Michelle Garren Flye's Blog, page 6

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There’s nothing like a mountain fog. It’s hard to put it into words. I remember when I was a kid growing up in Brevard, N.C., I loved foggy mornings. Waiting at the bus stop, I felt like the sky had fallen on me, soft and cool and protective. Later, as a grown-up navigating mountain roads in the fog, I still felt that mystical sense of otherworldliness.

For the past few days, I’ve spent a lot of time poring over pictures of flattened, flooded towns and videos of raging, red rivers full of debris. It’s hard for me to believe this is what’s left of some of the beautiful mountains where I grew up. I’ve lived on the eastern side of the state long enough to know there’s probably more saltwater in my veins than the red clay of the mountains now, but at times like this, I know there’s no denying it.

The coast may have been my destiny, but the mountains are my origin.

I haven’t been back in nearly two years. My mother passed away in February 2023 and I went back for her funeral. After that, my father moved down to Charlotte to be with my uncle and my older brother, and my mountains were just two hours too far to go.

I wonder how it became this hard to take time to get somewhere that’s still important to me.

I heard today that Interstate 40 Westbound was closed at Statesville to stop people wanting to get into the mountains—searching for friends and family, most likely, but maybe just curious. Maybe people like me who suddenly realized that the mountains of their origin might not always be there. The towns we grew up in can be wiped off the earth’s slate.

I’ve heard that Brevard survived, for the most part, in spite of being walloped with 30 inches of rain. But I’ve seen nothing to support that. There’s a webcam in downtown Brevard that is currently offline. I check it daily, sometimes hourly. I know it will likely be days or weeks before it comes back online, if it even survived, but still. It would be reassuring to see.

So little communication is possible, even with my brother and his family who still live there. I’ve gotten a few texts. He managed one phone call to my father.

I feel like the entirety of the North Carolina mountains is shrouded in fog now, but unlike the fog of my childhood, this is not protective, it’s a reminder. Nothing is permanent. Everything can be damaged or taken away.

the sky falls on us

while you, lost mountain girl,

roam the lonely coast

Copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem: On Receiving a Tarot Warning of You (RW)

Yesterday I posted a semi-free verse poem based on a Tarot reading. It got some good feedback. For some reason, recently, I’ve been fascinated with poetic form and transforming poetry to different forms. Today I was reading sonnets (classic stuff, not mine), and it occurred to me that yesterday’s free verse would read really well as a sonnet.

Or does it?

You can judge. Here’s yesterday’s post. Let me know in the comments!

On Receiving a Tarot Warning of You
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Just for today, promise me the world,
even if it’s just a pack of cards.
I’ll dance about, my wings unfurled,
cavort until the fall of the stars.
Judge me harshly, naked and cold,
standing alone in my own grave.
Wash me away in the coming flood!
New beginnings are only for the brave.
The dark man glowers, my love he denies,
promises made in Cupid’s embrace.
I will bare my heart, my soul to your cries,
but our abstract romance never takes place.
Through sunset’s blood, Death sweeps
and star’s life out of the pitcher leaks.
Photo and Poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem: On Receiving A Tarot Warning of You

On Receiving a Tarot Warning of You
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Which numbers more, the chirp of crickets
or the sparkle of the stars?

Today you promise me the world
but it’s a pack of cards.
Dance! Let your wings unfurl
before we all fall down.

Oh, will the judgment be enough
or leave us standing naked and cold in our own graves
surrounded by the flood?
Rejoice in new beginnings and your past will reward you.

I fear the dark, glowering man on the throne,
his staff held casually, bruisingly on a booted leg.
When will he leave me, let me be alone?
Can I knock the crown from his head?

I search for the promised love,
bare my soul and body before Cupid’s embrace,
but romance still seems far away
and likely to avoid me—or lay me low.

Death’s scythe continues its sweep,
cutting back excessive joy of life,
Distant sunset blood does creep
and brings along fear of living only in strife.

Only promise me the song of the stars,
and pour out your life to the babbling river. Photo and Poem Copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

Illustrated Poem: Joy is

I enjoy illustrating poems. I mostly use old pictures of my kids or animals or flowers or even myself as models/guides for my illustrations. Sometimes I combine pictures. This is a good example of that. I took an old picture of my daughter, put her on a picture of my current neighborhood and traded her hair for curlier hair because that’s how I pictured the child in my poem. The hardest part of this picture? Getting the flesh tone right.

