Thursday, August 23, 2012

Wild Woman Grabs a Brain


Ella of Ella's Edge, has posted a prompt about Salvador Dali at Poets United's Thursday Think Tank. We can write to any of his images, but what jumped out at me was the description of Dali's paranoic-critical method, "a surrealistic technique which involves optical illusions and multiple images". That sounds like the inside of my brain, most days, so I decided to have a little fun with it. * photo from Wikipedia*

There is a little man 
with a black moustache 
sitting on
Wild Woman's shoulder.
He mutters critical messages
in unceasing stream-of-consciousness,
as she totters gamely about,
swatting at him 
as if he were an annoying fly.

"OH! MY! GOD!
You're STOO-pid, stupid, stupid!"
he mutters, as he slaps his forehead.
"Remember the time you....?
OH! MY! GOD!
Where was your BRAIN??!!"

Wild Woman feels
the remembered embarrassment,
the sting of the moment,
all over again,
before she pulls herself together
and Moves On.
She  is smiling
but, at times, rather grimly,
in the face of this
constant barrage of memory.
Why must a life review hit upon 
all the embarrassing moments,
and skim over all the Relatively Okay
or even Resplendent ones?

She moves him over
to her other shoulder,
beside the deaf ear.
She can still hear him,
but softer.
If she gets very busy,
she can pretend he is whispering
sweet nothings into her ear,
but when things quiet,
there he is again,
sybillant, persistent, unforgiving.
"And then you.......OH! MY! GOD!...."
and she feels the chagrin again,
at having been such
a lacking individual for so long.

But then she remembers.
She was once married 
to someone like this,
and she showed him the door.
She straightens her shoulders.
"Look, kiddo, I've done the crime, yes, 
but I've also done the time,
and it is Over."
She boots him out on his ear, 
still muttering feverishly,
and readies her shoulder.
She is putting out tenders
to fill the position
with a kind, wise crone,
who will never use
the word Stupid,
who understands about Evolution,
and who will filter out the self-talk
with lovely floating images of
bunnies and deer frolicking in the forest.

Problem Solved.

The End.

15 comments:

  1. Very cool! Never take on a Dali as a guardian angel when you can have a crone instead. I love this poem and how you tell the whole miserable story yet leave me grinning. More people should kick out the naysayers on our shoulders, be they moms or husbands, bosses, friends or even children. Was it Julia Cameron who said invite them into tea, let them know you were expecting them and then tell them they are no longer in control? (It may have been Levine.)
    Bravo!

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  2. I believe that someone once wrote how those naysayers are simply renting space in our minds. We can evict them. Love that wildwoman did so. You always make me smile, Sherry,

    Elizabeth

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  3. Sherry,

    I absolutely love your 'take' on the subject of Dali. You introduced a real element of human experience to it all. Perhaps at times surreal, but mostly true!!!
    Loved that Dali was moved from your hearing ear, to the slightly closed ear. Priceless Sherry :)

    Eileen

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  4. I too love how you personalized him~
    He took on a negative force and you gave him your voice, your mind~
    Yes, we need to kick those naysayers to the curb...hard to do sometimes!
    I love your unique take on the prompt! How clever of you :D

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  5. You really had me there!! It is sad in a way yet I was smiling all through it. The words jumped out to me. I was thinking of the man and her expressions....

    Meditating for being one with you

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  6. My email id:

    gautami.tripathy[at]gmail.com

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  7. It's great Sherry! We sure have to be patient with certain people. But we may take drastic action on these naysayers. They draw on our nerves affecting progress which otherwise could run smoothly! Beautifully written, Ma'am!

    Hank

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  8. I like how your poem reflects his style, really well done and original too.

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  9. These people do sometimes have to pay a high price for their talents don't they. I'm think too of Van Gogh too, and Dali is no exception really. He was as eccentric as they come in may ways.
    So glad you kicked your man like that to the kerb and are happy doing your own 'Wildwoman' thing even if it means talking to the trees...:) It suits you!
    Great interpretation of the prompt Sherry.

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  10. Love this! --and the resolve...

    She straightens her shoulders.
    "Look, kiddo, I've done the crime, yes,
    but I've also done the time,
    and it is Over."
    She boots him out on his ear,

    Life's too short to listen to that inner, unforgiving, critical nag. Go Sherry!

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  11. How original. Love the perspective and the way you slung him over your shoulder from left to right.

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  12. Oh Sherry - even though he comes off less than stellar, I think Dali himself would have got a kick out of this ... a great take on the prompt ... wonderfully well done

    http://aleapingelephant.blogspot.ca/2012/08/its-about-time.html

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  13. `she moves him over to her other shoulder beside the deaf ear' - That image rocked this poem for me.
    Lots of vivid images.

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  14. swatting at him
    as if he were an annoying fly

    hehehe, Sherry, thanks for the amusing piece you have written.
    Well done, Wild Woman.
    :)))

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