Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Saturday, May 6, 2023

The Fool #8Sunday

   



Genre: Poetry

Heat Level: Poetic

Blurb

Poetry; a unique and beautiful way to express feelings and ideas. Weaving words into perfect poetic prose, these authors remind you of your childhood, bring comfort from the hardships of life, fiercely spur emotions, and tell tales of old. All lovers of poetry will find a favorite here!

Featuring poetry by the following authors: John Grey, Kellee Kranendonk, J.E. Feldman, Debbie Hadow, Nina Padolf, Dibyasree Nandy, Brianna Witte, Nnadi Samuel, Rhiannon Bird, Sunayna Pal, Christopher R. Muscato, Vanessa Bane, Edward Cody Huddleston, Prathyush Devadas, Ed Ahern, and Cara Hartley.

Snippet

the fool

The fool climbs a lonely path to the moon

hoping her dreams will be realized soon

seeking amnesty and adulation.


The fool gazes into the gloom

falling from the trail to her doom

pulled away from the truth by deception.


Falling for the twin lies

the promise of popularity coupled

with the belief that she was worthless.


She wasted her life chasing the approval

of the teeming masses

who couldn’t care less about anyone...


Save for themselves.

Buy Link

http://books2read.com/SoulInk1

The e-book is currently available for pre-order. It will be released on June 23, 2023.

Pre-Order Price $1.99

Ornery Owl is Outstanding in her Field
Free use image by Pexels on Pixabay



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Sunday, October 18, 2020

Scar Tissue

 

Image copyright The Real Cie
You're welcome to use it, I guess, but I don't know why you'd want to
Please credit me if you do

breathe
I guess
more or less
that's the first step
that I should take to start
the process of rebooting me
use meditation to rejuvenate
attempting to reboot the process of healing
healing the scar tissue deep within me
heal what has started to decay
you can't heal what's rotting
scars never fade
remaining
behind
veils

~cie~

The Nauseating Notes
It was supposed to be a diatelle, but I saw too late that those have a rhyme scheme, so it's just another stupid Diamante. Yes, I suck.


Buy more brooding poetry here

This poem was posted to these places:

LBRY is a decentralized content marketplace. I price the PDF versions of my work at approximately half of the Kindle price because I receive the entire amount rather than a royalty percentage. 

You can get a free LBRY account through this link. You can earn LBC for viewing content on LBRY as well as from selling your content.



Copyright Information
The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)
Copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press/Poetry of the Netherworld

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Saturday, August 22, 2020

Ornery Poetry Sunday: Wildfires

Image from the Lamar Ledger 17 August 2020

such a hot day
my shadow needs to cool down
under the willow
smoky haze filling the sky
world is burning around me

~cie~

notes
The Hokku (three-line stanza) is © Kyoshi Takahama (1874-1958). The Ageku (two-line stanza) was written by me.

I am well to the northeast of where the above image was taken, but there are wildfires all over the state. We are surrounded by haze. 


I will likely never publish this work in any collection. But who knows for sure?

This poem was posted to these places:

Want more Ornery Poetry?


Copyright Information
The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)
Copyright 2020 by Naughty Netherworld Press

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Ornery Poetry Sunday: Bully Is As Bully Does

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

I don't know who needs to hear this today
But if you are bullying a bully
The way the bully bullies his victims
Using the same cruel words as he uses
You have just become a bully yourself

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~


Ornery Owl
Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

I am feeling quite heartbroken today, close to suicidal. I feel that my work is worthless as am I. But I will try to believe and will keep going just in case things can improve somehow.

I wish you all the best.

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-picky Legalese If You Please (or Don't Please)

Copyright 2020 by The Ornery Old Lady

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

This work was published on 1 August 2020 on these platforms:


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Saturday, July 18, 2020

Weekend Writing Warriors 19 July 2020: Ornery Poetry Archive: Rain




I wish it would rain
Gloomy day with gray haze
Like the not quite sorrow in my brain

The sky won't cry
Neither will I
Guess neither of us have it in us to try

I have too much
But not enough
Too much trouble
Not enough of the right stuff

I wish it would rain
Wash away my weariness for just a while
I wish the sky would cry
So I wouldn't have to.

