Wishing On Stars

I Fear

Posted by Raivenne on June 7, 2012
Posted in: Hyde Park, Poetry, Poets Rally, The Past, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , . 6 Comments

I fear a love which fills my heart is slowly draining away
But taking the next step is one that hurts far too much
Now I have given up in believing in dreams that come true
When the secrets known to capture time are beyond my grasp

I am so afraid that someday there won’t be anything
That his caress will not be even a distant memory
Let alone the minutiae details of just our daily living
I fear a love which fills my heart is slowly draining away

I dared to dream I’d remember every aspect for all time
But what hold have I a mere mortal against all eternity?
I know this slow erasure is part of the steps in moving on
But taking the next step is one that hurts far too much

I need his kindred touch to remain locked deep inside me
Always a part of my soul as I believed with each breath
When our every want and dream seemed just a day away
Now I have given up in believing in dreams that come true

Yes, I need his kindred touch to remain locked deep inside me
For I dared to dream I’d remember every aspect for all time
Now I am so afraid that someday there won’t be anything
When the secrets known to capture time are beyond my grasp

<>==========<>==========<>

You know me and forms, today it is a Cascade.

In a Cascade a poet creates the initial stanza then takes each consecutive line from that first stanza and makes those the final lines of each stanza afterward. If the first stanza is sextet, then the complete poem will have seven stanzas. A tercet results in four stanzas and so on. Beyond that, there are no additional rules for rhyming, meter, etc.

Thursday Poets Rally Week 69

 

For A.J.

Posted by Raivenne on May 21, 2012
Posted in: Just Me, Being Me, Life in the Fat Lane, The Present, Thinking Aloud, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

I did not think anything could bring me down from my “I’m Going To Paris!” high. The excitement for the trip has grown by leaps and bounds this past week and now it’s only two days away. Even the dreary rainy Monday morning that greeted me couldn’t get me down.

Then I read about A.J. …

A.J. Confessore, for those who would not know, had a larger-than-life costumed alter-ego known as C.C. Banana. This included several subsets such as Bananakin Skywalker when interviewing in the Star Wars circuit and Ace Peeley when in the KISS realm.

A.J. also had another well-known costumed alias, Maul Stanley. Maul Stanley was a wicked merging of two of his favorites Star Wars (Darth Maul) and KISS (KISS member Paul Stanley). However, most knew him best as C.C. Banana. C.C. was infamous, in the fringes of the heavy metal crowd for his irreverent and often snarky, interview style.

A.J.’s alter egos: Maul Stanley being interviewed by C.C. Banana as Bananakin Skywalker.

A tiny sense of his wicked humor – at a party where the theme was “Gone but Not Forgotten” he appeared as thus:

C.C. Banana as “Banana Nicole Smith”

There’s a party happening this Memorial weekend. It’s the type of function where he would have made such an appearance as C.C.  I know there will be a moment of silence for him, which is odd for the energetic A.J. was anything but. Granted, he wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but C.C. Banana had his appeal (appeal get it? C.C. would have loved that pun).

In other circles, A.J. as himself was also known for his outgoing personality and zany humor as well as for his support and Fat Activism in producing the CD Whole Lotta Love, An All Star Salute To Fat Chicks, a unique musical montage celebrating the Big Beautiful Woman.

A.J. at the CD release party for “Whole Lotta Love”

A.J. was always gracious and funny and gave his all as C.C./Maul and himself.

As I wrote on his Facebook an hour or so after I learned of his death this morning:

“Bananakin Skywalker + Ace Peeley + Maul Stanley + CC Banana = A.J. Confessore.

Logically my head processes what has happened, but my heart cannot reconcile the lively force that created such irreverent characters and gave a Whole Lotta Love to us all, lost that joy for himself. R.I.P. A.J. you will be missed.”

Knowing why he chose to end his life in my head and understanding why in my heart are very two different things. It’s so many hours later and I sit here still unable come to grips with the loss. The C.C. I know would pull some gallows humor from this and a part of me that usually can crack a snark at damn near anything feels as though I’m somehow failing his spirit in my inability to do so now.

I’ve returned to his Facebook page a couple of times today to read all the heartfelt comments of so many who have felt his love whether for just a few moments at a party as C.C., for few years as A.J. or for many years as Tony (as his nearest and dearest know him). It’s crying shame he could not feel all this love for him in return to help him through.

R.I.P  Anthony Joseph Confessore – you made us tear up in laughter, I wish that was why we cried now.

