In Retrospect

I don’t know why I keep doing it.
Posting poetry, I mean. For nearly eleven years
I’ve been involved with critique forums, praise forums,
doodle forums, this and that forums, and for much of that time,
I’ve dealt with the most ridiculous nonsense one could imagine
on this planet. By faceless people who seemingly want to tear me to shreds.
Way back in 1999 I thought, what a wonderful venue! The nicer I am,
the worse it gets. I don’t deal with it anymore. I either leave or simply
ignore it. I love the craft of poetry but not the competition and the game
some play. I won’t do it.

Feedback! But not without a price. It’s the same old same old
no matter where I go and no matter how long I’m there.
Nice as nice can be and with more sugar and spice than anyone
could possibly want without going into a diabetic coma. Doesn’t matter.
Someone is going to come along with an ego the size of the State of Texas
and blast me for simply existing.

But life is far more paramount in its meaning for me to even let it matter.
I’m only writing about it because it doesn’t! I’ve made a few friends along the way
but even they disappear over time. Once I recognized the reality of this
and that none of it can be avoided no matter how kind, nice and generous
anyone is, it all fell into perspective.

I do it because I know more than ever now that whenever you gather
a group of people together, whether in cyber space or otherwise,
and they are creative people, someone is going to want to be center stage.
Someone is going to do whatever it takes to make it happen.

Most of the forums that have caused me grief don’t even exist anymore.
I should have learned not to respond back when. Trying to help others
often backfires because they want drama, and they want you to feed them.
It’s useless.
This is one reason why I strive for publications that are in print. I don’t want
something to vanish. I want to be able to hold the pages in my hands.

Eventually, probably soon, I’ll give it up completely and just submit.
I’ve learned enough about critique that I could just sit here and do my own poems
but that seems rather solitary. Still, after so many years of pettiness, a person
just says, why in the world invite that into your life.
Those who claim to not “like” me don’t even know me.

Sweet

This past weekend, while thinking about literature,
books, pages, writing, libraries and life in general,
an aunt on my husband’s side of the family passed away
quite suddenly. Even though she was nearly eighty seven.
I had seen her on and off throughout the years and always
enjoyed her company but I can’t say I knew her intimately.
Just about ten days ago a group of us were bundled together
so to speak, one from out of town, and we hadn’t seen
each other in many years. We sat around a table and talked,
and laughed about things that even happened in high school.
My aunt ate jelly beans and looked at me and said her hair
was her natural color, with all seriousness. I’m sure it was.

I remember when I left there that day, I thought, I’ve been in this
room before about thirty some years ago and seen many of these people
in this kitchen, or other places but now it was different. Each one of us
had something we were struggling with be it health or life circumstance.
We were different. The room only different from furnishings, appliances,
and a fresh change of candles, a warm scent and the breeze. But we,
we were different.

The chaplain said my aunt went very peacefully. That is the way I want to go.
I know where I’m going and believe me, there are days when heaven not only
sounds sweeter but I think that I can see a room waiting especially for me.
And once there I will never grow beyond my surroundings, age past them,
or be too informed to enjoy them.

When we left that day, I leaned over and kissed my aunt and said goodbye sweetie.
I’m not sure why I addressed her that way. It was a little more of an adolescent
greeting one might say to a small child. But it seemed natural. Maybe I was thinking
how sweet heaven really is, how her breath smelled like jelly beans,
and how the candles burning in the other rooms all around us just made it all
the most pleasant of days, the most pleasant ways to say goodbye for good,
without knowing I truly was.

Making the List

Besides a love for poetry,
like most people, I want to
live a happy life. Recently
I had this brainstorm to write
down each week five things
that bring to me the most joy and happiness
and no this is not a selfish experiment.
Not at all, because if I’m miserable, it affects others
around me.
I concentrate on including
them into my life daily.
write down five things
that either bring stress, or have had
a history of being stressful , things
that revive sorrow, difficulty
and dread. Then, I avoid those things
if possible, if they are things that
don’t need to be dealt with or if they
do, I deal with them if need be,
and then begin to move on quickly.
Quickly being the operative word.
Every week the lists will change
as I discover more and more about myself,
about how being happy
makes others happy to be around me.
I also discover that although I cannot
control everything, or everyone
and don’t want to, I feel a burden is lifted.
I learn that nothing in the past is relevant
in my happiness now,
and I learn that sometimes you have to cut
your losses instead of expecting
something to work that just isn’t doing it.
Even if you’ve been doing the same thing
for say twenty years. If it’s making you miserable,
stop!