~Cie~

Written for the unfortunately now-defunct Alpha-be Thursday

Jenny Matlock

And Now the Notes:

I'm combining Weekend Writing Warriors and Ornery Poetry Sunday. I've uploaded both of my poetry compilations in PDF format to the Poetry of the Netherworld Channel on LBRY. These compilations are also available in Kindle format, but the PDF versions cost approximately half what the Kindle versions do. Visit the Poetry of the Netherworld channel here.


I highly recommend getting a LBRY account as an alternate venue for sharing your work. LBRY is a decentralized marketplace where you can set your own price and keep all your earnings. An LBC is a form of cryptocurrency. It was worth about $0.02 at the time of this writing.

https://lbry.tv/$/invite/@naughtynetherworldpress:d

For more information about where you can find and consume Ornery Poetry, visit this link.


This poem was written on 21 March 2013. Later in 2013, I regretted writing it because the area I was living in was hit by a flood. My car was hit by a wave of water coming across the road in an area that was normally a field. I struggled with PTSD for some time after that incident, feeling that I didn't deserve to write because people had died and I was still alive. 

I may be dredging poems out of the archive for a while. My life is still quite a chaotic mess from dealing with cleaning out my old mobile home where I lived for 18 years with severe depression and very little in the way of assistance or compassion from others. I was able to make myself go to work and take my son to school, but not much else. The end results are catastrophic. But life is better now even if it is still stressful, and we would like to get on with the poem, wouldn't we? Let's do that.

~Cie the Ornery Old Poet, In Case You Didn't Know It~



The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)

Copyright 2013 by Cara Hartley

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

A paid version of this poem was published on 17 July 2020 on these platforms:





The free version of this poem appeared on 18 July 2020 at

http://www.naughtynetherworldpress.com

http://poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com

and on 19 July 2020 at

http://fishypoets.blogspot.com

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Naughty Netherworld PSA: Social Distancing Acrostic


is for sliding and side-stepping away
O is for only staying within your own circle
is for care of yourself and others
is for isolating
is for always taking precautions
is for spreading love, not contagion

D is for dancing at least six feet apart
is for insisting on doing what's right
is for soap and frequent hand-washing
is for taking time to be safe
is for asking others to maintain a safe distance
is for nicely considering needs
is for compassion and consideration
is for indoors in your own home
is for nature in a place that's uncrowded
is for growing and changing to find new ways to do things

~cie~

I am aware that this reads like a motivational poster.

Content coyright 2020 by Cara Hartley

Please do not repost

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it.

Sharing a link to the poem is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the poem for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

NaPoWriMo: Write a poem about the letters of the alphabet or perhaps a poem where the letters form a short word. I kind of took liberties with that idea.

April PAD Challenge: Write a poem about social distancing. There you have it!

If you enjoyed that poem, there's more in my first published poetry volume, Another Autumn. Available for 99 cents on Kindle.

Cross-Posted to:

Friday, January 17, 2020

Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry



This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili
between the beans and the spice
digestive horror
beneath the cover of night
noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.


Fat and Ornery
Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Sly and Snarky
Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com


Sunday, December 1, 2019

We're back!

What Lunch Looked Like

How y'all am are? I was not expecting to be back so soon, but, as fate would have it, I'm here and so are you! So, let's do this!

After spending a freezing night without power in the old Grover Hotel, the Ornery Old Lady (that's me) and Sonny Boy headed to Greeley to gather up some supplies in case we were looking at another night to a week or more of this. We stopped at Taco John's, a place I haven't been to in some 35 years. In fact, that's where I made my last post from!

I was glad to find that Taco John's still tastes the same, but the price about knocked me out of the ballpark. Twenty bucks for a chicken quesadilla, a stuffed taco, Potato Ole's, drinks, and some guacamole, queso, and sour cream. Honestly, it's not that bad for today's prices, but I can remember when I was in high school and would go to Taco John's instead of eating the cafeteria swill. I'd have five bucks on me and get a whole meal and still get change back. Well, so it goes.

