Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Graham Lester's Poetry Blog: We Shall Live On

Graham Lester's Poetry Blog: We Shall Live On: We shall live on In people far away Who don’t know our names, And don’t need to; In those who feel as we feel, Share our ideals, Rejoi...

In my most recent dream, Kanye West stood there observing me judgmentally as I ran around unable to accomplish anything, and my parents (my father is 10 years deceased) decided to use their gas stove as a storage area for their pots and pans, which I tried to talk them out of doing to no avail. 

It's been a while since I had a dream that wasn't a straight-up manifestation of stress.

Monday, March 29, 2021

Naughty Netherworld Press: Come As You Are Party: Visions of Kanye West: Welc...

Naughty Netherworld Press: Come As You Are Party: Visions of Kanye West: Welc...:   Image by kalhh from Pixabay This is my latest newsletter. If you aren't subscribed, remedy that lapse in judgment. Sign up here! http...


Bartok is right. Stress is a killer. And when you add Kanye West to the mix, you know you're really screwed.




Sunday, March 28, 2021

Come As You Are Party: Dark Hearts Love Too: End of the Road (Kyrielle)

Dark Hearts Love Too: End of the Road (Kyrielle):   Free use image from Pixabay wander across the Universe spilling out my accursed verse I'm carrying my heavy load to the end of life&#3...

Just some thoughts on how this life has been and how it's going 56 years in.

My dreams are haunted by ghosts, stress, and Kanye West.

Yes, Kanye West appeared in my dream last night. 

He didn't do much besides hanging around being Kanye West. 

But since he wasn't invited, I see him as a sign of stress.

Anyway, that's how things are going in my Universe.

Saturday, March 27, 2021

Blow Your Stack Saturday: I'm Not Special or an Inspiration and I Don't Want to Be

Guerrero Words: Dancing… in Ink: The COVID-19 pandemic has stolen a lot from people. It has taken loved ones, work, health, sleep, easy smiles, peace of mind… It has left mi...

I'm a hermit by nature, so isolating doesn't bother me. In fact, even in a town of 154 people, sometimes it's too "people" outside for my liking. 

I mostly have an "it is what is" attitude towards my various physical issues, but I bloody well wish that people would stop calling attention to my walker! 

I bought myself an upright walker so I could walk further without my back and right leg screaming at me. I can now walk a mile in relative comfort if I take brief breaks whereas before the walker I could do a quarter-mile at best. 

I swear sometimes if one more person gives me an "attagirl" when I'm just trying to take a walk in peace, my head will explode so hard that the whole town will be wiped off the map.

I suppose people mean well, but I find it demeaning and the trepidation at being confronted with praise for going out and taking a walk makes me not want to go out. 

I'm just a person taking a walk who has to use a tool so their back doesn't kill them. I don't want special treatment, praise, or pity. I just want to walk in peace.

Anyway, this post inspired me to lay down these thoughts, which means it was thought-provoking, and that's good. So, thank you!

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~




Angry and Ornery
Free-use Image from Pixabay




Friday, March 26, 2021

Dark Hearts Love Too: Small Flies and Other Wings

Dark Hearts Love Too: Small Flies and Other Wings:   Image copyright Brooke Shaden Surreal Photography The poem was also inspired by a painting called Small Flies and Other Wings by Indonesia...

This poem is a metaphor for my thoughts as a sexual assault survivor.

I've been told that I "need to get counseling" to "process my feelings" about what was done to me, but I found that counselors tend to be trained to try and make their clients "normal." I find this a flawed approach or at least one that doesn't work for me. I was never normal in the first place, and, as Thomas Wolfe famously said, you can't go home again. Once you have been sexually assaulted, you will never again know life as someone who hasn't. It's simply not possible. 

Also, I have no desire to revisit the events in question in a group setting. Yes, I know, by "not dealing" with what happened, what happened will deal with me, but it does anyway.

