Wednesday, June 8, 2011

What You Imagine (Poem)

What You Imagine

Fear no thing
word-drawn. The nightmare
is to live
so inside
unreal it spells virtual
 in more than just name.

© 2011 Maureen E. Doallas
______________________

I'm participating in the #Trust30 challenge, an online writing/reflection initiative for which a prompt is posted daily. All of the prompts to date are here.

This poem, in Shadorma form, is my response to the ninth prompt from psychotherapist and author Mary Jaksch:

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson says: "Always do what you are afraid to do." What is "too scary" to write about? Try doing it now.

* * *

My responses to prompts to date, all in the form of poems, are:

Let Me Tell You

Unreal

Words to Live By

Birthplace

Answer in Time

Giving Meaning to Others

Zigzag

Fifteen Minutes to Count Down

6 comments:

Beverly Diehl said...

SheWrites sister here - for the poetically illiterate, can you explain what "Shadorma form" is? (And explain any other poetic forms in future posts, please.)

I liked it, as is, would probably like it more if I understood what the contraints were.

Anonymous said...

for some reason this reminds me of the song "i just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in."

Maureen said...

Beverly,

I explained the Shadorma in the second post for the #Trust30 but did not repeat it in every post in which I've used it. Here is the explanation:

The Shadorma form comprises 6 lines of poetry, with no rhyme or no set rhyme, in which the number of syllables per line is 3-5-3-3-7-5, respectively. Multiple stanzas of 6 lines following the syllabic pattern can be linked. Since learning of it in a post at One Stop Poetry (it's also been explained at Poetic Asides), I've used it a lot.

S. Etole said...

This reads like a puzzle ... you are so very good at this1

Lenasledgeblog.com said...

I really love the quote by Emerson. Very poignant. I am trying to live life accordingly and just go for it. Nice poem to the prompt as well.

Louise Gallagher said...

I'm with Susan -- so very very good at this!