Author Archives: Maggie C

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About Maggie C

Stained glass artist, writer, respecter of life.

NaPoWriMo 2023: Day Two ~ Surreal

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Day Two of NaPoWriMo. 

Today’s prompt is inspired by poet Paul Celan, and asks us to:

“begin by picking 5-10 words from [a specified] list. Next, write out a question for each word that you’ve selected (e.g., what is [fog]?) Now for each question, write a one-line answer. Try to make the answer an image, and don’t worry about strict logic. These are surrealist answers, after all! After you’ve written out your series of questions and answers, place all the answers, without the questions, on a new page. See if you can make a poem of just the answers. You may find that what you have is very beautifully mysterious, and somehow has its own logic. Happy writing!”

The words I chose are: fog, clove, gutter, salt , thunder, ghost, acorn, elusive, and song (not in order of use). Nothing “beautifully mysterious” came of it, but an interesting challenge nonetheless. Herewith:

What Is…

A pig, a dentist and a cup of hot spiced wine.
[Sounds like the beginning of a bar joke];
that which climbs out of empty bottles.

The smell of old sheets, the color of forgotten.
Wrinkled memories calling bs.
What the dog seeks beneath the bed.

There is…
a giant underfoot,
looking straight, but seeing crooked,
[humming] mathematical paint splatters
hung on a fence to dry.

[Don’t turn around lest they be seen,]
pillars crying at being left behind.

April Showers Bring…

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Jules Verne. From the Earth to the Moon. London, Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle, 1873 

It’s April, and we all know what that means: NaPoWriMo!

It’s National Poetry Writing Month, and the well-versed souls at NaPoWriMo.net are once again supplying us with inspiration, motivation and creative prompts to help us in the challenge of writing a poem a day for the entire month of April. I always have the best intentions of meeting the challenge, but sometimes life happens. We’ll see how it goes this year.

For April 1:

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but they never said you can’t try to write a poem based on a book cover — and that’s your challenge for today! 

As a resource, we were sent to The Public Domain Review’s collection “The Art of Book Covers 1820-1914.”

I chose to use a cover to Jules Verne’s book From Earth to the Moon. My endeavor:

To the Moon

When first we breached primordial ooze, 
our lungs inflating from newfound air,
we turned skyward with clouded eyes, and
there it was:

a moon!

We grew a spine (well, some of us),
strengthened lengthening limbs,
climbed mountains and – 
finding our voice – we howled 

at the moon. 

Torsos stretched, gaining balance.
Minds stretched, gaining wherewithal.
Desires stirred beyond mere survival.
Straining upright, we reached yearningly to

touch the moon.

Stripped of innocence, we clothed our bodies.
Sloughing naivete, we cloaked our intentions.
Finding pride, we adorned our personhood.
Growing listless, we set a goal: we would walk

on the moon. 

Scarred and marred from our abuse, at a distance
Earth nonetheless appears a shiny bauble; a marble
expendable in our cosmic game, because we believe
if all else fails, we will simply move 

to the moon.

Half Life

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We likely all know the trope of whether a half-filled glass of water is half full or half empty. In truth, the glass is completely full: half water and half air. Both are vital to our survival. 

Like the cycles of the moon, our lives are said to wax and wane. Coming into my seventh decade, I am by force of nature inarguably waning, and yet my life is full to overflowing. As the cycle continues, I am quite curious as to where I will find myself at my own next new moon. 

whole moon half-hidden

wax and wane like hide and seek

steadfast in the sky

For dVerse prompt: Haibun Monday ~ Mezza Luna

Murmur Murmur

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Well, it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? But here I am, back in Stanza-land, and what better way to come back than a writing prompt from the folks at dVerse? Today, Sarah challenges us to choose from a number of paintings by artist Lee Madgwick, and use the painting as inspiration for an original poem.

I will post the painting below, but first, the poem.

Murmuration:
Murmuration refers to the phenomenon that results when hundreds, sometimes thousands, of starlings fly in swooping, intricately coordinated patterns through the sky.

NPR.org

Murmur Murmur

Murmur, murmur, murmuration.
Endless swirling iterations.
By what compelled? No explanation.
I won’t venture speculation.

Like pointillistic illustration,
a thousandfold their compilation.
As one they dance their presentation,
and none claim “leader” designation.

At dusk they merge, no hesitations;
mingling, calling salutations.
This roiling mass staves off predation
as they scope night’s destination.

Starling flock cooperation;
flights that defy computation.
I murmur my appreciation.
Murmur, murmur, murmuration.

Murmuration, by Lee Madgwick

In the Stars

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I was debating with my daughter the other day as to whether I might be an alien, (something to do with my long toes), and I was reminded of this piece I wrote in 2013 for my original (now defunct) blog. As I am the master of my own blog — if not my own destiny — I decided to post it again. Herewith:

Psychic Revelation

You’re not going to believe this… well, maybe you are. I didn’t at first, but now the notion is kind of growing on me.

You see, I just found out that I’m from another planet. Maybe even another star system. It’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the idea, but it would sure explain a lot.

I had a reading with a psychic yesterday, and among other (very accurate) things, she told me that I was an old soul (I’ve always felt that), and that I was a “star seed.” I’d never heard of a star seed. The psychic indicated that I had a lot of “homework” to do to get up to speed on all of this, so as soon as the reading was over, I ran right to my computer to research the whole matter.

The Sirius Temple of Ascension website tells us that “Star Seeds are beings that have experienced life elsewhere in the Universe on other planets and in non-physical dimensions other than on Earth,” although they may have had previous life times on earth as well.

Old soul star seeds are “Guardians of the earth” and have usually had “hundreds of life times on earth going back to the beginning of humanity” or even the beginning of earth. The life missions of old soul star seeds are “tied into the long term evolution of earth and humanity” and so they have incarnated on earth multiple times to fulfill relevant “projects.” Once the projects are completed, the old soul star seeds discontinue their cycles of lifetimes.

The psychic indicated that my purpose was related to healing. She mentioned Reiki (a form of hands on energy healing) and I told her that I was, indeed, a Reiki practitioner. The conversation somehow got sidetracked there when she said that my cats didn’t want me to give them Reiki because they were evolved beyond that and so they just roll their eyes when I try it on them.

I was so astounded at the idea of my cats rolling their eyes at me that I forgot to pursue the whole old soul star seed topic any further in our discussion. My subsequent research, however, turned up some tests that one can take to determine whether or not they are a star seed. My favorite is the Starseed Quiz. It consists of 100 questions and the nifty part about it is that the computer calculates your score at the end.

Some of the questions that intrigued me:

“As a child, did you have an imaginary friend?” I had three. Didn’t everyone?

“When alone & indoors, have you ever worked or studied in the nude?” That would be a “no” for me. Eww!

“Do you have a blank space/or unusually high level of memory of your early childhood years?” My memory of my whole life is pretty blank, not just my childhood. Not sure what that might indicate.

“Do you like tapioca?” Well, yeah! What’s not to like?

“If offered a choice of meeting a celebrity or an alien ~ would you choose the alien?” I wasn’t convinced this had to be an either/or question. I’d personally like to meet a celebrity alien.

The results of my test indicated that it definitely could maybe be a possibility that I am indeed a star seed.

So what am I going to do with this newfound information? Well, my cats can forget sitting on my lap for Reiki any time soon, that’s for sure. But I may need to do some further investigating into the rest of it. Even though I am poking fun at it, who am I to say what is and isn’t within the realm of Universal possibility?

I mean, tapioca seldom lies.