We went to Home Depot and bought a propane-powered space heater and looked into getting a backup generator. We picked up a snow shovel, which I thought was steel. It was aluminum and it bent easily. Not a winner there. We got a flashlight and a mini lantern. Then we headed to visit my son's second cousins on his father's side. They said that if the power was going to be out for a while, we could bring the cats and stay with them.

We hit the King Soopers to get some nonperishables like crackers and tinned kippers and then headed for home.

My son was reading the instructions for the space heater and I was getting the snow shovel out of the car when he came running out in an excited mood. The power was back on! I looked down the street to see the blinking red light just beyond the general store, and it never looked so beautiful!

It's still colder than a well-digger's ass in the old Hotel, but the furnace is back on and the temperature is rising. I've got salmon, potatoes, and corn in the oven. I also have (I hope) a fun opportunity.

I am going to need help deciding which poems to put in my manuscript for the November PAD Chapbook Challenge. So, for the next month, I will be having a Battle of the Poems. I will put up two poems, and I would like readers to decide which of the two they prefer. You can give me a reason, or just say "I like number (one or two) best." 

There will be a prize as an incentive for helping me. 

The person who comments on the most poems will receive a $5 Amazon gift card in their email. In the event that there is a tie, I will use a coin, dice, or Random Number Generator to help me choose.

I think this will be fun, and I hope I can get a few people to play along.

The first Battle of the Poems will appear tomorrow!

~Cie~


Thursday, October 24, 2019

Real Cie Reviews: Of Illusions and Ink Spills



Genre:
Poetry

Rating:
Four out of Four stars for Online Book Club
Five out of Five Stars for Amazon

Disclosure:
I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.
If readers purchase a copy of the book through the link provided, I receive a small commission from Amazon.
This review is a duplicate of my review on Amazon.

You can read my exclusive review of this book for the Online Book Club here.

If you like your poetry untamed and not afraid to wander off the beaten path, then Divya Hirani's short volume of playful, avant-garde verse is the book for you.

These free-verse poems explore a myriad of ideas in an almost laid-back fashion. Some might call the tone of the poetry depressive. These works are actually closer to grungy, viewing the world through a realist's somewhat jaded but not ready to give up lenses. If these poems were characters, they would be introspective loners walking resolutely through the shadow of life with a low spark of humor twinkling in their eyes as they took in the sometimes absurd scenes around them.

~Cie~



Free use image from Pixabay

Monday, August 5, 2019

Fetch: I Just Wanted You to Know

A Lost World Version 4
Photoshop Art by The Real Cie

I just wanted you to know
You seemed eternal, you know
And part of my mind which doesn't work quite right believes
That this is still what's going on
And you aren't dead and gone
Taken from the world 
By a disease that destroyed your mind

I'm sorry I got angry with you
For something which was in no way your fault
I believed in you
I wanted to meet you
I wanted to be your friend
I knew no-one like you could ever love me
I know for a fact that no-one can
But I hoped that maybe you would like me just a little

I still love you 
But I fuck everything up
I wish that we could reconnect
I wish that we could try again


I'm so hungry for something I haven't a recipe for
I want to believe in magic
I want to believe in dreams
I want gentle ghosts to haunt my graveyard
And my house and my carousel

I want you to come visit me across time
I would give you a place to hide
In my heart or my pocket
I keep your picture in my broken locket
Beautiful little fractured spirit
You are so much more than you know

I wish that I could hold you to my breast
And soothe the sorrow from your soul
The feeling does go both ways, you know
I still love you
I would try again a million times

Sweet thief of hearts
Come steal my heart
Again
And again
And again

For Gerry from Pepper

Notes:
This poem was created for Team Netherworld's long-running WIP, Fetch. 


Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Five Line Fetchy Fragment: Hunger


I'm so hungry for something I haven't a recipe for
I want to believe in magic
I want to believe in dreams
I want gentle ghosts to haunt my graveyard
And my house and my carousel

Cie for Gem
Ondina for Serab
Pepper for Gerry

Prompt Used:


You can stop right there and just read the poem, or you can continue on and read the long and rambling notes.

