Rupture of the human mind

 

Since that is all I have

No sea-fret breath

no gills no dorsal fins

All I have is this rupture

Recultured draft of stories beyond words

Just 

Space between the abyss-like crack ripping open

Ripping time off

Stuck in salty coagulated blood plaster-like ripping 

All the likes 

All the ruptures

Sand dissolving under my feet on beaches I can no longer visit

Water stinking crystal clear into eyes that no longer can see them 

Just feel them

Crisscross cutting wintered skin 

Writings of longing

'Seachanger - Wave Weaver' New Book Out Now

 'Seachanger - Wave Weaver' the second book in the Blue trilogy is out on December 1st 2021

I have created another book of poetry and flash fiction. It is as seashaken as the first, but in this, the focus is on the changing. Change of circumstances, perspectives, a debate of how we perceive reality, realities; time and times past and future. 

As ever the healing point of origin, for me, is the salty sea. But not any sea. Sea I can touch. The poem 'Not my sea' gets into the meat of that. 

This is also a book of irreverent flippancy and unapologetic swearing at all things cancer and illness. Not a pity party. More like a KBO fest.

The book starts with the poem 

And So it Begins

with a moonrise

kissing the edges of the eastern sea

harvest sized

Red horizon seeking me

I am right here,

as ever.

Open arms.

Ready for the first rush of night

This is how it always begins

with a moonrise,

by a sea

and my open heart

We all weave our tapestries with what we have got. If you can't make it pretty, might as well make it good fun. This weaving of words is coloured by a year of funerals I could not attend, coffee I drank and all the beautiful people who helped us through the last few years of navigating cancer and COVID restrictions. 

Disclaimer: If you are triggered by talk of grave illness, swearing, death, and making sense of all of this using dark humour, blue language and growing fins, scales and possibly gills. THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

However if you like a bit of Scandinavian WTH,  bedazzled with Tjasa Owen Seascape painting magic... buy it. Read it, write to me, call me, just don't turn up at my house, that would be weird, dude.

£ 11 

You can acquire this salt cut collection directly from Galleri Livsmaleri by sending an email gallerilivsmaleri@gmail.com international shipping £4 UK shipping free

Or order via

Https://www.waterstones.com/book/seachanger/sussi-louise-smith/9780995751248

Or

https://www.grovebookshopbooks.com/product/seachanger-wave-weaver/

Tjasa Owen   www.tjasaowen.com

Painting with saltwater

 

Seascape Painting

Painting the sea

So, I can smell the salt

Hold the rough waves to heart

It's right here

In my hands

A brushstroke dance,

across paper and pulse

I am

the sea

Trapped by dales

And low-level river lulls

Breaking free impossible

This chronicle inaudible

 

So, I paint the sea

To smell the salty air

Hold the rough waves to heart

Ripples fluidly connected

Pigments intertwined

Outshined

only by deepfelt memories

I know are almost here

 

I'm not done

A brushstroke more

A dance before

the new moon calms

this longing

So,

 I keep painting the sea

with the sea

Bottles filled while paddling,

holy saltwater

When I run out, and the need, the urge,

 is breath-swallowingly desperate

I sprinkle.

Little flakes of dried island waters

and watch them dissolve

New book of Salty Poetry out Dec 2021

Saline - Dales to the Sea

 

The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, West Yorkshire

The Grove Bookshop in Ilkley, West Yorkshire has summer holiday fun books, games, maps, stones THE LOT

The happy book stones are painted on rocks from all over 

 

Art as colour therapy STUFF

 

Stille i stormen

Painting my way

Though a rather uncomfortable

Hospital stay

 

Kraken poetry

We do not eat the Kraken

All that water looking ironclad

Steely grey against the lightning storm above

Only movement 

our chests as we breathe

Not a wind but for the air we let out

It's unsettling this mirroresque sea against 

the raging of skies so high above we 

can only see the flashes in the loom,

Hardly a boom reaches us

The slow flattened surface disfiguring that half crested moon

reminding us of a golden octopus we once tried to eat in Greece

Arms contorted

Now white against the black płate it had been thrown onto

Menacing it looked

Blaming

I remember thinking that had this creature been the size of a house 

it would be exactly what I imagined the Kraken to be

I have a soft spot for the Kraken 

Naturally, we didn't actually eat it

One doesn't eat magical creatures

Monsters or not, they deserve respect. 

And time

We eat our words, our hearts, our pride. 

