Gone With Fairies

 

There is an incline in the forest where bluebells blossom, dense as grapes, heady as lilac. I stretch out on my back. Green stems, like octopus tendrils, tangle my hair. The land shifts perpendicular.  Down, down I slide, damp earth brushing my elbows. I land with a soft jolt onto ripe grass. The smell is beetroot, radish and earthworm.

Consider magic.

Underground rogues, fey and trolls

guard hidden treasure

beneath marbled walls. They keep

secrets, bargain dark wishes.

 

From a fog, metallic as pyrite, they emerge.  Blue skin, sapphire eyes that stare still as stone. One of them hands me a violin.  Aged from wear and tear,  its wood is warped, strings stretched.  With a rickety bow, I play.  Joyful noise spills from my fingers.

And yet.  I do not know a single note.

 

**NOTE: This poem is in response to Colleen’s Poetry Challenge/ Fairy Magic.  It is my first attempt at Haibun.  (Not sure I did it right, but hope you like 🙂  )

Happy Summer Solstice! “Always go with fairies.”

 

 

 

 

Six Word Story (candles)

 

Elegant tapers summon spirits, illuminating obscurity.

 

 

 

 

Mother

 

She is the first

pink smile, bright force, propagator of all

Humanity. She

has but one egg, he a thousand sperm

and for that they place her

on a pedestal

of impossibility

only

to knock her down again and again.

 

She weeps. She bleeds. Endures

a maze of obligations in simple

Obscurity. Her work is the hardest, her task Divine

sandwiched between the pure Maiden

and waning Crone.

 

Not all are mothers, but all have a mother.

On this day, honor yours.

 

 

Magnolias (a haiku)

 

So much is said by

Magnolias climbing , striving

Into April skies

 

 

 

To Criticize

 

We can’t blame them. After all,                                                                                                               we pay them to criticize.

Art critics, film critics, literary critics, television critics, political critics, critical analysts

Anyone

will criticize anything                                                                                                                                      even things they know

nothing

about. Confuse with configuration baffle with banter solidify with soliloquy debase with damnation

And so in the end

no one knows                                                                                                                                                how t0 feel                                                                                                                                                      about anything.                                                                                                                                              That is Precisely

the point

 

 

 

Not Princess Leia!

 

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. You don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” — Carrie Fisher

There are very few celebrity deaths that bring me to tears, but this one did.

I will always love Carrie/ Leia — a badass girl who, in dangerous situations proved herself to be no damsel in distress. She brought a new paradigm for the traditional fairy tale princess. Even Disney took a clue.  After Leia came the likes of Asian warrior Mulan, along with the super-smart Belle, Scottish Brave-girl Merida, ice queen Elsa and the wounded but loving Malificent.  They were  all radicals who cared more about helping their families and contributing to society’s greater good than they did about ball gowns, riches and marrying handsome princes.  Gone were the sleeping beauties, in were the new feminists.  Princess Leia set an important precedent.

To me, Carrie and Princess Leia are forever intertwined.  Carrie pulled off the role splendidly, and spoke to generations of girls. In real life she was a warrior too, defying conventions and taking on the taboos of addiction and mental illness. Her books were bittersweet, tragically hilarious.  Carrie Fisher was a brave, funny, frank and fantastic woman.

Star Wars may be fiction, but to many of us it is very real. The Force is forever with us. There are psychological/ Jungian/ collective subconscious reasons for its popularity. Deep within the human psyche lurks a longing for the righteousness of myth.

Just ask the late great Joseph Campbell, a professor of mythology who spent a good deal of time on George Lucas’ ranch.  He’ll give you an earful! Here is a short sample:

 

Some great Carrie moments that sum it all up:

 

Farewell sweet princess, you will not be forgotten. We will look for you among the stars, the Pleiades and Milky Way, walking the sky and mining the truth as you are wont to do.