Marilyn Rea Beyer, Radio/Poems/Stories/VO
Words have power.
Three poems in this new anthology of poems on living with and living alongside mental illness.
Three poems in this new anthology of poems on living with and living alongside mental illness.
Sometimes writing gets a bit squirrely...
Sometimes writing gets a bit squirrely...
Form strictures can stimulate creativity, rather than thwart it.
WORD BUILDING Sestina 2020
Did you ever stop to think what really makes a building?
The easy answers are steel and oak and glass and stone.
But there are structures without gutters that a squirrel
can invade, scrabble over and stay trapped in until it’s found dead
when you clean out the leaves in the springtime light.
(After a job like that, you need a good scrub in the basement sink.)
You start with a fearless foundation that you sink
into the ground so deep that no matter what hits it, the building
won’t budge. You’ll face it in marble, showing East to catch the light.
Every pedestrian will know your name from the corner stone.
What a monument to leave for your daughter when you’re dead!
If you are not too extravagant, you still have time to squirrel
away more gold than the piles and piles of nuts a squirrel
lays by in the fall. Outfit the kitchen with a simple farmer’s sink.
Employ classic motifs found in the tombs of dead
Egyptians. Never forget that you are building
a tribute to your well-lived life, not a tomb stone
to hold your body down. You will keep it light.
For winter, you will want a fireplace for light,
to keep you warm and snug as a hibernating squirrel,
with shiny brass andirons and a hearth of ancient stone.
In the spring mud, your boots will likely sink
unless you use more stones for a path to the building,
not caring that the grass beneath them will be dead.
Every night when the world outside is dead
quiet, you will write by the home fire’s light.
Warm inside, you and your love are building
dreams and telling your baby tales of Squirrel
Nutkin and Benjamin Bunny as you bathe her in the sink,
her toes so pink and her eyes blue as a sapphire stone.
The house you write is stronger than oaken timbers and stone
walls. For the trees used to frame houses are dead
and the nails that you counter-sink
are steely cold. Writing is made from life. The light
of your words comes warmly, quick and soft as the tail of the squirrel
that lived in the oak: Poems more sturdy than any building.
The poet in the mirror may sink from view, but the words stay like a stone
or glass or marble building standing long after the dead
writer is buried, reflecting light bright as a penny, nimble as a squirrel.
© Marilyn Rea Beyer
5.17.2020
In support of The Midnight Special, Folkstage, Studs Terkel Archives and Classical music at WFMT. Donate at www.wfmt.org
In support of The Midnight Special, Folkstage, Studs Terkel Archives and Classical music at WFMT. Donate at www.wfmt.org
This poem originated at the Salem Athenaeum...Nathaniel Hawthorne's old hangout. Today it's a haven for new writers. Show your support: http://salemathenaeum.net/support/donations/
This poem originated at the Salem Athenaeum...Nathaniel Hawthorne's old hangout. Today it's a haven for new writers. Show your support: http://salemathenaeum.net/support/donations/
We Will Not be SilencedIndieBlu(e) Poetry Anthology... contains three of my poems and hundreds of others by writers I admire. Now in print and Kindle on amazon.com.
Subtitled "The Lived Experience of Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Told Powerfully through Poetry, Prose, Essay and Art," this book is neither screed nor pity party. Rather, it’s a positive, powerful platform to give voice to people who have been sexually exploited, abused, treated as invisible.Listen and believe them.
Click for a short video:
This one hit me observing my city hit by COVID-19
This one hit me observing my city hit by COVID-19
The Disappearing Man or Resist the Inevitable
The disappearing man did not select his fate.
It was no vanishing act
intended to impress.
He wished to remain intact
to arise and bathe and dress,
to chalk in another square, mark off just one more date.
Sudden stilled Earth would like to continue to turn.
What a clumsy sleight of hand,
beyond the angels’ touch,
bent under the gods’ demand
for pestilences and such,
that bade humanity embrace the ashen urn.
You, be fierce. Defy the sanitary dying.
Stand upon on your balcony
and shout and cheer and sing.
Rise up in cacophony.
Make the invisible ring.
Be seen to have courage. Be heard to be living.
©Marilyn Rea Beyer
Also: Follow the strong words of strong women in Whisper and the Roar. Two of my poems were published during June '18. Click on the poem titles to read To Live Like Shakespeare and I Never Feared Death.