…?

 

© 2024 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: Moon for Daemonia Canto 8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LUNULA

(LUN-you-la)

 

My Moon sign is the Moon

It is like a personal rune

With Earth’s satellite I often commune

This lovely celestial body bright as a doubloon

 

In ancient Rome the female nobility

Wore lunula amulets for fertility

But also protection against male virility

As they searched for mates with compatibility

 

Actually, a bronze calendar

Moon phases to help women remember

Tides of seas and menses the center

Of bodies ripe for surrender

 

Those worries are gone for me

Yet, I still live rhythmically

Dark of the Moon? Live quietly

But perigee and apogee are the key

 

So all this is to say

3 a.m. shopping is okay

Stuff unneeded but they outweigh

Boredom, and take the mind away

 

To a world of imagination and Moonlore

(Cease looping and move through an unknown door)

 

© 2024 Clarissa Simmens (ViataMaja)

IMAGE: My Lunula amulet

 

No matter our age, it is always good to connect our female energy with the lunar cycle.  Here’s my poem and I recommend, if you enjoy the Horror Genre, Elizabeth Hand’s Waking the Moon. But don’t use your lunula like her antagonist does in the book! She also wrote the excellent book A Haunting on the Hill, based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.