I actually am not abnormally afraid that someone will break in and sexually assault me. I'm not afraid to be out in the dark, although at this juncture I don't see very well when driving at night because of cataracts. Also, I live in the middle of nowhere, so there isn't anywhere for me to be going at night. I'm not afraid of men. I function as normally as anyone with my particular limitations, including physical, neurological, and psychological can.

My brand of weirdness manifests in a need to sleep in a somewhat confined space, up against a wall. Somehow, this makes me feel safer. I also bristle whenever I discuss the times that I was molested, even though decades have gone by. That will never stop. No amount of counseling with someone I'll never feel free to truly be myself with will ever change that.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~


Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay


Thursday, March 25, 2021

The Hidden Self

 

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

This is a response to a post by Pensitivity 101.

https://pensitivity101.wordpress.com/2021/03/22/worlde-230/

I always hated working in an office setting, having to pretend I was someone I wasn't. To a degree, though, the same applied when I was working as a bartender in a casino.

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

Rainbow: a model office worker

Rainbow: a model office worker:                                                                                 Author: Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken 

My neurological makeup made me a poor candidate for office work. I would become severely clinically depressed after a couple of weeks having to adhere to a schedule that necessitated being awake at 4:30 in the morning. The years that I worked in an office setting were among the worst in my life. I always did much better working evening or night shifts, which generally meant doing physically demanding jobs.

Tuesday, March 23, 2021

Dark Hearts Love Too: The Ugly Duckling

Dark Hearts Love Too: The Ugly Duckling:   Free use image from Pixabay The ugly duckling Is actually darling But he wouldn’t know it, you know Exposed to the ignorance Of th...

A new poem about the lifelong scars left behind by bullying.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Becky Flade, Author: Half Price for Every Device #MFRWHooks

Becky Flade, Author: Half Price for Every Device #MFRWHooks: March is National Women’s History Month and March 8 th – specifically – is International Women’s Day! I love to write strong, unique women....

These all sound like interesting stories. I'm probably the odd one out here, but I didn't mind reading just the blurbs although I would not have found excerpts bothersome at all. 

As for a woman I admire, I'm going to say something that is very unlike me because I'm generally quite hard on myself. At the moment, I admire me for not having punched my own ticket as I have wanted to do so often in life. Try though my haters might, they ain't found a way to kill me yet. I'm too obnoxious to go down easy.

Thursday, March 18, 2021

Rainbow Lyrics and Mellow Mushrooms: Rainbow Snippet 3/13/2021

Rainbow Lyrics and Mellow Mushrooms: Rainbow Snippet 3/13/2021:   Rainbow Snippets gives writers a chance to share six sentences (and sometimes a little more) of LGBTQ+ fiction every weekend. Check out th...

His siblings are right. Hard though it might be to know the truth, he needs to listen to them if he wants to know the full story.

My parents didn't like my ex-husband. Back in 1984 when I told them that we were getting an apartment together, my mother accused me of having sex with both him and our roommate, a guy whom I couldn't have been less attracted to, even if I was inclined to sleep around, which I wasn't.

They also turned my brother against me and our relationship has never recovered. 

I try not to use past harms as an excuse to be hateful now. My mother wouldn't even remember these events, not because she has dementia (she doesn't) but because she has selective amnesia and, like the rest of my family, is utterly incapable of wrongdoing. (Yes, that's sarcasm.) 

Also, it's not as though I'm innocent of saying completely horrific shit at times. I grew up listening to my parents shout at each other and at me and my brother. It was "normal" to shout horrible shit when you were angry. When it bothered me, I was admonished to stop being so sensitive. My frustration at being unheard and dismissed, particularly when it came to the trauma I'd endured, made me angry. I became quite deft at slinging my words like projectiles. 

I promised myself that I wouldn't ever yell at my son the way my parents yelled at me. My efforts weren't perfect, and my tendency to scold and lecture damaged my relationship with him. When he was fourteen, I started turning things around. Sometimes I probably take things too far in the other direction, but sometimes the less said, the better.