But not the Kraken

#sussithepoet

#bluemind

 

 

The Humans Who Inspire Me: Tjasa Owen

www.tjasaowen.com

An American seascape painter who continuously inspire me by playing with my colours

ok, not MY colours, but the colours that vibrationally signify my true self

Maybe yours too?

Anyways, I do not know how, but in a previous life I think Tjasa might have been my favourite muse, an angel in disguise, possibly a mermaid sister

and

Every

Single

Day

I feel seen when I look at her paintings.

It is a really beautiful thing, feeling seen.

Invisibility was always a theme of mine growing up. 

Double-edged sword kindafink

wanting desperately to achieve that perfect level of clear water blend-in-ness

cherishing the ability to disappear

but also hungering, starving to be seen. 

Really seen

As the person I was. 

I had a strong sense of self even as a child

and I knew I was not truly seen.

Loved, but not for who I really was. Does that make sense?

Anyways, what happens sometimes, 

when I see certain constellations of colours, like the ones Tjasa use,  

is that a song forms in my head

a seashanty-like wave of nodes and words kissing my synaesthesia brain

like the painting above did:

'Sea Grit'

 

Piano I Ching

Piano I Ching

There is a glorious smell of piano in my study

Throwing me down the path of basement lessons with cute 'klaver' teacher as an impressionable teen. 

No nodes could be taught,

I was dumb as soup. Which is why first two teachers gave up on me.

I could hear though. 

Mozart and Beethoven, a salad of Straßes and a side bar of Beatles. 

Bitter sweet memories form as I sit here looking at the remainder of a 100 year old piano split to kindling. 

The I Ching of change right here on my table. Our piano always sang change. Stuffed into the 70ies home bar area in the white house dad bought when we were too broke to stay in the one before. And the one before that. Still, he wanted his daughter to play an instrument. We had tried the accordion.

It weighed more than me and had it after I drew blood on its clasp falling over it 

That. And the fact that I have no left right coordination. Was a leftie, turned right in first grade. A thinly disguised attempt to 'normalify' the last of the Mortensen kids. Having failed to succeed with the other three, all stops were pulled. They failed. Instead I could both write with and not write prettily with both hands. And if I had ever had any, the ability to know what was left or right, how to coordinate the two with hands feet and eyes, went. My exceptional father saw the clumsiness as a sign I was his ... Flat footed fella he was. Walked like a goose. Although, feeling loved by your dad is great, goose walking ambidextrous five year olds do not fare well in rural seventies school yards.

My foot to shin aim was perfected soon enough. Unfortunately, this would not help me 10 years later cloppering the pedals on the sad bar piano that had replaced the atrocious accordion. Black gentleman he was, still smelled of smoke and bodega. In times of strife dad could always find a bargain. Wolfgang I called him. Ivory fingers, at least a handful of the slices of dead elephant missing. The old man was injured. Mum had him tuned once. That would do it tight dad said. 'It is not about being in tune, it's about knowing the dance.' Explained a lot. Half the family couldn't carry a tune if it were a feather the other had perfect pitch. And then there was me.

#sussithepoet

Dancer

 

Dancer

It was the way she danced. 

Her touch on the floor so fleeting it seemed inconsequential. 

She had asked me to come. 

She needed a dancing partner, she said. 

Admiring her now, I know that was not true. 

This girl needs nothing when she dances. 

Not music not gravity, definitely not me. 

Inconsequential me. 

All at Once

 All at once

Those clouds gather 

to please me, I am sure

Tease shapes in pure pink allure

pregnant bellies ready to burst

frosty flakes in the billions

All at once I am four again

Sat in window waiting. 

Vision fading as snow was invading

every crevice of my little mind

potent anticipation brewing

innocently queuing behind ice on 

thermal glazing

Waiting

for the first cover to settle. 

The blank sheet to paint on

With my sticky arms and 

pipe cleaner legs

Angels

Silent angels

Before anyone else was awake 

The sea of white was mine to sail

New coasts to conquer

dunes to wander 

Alone

With every flake

Unique to me and itself

Pink clouds against dark morning skies 

The call so faint only I could hear

clear crystal summoning of 

small people

still believing in miracles

 

Belly full of awe so raw

just one sound remains

The gestational wait in 

Silence

The most beautiful sound of all

is the call of the soon to be born

falling snow

I am old now

Bones wary of the walks I have walked

the talks I have talked 

Thoughts I have thought

But all at once 

I am four again

Listening for the snow in the

expectant growth of the pink clouds

against the night blue sky

Silent snow

bridging time

with the ease of truth descending

not ending here but mending the cracks

that I have made

and those that were given me

In the silvery pink diamond mornings

All is good

All at once

#sussithepoet