Two Sides

Posted by Raivenne on April 19, 2012
Posted in: dVerse ~ Poets Pub, Love, Meeting the Bar, Poetry, The Past, The Present, Thinking Aloud, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 18 Comments

All day and night that is all
I want of you – I
Want with a want so deep that “want”
Is too trite a word – this is
To me my very breath – to
Be in this love is to be
Yours and only yours
Forever and forever

All you ask of me, I ignore all
I submit easily to your succor but I
Want so little of what you want
Is this all there is?
To simply enjoy it for now – to
Be something temporary – to be
Yours and only yours
Tonight, but only for tonight

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Playing around with two forms  1) Word Acrostics (the first word of each line forms a phrase) and 2) Serpentine (each line of verse beginning and ending with the same word), throw in opposites to tell a familiar tale and even have a little something of a shape – I think I’ve achieved balance.

dVerse Poets Pub | Balance-dVerse Meeting the Bar

Living For the Art Of It..

Posted by Raivenne on March 2, 2012
Posted in: Just Me, Being Me, Slice of Life - Two Writing Teachers, The Past, The Present, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . 5 Comments

Last night I had the pleasure to enjoy Left On Red (two beautiful, talented young ladies I am happy to call friends), perform at The Bitter End. As I sat there, bopping my head, humming along, I marveled at how my life had changed artistically.

I grew up in a home where the arts were not appreciated. My father truly could not have cared less. While my mother did enjoy a pretty picture, at least  as much as the next person, that was the end-all.be-all of her interest. Karma in, full bitch mode, lands her a daughter that adores music, creative writing and drawing. I was attempting pointillism and abstracts, metaphors and onomatopoeia a good decade before I ever heard the terms. Her favorite form of punishment was to break my pencils and tear up anything hanging on my walls. Eventually, I learned to stop  trying.

In fact, I learned it so well, that I was with my late-husband for about five years before he had any inkling I could draw. Still, I lived a relatively closed life at the time and really had no other creative people in my life.  Of course, being a mother, wife, worker etc., life itself got in the way. Okay, that’s not true, I let life get in the way. It was much easier to say I don’t have time for that nonsense, than to pick up a pencil and see if I could still do any of it. Other than painting a mural on a closet door (that’s how my late-husband final discovered my dirty little secret), I did practically nothing for nearly twenty years. Then one day in frustration with my life, I picked up a pencil and started writing. That writing turned into the first poem I had written since high school Somewhere. It was a start, but then — nothing.

It took a couple more years and the internet to finally kick-start my writing into high gear. I entered an online poetry challenge on a website that required you to write a poem based on a given phrase. I did not win, but for the first time in my life, my words were praised by people who were not related to me and whose talents I enjoyed and respected. The dam burst. Within, two years I had written nearly one hundred poems. Now I have no idea how many I’ve penned, I stopped counting after four hundred. Not all of them are gems obviously, but they are all mine.

Unlike some artistic types, I realize now I cannot live in an artistic vacuum. Like misery, my art loves company. Which is why it amuses to no end, that while my childhood was a dearth of creativity, my adulthood now overflows with it. In the past few years, I have found myself surrounded by artists. People with amazing talents and several with the guts to go for it as their life pursuit. Singers, sculptors, painters, spoken word etc. It is a complete 180 turn of events and I am loving it! Granted, I have not picked-up painting/drawing again, the way I picked up writing, but every now and then, I feel little tinges of that urge starting to take hold, so who knows…?

Someday you may own an original Raivenne artwork. You can show it off along with the hardbound edition of my poems. Go ahead and name drop that you knew me when I was just a simple web blogger among the masses.

I won’t mind.

>========<

Visit the rest of today’s Slices of Life over at Two Writing Teachers.

SOL - Slice of Life March Challenge 2012

SOL - Slice of Life March Challenge 2012

Soulmates

Posted by Raivenne on January 9, 2012
Posted in: Just Me, Being Me, Love, Soul, The Funny SIde, The Present, Thinking Aloud, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 9 Comments

I have friends who are in long-term with their mates.
I have friends who have just had their hearts broken.
I have friends who made the decision to be the heart breaker.
I have friends who cannot be so bothered with the pursuit and choose celibacy.
I have friends who will not be so bothered with it, but are not choosing to be celibate.
I have friends who are looking so hard for theirs; they are completely deaf to the Klaxons of desperation, which are blasting the eardrums of everyone else around them.

And for what? The Soul-mate (cue echo machine).

To many, the soul-mate interpretation of love is not an interpretation, it is not a myth, and it is not modern. Rather, it is The Way It Is, and the way it always has been.

* presses play on effin_sappy-assed_violins_and_fireworks.mp3 *

Find “The One” and you will be happy.
Find “The One” and your whole life falls into place.
Find “The One” and no pursuit, no passion, no love could be any greater than the love you feel when you finally embrace your soul-mate.