Parents aren't perfect and I do forgive my parents, but I wish I could patch this shit up with my mother. I know I'll never be able to. She'd only get defensive and I'd end up even angrier. As Stephen King said, sometimes dead is better, but in this case, it's buried in an unquiet grave.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay


Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Life with ADHD

 

Free use image by John Hain on Pixabay

This is a response to a post by Veronica Scott.

https://veronicascott.wpcomstaging.com/2021/03/06/they-know-a-lot-weekend-writing-warriors/

Gorgeous world-building. 

"She shook her head, annoyed at herself for having a scatterbrained mind and thoughts skittering like demented butterflies right now" sounds like the story of my life with ADHD. I've always had people tell me to "just" stop being so scatterbrained, stop daydreaming, pay attention, stop being so self-absorbed. 

The funny thing is, I'm conversely quite capable of hyper-focus. I've only just started learning to accept and work with my ADHD (and myself as a whole, really,) and I'm 56 years old. 

Sorry, I sometimes hyper-focus on a small piece of what I've read if it really grabs me as this sentence did.



Image by Please Don't sell My Artwork AS IS from Pixabay

Note: Today is my brother's 52nd birthday. It is also Saint Patrick's Day. So, happy birthday to one who's a saint and one who ain't.


Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 342: The House at the Crossing 50

Mes crazy expériences: WeWriWar 342: The House at the Crossing 50:   Hello everybody and welcome for a new Sunday of writing with Weekend Writing Warrior and Snippet Sunday !   How are you doing?   ...

Oh my gosh, if I had to deal with three crying babies plus seeing me from alternate universes appearing and disappearing, I think I'd lose what I have left of "it."

I live in a big old house in the middle of nowhere, which I really love. Unfortunately, the parts of myself and memories of my past that I don't really love followed me here, and I've been having nightmares.

Monday, March 15, 2021

Guerrero Words: Monsters in Love

Guerrero Words: Monsters in Love: It scratched its way out the chambers of my heart, whispering, “Close your eyes, my sweet, this night is my gift.” I didn’t always know it, ...

This is fantastic.

In my life, I found that I confused lust and abuse with love more often than not. At this point in my life, I prefer to be without what passes for "love" and wouldn't know what to do with the romantic type of love even if it was real. I prefer platonic friendships and those are difficult enough to maintain.

Sunday, March 14, 2021

Under Glass

 

This is a response to a post by Jim.

https://jimmiehov6.blogspot.com/2021/03/weekly-scribblings-poem-your-dad-trouble.html

I wasn't expecting that ending--quite a one-two punch!

Addiction is still a very misunderstood issue. 

When I was in elementary school, I had a friend who was a preacher's daughter. She was one of those nice Christians who practiced what she preached. I knew far too many of the other kind.

Even though I was still quite religious at that point in my life, I was glad that my father was a professor rather than a preacher.

Saturday, March 13, 2021

VERSES: 788

VERSES: 788: COLLECTIVE GOLIATH There used to be a moon leading like a star would. There used to be people, crowds of them in the auditorium park. Ther...

People are quite gung ho to drop the masks. I feel that this is premature. I'm going to keep wearing mine. I'm disinclined to go among crowds anyway, but I would like to see the eventual return of festivals, at least things like the festivals in the little towns in the area where I live.

Friday, March 12, 2021

Familial Racism

 


This is a response to a post by Rallentanda.

https://rallentanda.blogspot.com/2021/03/weekly-scribblings-61-poets-stories.html

My family is white as paste. One of my cousins married a black woman. One would think that it would be the oldsters who would be appalled, but my grandmother (RIP) simply said "it wasn't done in my day, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done." It was the younger relatives who were awful about it.

The marriage didn't survive. In part because of my cousin's wife's depression after giving birth to conjoined twins who died a few hours after being born, but in greater part because of pressure and lack of support from family.

