Her last three footsteps
raised the devil.
At the sight of her,
hell surrendered –
besieged by the spirits
of plunder and
confiscation.
(Another blackout poem inspired by A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens)
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Poetry – Stuck
Stuck
not sure where to go
so many roads
limited time
stalled
pick foot up
put back down
repeat.
Am I moving forward
or standing still?
The shadows move
but my footprints
stay right here.
Poetry (Haiku) – Grow Up
Grow up, they all say
But when I try to plant roots
they poison the soil
(Written for a #haikudaily tag on Twitter, theme was “grow”)
Poetry: Sick or Dead
(I created the following blackout poem from a random excerpt of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain)
Sick or Dead
What to do if a body
is sick or dead:
black crayons
black dress
black shovel
black veil
black tape
black slippers
black bird
black sealing wax
black hole
Poetry – Just a Poe Boy (or Girl)
If Edgar had a muse
to hassle and abuse,
why not I?
Enter those raven’s wings
and all terrible things
from finer days gone by.
Poetry: Sole Survivor
For my own poor health
the truth must be told –
my mother, I remember,
was heaviest, the faintest –
sinking the small pulse
of life within me.
I later roused myself –
dreaming over the cool
night air in the suburbs.
I turned again to
my mother, my sister –
but I was the sole
survivor
of the family.
(Poetry by Maranda Russell)
I’m Writing a New Book! Diary of a Brainwashed Fundamentalist Teenager
For years now, I have considered writing a book about my teen years, when I got swept up in a fundamentalist, almost cult-like religious environment for several years. Boy, was I a mixed up kid back then! I’m using my actual diary entries from that time to illustrate what I went through psychologically trying to be this perfect “Christian” that the church I was going to at the time said I had to be. Here is a sneak peak at the introduction to the book:
“This book is one I’ve thought about writing for a while now and finally decided to just do it. As the title suggests, this is indeed one of my own diaries from when I was a teenager and was being influenced by a fundamentalist Christian mentality that sought to isolate me from everyone around me, put fear and anxiety into my heart concerning every choice I had to make, and weighed down my conscience with constant guilt over every little real or imagined transgression.
I am using the first journal I happen to have, started when I was 14 and about to enter high school. The journal covers the time I was most influenced by fundamentalist, almost cult-like ideas.
This religion told me it was wrong to wear pants as a woman. They told me it was wrong to cut my hair or wear jewelry and makeup. They told me it was wrong to listen to secular music, go to the movies, or watch tv. The internet was evil as well. They told me it was wrong to have friends that weren’t “holy” believers. They tried to make me feel like women were simply made to be complements to men, not to have dreams, goals, or lives of their own.
This religion had me constantly fearing the presence and “possession” of demons and thinking that my future didn’t matter because Jesus was coming back soon anyway, so I wouldn’t live long enough to have much of an earthly life. They even discouraged use of “man-made” medicine because it supposedly showed a lack of faith in God’s healing powers.
I have lightly edited the journal entries to make them easier to read, but have otherwise left the content as is. I have inserted italic comments in parentheses when I felt I needed to clarify something. I did leave out parts I felt were uninteresting or just don’t matter overall. I hope you enjoy reading it and can see how fundamentalist religious environments can be extremely damaging to children and teens.”
Poetry: Unspeakable Childhood
‘Twas horrible to think
that she suffered
an unspeakable childhood.
Every day they reopened
the contentions –
old ones
that she could not
tear away.
Mischief and dread
became more likely
than right and wrong –
causing heads to hit
hard against circumstances
almost as good
as she once was.
(Blackout poetry created from a page of “Great Expectations” by Charles Dickens)
Poetry: Nightlights
I got a new blackout poetry journal that uses classic literature to inspire new works of poetry. This first one is my attempt at making original poetry from a random page of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan:
Nightlights
My love,
were not all natural
dreams forgotten?
The skeleton
crawled about the floor,
rattled up the chimney,
and bathed her hand in sleep.
Nightlights pulsed
while strange children
found new mothers
in the faces of the night.
Once all were safe
her fears sat down
by the quickening fire,
warming the nursery.
