Fetch: Invisible Submersion

In Tune with the Infinite

Copyright Mira Nedyalkova

The day after her troubled brother Daniel's disappearance, a tearful Amber Clifford-Collins showed her Uncle Paul the disturbing final entry in Dan's diary.

The annegare

In secluded submersion

Lie invisible

~Cie, Gem, and Helena~

Prompts Used:

Five Lines or Less

Victorious Vocabulary

Notes:

Although we believe this works as an eerie stand-alone piece, it is also part of Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch. The Fetch blog is for Team Netherworld members only, but I reposted the chapter where Daniel describes meeting the Annegare, as he calls the mermaids of Cerenarian Sea, to his sister, Amber.

Annegare is an Italian word meaning "to drown." It is pronounced an-ne-gar-re.

Etymology: from Latin *adnecare, from necāre, present active infinitive of necō, “kill”.

Earth's Dreamlands and the Cerenarian Sea are the creations of H.P. Lovecraft.

Amber Clifford-Collins, Daniel Clifford, and Paul Clifford are original characters created by Team Netherworld.

Dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft for a lifetime of inspiration

Without him, many of our stories would never have happened

NaHaiWriMo 2018 #4: Picture of the Photographer

Notes:

Images copyright Cara Hartley/The Real Cie. I allow the use of my photographs in other creative blogs with credit to me. 

The person in the photograph is my 28-year-old son, Michael, who is taking photographs of some specimens at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Michael has overcome a lot of challenges in his life, and I am very proud of him. He has worked hard to manage depression and anxiety without medication, as the medications don't work for him. Although he still deals with these issues, he has developed excellent coping skills.

Psych meds work well for some people, but they don't work for everyone. In Michael's case, they don't work at all. In my case, they make me manic and psychotic, which I am usually not. 

People tend to want to "fix" those who have neurological and psychological differences. Instead of trying to "fix" us, which tends to make us become defensive and shuts down conversations, try instead to understand our perspective, which opens the doors to understanding and possibility.

~Cie~

Shadorma: His Eyes

Image Source

Shadorma:

His Eyes

*********

His eyes are

Sometimes cornflower

Blue and then

Sometimes they

Are green like midday sea spray

Wherein I have drowned

********

For Gerry from Pepper

and

For Gem from cie

Prompt Used:

Hourly Writing Prompts

Mad For You

Secret Fates Version 11:

The Door to my Heart

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

Love is always a lie, but you're no liar

You said you loved me

You set my world on fire

I've never been a winner, only a trier

You asked me to give it a try with you

Love is always a lie, but you're no liar

Once bitten twice shy, but I'm even shyer

You said I was just what you needed

You set my world on fire

I've always been the rebel and defier

I defied my own rules to be with you

Love is always a lie, but you're no liar

Did you have any notion of what loving me would require?

I have no ability to trust although I love you so much

You set my world on fire

It's still burning

For 

Gem from Cie

and

Gerry from Pepper

 

Notes:

Today the assignment was to take a Sylvia Plath poem and write a response to it. My favorite has always been Mad Girl's Love Song. Sadly, I have been able to resonate all too well with this poem in my life. Love has not been kind to me. 

Here is the original.

Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"

The Dead World

Perennial tears descend in gems

From the eyes of those who remember when

They weep: from off their delicate stems

Where leaves will never grow again

Eternal dews come down in drops

In a flood which seems will never stop

They wave: from out their fragrant tops

Poison rain destroys good crops

And weep above a nameless grave!

In this world where nothing can be saved

Over the lilies there that wave

On the seashore, near the cave

In myriad types of the human eye

None of them notice when I cry

Over the violets there that lie

My breath escapes in a hopeless sigh

Uneasily from morn till even

I search in vain to find a reason

That rustle through the unquiet Heaven

Naught is revealed in study or sweven

Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven

In vain another day I've striven

Around the misty Hebrides!

A voice moans mournful through the trees

That palpitate like the chill seas

Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees

The moans cause the blood in my veins to freeze

Over the magic solitude

A feeling of terror doth intrude

Nothing save the airs that brood

Can be envisioned or construed

Nothing there is motionless

An invisible hand my cheek does caress

The sad valley's restlessness

Brings to my soul a deep distress

Now each visitor shall confess

Now each mind will begin to regress

The red sunlight lazily lay

Over the kingdom far away

In the midst of which all day

The devout bow their heads to pray

To keep watch above the flowers

To drive away the terror of the hours

Nightly, from their azure towers

Whilst death rains from the sky in showers

Trusting to the mild-eyed stars

To take them somewhere very far

They had gone unto the wars

Knowing not what they were fighting for

Where the people did not dwell

The world made a living hell

Once it smiled a silent dell

O'er the land rang the sound of a funeral bell

By Cie and Gem and Gerry and Pepper

With apologies and thanks to Edgar Allan Poe

Ode to the Corpse Flower

The pungent Corpse Flower resides in the hothouse at the Denver Botanic Gardens

I jumped into the crowd

That hurried swiftly past

Don't stop and smell the Corpse Flower

Its scent will kick your lily ass

~Cie~

Notes:

We were supposed to take cliche phrases and "turn them on their head."

I used "go against the grain" and "stop and smell the roses."

The Corpse Flower is a real plant. You can't make this crap up.

The Corpse Flower is not an actual Lovecraftian horror. BUT IT COULD BE!

Serab's Senryu: The Ghosts of What Was

Zetar's End Version 13

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

Sometimes I sense ghosts

From a world long dead and gone

I weep for what was

~Serab~

Cie's notes:

Serab is a past incarnation of the musician Gerry Clifford, the main male protagonist in Team Netherworld's eternal WIP, Fetch. Serab was a resident of Zetar 6 (Zecor), a world with a binary star system where the smaller sun began pulling energy off the larger sun, setting off a nova which destroyed the inner planets and rendered the sixth planet incapable of sustaining life.

Serab in spirit form viewed the nova just before being relocated to a place which his beloved Princess Ondina, a powerful sorceress, referred to as "the Realm of the Yellow Sun." 

In her grief and guilt over Serab's murder by her brutal and jealous megalomaniac brother King Qweh, Ondina believed it necessary that she and Serab should never again cross paths. Serab's longing for Ondina eventually overrode her spell, and, near the end of his lifetime as Gerry Clifford, he found her again. She had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a medium living with major mental illness whose life had never gone quite right.

As Gerry and Pepper became reacquainted and their love rekindled, memories of their past incarnations on Zecor were awakened, and an old and dangerous foe re-emerged in the form of Yadira Root, a powerful high priestess of Nyarlathotep, whose plans for Gerry were most unsavory.

TL:DR

We majorly deviated from the prompt given today.

NaPoWriMo 2018: Day 6: Wrap It Up Already!

A

Break can

Completely help to

Determine whether a poem

Eventually will be seen as

Fine work, and the poet deemed

Good or bad based upon the ability

He or she has to know about when

It is time to wrap things up and not

Just keep blathering on and making the reader want to

Kill them in order to shut them up, finding themselves a

Lead pipe to bludgeon to death the overly verbose poet and their

Meandering lines of word after word after meaningless word, does this person truly

Not know when to shut the hell up, can they truly not see how

Obnoxious their run-on lines are, do they not know that they are an embarrassment to

Poets everywhere, have they no pride in themselves and the craft of poetry, had they a

Quill, I would break it and stab it through their heart so they couldn't write one more

Run-on line in the self-aggrandizing mess they believe to be a poem, they must really love the grating

Sound of their own voice, or at least the sight of their own words, I really hope they don't

Talk the way they write because listening to them would be like nails on a chalkboard, a completely, absolutely, and 

Utterly intolerable, never-ending flow of verbal vomit, which would cause anyone in earshot to flee, in order to escape the ceaseless

Vocal violence of endless words being spouted for the sake of spouting them as if the speaker had no regard for the

Weary listener, or for the craft of poetry or prose, or knowledge that the reader would rather throw themselves into a nest of

Xenomorph eggs and become host to an alien monster that would soon rupture from their innards and leave them in a foul mess of

Yellow bile and red blood, but even this this terrible fate is preferable to reading line after line of dreadful verse brewed up by a

Zany poet who really and truly simply does not understand the concept that less is more and they should have wrapped this thing up ages ago

~Cie~

Note:

The prompt asked for participants to stretch their comfort zone with line breaks, not realizing that I am very prone to hyperbole and that I would be likely to make everyone else suffer along with me.

 

Senryu: All of Me

I was unable to find the creator of this image. If anyone knows, I am more than happy to credit them.

I am very tired

 Of things being hard, you know

 She has had enough

~Cie~

The prompt today asked us to play with voice. So I wrote one line in first person, one in second person (sort of), and one in third person. 

I like short poems because they help me avoid creating verbal vomit, which is something I'm all too good at.

Senryu: Hidden

At the End of Everything Version 10

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

I am not ashamed

Of the one who haunts my heart

But must stay hidden

~Cie~

The prompt today asked participants to write about a secret shame. One of the suggestions was that one might be ashamed of eating "too many cookies." That's a trick statement, there is no such thing as too many cookies. 

However, that is not what this poem is about.

I decided to do a little twist on the prompt. What if the secret is not something shameful, but must be hidden anyway. What if the poem's protagonist is homosexual but comes from a homophobic family? What if, as in many dramas, the protagonist is from a rich family and falls in love with a poor person, and their family does not approve?

I actually wrote the poem from the point of view of Pepper, the female protagonist from Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch. Pepper, a medium, loves Gerry, a ghost. There is actually nothing shameful about Pepper's feelings for Gerry. They are both older adults. However, the majority of the populace would not understand Pepper's feelings. Thus, in order to avoid becoming a pariah or even being institutionalized, Pepper must keep her feelings to herself.

Eldritch Senryu: The Rats In The Walls

"The Rats In The Walls" by KxG Witcher

Inspired by the H.P. Lovecraft tale of the same name

The scampering claws

 Of the rats within the walls

 Drive one to madness

~Cie the Lovecraft Devotee~

Prompts Used:

Hourly Writing Prompts 

The stars were right, the Cheese Factor was high, the prompts aligned, and this eldritch horror made its way effortlessly into the doomed world. Iä, Iä, Cthulu fhtagn!

Shadow World

Shadowfell

I'm going away

Soon to the Shadow World where

Stories and dreams dwell

~Cie~

(a thing that never should have happened)

Senryu: Waiting

Copyright Jerry Kieswetter

On the outskirts of

The city where bombs fell

They wait for letters

~Cie and Gem~

Prompt Used:

Three Line Tales

Thief of Dreams

Image Source

 I aim to

 Lose sight of you but

 I let my

 Guard down when

 The night falls and you sneak in

 Breathe you in like air

 Thief of dreams

 With love from 

Pepper to Gerry

and 

Cie to Gem

Notes:

This Shadorma has one additional three-syllable line tacked on

Pepper and Gerry are the major protagonists in Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch.

Word Salad:

Aim

Air

Dream

Guard 

Lose

Night

Sneak

Prompts Used:

Dark Helvete 

Ronovan Writes

The Secret Keeper

Fetch: Starting Fires in the Atmosphere

Copyright Patrick Jennings

Light years from here we're gonna burn up in the atmosphere 

It's not my line, but I wish I'd thought of it

 Copyright Jennifer Nichole Wells

Until the time when we can finally be together

To get started, start a fire, which is another line I wish I'd penned

Copyright Ramon Garcia

As I stand upon the qiao above the lonely river

My tears will drop into waters as bluetiful as your eyes

For Gerry from Pepper

and Gem from Cie

Prompts Used:

Color Your World

The Daily Post

Pic and a Word Challenge

Six Sentence Stories

Victorious Vocabulary 

Stolen Lines from:

Aqualung by Morcheeba

Get Started, Start a Fire by Graham Parker

Cousin Rachel

My cousin Rachel committed suicide in 2004. She was 41 years old. She overdosed on medication.

We weren't super close. Our families lived 2000 miles apart.

However, I was saddened to hear of her passing. I didn't know she was struggling so hard. I don't know if anyone did.

Rachel had what is termed "medication resistant depression."

People, including mental health and medical professionals, have a tendency to treat medication as a be all and end all. It isn't. For some of us (like Rachel and my son) it simply doesn't work. 

For others, like me, the "cure" is worse than the problem. I react badly to most medications. For instance, SSRI's, the darlings of the psych industry, cause me to become manic and psychotic, two things which I am usually not and I don't enjoy either of them. I have type 2 bipolar disorder, which causes hypomania rather than full mania and does not have psychotic features.

I am not the only one that SSRI's do this to. Motley Crue's Mick Mars describes a similar experience with SSRI's in the band's book, "The Dirt." Mick has a debilitating musculoskeletal condition called ankylosing spondylitis. When the doctor noted he was depressed, Mick said: "tell me something I don't know."

The doctor's response was to put Mick on SSRI's, which triggered psychotic episodes. Rather than questioning if the medication might be doing this, the doctor put Mick on antipsychotics, which really messed him up. Fortunately, Mick is a smart guy and realized that it was highly unlikely that he'd suddenly developed schizophrenia, which usually onsets earlier in life. (Mick was in his mid-fifties at the time of these events.) He stopped taking the medication and his mental state returned to normal.

At one point I was put on Zoloft, which caused me to feel as if my brain had grown tiny hands and was trying to pick its way out of my head. When I told the doctor this, he admonished me to stay on the medication. I didn't. Within a few days, my brain no longer had tiny hands. Amazing how that works!

Many people, including medical professionals, treat patients with psychological anomalies as if they are failures if their depression/anxiety/psychosis does not get better. Its bad enough living with these conditions and knowing we will never be "normal" even if we pass for "normal." It's worse when we're being shamed for something we can't change on top of having to live with it. 

I give a derisive laugh in the general direction of everyone who ever told a person with a mood disorder to "just cheer up," "just snap out of it," "just stop thinking that way," "don't be a Debbie Downer," or other such brilliant and witty admonitions.

I realize that it's a rare thing for me to be happy. The times when I thought I was happy I was actually giddy. It's not the same thing. Before finally learning when I was nearly forty that I had bipolar disorder rather than depression with anxiety or adult ADD or any of the other things that I had been diagnosed with, hypomanic states could be easily triggered by environmental factors. 

These states involved magical thinking. By magical thinking, I don't mean that I believed the genie from the lamp was there granting wishes or that I could control the weather with my mind. I mean that I believed I was finally happy and that I would never be unhappy again. I admonished myself that I would stay this way forever. When the elevated mood inevitably wore off, I was left with a high degree of self-loathing to contend with as well as a depressed mood.

I can't say for certain, but I wonder if Rachel might not have committed suicide if she'd been encouraged to accept herself as she was rather than admonished to "get better."

People with psych anomalies have the double-edged sword of not only being treated as "bad" and "wrong" but as failures if we don't comply and "improve." We are told that we are "being lazy," "not trying hard enough," "seeking attention," and any other number of harsh criticisms.

Stop trying to "fix" us and stop telling us that we need to be "fixed." 

Accept us or leave us alone.

~Cie~ 

OctPoWriMo 2017: Day 31: Wake Me Up When October Ends

Image Source

October ending

I'd like to write about Halloween

But I don't have it in me this year

~Cie~

Last one and done

The Cheese Grates It + OctPoWriMo 2017: Day 29: Beautiful Ugly People

Beautiful Ugly People

Not seen as pretty outside

And the insides are too dark

The world tells them to hide

Sometimes they refuse to hide

They risk everything although they are

Not seen as pretty outside

Sometimes it hurts to have pride

Even though they have much to offer

The world tells them to hide

Copyright Prometeus +123RF.com 

It's hard to believe in the beauty inside

When you hear every day how ugly you are

Not seen as pretty outside

If you've a best friend who's along for the ride

It can be easier to make the scene although

The world tells them to hide

Per Ohlin

January 16, 1969 - April 8, 1991

If no-one sees the tears that you've cried

It's harder to be walking alone when you're

Not seen as pretty outside

The world tells them to hide

Love,

Cie

Note:

For better or worse, here's my crack at a Villanelle.

I'll be finishing out the challenge because I'm not a quitter, but I won't be sharing any more of my work. Honestly, it's a little tiresome when the only poems anyone wants to read are bright, chipper little odes to spring and twoo wuv. 

I'm sure everyone would have told Edgar Allan Poe to "just cheer up" too. 

I will leave everyone with the thought that maybe people whose minds work differently aren't broken things to be fixed and perhaps the reason we tend to hide and suffer in silence is because any time we share what's on our mind, we are admonished to "stop that stinkin' thinkin'" or are told that one day we'll straighten up and fly right, the often unstated piece being "and if you don't, you're a loser who just didn't try hard enough.
Believe it or not, I actually do have a "light half." I have a blog with no political rants or bleak ruminations whatsoever. It's mostly pictures of plants and nature. It can be found at http://cieswonderfulworld.tumblr.com

~The Cheese Hath Grated It~

OctPoWriMo 2017: Day 28: LONE

Copyright: grandfailure / 123RF Stock Photo

LONE

Lonely

Lonely me

I feel unwanted

I feel undeserving

I fear I'm fatally flawed

LONE, lonely me, fatally flawed

~Cie and Pepper~

Notes:

Here is another work which is autobiographical to the author and also descriptive of Fetch's female protagonist, Pepper Baiij.

I desperately want to get back to working on stories again. I am lost without them.

At least I met Gem on the astral plane while in a troubled sleep that I hoped never to wake from.

In a world that wants sunshine, flowers, chirping birds, and unicorn farts, I bring you depressing poetry. Hence, I walk alone through this life.

~Cie~

OctPoWriMo 2017: Day 27: For My Father

Copyright: kytalpa / 123RF Stock Photo

For my Father

Your love of nature

Memories of sweet springtime

Petals yesterday

The scents turn smoky

Today leaves crushed underfoot

Snow lies on the ground

The time approaches

Seventh anniversary

Of your leaving us

May 31, 1936

~

November 28, 2010

I miss you, Dad

~Cie~