Tag Archives: poems

May 20 2020

Quaritry? Poetry and Quarintine

So its day 50 or so of shelter in place and cleaning yeilded som nice results. Namely, I found an old notebook with poetry on it. Below is a rediscovered poems of mine that I slightly retools.

Untitled

Forgotten roadways taste, seven states out of home . Let’s stop here. He says. It looks nice. He says. rusted out, din down shack of a restaurant, with an “I” burnt out, but no cover charge for me. Women are always free. We don’t see many girls. (Off stage) I don’t smile. You here for the show or the food. I’m starving. Both. He says.
Plastic tits. Artificial, wanna-be twelve year old cats bounce out of time to the nineties grunge. Now, I understand Cobain. hashbrowns and pancakes please. And some clothes.
What would you suggest? Everything’s good here. (if you know what she means hint, hint). Toast, butter, two eggs, sunny-side up, honey. Isn’t this amazing? Yes, hope dreams of undercooked eggs.
Fog machine fire, dizzy neon burnt-out. Spinning. Tan-hidden cellulite, forming to the poles.
Burnt hole through head, his eyes caught a starring look.
I’m starving.
Aren’t you glad we got away from everything? It’s nice to have a chance to escape it all, if only for a while…do us well
Uh-huh. I think we should hit the Keys first, don’t you. I hear the sand there is beautiful. Did you hear me?
Hey you.
I look down (b-cup blues).

Back story of poem

During my senior into year year of college, I experienced my first serious relationship. One of those immediately connected, the world can never stop us, this is true love things. Of course after a year of and a half and a haphazard engagement, like many things that burn too brightly, it fizzled.

A co-worker of mine suggested a road trip down to the Keys. I left broken-hearted, hoping for a vacation from life, only to find myself stuck in a car for two weeks with a friend, who decided this trip was going to be the start of our epic romance…. it was not.

Aug 14 2015

I’m not dead, I’m just a mommy…..

Just a quick note at work, I realize this last year that I have very sadly let this blog go downhill. (What can I say motherhood has kicked my artistic ASS). But on the plus side, my amazing illustrator is making progress on our children’s book, I have a youtube series in the work and I’m finely writing poetry again. So please bare with me as I slowly work my  way back to artistic glory or at least.  And until that way, enjoy a progress sketch of Monster’s Don’t Hugs.

Alfie

Peace n Love,

Rach

Feb 23 2015

Just a quick update

I am going to try retooling my blog and making it a bit more mainstream. I know I have been ignoring this the last few months (a new born can do that to you.) But I’m recommiting myself to keeping this up. And I’m hoping that you can help, please take a minute to fill out the poll and leave a comment with advice, what do you like to see from a blog? 

Jul 10 2014

marching towards the light, erasure poem by Rachael Stanford (Half New Year Poetry Series)

My poem is live,check it out 🙂

Silver Birch Press

stanford_erasure
marching towards the light
by Rachael Stanford

My dream — wearing a wedding dress
it didn’t fit, the hem was caked
with dried mud, a tattered veil

he, a dank cave,
an old fashioned white cloth
half woven

and he was staring right at me,
like I was a TV program,
he’d been waiting for.

My dream-self was slow
taking in the stalactite ceiling,
the stench of growling
bleating sounds that echo from behind
blocking the room’s only exit — a cavern
beyond.

“please I don’t have the strength,
you have to hear me!”

SOURCE:  Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book Two : The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan (Hyperion Books, 2006).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is based on a page from a Percy Jackson YA novel. In writing the poem, I wanted to retain the original feel of the page but change and tweak it to elicit…

View original post 81 more words

Jul 1 2014

The spastic love child of Axl Rose and Sylvia Path

tesla_meLast week was the week I said, I was going to release my E-Book. Then I ended up getting called in for an interview for teaching a playwriting class and realized that I had an erasure poem I wanted to submit and the deadline was fast approaching…

so last week was not the week.

But as Scarlett O’Hara, a heroine that I despise would say, “tomorrow is another day.”

So barring anything crazy, this week will be the week.

But back to the erasure poem, I received work yesterday that it will be included in the project (I’ll post more later.) (I also got the job teaching kids play-writing! expect a blog on that later.)

I’m super excited. This was my first attempt at an erasure poem.  Erasure poems, for those who don’t know, is  a form of found poetry or found art created by erasing words from an existing text in prose or verse and framing the result on the page as a poem.

The project is going to be available on Silver Birch Press.

I found this sort of work, freeing in its constrictions. The project had a specific constraints on the topic as well as the page number you could pick. It was a puzzle for the artistic mind!

It also helped with my writer’s block. 🙂 I really do suggest it for people who can’t think of anything to write or who like to pretend like me that they are visual artists as well.

I think I might take a few books and just have at it. Who knows maybe I’ll come up with

 

Jun 19 2014

When words aren’t enough…..

Note: written during the weekend of another Hallmark holiday, Father’s Day, where I find myself lost once again so I take to the paper and write something, I’ll be rewriting for the rest of my life.

