November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 28: Grateful

Image by Matthias Cooper from Pixabay

grateful for what's here

a town far from everything

life in an old house

impossible dreams fade out

bittersweet acceptance in

~Cie~

Notes:

Today's November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt asked for a Gratitude poem.

People, you know me. I am not the sort to write heartwarming, Chicken Soup for the Soul, grateful for God and family and Better Homes and Gardens type poetry. I am an agnostic curmudgeon, and the only miracle here is that I'm still alive. They ain't found a way to kill me yet, and neither have I. I believe there is something that survives the death of the corporeal body, and I believe there are advanced spiritual forces which could be termed higher powers. I don't like the Church God, and although I'm willing to judge his followers on a case by case basis, I tend to be mightily skeptical of them.

I was raised Catholic and am the black sheep of a family that tried way too hard to keep up appearances. Today is the ninth anniversary of my father's passing. Although we had a sometimes contentious relationship and he passed his own insecurities down to me, he was a devoted father and I love him. I am glad he isn't suffering anymore. The last five years of his life were increasingly difficult. In the end, he really wasn't himself anymore.

I want to call my mother today. My mother is a loyal person who is too wrapped up in keeping up appearances to see the damage that mindset does. She has no idea who I actually am or what I'm really doing because anytime I have tried to tell her, she shuts me down and criticizes me, so I just let her think what she wants.

My brother and I were once the greatest of friends but now have a civil but distant relationship. 

I love my son with all my heart and soul. There are some hurts from the past from when my mental illness was as yet undiagnosed and my behavior was chaotic.

Leonard Cohen wrote the line "It's Father's Day and everybody's wounded."

I think the same could be said for most holidays.

If you're having a Better Homes and Gardens Thanksgiving, that's great, and I hope you enjoy it. I would just ask that you realize that this is not the case for everyone, and those of us who are unable to have Shiny Happy Holidays are not bad people or just feeling sorry for ourselves for attention. The hurt is real.

Just to lighten the load a bit, here's one of my favorites:

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 28: Broken Pieces

Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, Sunshine

You see, I'm feeling discouraged today

You see, my obsessive-compulsive, bipolar, attention-deficient brain

Is not complying with this idea of acceptance

You see, my quivering fuckery of a personality is feeling anything but precious

Some days she can fool herself that she's healing

That she's regaining her strength

Today is not that day

And tomorrow isn't looking so hot either

Do not come 

To my run-down, battered, dilapidated, war-torn house in the bad part of town

Looking for a bright beacon of light

Or some fucking Hallmark Channel story about the horrible old hag

Who was cured of her mental illness

And suddenly became young and pretty

You will not find her here

On the wrong side of the Cosmos

Swilling her bitter bitches brew

Wondering if today is the day when she walks off down the road

Into the cold

And lets nature take its course

Like it should have long ago

I have some bad news for you, Sunshine

Today is not that day

And tomorrow is not looking so hot either

All bad things must come to an end

But today is not that day

Maybe tomorrow

Who the hell knows?

In the meantime, I sip my bitches brew

And try to kill off the remaining feelings

Wherever they may hide

Deep inside

The toxic moonlight bipolar negative blacklight supernova

That lies at the very heart of me

~Cie~

Carpe Diem Weekend Meditation #106: Turn Back Time: Flourishing Plum Blossoms in the Moonlight

Image Source

Here is the original poem for today's revision exercise.

arranging the plum-flowers,
I would enjoy them in the light of the lamp,
as if in the moonlight

© Taigi (1709-1771)

Here is my follow-up:

muse's promise leads to
lonely life of poverty
and head full of dreams

~Cie~

Notes:

I'm invoking the right to poetic expression here. My verse was inspired by this paragraph rather than directly by the featured poem.

"The original of the above haiku is even more difficult, literally: "arranging the plum, as if the moon, I would savour, lamp-light" (Wabiru translated 'enjoy', 'means' to live a life of poetry in poverty). The poet has arranged the flowers in a vase, and wishes to see them in the light of the moon, but there being no moon, he lights the lamp instead, and adds its light to the poetry and the beauty of the flowers."

I am sitting in a room which looks like a construction zone in a cold house with no working furnace, an old comforter wrapped around my legs and feet. I am wearing two pairs of socks. My hands are chafed and red from the cold. I have a space heater, which is cranked up to 90, but the little area I'm sitting in won't warm past 55, and it feels colder than that.

You know those damn Hallmark channel type movies about the romance writer living in genteel poverty, chipping devotedly away at her novel until G.Q. Cover Model Guy sweeps her away into a life of luxury and she becomes a best-selling author?

I have some bad news for you, Sunshine.

Those movies are bullshit.

Committed writers are more likely to be like me and my literary heroes H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.

We're committed to writing because otherwise, we'd be committed to the mental hospital, and ain't nobody wants to go there.

We're introverted, socially maladjusted, depressive, and will likely die in poverty, perhaps achieving posthumous fame at a later date.

The reality for our sort is much more likely to end like a Lovecraft or Poe story than a Hallmark Channel romance: poverty, death, and possibly delirium at the end of it all.

This has been your Spot of Cheer for this episode of "Cie is a Fucking Depressive Hag, Never Have Tea With the Gloomy Bitch."

OctPoWriMo 2019: Day 9: What My Eyes Saw

I Blinked and the World Was Gone

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

My eyes saw that in the end

Everything was just a lie

Seeing is not believing

Hearing is deceiving

Truth is but a silent sigh

Perspective nothing but perception

Reality is, on one hand, subjective

And on the other hand as objective

As a knife to the spine

My eyes are but windows

To the lies my soul tells

~Cie~