Ah, the amazing powers of the SOUL-MATE
(music crescendo – doves flying – sun shining – heavens parting – angels singing… you get the drift)…

Oh bollocks already!

* And insert record-scratch.mp3 here *

I personally have always had a problem with that theory – it is too damned easy. Everyone wants the easy way out, or more specifically the easy way in love and guess what? It don’t work that way. Yes, this very poet who has dozens of words expounding on the very subject of the perfect romantic love within this very blog said it. Slap on a pair and deal with it, I got more.

Everything worthwhile having gives you some crap, if not out right hell. “The One” is no different.

Contrary to what popular romantic theory (aka TV – Movies – Music – Poetry), would have you believe, meeting your soul-mate doesn’t guarantee “happily ever after.” Things don’t always get easier when you find that special someone and in fact, they might get even harder from time to time.

Let’s face it, even in the Disney-fied fairy tales most of the lovers either went through the “I can’t stand him / her” stage before they fell in love or had to tackle some major shit (and sometimes both), before the happily-ever-after finally kicked in. And are we really sure about that happily-ever-after? I mean Princess Aurora has been asleep for one hundred years! Can you imagine Aurora’s stress on having to suddenly get up-to-date on fashions (oh gurl that gown is so last century!) and modern conveniences (a chamber pot in its own room M’Lord? How divine!) while Phillips is busy still trying to maintain the apparent duties of being heir apparent? (Seriously babe, I couldn’t give a dragon’s fart on whether you wear the pink or blue bustle.)

Okay fine, let’s jump the fairy tales up a century or two:

Yes, Edward Lewis (Richard Gere) and Vivian Ward (Julia Roberts) fall in love in Pretty Woman, but we aren’t there after the screen fades to black to see how the multimillionaire and former prostitute try to make their relationship work past the fire-escape. You know Philip Stuckey (Jason Alexander) the only other person who knew (and not in Edward’s best graces), blabbed that tidbit of her previous employment all over the place, which I am sure was taken oh so well by the other ladies in their snotty little society.

Hell, let’s jump another couple of decades forward to Sex and the City (the television show). Carrie and Big went through years of bullshit (and other lovers), before they got their act together. Years. Yet no one denies those two are soul-mates.

In Sex and the City: The Movie 1, Carrie reads the story of Cinderella to one of her best-friend Charlotte’s young daughter, Lily. At the end of the story, she looks at the little girl and says, “You know this is just a fairy tale, right sweetheart? Things always don’t happen like this in real life”

Let’s stick with our modern-day fairytale princess Carrie Bradshaw for just a tad moment longer. Even after she and Big are married – they learn, in Sex and the City: The Movie 2, with even a love as grand as theirs (*barfing.mp3 *), it ain’t always easy keeping the magic going.

Falling in love, as hard as it sometimes is, is the easy part. Staying in love is work.

The problem is few want to work. Thus, I reiterate my sentence from above…

Everything worthwhile having gives you some crap, if not out right hell from time to time. “The One” is no different.

Ultimately, a soul-mate is someone you can grow with, and the only way to grow together is to face challenges together and challenges are work.

And here is where I’m really gonna set fire to the rain…

Nearly, everyone says and thinks of a soul-mate as the all-encompassing, be all and end all romantic type of love.

I propose a person can have more than one soul-mate and while a soul-mate is always, someone you want to share the rest of your days with, a soul-mate is not necessarily or solely the person you also want to share your bed with for the rest of your days.

But that thought is a blog for another day…

For Amy

Posted by Raivenne on July 26, 2011
Posted in: Just Me, Being Me, The Present, Thinking Aloud, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , , , , . 2 Comments

The first time I heard Amy Winehouse’s voice was on the Soundtrack of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, with her mellow, but nonetheless beautiful cover of Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.


I loved her then, strictly on the merits of her talent. It was a good year before I learned about Winehouse’s first LP Frank, cementing my love of her voice even more.  Then came Back to Black. I had You Know I’m No Good on my personal replay the way every one is now currently loving/bitching on Adele’s Rolling in the Deep. Amy was somewhere in a world only Janis, Billie and Ella could touch previously and people had taken notice. Amy could have taken that talent anywhere. Regrettably, as it seems with so many of the really great ones, she had her demons and they took her first.

Learning of her death Saturday gave me pause. I have learned, for the most part, not to read the comments section on most online editorials. Somehow, the shock of it made me temporarily forget and I was quickly reminded why I avoid such. The public never fails to disappoint in how vicious it can be at such a time. For every heartfelt RIP there were numerous “well no surprise there” type comments. And I have no words that would fully encompass the anger felt for the anonymous douche(s) that chose such a time to lay blame to Amy’s parents for not doing enough and to riff on “Rehab“.

