November PAD Challenge 2022: Day 3: The Golden Apples Left to Rot

Image by jhenning from Pixabay

You encouraged me from an early age

To learn about so many things

You read to me about the golden apples of the sun

You'll be gone twelve years at the end of this month

But even if you were still here and still you

I could never ask

Because you would only say

That you were right

And I was misguided

That's the way it always was

No sense in denying it now

Why did you teach me

All of those wonderful things

And then try to turn me away from them?

Why did you tell me

I needed to get a practical job

As a secretary or a nurse

When time and time again

I proved to have no aptitude

For such professions

I spent most of my life

Believing I was broken

When maybe I just didn't fit

Where I was told I ought to

I was misguided

But maybe so were you

At least when it comes to this

You planted the seed of the golden apples in my mind

I will cultivate this orchard of my imagination now

While there's still a little time

I wish that you could see the results

Maybe you do

Maybe now you can understand me 

I wasn't like you

I couldn't be

I can only be like me

Is that really such a bad thing after all?

I will always love you, Dad

But the hurt of never knowing your approval

Never ends

Even now as I approach the twilight of my life

Your daughter,

Ornery Owl

Image by Willgard Krause from Pixabay

notes and prompts used

"The golden apples of the sun" is a line from the poem The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats.

https://poets.org/poem/song-wandering-aengus

It is also the title of a collection of stories by Ray Bradbury published in 1953.

My father was a professor of arts and humanities. I can remember him reading The Song of Wandering Aengus and The Tyger by William Blake.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43687/the-tyger

I learned how to read by the time I was four years old. My father wanted me to be a prodigy. I have no idea if I have the intellectual capacity for such. After all, I was labeled borderline retarded when I was eleven years old. 

I know for a fact that I don't have the patience to be a prodigy. I know now that I have ADHD, but that's a whole other story unto itself, so we'll save it for another time, possibly the same bat-channel, possibly not. It remains to be seen.

I always questioned how I could be retarded when I was reading and writing at an eighth grade level when I was in the fifth grade. However, I was terrible at anything beyond addition and subtraction, and I earned the borderline retarded label by spectacularly bombing on the Ravens IQ Assessment, which is based around pattern recognition. 

I also had some physical coordination problems courtesy of frequent ear infections in early childhood, and I had to use a special trick to determine left from right. I still use this trick at nearly 58 years old. Just last year, I added the Never Eat Shredded Wheat mnemonic to my arsenal, so I finally can work out direction. This is an excellent tool as I have no internal compass whatsoever.

When I was 23 years old, I learned that I was not retarded, I was somewhat dyslexic. That explained a lot, and it also made me want to go back in time and slap the school psychologist, the gym teacher who put me in the special gym class, and also my sixth-grade teacher. Granted, I already wanted to smack my sixth-grade teacher because he was an abusive asshole, but that's another story for another time.

As I moved into my teen years, my parents tried to push me in directions I wasn't interested in. I now understand some of their concerns, but they went about things the wrong way. Folks, if you try to browbeat a teenager into doing something, they will either push back and do the opposite of what you want, or they will comply and resent you. Neither of those is something you want, so here's what you need to do instead.

Many of us cursed by a love for artistic endeavors know how hard it is to make a living at our obsession. This is why those with a love for the arts should also be encouraged to learn a trade they can tolerate. It needs to be a trade of their choosing, not of yours.

I did a Book Blogger Hop post about a book called Reconfigurement. It was written to help older adults find a new career path, but many of the exercises can also help people of any age figure out what careers they might enjoy. You can read the post at the following link

https://ornerybookemporium.blogspot.com/2022/09/friday-book-blog-hop-reconfigurement.html

Or just head over to Amazon and check it out.

https://amzn.to/3KkbJFg

I will earn a small commission from Amazon for anything purchased through the above link.

And now, without further ado-doo, I will share the prompts that prompted me to create today's poem and post.

https://earthweal.com/2022/10/31/first-poems-door-to-the-wilder-eye/

The weekly challenge from Earthweal asks poets to "look back at our younger selves, back to the first poems that made us notice them, and see where they have taken us." Some of my earliest memories involve my father reading to me the poems mentioned above.

https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/2022-november-pad-chapbook-challenge-day-3

Today's prompt asks poets to craft a "misguided" poem. Some readers may think this entire post is misguided. You are within your rights to think that, just as I am within mine to give no fucks what anyone else thinks.

Image by Thomas from Pixabay

Critical Chicken is judging you

A to Z Blogging Challenge: M is for Music and Mental Illness

A to Z Blogging Challenge: 

M is for Music and Mental Illness

by

Illsa Gorrey

Hello, everybody. This is going to get kind of ranty, so before I start, I'll just say this. Anyone who reads the Undead in the Netherworld blog consistently knows that we utilize music a fair bit on our posts. You will also notice that a lot of the soundtrack music is hard rock and metal. That's because our stories are more metal than everybody's! ;-)

Winky face so nobody gets all butt hurt and bent out of shape. 

KHEL 666 is our Multimedia blog, so we feature a lot of music there. A lot of that is hard rock and metal too.

We sometimes use music to drive a point home or to illustrate what we're feeling on Crazy Town in Looney Land (one of our Dropout Loser Quitter Blogs that didn't finish the A-Z Challenge.)

We might feature music occasionally on Poetry of the Netherworld. Because music is, after all, poetry in an instrumental setting.

This entry is going to be cross-posted over all of those blogs. Lazy? Whatever. We have other projects and problems. Sometimes we get lazy.

So before I start the rant, here is a playlist of relaxing music. This is the kind of music we listen to while editing, trying to meditate, or just because. We're eclectic here.

"You sound angry, Illsa. So you're not going to whip out the Death Metal on our asses?"

Nope. Not today.

Everyone involved with this series of blogs has a mental illness of one variety or another. Most of the participants have bipolar disorder. We met culling through mental health sites and found each other. Not all of our team members participate in the blogs very often. We have kind of a core group who are frequent participants. You'll see a lot of Tempest, a fair bit of me and Lily. Opal has been fairly active this month as well. Cie Cheesemeister is generally in the background, editing or creating her photoshop images. She doesn't directly post very often these days.

We are all broken people. We are not your happy go lucky chasing dreams and love types. That ship done sailed long ago, that train done left town. We are older, we have been abused, we realize that dreams don't tend to come true for people like us. We're waiting to die, we're just trying to make it more interesting while we wait.

I have discovered that I really hate certain words. Don't give me the "they're just words" schpiel. Let me call you a cuntbag and tell you "it's just a word." But think for a minute what your immediate reaction to being called a cuntbag is. Yeah, words have power. It's one of the reasons why bullying is so destructive. So let's put the "they're just words" bit to rest right now.

"Lazy" is a word that I hate.

I used to apply it to myself, anytime I was lying around so inert that I could barely get up to do anything. "Get up you lazy, stupid bitch! Get up!" 

I was experiencing severe depression. I knew I was sad and miserable and had "no reason to be." I should have been able to "just get up." Or so I was told.

"Loser" is a word that I hate.

Many people are unable to become successful in life. There is too much onus placed on being some sort of superstar. Not being able to achieve a certain measure of success does not make a person a loser. I think there are plenty of really talented people who never become successful or famous.

"Quitter" is another word that I don't like.

People quit things for a variety of reasons. Maybe they give up too soon, but branding them with a label is never good. Many people have enough negative labels applied to them. Perhaps more like negative millstones. I know that all the negative terms that come to mind for myself weigh heavy on me.

Our M of the day is Music and Mental Illness and an admonition to put yourself in someone else's shoes before you apply a label to them.

Peace.