This is an experiment
I intend to live with. Its one that is teaching me
so much about myself. The most important thing
it has taught me is not to look to others or even
circumstance to bring happiness. It can come
regardless, even at those times when you see
nothing but chaos and despair.

Under the Right Conditions

Time to submit poetry and finish the book
“Ordinary Genius” by Kim Addonizio,
which is such a great book. She’s got me
to journal again. Like this entry:
Today, I was driving to my son’s house
to babysit for my beautiful granddaughter.
To some, that would seem very normal
but for me it wasn’t. My driving has been very
limited and even though the eye doctor
says by all means, drive, the time that I was
not able to stole my confidence. I had to regain
that confidence back. So even this short trip,
which is only about twenty minutes, if that,
was stressing me out.
And while I can’t drive after dark, it wasn’t dark,
it was warm, sunny, little traffic, few things in my
way. All the conditions were perfect. And I
made it there and back later with no problem.
But on the way there I felt God was speaking
to me in a way I’d never heard before.
I felt he was telling me that with him, there
is no window of opportunity to feel his presence.
There are no conditions outside of Christ,
that we need adhere to in order to feel his
presence. No conditions, unlimited time to be
with him. Darkness — doesn’t matter. In fact,
that’s when we need him the most.
Traffic? We don’t have to stand in line,
or swerve to miss him. He is available.
Driving in the rain is sometimes difficult
for me and I rarely do but what if it begins
to rain when I’m out? I thought of how the
rain is a symbol for the Holy Spirit.
That comforted me.

Brain Waves

I feel like the prickly pear,
a cactus slowly dying,
until, toward the end of life

I become smaller and shorter,
like mother who always wore
buttons the size of bonnets,
to offset her hair styled into a high-rise,

or father, whose goatee grew
in gray and black.
Those moody brain waves
(bipolar bear in the family)
louder than the dinner bell.

They remain both with,
and without out me. And I them.
I’m sure they did the best they could,
and exponentially, so did I.

Kathleen Vibbert 2009

Shelf Life

I almost envy you dying.
Your soul finally written of,
a glass chime
raised up to drink
and drink
of sound,
and hours held with such
a frail hand –caged
lines of bone.
I almost envy you going.
Receiving a new name as a child
waiting for his report card,
yet when you hear it, you’ll
be so silent still.
Why so silent when all the world
longs to be in a more beautiful place?

Held more by color
than the hands
of this earth.
There, there, your
life is slowly coming back from the wave,
from that great sea inside you.

Kathleen Vibbert 2009

Solomon’s Mines


04/28/09
I feel more the philosopher these
days than poet, although I’m
convinced there is little difference.
If musing is a bridge, then I haven’t
walked it for some time.
If what I call my writer’s ghost, which
I believe we writers all have, is
lurking around through out my mind nurturing
a weak lantern, he or she
needs to exit because
it’s dark in there at times.
Not dark as in depressing, because
I’ve never experienced so much joy
as since Sophia was born. And life
is as they say, good. But like all of us,
at times the dark comes out through
expression, not depression.
I’m sure that during the past ten
years I’ve wandered through one of
Solomon’s mines because I feel
richer but not in a monetary sense
and not even desiring that.
Just when you think
you have something figured out,
wham, you’re back to square one.
Thus, the comment about being a philosopher.
I’ve accepted that some things no longer work,
(if they ever did) I’ve accepted
when to say no, when to say nothing.
I know that people come and people go:
there are days when I’d love a grand ballroom
filled with every dear friend I ever had.
Champagne glasses, a huge cake,
reunion hugs, and catch up smiles.
That’s not going to happen.
I’ll never stop wishing it could happen,
but knowing that it won’t is called maturity,
I suppose, or wisdom?
But there’s a huge difference between that…and expecting it.
I have one year left to spend in my
fifties.
And if I can go through it holding anything,
it doesn’t need to be a crystal ball.
The past decade
has been spent battling to keep my vision,
having surgery after surgery,
hanging on, 
until it almost became some farce
and I was on this stage
without a script or ending. Had it only
been the eyes, I could have dealt,
but then all the other things.
I never say “hang in there” to anyone,
ever because it means nothing.
How do you tell someone to
hang in there,
when their emotional arms are exhausted?
I suppose some would think it better
than nothing. It’s dead air,
and prosaic.
And while I don’t have the answer for life,
as far as why we suffer, I know what comes
after. I know about what to expect and what
I can expect. I cling to the cross for that
answer. But I strive to give to every man,
and woman an answer for support, or whatever
I think is truly sincere because we all deserve it.




