Senses Working Overtime
A sonnetesque poem
See beauty in both a purple sunset and wrath of hurricane bout to onset See evil in twinkle of a narc’s eye behind their hardened masks of puss of stye
Hear words spoken by false Robbins guru yet discern truth twixt the lies that he spews Smell the sweet fragrance of flowers and weeds and the putrid stench of what I don’t need
Touch the soft warm essence of kind souls’ skin and the rough exterior of false kin Taste spiritual nourishment of love but spit out that which does not fit like glove
Trust my intuition to rule the day Sixth sense makes sure I learn from acts of play
This poem was sparked by a great song by an underappreciated band, Senses Working Overtime by XTC (video embedded below), which those familiar with my process will realize means it came on my shuffle play this afternoon, and a question that a dear friend asked me in an email yesterday:
“How do you handle all the energy that comes in from others? This experience is difficult for me. I see all on the Medium platform. Their responses to even to my own words are so much to take in and filter. Love is tremendous. I’ve avoided all social media because I just don’t any type of air-traffic control. There is too much pain and honesty and bs. It gets presented to me with a bow.
How do you feel love? How do you experience deep love? How do you trust? Who do you know to trust? How do you experience love and trust your all your senses?”
I first responded to my friend with this tanka that I wrote last spring:
All people have good Many express none at all My trust must be earned Don’t freely give love’s power Don’t gaslight intuition
That tanka was channspired by this great piece by Keri Mangis:
For those unfamiliar with that may want to try their hand at a sonnet, which this is not, each line should have ten syllables, and the poem consists of three quatrains and one couplet, with this end-of-each-line rhyming scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. I got the structure confused in my head and wrote this to AABB CCDD EEFF GG. I liked the creation too much to redo the poem just to fit the structure I had intended. I have no idea if the structure I created has a name. Somsubhra Banerjee will know.
Tagging some friends to share: Joseph Lieungh| Kira Dawn | William J Spirdione (I wrote this one by hand too)| I. Trudie Palmer | jules | Libby Shively McAvoy | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Dr. Preeti Singh | Maria Rattray | Claire Kelly | DMTakeshi |Stuart Englander | Diana C. | Anthi Psomiadou | David Pahor| Kim Petersen | Thief | Rebecca Romanelli | Carrie. A. Kelly | Carolyn F. Chryst, Ph.D. | Melanie J. | Dr. Fatima Imam | JS Adam | Agnes Laurens | Ravyne Hawke | Joanne Olivieri | LM
In Rama I create, with soul-energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,