Notes:
This story poem was created for Team Netherworld's longest-running WIP, Fetch, which is a Lovecraftian paranormal romance.
Fetch's protagonist is Gerry Clifford, a Scottish musician raised in London's seedy Crouch End borough from the time he was twelve years old. (As inspired by Stephen King's Lovecraftian short story, Crouch End, which can be found in the 1980 anthology, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.) As Gerry's cognitive and physical abilities deteriorate, he is placed in London's Candlelight Ridge Care Home. Gerry's spirit begins to go AWOL from a body which no longer works properly, and he discovers that the unfortunate residents at Candlelight Ridge are not simply succumbing to the ravages of age and infirmity, their souls are being harvested by Yadira Root, an ancient high priestess of the notorious Cthulhu Cult and the daughter of Nyarlathotep himself. Pursued by a hostile hive entity, Gerry turns to troubled American medium Pepper Baiij for help.
Many millennia previously in another star system and possibly another dimension, Gerry was a thief named Serab. Serab was a member of a race persecuted by West Zecor's tyrannical King Qweh, who captured the hapless thief one day and presented him to his sister Princess Ondina, an empath whose primary function was attempting to ameliorate the destruction and chaos caused by Qweh.
Qweh hoped for Ondina to be irritated when he gave her the tiny, elfin Serab as a replacement for her slain bodyguard, but Ondina did not react as Qweh hoped. She treated Serab respectfully. There was an immediate attraction between Ondina and Serab, although Ondina was statuesque, stately, and a member of the ruling class while Serab was small, rough, and a member of an oppressed race.
When Serab was brutally murdered by Qweh at the end of the doomed planet Zecor's existence, Ondina sent his soul to "the realm of the yellow sun" with the admonition that the pair must never meet again. Ondina hoped to protect her beloved from Qweh's threat that he would destroy Serab in any lifetime where he and Ondina reunited.
Serab eventually reincarnated as Gerry Clifford while Ondina reincarnated as Pepper Baiij. The star-crossed lovers were finally reunited when Gerry's spirit or Fetch began leaving his body in search of help.
It's doubtful that Fetch will ever be published in any kind of cohesive form. It remains Team Netherworld's favorite WIP.

Disclosure: If you purchase the book through this link, I earn a small commission.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Insecure Writers' Support Group May 2019: Cie Plans Ahead

Image copyright Conger Design on Pixabay

As the sort of person who tends to fly by the seat of my pants, I like to instill some discipline into my program by participating in writing prompts. However, as I discovered this year when participating in Camp NaNoWriMo plus the NaPoWriMo and Poems in April prompts at the same time on my poetry blog, and the A to Z challenge over at Naughty Netherworld Press, too many prompts can feel more like a cluster flock than an inspiration.


This nightmare vision is a massive flock of starlings. I don't have a bird phobia, but I find this a bit unsettling. I don't like swarms of anything, and that includes people.
Camp NaNoWriMo is much more flexible than NaNoWriMo. I was using it as a tool to inspire me to pull together my first poetry book. I'm not sure it succeeded. 
NaPoWriMo's prompts are optional. One can participate in NaPoWriMo without ever using one of their prompts.
Poems in April's prompts are not flexible.
The A to Z blogging challenge doesn't have any hard and fast rules other than, you know, having your posts go in alphabetical order. The subject you choose is up to you. 
I used the A to Z challenge to introduce the bold and bawdy characters from Naughty Netherworld Press' Carnal Invasion series to the world. This was enjoyable but labor-intensive. I don't think it would be a bad thing to plan next year's A to Z Challenge this year and have at least a rough draft version of the posts ready to go for next year.
For the poetry project, I believe that next year I am going to go with Carpe Diem's Spring Kigo. This will work fine with NaPoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo, plus there is a feeling of continuity, and I can hone my Haiku. There are people who loathe Haiku. I am not among them.
If either the NaPoWriMo or Poems in April prompts strike my fancy, I can hammer out a bonus poem. My -666 fans will be thrilled!
I had planned to answer the Insecure Writers' Support Group question in this month's post, but I'm not going to--again. Maybe next time.