Was the way she died a surprise? No. Was still a tragic shame? Yes.

I read various online articles. I was a little dumbstruck by it at first. I was waiting…for the retraction…waiting to read that it was a mistake, a hoax.  I really expected to someday relatively soon to read, hear that she was getting better.  That she was in the studio recording. That her new single/CD would be out. I was waiting…

From my Facebook, after I read the news, on Saturday:

Oh Amy, I was really pulling for you to prove all the naysayers wrong and come back swinging. May you now rest in peace in the afterlife that you were not able to find in the too short 27 years of your life here on earth.

I really was waiting for her to take that one cleansing breath. You know the one, when you know you’ve hit rock bottom, it can’t possibly get any worse, so you just breathe. In that breath comes a clarity that gets you to do nothing more than take another breath, but that first breath is the cleansing breath of hope that says you can do this/get through this as long as you’re breathing.

Alas, days later, I sit here with my iPod, breathing through various Winehouse singles, duets etc shaking my head at the loss of the woman, the talent, the potential that could have been Amy, who I will still love tomorrow and I can’t help but think…

Just one more breath Amy, it might have been the one …

After-cation

Posted by Raivenne on July 21, 2011
Posted in: Just Me, Being Me, The Funny SIde, The Past, The Present, This World Needs An Enema!, Wishing On Stars. Tagged: , , . 6 Comments

I just returned from an eight day vacation in Las Vegas and saying it was AWE-SOME really just doesn’t cut it. However, it is now official. Two days back at work and I am in the midst of a serious post-vacation funk. And let me tell you, the rumored funk is so very real and is near inevitable in the life of any vacationer.

All the fun I spent months planning for, saving for and laid awake with great night-before-Christmas anticipation for is… over. The photographic proof of my good time is now on my Facebook and the laundry is out of the suitcase, in the hamper, waiting to be done.

Mind you, this funk does not occur overnight. It is something that seeped into my conscience slowly and before I knew it I was completely mired in it. Yet it feels that all of a sudden I am knee-deep in the reality that I are not: A. Independently wealthy, or B. Free from that most horrid obscenity called Work… with a capital “W.”

When I first arrived home, a tired traveler comfortably surrounded by the familiar sights, scents and sounds of my belongings, I couldn’t help but experience that warm There’s No Place Like Home feeling of sleeping in my own bed. Oh, the bliss!.

Then next yesterday comes, I’m back at work and it is a flurry of activity. I am answering emails, returning calls with a well-rested glow that only a true getaway vacation and not a stay-cation can provide. I’m still in the chillaxin’ zone that comes from spending eight days swimming, partying and just being in Vegas baby. By the third recounting of the details of my grand fun I am progressively losing my voice through the chain-smoking hooker stage straight through to Macy Gray with laryngitis. By 9:15 am I have concocted the following sign:

Granted, work expects that I will be “at the top of your game” since I’m so well-rested, when in reality my head is still in the pool (or on the Vegas Strip, or at any of the various parties), minor gaffs are hopefully forgiven. Hey, it took a solid minute and a half to remember my log on password and you want a briefing on what?

Day two brings with it the mofo that is Reality (with a capital “R.”). The alarm sounds for the second time since I’ve been back and I remember that this was why I went on vacation in the first place – to escape that frackin’ alarm and the daily grind that follows it.

Day two is the same as the day one, only worse. The alarm clock goes off like a Star Trek red-alert reminding me that yesterday was not a fluke or a bad joke. I. AM. HOME. And it is only Thursday. I’ve already begun the self-flagellation of: “Where Was I Exactly One Week Ago?” Let me tell you, it is no where near as enjoyable in retrospect as “Where Will I Be In One Week” was a fortnight ago in anticipation.

Sigh…

I’m beginning to entertain flights of fancy about how I might achieve the life of a full-time vacationer. What if I just disappeared? Is it too late to get a degree in Recreation or Hospitality and Tourism Management? How much DO they pay those people who change sheets and fold towels into the awesome animal shapes, anyway? In the interim – I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.

They say that there are five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and finally Acceptance. They are not necessarily experienced in order. The bereaved might vacillate between the five for several weeks or months languishing for a time at one stage or another. So far I think I have experienced all of them and it has yet to be three days.

I know by Monday I will be resigned to my fate and will have quietly accepted my life just the way it is, but I do not like it. I can’t seem to stop playing the “Where Were You Exactly One Week Ago Today?” game. Every time I look at the CSI:The Experience highlighters I purchased and brought to work to remind me what a great time I had there – I want to cry.

Is it wrong that I have not been back a solid three days and I am already plotting my next escape?