Healing, #RDP

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Maybe the prayers aren’t working,

Maybe the prayers aren’t enough.

“Please heal me, Please heal us,

Please let me heal.”

Of course, you must believe you can.

Perhaps it takes more than

a simple plea repeated.

We can reach out to others for strength

We can still affect the world and bring change

Through a broken glass image,

that they think is not whole.

But you see, there’s still beauty in a fractured soul.

Since it still reflects the light,

and still tries with all its might.

A fractured soul is still a soul,

that should never hide itself in a hole.

**Written in response to the Ragtag Daily Prompt word of the day: heal. Visit https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2022/08/23/rdp-tuesday-heal/ for more info. and to see other responses!

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Life’s Ceaseless Circus

(C) 2021, Pamela Schloesser Canepa

My life is a three-ring circus, but someone forgot the popcorn.

I am a performer that sometimes falls at breakneck speed,

Never allowed to simply sit in the stands.

Sometimes I fret over how I have performed…

I sometimes am greeted by smiles, and other times, worry lines.

After a fall, I dust myself off and practice my turns, I can not give up.

Maybe it never slows down, and I’ll need to stay well-rehearsed

Maybe I should call the shots and require performer’s rights

Being a one-woman show who enlists others to join

We’ll dance with elephants and laugh with the monkeys while singing jolly songs

I don’t control this circus, but I can set the tone.

The smile on my face is my choice, the reaction I choose is my dance on the wire.

Two Levels, #poetry

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Two Levels by Pamela Schloesser Canepa (c) 2021

There are two levels of me in everything–

the scared, unsure child and the reasonable adult

comforting her or calming her, reminding of what’s

real and what is a reflection of an anxious mind.

But which is the one that takes off on a flight of fancy?

Which is the one that laughs at an uncomfortable moment,

breaking the tension with a goofy smile?

Which is the intellectual and which is the buffoon?

Ah, but aren’t they one and the same when

I can open up and just laugh at myself?

You see. These two threads are intertwined.

I should deny neither one. I have earned that prize,

my prize for repressing the youthful spirit

when I still had my youth, a consolation prize,

for I had to be good girl, big sister, had to be the wife, and then the mom

restrained by fear or worry or someone else’s view of me.

I had to be what society wanted to see…

and was so afraid to step out of those lines.

I have owed it to myself, I should have claimed it then

But finally now I see it’s my right,

To comfortably own all sides of myself.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

Yada, yada, yada #RDP #amwriting

Monday. I’ve got this!

I woke up and ate breakfast.

Not once did I worry.

Even though I started to get ready, yada, yada, yada, I took my time.

Ever since I got to work, yada, yada, yada.

Dropping papers, yada, yada, yada…

This too shall pass.

Other than that, Monday is passing.

Right now, I’m cheerful

Even though it’s Monday.

Look, we can do this,

Alright?

X Marks the spot. Sign in. Yada, yada, yada.

**Posted in response to the Seinfeld-ish word prompt found at https://ragtagcommunity.wordpress.com/2020/09/14/rdp-monday-yada-yada-yada/

(This was fun)!

By Design #RDP #poetry

“By Design”, (c) 2020 by Pamela Schloesser Canepa

 

You are here by design,

But your every move defines.

 

You might make a million

Or live in a cardboard box

Eating Ramen with holes in your socks

Maybe you’re stuck to the eternal college life

Or settled down with a home and a wife

You may be untethered and wandering free

You may have chosen to simplify and just be

You’re the life of the party or the one serving drinks

To the guy smiling at you, with a nod and a wink

Because he knows…that we are all trapped on this rotating star

We’re happy or lonesome, but together we are

Tasked with burning or nurturing our Earth.

Tasked to choose either death or rebirth,

To watch the fall of each other

Or to reach out and weather this together.

 

 

Waking up.#writephoto

Waking Up (c)2020, by Pamela Schloesser Canepa

 

We were pushed out of our homes.

pushed into the night

a sudden awakening

where there had been no light.

Triggered, incited

forced to move on.

It seemed I breathed fresh air

for the first time ever.

Everyone looked on me in scorn

as I rolled down the window

saying Goodbye forever.

