Category: Things I Know for Sure

Failure, Writing & Haiku

July 22, 2017

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill.

I’ve set new writing goals for myself. 30 minutes a day every day. Three days a week on poetry, four days a week on prose — the current work in progress. No matter what, without fail, and other writing doesn’t count for those thirty minutes.

Yesterday, or by the time of this post, the day before I wrote this post, which is not one and the same because I work on scheduling posts rather than waiting until I am under the gun. I don’t deal well with that pressure although a good deadline is great.

‘SQUIRREL!’

Yesterday was focused on poetry. I’ve been working on a poem for a while and it’s not coming together. The lack of progress, my failure to successfully finish the piece so I could edit it, started to work on my internal chatter. “You’re not good enough.” “You’re a joke.” “You can’t do this.” I refer to this crap as, “Bridge Troll Dialogue.” (My childhood story is the Norwegian tale. See the link.) The negativity interferes with my goals.

One way for me to combat the poison is through various mantras. Your mileage may vary with this, and it all may be too woo-woo for you. Find what works and use it ruthlessly. My current mantra calms my emotional seas every time I read it.

“Just getting the words down on paper, opens me up to everything else.” ~ Maria Powers

The other way for me to beat back at the chatter and the fear is Haiku.

Tiny poems, three lines, 5/7/5 syllabic pattern. There’s more to them than just that, but for my purpose, I focus only on the basics of the form. The very essence of this form is what stops the blocks. Poetry may not work for you, but perhaps a short-short story will, or writing a scene that’s been playing in your head, or whatever gets you writing again.

The items below are the five Haiku that unfolded from being stymied on the other piece.

It’s all good.

Tree swept highways run
endless. Shore to shore — burnt tar
perfumes summer suns.

Oranges and cloves hint
at holiday spice filled dreams.
Heat slaps you awake.

Habits force your life
to open expectations.
Endlessly freeing.

Inspiration stabs
against the black cavern light.
Practice slams genius.

Clouds scuttle across
the ocean colored skyline.
Love blinds each of us.

What I know for sure is that each of us creates our own lives through what we see, what we do, what we act upon. We do this intentionally or accidentally. We decide if failure stops us or is just a curve on the road to success.

I choose success. Now back to my goals. Today is thirty minutes on the current work in progress.

“Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.”
― Gordon Parks

M.L. Seager is my poet alter-ego. I’ve been writing poetry since I was eleven. It’s my gateway drug into writing, and it’s where I feel the most at home. For me, poetry is the snapshot, the shot of a moment in time, a captured fleeting second of life that speaks eternally across the universe. It is where I go to be renewed again.

Peanut Butter & Jelly

July 15, 2017

“Peanut butter and jelly just go together,”
I said, “or at least they do for Americans-”

“Unless they’re allergic and have to carry an epi pen in case they even smell a peanut,”
He interrupted.

He always interrupted, interjected, and colored
my thoughts with his opinion to make me more him,
my thoughts more his, to claim me as him,

Or so I thought.

One day he was no longer the peanut butter to my jelly.
He left to become the meat in a different sandwich,
but I’d never known he was meat.
I thought he was the nuts to my fruit.

I thought he was my nuts.
His nuts mine, and my fruit his.
Together forever, love incarnate as a couple
separate, equal, interdependent,
better for each other.

Sometimes.

His opinion no longer colored mine or covered my thoughts
with the debris of his mental gyrations.
He no longer twirled his influence reining me into his orbit
to control, to end my wanderings and flights of fantasy
across universes unknown, created by me for me.

One day I was no longer the jelly to his peanut butter,
no longer his fruit, no longer ours, no longer his,

No longer.

Born again from the ashes of my grief
I twirled alone, stronger, changed from the us
and the me before the us.

New worlds loomed, blossomed, bloomed
in the ashes of my grief that had uprooted
the flower of his lying, dying love.

“Grief and love are like peanut butter and jelly,”
I said, “they just go together.”

And there was no one to interrupt me.

By M.L. Seager

Love Alone Is Not Enough

July 8, 2017

I am a reader and writer of romance.

I love, love
in all it’s pretty colors of pinks and reds, passion and flowers.

Love alone is not enough
to tell or make a story.
It’s the pretty part.

It’s the part that makes you sigh, that touches your heart, that allows the exhale.
It’s the part that makes you wet and wild, moist and hard,
nipples and clitoris turgid with desire for the newest, latest lover
inside or out of a book and my bed.

I love, love.

Love alone is not enough
because it doesn’t clean up the cat vomit or the shit inside or out of the kitty litter box.
Love alone doesn’t take out the trash,
but it does make trash removal easier.

Between the sheets of paper, and on my bed, love makes the world-go-round;
fireworks explode because of love, even if it is just the lie of love.
Love helps clean up the ugly and paint over the betrayal of life.

Sometimes.

Love alone cannot make whole cloth from rags, rope and string
even when I sweat and bleed to weave it all together, love alone is not enough.

I love, love and its power to redeem the unredeemable,
to make the horrible understandable,
even if it will never be acceptable.

I am a reader and writer of romance.
I love, love.

Love alone is not enough
to end the shadows, to wipe away the pain,
the loneliness and the sorrow,
but love will dress all of that up.

And make the unbearable,

Bearable again.

By M.L. Seager