Tag: Poetry

• Photoshoot

  

  The giant water lily clears rivals
  from the sluggish surface
  by brandishing its pale-spiked bud like a morning star.

  In the cerulean murk, the bud creeps,
  then thrusts upward, emerging
  as a monstrous Aphrodite.

  Well-armed, the bud jets out,
  performs a dizzying choreography
  that makes the water seethe.

  Victorious, the lily bud claims its spot,
  drives spikes into its competition
  as it unfurls,

  a final burst
  of sunlight for life below.
  Staring up at the ribbed structure

  supporting the glass roof.
  The moist air forms crystal drops
  on the sitting baby’s delicate skin

  that contrasts so nicely
  with the scale-like green of the giant lily pad.

  

  March 17, 2023

  nature poetry, Poetry

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• An assembly line robot wants to be a tree

  On the wide factory floor, the shiny floor
  not scuffed by shuffling feet,
  a metal arm stands – bolted.

  For all its permanency
  and never-ending action, the robot arm
  conveys a sadness with the state of affairs.

  And it dreams of entropy … .. . .

  an energy to take hold of the small particles;
  to rearrange them, spinning
  in a somewhat different formation.

  This could have been: cambium cells fed by hormones,
  made by leaf buds,
  passed down through the inner bark;

  which then slowly gives up feeding and turns to protection.
  It builds and builds and protects.
  What do robot arms build?

  It’s a different kind of forest.

  Counting electrons and protons,
  one – two – tree
  Could it still be?

  March 10, 2023

  Poetry

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• After: Relax, you’ve arrived

  Not restricted to poems alone, my After series will also occasionally delve into other sources. This poem was inspired by Just One Thing, a newsletter by Rick Hanson.

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  after Rick Hanson, PhD

  the cup I drink from this morning washes up on the shore
  the eye that receives a sunrise this morning washes up on the shore
  the smile of a friend that lands in my heart this morning washes up on the shore
  I step onto the shore
  leave the unmet
  for now

  March 3, 2023

  Poetry

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• Update on The Summer Book Project

  In the second half of 2020 I started a book-long erasure poetry and collage project: The Summer Book project.

  I have been mining Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book for poetic lines that express the isolation of living with a bewildering chronic illness and the struggle to keep a sense of purpose. This came about after reading a line in the introduction about how “an island can be dreadful for someone from the outside” and how it “has no need of you”. I just couldn’t decide if I’m the person the island has no need of or if I’m the island.

  Progress has been slow, because I’m constantly distracted by a million things. Then there was some growth.

  I wrote a post a while back “Where to go from here“. I talk about how I realised that this victim narrative was keeping me trapped in my discomfort. So now I’m making a conscious effort to draw out the positive instead of the negative.

  I’d like to share some of these newer erasure works with you today 😊

  You can also follow my progress on my Instagram page.

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  February 24, 2023

  bibliotherapy, blackout poetry, chronic illness, Collage, erasure poetry, mental health, mindfulness, Poetry, Poetry therapy

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• Submerged (a poetic personal essay) @ The Winged Moon Magazine

  

  If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you will have noticed that I don’t shy away from writing about highly personal, and often painful, experiences. I suppose my urge to write has come from a need to get a handle on situations that have uprooted me and have sent me on a journey of self-discovery.

  This essay, that was just published for the first time by fellow poet Jai-Michelle Louissen in her Substack magazine The Winged Moon, tells the story of a woman who was set adrift by a creeping chronic illness and a disintegrating relationship. Having grown up on the Belgian coast, I was compelled to use the imagery of a submerged land, called Doggerland, to build a poetic mindscape that mirrored my emotional state during these hard years.

  This essay means a lot to me, because of the subject matter, and also because it’s my first proper lyrical essay (in a braided form, to use technical language). It would mean the world to me if you could go to the magazine and read it.

  You may be asked to sign up with your email, but it’s free to do so!

  I hope you like what you read there! (The other poems and art are absolutely wonderful!)

  READ “SUBMERGED” BY CONNY BORGELIOEN

  February 23, 2023

  chronic illness, lyrical essay, memoir, Poetry

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• Expulsion from the Garden of Eden recast in Taoist thought

  Adam and Eve, happy as fleas in a doghouse
  Glacial, this garden,
  without self-determination
  The mother serpent said it was good

  When Eve took
  the fruit from the tree with roots that go up as well as down,
  like a nervous system,
  like arteries from the heart;
  it was a flea that jumped
  from the rotting flesh of the giant

  Now we swim in the many rivers of earth,
  still together, inseparable

  The lover yearns to unite with their empty spaces
  The child yearns to eat the cyanide pips
  The river yearns to spill into the sea

  But we never left

  There are only beginnings
  for the unborn

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  I know that this poem doesn’t make much sense. You may think it’s absurd, or offensive even. I wrote it as a thought-experiment from the point of view of someone who has catholic roots, only to become uprooted at the age of fourteen. (I stayed seated during communion; I simply refused to join my classmates in the queue to receive the sacrament.)

  Over the years, I have called myself agnostic, atheist, and now I use the wide term spiritual. Like many spiritual Westerners, my spiritualism is a pick-and-mix of Eastern influences, my main beliefs being shaped by Taoism and Zen Buddhism in particular. Almost everything I know about these ancient traditions comes from Western translations and adaptations, which have been accused of being reductive.

  So, this poem is a product of that. Everything that resonates with you, and everything that you object to in this poem, is part of the experience of the poem. Thanks for trying to understand!

  February 17, 2023

  Poetry, spirituality, Taoism

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