I was what they said I should be

But I’m now my own version of me

Grateful for change when they only

saw catastrophe.

 

In the Nineties. #poetry

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Pexels.com

(c) Pamela Schloesser, 2019

It was the nineties,

I was young, and you were bold,

I just wanted to be told

How beautiful I was.

My brother skated, my mother worried,

And I tried not to seem so smart.

 

It was the nineties;

I just wanted to be cool

and I wanted to be pretty.

I married someone

who was the life of the party.

We were all about

Chinese takeout

and a thirteen inch t.v.

Californians were cooler than us

Moulder and Scully were

more interesting than us.

We’d finish our X-files and takeout

and sit on the back porch

watching for our own aliens.

 

I’d retreat to some Stephen King

you’d escape somewhere partying

with people cooler than I.

You’d always return,

whether I liked it or not;

I was home base.

Whether you walked straight or not

if you howled at the moon or not,

whether you were seeing two or three,

I was still home base.

 

Starting a family didn’t help.

Threatening to leave didn’t help.

It was the nineties and we were

just who we were.

But I didn’t like you interpreting

my place anymore.

 

It was nineteen ninety eight

and time to get things straight.

Growing up is important.

We do what we must do,

and it was time to acknowledge

that I couldn’t grow with you.

 

It was the late nineties

and I’d dashed your world,

split up our family, taken your son.

I was many horrible things

all rolled up into one.

But I walked on that broken glass

with a toddler in my hands

to freedom on the other side.

 

It was the nineties,

and then it no longer was.

A new millenium,

The crossing of a threshold.

I was thirty, and wise

but not at all old.

I look back, glad Iit’s in the past.

But still, I learn when I look back.

**The nineties were an important part of me, and such a very interesting decade on their own.  This timeframe has shown up in my writing, particularly in the book, Detours in Time.  You can find out about this book and series at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711ZW6XF  Thank you for stopping by, and I do hope you will return to my blog.  I offer a little bit of everything here.  Cheers!

 

Word Play. #WorldPoetryDay

I love words

when they gather

in obedient herds

to do my bidding

and make my point,

to let my thoughts be heard.

Though sometimes they serve me

like an unsuspecting dish.

I trip and they unnerve me.

Tongue-tied, I sit quiet

afraid they’ll have me

earning a worm-filled diet.

This is just part of the dance.

I shall never quit,

no, not a chance.

“Word Play” by Pamela Schloesser Canepa. (c) 2018

Morning Mantra. #amwriting #letterstomyself

Photo taken at Jacksonville downtown Artwalk.

(c) Pamela Schloesser Canepa

I want world peace now.

Now is the time, and it starts with me

It starts with children, who taunt and ‘play’ for fun

It starts with adults who point fingers and judge.

It starts with a word. Think before your speak…because that thought starts with intention.

Forget what is said of the road to hell.

Start with your intention. Let it carry you.

Center your goals for today and stop pondering

all that you must do in reaction to yesterday.

Start with love and stop reacting to hate. Respond to vitriol with love. Return to a place of peace and love in your hurt when the building is burning down with hate, panic, or just plain chaos.

Start with love. Let it remain, let it be your home and your escape. Someone may just follow your example.

#letterstomyself #freeverse

U is for Underdog. #AtoZChallenge

Photo courtesy of Pixabay.

Beware the underdog
Who is simply a wolf
In the clothes of the last sheep
He roughed up.

#AtoZChallenge I am blogging for every letter of the alphabet in the month of April. Each post will tell you a little something about me. This one is a free verse poem that is a spin on the old proverb and speaks as to some of my experiences.  I have long befriended the underdog.  Still, when the underdog becomes king of the hill simply due to his victim story, don’t be the one who put him there.  Especially if he stepped on you to get there.  Was it his main aim to simply be king?  Then he’s not too concerned with the other underdogs, and there are plenty in this world.  Nothing original in these thoughts here; it’s a story as old as time itself.  Steeped in metaphors.

Each day I will write something based on the next letter in the alphabet.  It’s been fun so far, yet it has really given me a chance to pause for reflection as well.

Want to know more about the A-Z blog challenge?  Visit http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com