Joy is
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Joy is an unruly child

she belongs to one of the neighbors
I know not which
but she pops in unexpectedly
then disappears for months on end
just as I get used to having her around

she has a mop of golden curls
like an angel’s halo
she’s loud and boisterous
for a while
then tiptoes out
and I don’t realize
she’s gone
until I miss her

I wish I knew to whom she belonged
and I’d be able to seek her out
when light and sparkle have dulled
and I want someone to sing me a song

but instead I just have to sit and wait
as evening shadows creep up on me
hoping the next step on the walk
will be the dancing one I recognize

Illustration and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

A fun exercise with a poem: For Basho

Today I did something kind of fun. I have a book of Matsuo Basho’s haiku on my desk that I often read when I’m experiencing writer’s block. It’s a beautiful book even though now it’s a bit beat up and coffee-stained. But the pages are full of haiku by the master of haiku. Sometimes when I read them, I feel like I can picture him on his travels, taking inspiration from the simplest of things, writing his verses even in discomfort, possibly hungry, cold, stuck in bad weather, probably tired.

And then I wonder how on earth I can claim any adversity at all.

At any rate, today I was reading some Matsuo Basho and I found this one:

snow on snow

this night in December

a full moon

—Matsuo Basho

I’m currently editing my book Winter Solstice for republishing so this little haiku caught my attention, especially when I read the backstory of it. Basho wrote it for two fellow poets who were arguing, hoping by pointing out the beauty of the moon’s glow on the snow, he could defuse the fight.

I don’t know if it worked for them, but it gave me something to think about. I wondered what it would be like to write a sonnet with the same idea. So I did.

For Basho
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Why persist in impatience and strife?
When yonder field full of starflowers
reflects the moon’s light into our life,
how can this world of war be ours?

Sit here beside me, give me your cares.
Worries, bad habits, and visions begone!
Along with all the stuff of your nightmares—
the ones that sometimes linger on.

This world is full of beauty, you know:
meadows turned into a galaxy of stars
by nothing more than the moon’s glow
concealing all of our cuts and scars

Take heart! Come with me and dance
in soft grass among stars and planets.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that our world has been through a lot and survived. Sometimes the news makes it seem we are on the brink of all the disasters. Politicians make money off our fears, the media churns out new ones every day. But today I saw a Monarch on a bunch of pink lemonade lantana, and it made me happy.

Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

Happy National Poets’ Day!

I still remember the first day I actually identified as a poet. September 11, 2020. I had entered a local poetry contest and there was a reading. Still wearing a mask to keep the dreaded COVID-19 at bay, I attended with my then husband. The poem I read that night was prophetic, but the sticker the organization gave me to wear with my name badge was even more so.

It said, quite simply: “Poet”.

And when I put it on, I didn’t feel like an impostor.

I’ve read a lot of my poems in public since then. I’ve read other people’s poems in public, too. No matter what I do, I know I am a poet. Maybe we are all poets at heart, so maybe I’m not that special, but I have fully embraced being a poet.

Today is National Poets’ Day. It seems an appropriate day to share the news of my latest poetry book, Unwelcome Souvenirs. I’m very proud of this book. It has more than ninety poems in it, including many of the fortune cookie poems I wrote last April for National Poetry Month.

As a very important aside, my daughter also published her first poetry book this week. This was not planned. We finished them close to the same time, and when she told me hers was ready, I thought about how we used to get hiccups at the same time when she was a baby.

Just so you know I am not an impostor poet, I will share the last poem from the “Broken Things” portion of my book:

Just the Heart
By Michelle Garren-Flye

just the heart
that's all that's left
after all the acid rain
and all the cleansing pain
washed everything else away

just the heart left
on a simple pedestal
i let the rest of it go
(not without a fight though.)
I'll plant it now, see what grows. Copies of my daughter’s book next to mine on the shelf at my store.
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

Poem: Call Me Destructor

So, yesterday, when I might or might not have preferred to be watching anime, I mowed the lawn. My lawn hadn’t been mowed in about two weeks, and it had, in the meantime, been watered well by the rains of a tropical storm. It was thick, lush, quite tall, and inhabited by many crickets, spiders, moths, mosquitoes, and some very pretty green bugs with lacy wings.

It was an entire habitat.

Needless to say, in my little urban neighborhood, said habitat had to go. Not to mention that it also probably housed roaches, mice, and other pests that I’d prefer not to encounter when I take my dog out at night.

To alleviate my guilt, I imagined myself as an anime villain, mowing down everything in my path, laughing evilly as the innocent bugs tried to escape. And that got me writing this poem in my head. I originally thought it was a villanelle. Not sure what it ended up as, but I do like the rhyme scheme, and the evil tone that grows more seductive through the poem is a little chilling, even to me.

Call Me Destructor
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Call me Destructor;
watch me lay waste.
I cannot hear your cry,
but you will not escape.

Luxuries can’t make me poor;
destruction is my only taste.
My use of power I justify;
just watch me lay waste.

I feel the rush in my core…
Victims stuck in my mindscape—
watch them flitter and fly!
I laugh as they try to escape.

Never enough, I always want more.
Your dreams I will reshape—
raze it all, the only way to satisfy
this desire I have to rape.

You want what you know is in store;
your desires were never chaste.
I know this you cannot deny.
Are you sure you desire escape?
Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye.

Where have i been?

It’s an excellent question. The truth is, I’ve been traveling with family, but I’ve also been lost in other worlds of my own making. I’m working on another poetry book (with my fortune cookie poetry included), and I’ve started a new novel, but don’t hold your breath on that one lol. It’s coming along, but right now I’m really just getting to know the characters. It’s a romantic fantasy adventure. Probably a standalone, but possibly the beginning of a new series.

And to top it off, it’s poetry contest season. Not wanting to pull any of the poems I’d already decided to put into my books, I had to write some fresh poetry. Plus, one of the competitions is an ekphrastic poetry contest I enter every year (never won it though). For those who don’t know, ekphrastic poetry is where you write poetry based on a work of art. I love it.

This year I had a lot of fun with it, too. I chose one painting and wrote three different poems (villanelle, sonnet, and tanka) about it. I loved all of them, so I submitted all of them lol. It might be fun if one of them wins!

In the meantime, though I don’t have a poem to share with you today, I did think I might share some of the artwork I’ve been creating for Unwelcome Souvenirs, my next poetry book.

Poem: In Celebration of the Furniture Year

In Celebration of the Furniture Year
By Michelle Garren-Flye

On that morning twenty-nine years ago,
I wanted to be a princess
so much I shouted my beliefs
loud enough to drown lingering doubts

and stormy weather that took the helium
right out of the balloons, so the wind
sounded like Daffy Duck and my pink and yellow
and blue spheres hung flaccid

by the sign announcing our nuptials,
and it was too late for real daffodils, so I
made do with false ones, mixed with daisies
and mournful white roses

and still I have no regrets because
for at least twenty-five of those years
I did believe I was a princess, or at least as good
as a mom of three who lost her figure in the war can be,

and I have been awarded all these badges
for my courage, and my ambition now
is to deserve them, which I do, much more than I did
on that morning twenty-nine years ago. Photo and poem copyright 2024 Michelle Garren-Flye

A Poem for Lamar and Drake

I originally had decided to write a blog post about finally re-watching the entire series of “Lost” because I always felt sure I missed a lot during my first watch of the show during six erratic television seasons. (I really had, too. No doubt, lots of stuff missed during that first viewing.) Then I happened to listen to a podcast about the ongoing war between the two rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake, found I had an opinion about that, too, and that opinion actually developed into a poem, so, in the realm of Things I Have No Business Commenting On…

Being a fifty-plus-year-old white woman, I don’t really keep up with the hiphop/rap scene much, although I’ve undoubtedly heard some I like. The first I’d heard about the Drake/Lamar feud was a couple weeks ago in a chance remark from a friend. I was interested because Kendrick Lamar had actually achieved something I once wished I could when he won the Pulitzer Prize.

The podcast I listened to was a Washington Post podcast, so fairly unbiased. I’ve read a little more since and talked to a few people. Everyone’s got an opinion, and some people have a less than complimentary view of Drake, influenced, no doubt, by salacious (the news loves that word) rumors and claims about his relationships. As one person said to me with great disdain, “Who’s on team Drake?”

And yet, both rappers have been acting out, putting out music practically in real time over streaming services. It reminds me of old battles that happened in newspapers between politicians or poets like Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg (that’s one of my favorites). Except these “songs” are more than inflammatory disses, they’re downright mean and often libelous, and more than one has been taken down almost as soon as it was put up. Maybe by a manager or someone with some creative control and more common sense?

So, even though I probably don’t have any right to have a real opinion about this rap battle, I was nonetheless moved to write the following poem. As for if I’m on team Lamar or team Drake, I’d just like to say I hate to see anybody wasting their talents dragging apart an art form they both excel at and should spend their time promoting. What good will it do the music world if two bright stars develop a black hole between them?

Beef
By Michelle Garren-Flye

Send out your diss
over the interweb.
Its mark won’t miss
your intended jab.

Insulting pushback,
wasting your time.
Get in the next crack—
make sure to rhyme!

Talent you got in spades
but gotta be sure to rile
when you throw shades!
(What rhymes with pedophile?)

Take it from this old white chick:
you could do so much more.
You could make each word stick,
bring the world to the floor.

But go ahead, send out a slur,
defend what’s left of pride.
Growl and bark like a mad cur,
and we’ll watch from ringside. This tree has a death sentence. The town has decided it doesn’t look good enough to not be cut down. So it will soon be gone. I’m a little sad. Photo by Michelle Garren-Flye