At my grandmother's funeral, I overheard my other cousins gossiping about my cousin's ex-wife, whom I'd met for the first time and who was trying her hardest to get along. It made me feel ashamed to be part of my family.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay


Thursday, March 11, 2021

Worditude: SCARRED

Worditude: SCARRED:  Wednesday Scribblings, and Magaly asks us to consider broken relationships in this week’s scribblings….a painful place to visit.  I leave i...

I resonate with this. People ask me why I don't "try to find love again." "It's been long enough." "There are good guys out there." 
I am not them and they don't know my pain. I'm better off without it.

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

The Plain Truth

  

Image by Lucija Rasonja from Pixabay

I feel an all too familiar pain in my soul

As I look out through foggy glass surrounded by weathered pane

And realize that I will never be on top of anything

Not even if I take a plane to the stars

It is plain to me that my most troubled relationship

Has always been the one that I have with myself

~cie~


Write a "top" poem

Write about a troubled relationship

This poem was posted to these places:





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Saturday, March 6, 2021

Denise Covey: #WEPff FEBRUARY - 'Woman in Gold', Inspired by 'TH...

Denise Covey: #WEPff FEBRUARY - 'Woman in Gold', Inspired by 'TH...: Hello! Welcome to WEP 2021, the Year of Art . We begin with Klimt's THE KISS. My entry today is taken from my to-be-published-in-2021 no...

A nicely romantic story.

As poorly as I've done with romance in life (I always manage to epically cock things up even when I don't choose terrible partners) I don't understand where my propensity for writing romance for these challenges comes from as it's something that I would run from in reality. This would be quite a feat considering that I have to use a walker for more than very short distances.

Friday, March 5, 2021

If I Had Only...

 


Image by Dina Dee from Pixabay

This is my response to a post by C. Lee Mackenzie.

https://www.cleemckenziebooks.com/wep-kicks-off-2021-with-a-kiss/

As someone who has been sexually assaulted, I resonate with the feeling of wondering what I did to provoke it. Even years after the event, I wonder if maybe I could have prevented it if I had behaved differently at the time.

The image that I chose for the post reminds me of a dream that I had at six years old. In a tomb within a pyramid was a woman wrapped in bandages like a mummy whose body had been cut into perfect cubes, yet she remained alive. Her face had not been wrapped. She was anywhere between 25 - 40 years old. Her eyes were closed and her expression was one of sadness and resignation to her fate. There were at least two men in the tomb with her. I could sense that she felt like she might as well play dead because a woman is not allowed to live her own life, she must live to serve man.

I can't recall being consciously aware of the prevalence of chauvinistic attitudes and the fact that women are always supposed to be pretty and compliant while men can look however they look and do whatever they like, but I suppose that I must have had some awareness of the inequalities that I was destined to face because I was a girl. I wasn't pretty, but I wanted to be. Still, perhaps there was an awareness that being perceived as pretty is a trap too. It sucks to only be desired for beauty.

Even at that young age, I was aware of the way that men looked at women and what they expected of women. My mother did not get to have her name as "Susan Ornery" or even "Mrs. Susan Ornery" on her credit card. The name on the credit card was "Mrs. Roger Ornery." The department stores and credit card companies viewed married women as their husband's property.

At six years old, I had the silly idea in my head that I wanted to have twelve children named after each month of the year. I later altered this to the more sensible idea of having twins, a boy named Glen and a girl named Glenda, because I loved Glen Campbell's song "Rhinestone Cowboy." However, I knew damn well that I never wanted my name on my credit card to be "Mrs. Dick Grayson," even though I was head over heels in love with Burt Ward as Robin. Even if I changed my last name, the first name on my credit card would be my own.

I honestly see that dream as precognitive. I have had a difficult go of things and many of the abuses that I have endured are 100% because I am female and there are a lot of angry males in the world who use women and children as punching bags.

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~



Free use image by Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay