The Terrible Awful by Alise Versella

I wrote this poem two weeks after Robin Williams died…

I was feeling the immense heaviness of the world around me and its sadness. I was feeling the pains of those closest to me: the failure in not being able to help them. I was feeling like a failure. And I couldn't even cry about any of it.

Sometimes we see tears as weakness but they're not. They're a beautiful sweet release that is so necessary. Society has strayed so far passed the simple, beautiful things. This poem is about getting back to them: Not subjecting ourselves to a cancerous society's ridicule. But of relishing in that which makes life worth living: music nature, simplicity, and a few wild stanzas. 

The Terrible Awful Keeps Me Stuck in My Head

　

Life cut short, or too much life but like fireworks set off in reverse?

Why is it so wrong to feel anything but happiness?

It’s okay to want to cry and scream and smash the vase

It’s okay to want to be left alone

It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…

When is it not?

I feel so compressed upon my chest

So much like I can’t get air

I’ve been finding it harder to cry

Tears few and far between

They just don’t come just the choking snub

Stuck in my throat

What I wouldn’t give to cry it just feels so good to let it out

But the tears are stuck like everything else

I can’t spill the tears

Can’t write the words

Can’t paint till the flecks are stuck under my nails

I am stuck feeling uncreative

Pent up and frustrated

Bored and in need of soul healing

I need nature

I crave it

I need silence

I want to meditate

My muscles are tense

Give me therapeutic deep tissue

My stomach hurts

Give me homegrown, home cooked, vibrant sapling growth

I am sick of the unbearable feeling of guilt

The pressure of having to please

The urgency in forsaking my beliefs for others decisions

The feeling of a need for a reason

To explain all my ‘why not’s’

I hate the guilt in feeling judged

I live in a world where cancer is the norm

Where everything is a carcinogen

I just want to get back to a place where something’s pure:

Pure wildflowers and dew drowned grass

Pure sunshine dappling aquamarine waves

Pushed by a milk moon to dig its foam into the sand

Pure wild drumbeats and whiskey honey voices

And tambourines and slide guitar pounding with my heartbeats

Sprawled out in a sail boat blanket on a grassy sea of Central Park

Hiking canyon hills meandering from the magic cities

Old Hollywoodland and Broadway

Meditating through the winds of Big Sur

Typing away at alphabet letters on antique keys in bohemian Paris

Growing tanner and fuller on

Olive oil soaked bread and tomatoes and wine and pasta

That I garnished myself

Inhaling the scents of herbs and lavender

Window boxes full of marigolds

Fires at dusk to light our dreams up

　

Be pure

Be simple

Be free

And make of this life a few wild stanzas.

~

(This poem appears in Alise's new book "A Few Wild Stanzas", available here) 

Alise Versella:  I am a 24 year old poet living in the pinelands of New Jersey. Poetry has always been the ether in my veins and the oxygen I breathe. It is my Five Foot Voice, my Onion Heart, I am peeling back the layers of myself like a lotus unfurling its petals in order to grow fully in the waters that can sometimes weigh us down. I’m writing poetry to find myself, I’m writing poetry to save the world. My hope it that my poetry saves someone’s world from crumbling because I believe art has the power to hold us up when we can’t find the legs to stand. You can visit me at my Facebook page here or on my website here. And my third volume of poetry, A Few Wild Stanzas, is available here. 

~If you are interested in seeing your poetry appear in this blog, or submitting a poem by a woman that has inspired you, please click here for submission guidelines. I greatly look forward to hearing from you!~