PUBLICATIONS

Forthcoming: Brreadcrumb. Scabs, A Poetry Magazine, 9th issue.

Third Anthology : MEOW, pub. by Jeff Winke,

October 2005, IBPC HR, Judge David Hernandez
March, 2007 IBPC HR, Judge Pascale Petit
October 2007, IBPC HR Judge Ethelbert Miller
March 2008, IBPC HR, Judge Fieda Brown

Most recent pub:

Oak Bend Review, April 2009,
Rust and Moth Literary Journal, Spring, 2009,

Anthology:

Women Celebrating Women “Remembering Faces”
The first two books in the series were Common Intuitions(2005)
and
The Woman in the Mirror (2004) sold
out within a week of the reading and is currently out of print.

Muscadine Lines, A Southern Anthology
by Kathy Hardy Rhodes (Editor)
“In this book the talents of many stand as the product of one.”
—Jackie K. Cooper

Muscadine Lines is a COLLECTION of short fiction, personal essays, and poems. Muscadine Lines offers readers the joy of discovering the treasures of promising new voices, as well as seasoned veterans.

This book is a gathering of stories and poems that epitomize the qualities readers treasure in the best Southern literature—a rich appreciation of language and humor, as well as a dead-on sense of place and character. These storytellers let their ideas, experiences, and imaginations flow from their minds to the lines, as they tell of worlds that are fictionally unique, yet realistically akin to our own.
available through Barnes and Nobles and Amazon.com

Anthology:

Remembering Faces (Palettes and Quills Press)
available through mail, and also email: psnquill@rochester.rr.com

Previous credits incude:

Chapbook “Past the River” D-N Publishing,
The Criterion Newspaper, Indianapolis, IN
The Dallas Morning News,
White Chimney, London,
Tipton Poetry Journal,
The Shine Journal,
Falling Star Magazine,
Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, Spring 2006.
Connections-A Quarterly Environmental Journal based in New Hampshire,
Spillway Review,
Facets, a Literary Magazine,
Red River Review,
Autumn Sky Poetry,
Softblow Poetry Journal, Cyril Wong, Editor
Pocket Change, Poetry and Art Journal,
The Electric Acorn, #14,
Pachamama Press,
Tonopah: A Quarterly Journal of Prose and Poetry,
Lily, A Monthly Online Literary Review,
Muscadine Lines, A Southern Journal,
Moondance Journal, Celebrating Creative Women,
Just West of Athens,
Metromania Magazine,

DEAR OLD MR. BELVEDERE

I grow old … I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
TS Eliot- The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock

Dear Old Mr. Belvedere

I called him Mister Belvedere
he wore his pant legs up
and when the sun came near the hills
he’d fill his coffee cup

iambic meter through his pen
ah, reverie came due
his brow the smell of fish and fries
and powdered chicken too.

He wrote of aspens, birch and wood
and how he’d fit between
the poplars with their songs in place
the languid shades of green.

How strange, his ashes found their way
to seeds that spread foreshore
and like a tired old jetty swells,
he lines the river’s floor.

K. Vibbert

DISCOVERING A NEW POET

New to me, that is. Maybe it’s the Irish hiding
in my background, or the fact this poet truly got my juices going. I can’t get enough of her writing.

Thought I would post a link in case anyone else is interested.

EAVAN BOLAND