Image

I found myself in the sterile room,

snow blind, a blizzard

of you.

as the doctor’s tongue snaked

charmed out symbols, I coated

myself with words: selfishness,

bravery and faith.

and the silent bargains serenade

angels, the bleat from

my lips to the eletronic  pulse

… . … . … . … .

You need a lung

but my words were dull,

unable to cut the

supple folds of my

skin. You needed

everything

 

all I could give you was a sonnet.

Mar 19 2014

When your give birth to your literary babies

Poetry may be dead, but poets aren’t!

I woke up on Monday with two bittersweet emails. Two of my poems had been accepted for publication in Cool Etc! a few new online journal. One of which was a baby of  mine, Loaded Gun, Twice Fired. I wrote this poem about 8 years ago (wow I’m getting old) for a class in poetry. The assignment was to finish the Emily Dickinson poem, My life has stood a loaded gun. I ended up with a poem that I loved that stood a lone or in tandem to the original piece. But after I got out of college, I had a heck of a time trying to publish it, because it was “too traditionally.” I refused to give up, and now, my baby shall see the light of day. It’s an odd feeling though, to be done with a piece I tweaked and changed some many times throughout the year, but greatly satisfying. Image
In addition, my poem, The river bed, was also published! This wasn’t a baby of mine, rather a poem I wrote while spending a day walking along the Mackinaw river.

It’s pleasures like this that make a rainy Wednesday much more enjoyable. I hope you liked my work.

Dec 31 2013

Goodbye 2013 (the last of my two pieces published this year)

One more day until the new year, so I decided to post the other two of my pieces which were accepted in Euphemism. I’m about a month behind on this but as I documented so much in this blog, life has a funny way of getting in the way of my life plans! Enjoy and stay safe this holiday!

After (You’ve Gone)

the heart beats on

life beats
on.

the heart generates
an electrical
signal

its own signal,
animpulse

this,
we can prove
recorded by
an EKG

dots of
your fingertips
painting my
skin red

electrodes
on
chest

it exists

as

I and you,
did, do,

still do

though not us,
rusted, worn, rotten pictures

the impulse leads
to each beat

mix-tape memories stuck
controlling

a we’re-through, salty-tear
smooch stains until
you tear awayas
the signal spreads
across the heart

triggering
muscles to contract
in the correct sequence.

the signal spreads
right to left

a party of dreams
relay-replay.

pushing the blood into…

right to
left

right to
left

your face brushed
mine, smiling

the impulse is
then passed through
to the ventricles

misty, black n white
nightmares

us

causing
the ventricles to
contract.

I throw off my
sheet, ripping at
my skull.

the heart
beats
on.

and my essay:

The flip side of a copy

Time moves slowly when you’re a glorified copy wench. As the pale glow of replication illuminates the growing wrinkles adorning my face, the realization slowly sinks in. A train monkey could take my place, not a NASA rocketeering monkey either but a sleep-most-of-the-day in between poo-flinging one.

As the minutes tick to the void, my eyes scan the room. I want to rip down the OSHA poster, burn it to the ground, screaming to my coworkers, “six years, two degrees, honors societies and publications have to amount to more than paper cuts. And sleepless nights slaved away with library crammed house should amount to more than a no-benefits, crap-dollar an hour pay.”  I want to start anew.

A battled scared vet returning to a reformed nation, I find myself longing to be lost in The Wasteland, strung out and strung up in a hotel full of beatniks and hippies hell bent on filling the worlds with flowers.  But the best minds of my generation are wasting away in cheaply pressed suits, long retail hour eyes wearied, as their back breaks with the loans on which their future was built/destroyed.  And my rent is due in a week.

The copy machine spits out my order. As my hands shake, I pick up each warm piece, permeating my skins. But my bones shake as I turn out the light and slowly walk away, each step echoing down the hallway.

Dec 27 2013

A new year, a new artistic you

I’ve never been particularly fond of New Years. Maybe it’s because I have always sucked at keeping my resolutions. Maybe it’s because I find the song “Auld Lang Syne” incredibly depressing.   Or perhaps it is because I feel like its a manufactured holiday that most people my age use as an excuse to get smashed.

Whatever the reason, I usually find myself plopped on the couch watching the “Twilight Zone” Marathon that runs on SyFy with a bottle of non-alcoholic strawberry sparkling water

But then I ran across this.
New Years IdeaWhat a wonderful idea! Instead of making a crapton of goals as an artist based on making money, procuring fame or producing a product, perhaps, we can instead find a way to help produce the inner peace in our art.

It’s so easy as an artist to fall into these traps. I especially fail with number 10. I do not have patience. I want amazing success ASAP. And I struggle when at the end of the day, I didn’t get as far as I wanted. But what does that struggle get me? No closer to my goal and miserable.

This year, I’ll still probably be on the coach for New Year’s Eve watching the “Twilight Zone”, but I am going to print off this picture and remind myself everyday. Art is a process and a wonderful journey but there are certian mindsets and traps we can fall into as artist that will make us miserable! Make a goal to avoid them this new year.