~Cie~



Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Catastases

The Beginning of the End
Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

Good people are like candles
They burn themselves up to give others light
You gave me your promise
With the expectation
That we might know love together
The length and measures of our days would wax long with love
You were and still are the one
But I became suspicious as I always do
Causing the strength of our love to be eroded into catastases
Marking time until the inevitable tragedy
I was wrong
Though I have always been poor, your love made me rich in spirit
Now I have only memories
Of a love that could have lasted forever

For Gerry from Pepper
and for Gem from Cie

Word list
Catastases
Promise
Suspicious
love, might, know, length, long, measures, rich, makes, wax, wrong, strength, one

Prompts Used:

Monday, January 8, 2018

Yama's Shop of Souls

 Copyright Samuel Araya

 Copyright Patrick Jennings


Yama's Shop of Souls

Yadira set up shop down in the Bayou
If you give her one week's wage then you can buy you
Access to the soul of one who's crossed
Across to the land of death and gotten lost
Sometimes people try to stop you, you know they just don't hear ya
Forget them and take your troubles to Yadira

For the Team with love from Yeris
I hope you like it!
I believe

Prompts Used:

Notes:
Yadira Root is a character created by Team Netherworld for our WIP novel, Fetch. She is a wonderfully wicked villain. I thought she deserved her own spin-off. 

Cross-Posted to:

Monday, August 21, 2017

Thirteen Week Streak: Week 12: Hermione


Hermione

On one of many despairing nights
A soul wishing to take flight
Took leave of the body, choosing, it seems
To float hopelessly in the sea of lost dreams
Surrounded was I by rotting things

Things with slippery skin and unseeing eyes
Not quite dead but not alive
I saw the phantoms of what I once believed
Saw the corpses of what I once conceived
I floated in the sea of my lost dreams

In this gruesome sea of decay and death
I hoped that I’d soon take my last breath
Nothing has ever worked out for me
I only want to be set free
Of a life that mocks me at every turn

It was then that I heard the voice
“It grieves me that you’ve made this choice”
I ignored the sound and floated on
If I let it be, it will be gone
But the voice persisted in its call

Why have you forgotten me?
I am your Hermione
That plucky girl who won’t give in
Who keeps fighting although it seems she can’t win
How could you forget the dreams we dreamed?

With anger I defied the voice
Let me alone, I’ve made my choice
You’re nothing but a Mary Sue
And so I have no use for you
Nor for these foolish, floating dead

Mary Sues aren’t all bad, retorted she
They let you see what you want to be
And though some dreams can’t come true literally
You can bring them to life literarily
Your stories make the world better

In this world my stories have no place
I declared with a frown on my face
And nor, for that matter, a place have I
So take your dreams and say goodbye
Begone from my mind, Mary Sue

I know this world has hurt you, she said
Still, you’re not ready to be dead
There’s still more that you can do
Though you can’t see, there’s worth in you
I believe in you, and I’m your friend

What use are imaginary friends, scoffed I
I have no need for pie in the sky
I work all week, and when the week is done
I seek out a little bit of fun
Fun is a thing which I fear is in short supply

We used to have fun, Hermione opined
Back when you had an open mind
There was nothing you couldn’t do
You loved the characters who worked with you
Why would you send us away?

I’m sorry, said I, but no hope remains
Every day of life’s a strain
Although I work many hours and days
I don’t make enough for the bills to get paid
I’m simply too tired to dream any more

Hermione had no more to say
With a tear in her eye she floated away
I was sorry for her to leave
With ambition flown away, I am left to grieve
For the dreams which once gave me pleasure

A world without dreams
Is a dead world
Without promise

~Cie~


Notes:
This is autobiographical, and I am very, very tired.
I will miss this prompt.

Cross-posted to:
dotheflash.blogspot.com
poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com
strandsofeternity.blogspot.com