The Artist, The Muse: A Poetry & Prose Collection

December 6, 2017February 22, 2018Leave a comment

The Artist, The Muse: A Poetry & Prose Collection by Valerie Parente OUT NOW

The Artist, The Muse is what you get when you interweave psychology, creativity, and spirituality into the poetic fabric of a mentally disordered daydreamer’s mind. Valerie Parente artfully hones the craft of written word in this collection of poetry and prose through fantastical metaphors, rhythmic patterns, heartfelt emotions, metaphysical references, and breath-taking epiphanies. Dark daydreams and silver-lining mantras blossom out of the obsessive compulsive writer’s verbal landscape as the artist becomes her own muse.

Includes poetry, prose, and artwork by Valerie Parente.

Table of Contents:

The Artist, The Muse
Conscience of Nonsense
Glitter In The Air
Shy of Me
The Gargoyle Mindset
An Inadequate Reflection
Ink
You’ve Made An Author Out Of Me
Essence
Grandiosity of the Sick
Daydreams Are Shadows
Sanctuary
Hindsight of the Falsehood
Echoes
Idu Ego
The Silver Screen
Realize These Butterflies
The Writer
Natural
The Instinct of Intuition
The Masterpiece Tragedy of Marionette
Egomaniac
Inquiries
Playing with Dolls
Imagination Is Not Free
Validation
I Wish You Well
Bleeding
Paradox Lock
Dreams of Floating
Give & Take
Her Bright Pink Shoes
Why I Apologize
My Heart Thaws
Mars
Sage of Tarkus
Normal
The Creeper
Young Sapling
Scarecrow
she could not master astral projection
Touch the Heart
Creator
To Be Human
Lady Luna and the Light Inside
Tiara
The Answer
Order In Disorder
Trust the Stars
Novelty
Message From The Universe

The Artist, The Muse by Valerie Parente

Sage of Tarkus

November 23, 2017November 23, 2017Leave a comment

Sage of Tarkus by Valerie Parente

The heartaches of war that plagued the land of Segaduses left many civilians absent of faith. Lost. Looking for a reason to live again.

Determined to receive some sort of direction from a beacon of wisdom, a damsel from Segaduses traveled thirty miles by knight and steed to arrive at a cabin deep in the woods of Tarkus, home of the most acclaimed sage in all of the land. She had been on a journey for the past three years, searching for an answer to all of her sorrow. This girl with the mint green eyes convinced herself that the cure to her faithless haze could be found by falling in love. Her journey, for the past three years, was none other than a quest for a beloved hero whom could fill her life with purpose and interpersonal connection.

The gown worn by the damsel of Segaduses billowed like a blossoming tulip as she seated herself across the sage.

“I’ve been expecting you, dear,” the pale old woman stirred her chalice, making a burgundy whirlpool of the most fragrant truth serum. As the aroma wafted into stuffy cottage the damsel’s nostrils were filled and the knowledge she had denied deep in the core of her brain was activated.

With a confident nod the sage pointed to the knight on the stallion, outside of the cabin, whom had brought the Segaduses maiden so far along her journey.

“He is the one,” the strong-minded sage determined. “The man on the stallion is the man you will wed.”

For a fleeting second the damsel’s brow furrowed, then quickly vanished. Suddenly with a panic the enlightened yet shocked girl hastily shook her head, as if to rattle away the wisdom of the perceptive woman before her. “Oh no, no… he can’t be. I’ve known him for three years… he’s, he’s always been there in the background. If he were the one I would have known.”

“Dear,” the sage’s raspy voice lowered to a tender lull, “Knowledge does not require your conscious consent. Sometimes our subconscious knows at first sight, but our mind does not realize that what we felt was knowledge until years have passed.”

It took the frazzled girl a moment to respond. Her mint green eyes shivered as she struggled to make sense of the sage’s wisdom. How could it be? How could she have wanted something so badly but have never realized it was right before her eyes?

Adamant that the sage of Tarkus must have made a mistake, the damsel allowed her stubborn mind to wonder aloud, “But how can he be my hero if he does not have my most coveted traits?”

“Well what are you looking for in a hero, my dear?” the sage asked.

“A hero who has the same interests as I do.”

“So he is a reflection?”

“A hero who loves me unconditionally.”

“So he is a father?”

“A hero who knows how I feel before I say it.”

“So he is omniscient?”

Having given up, the damsel sunk deeper into her seat.

“Dear, what your heartbreak longs for is not a partner. What you are describing is not an equal. You are describing a God.”

Having given up, the Segaduses girl fell deeper into her subconscious, realizing the knowledge her depressed mind had repressed for so long.

"Damsel" by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (11-23-2017)

Glitter In The Air

November 6, 2017November 6, 2017Leave a comment

“Glittler In The Air” by Valerie Parente

“Run Away” by Valerie Parente

I told a star that I wanted to dedicate a fraction of myself to its bright soul. I preserved my time long before I ever laid eyes on that star. I spent twenty three years cultivating emotions, memories, and wisdom, and waited until it felt right to share these qualities. Then in the rain of my own eyes I was denied. And I guess what I feel now… is lost. I am lost in an immaculate dark forest under the most beautiful canopy of stars. Here I am trying to run away from a sadness surrounded by the sparkling night and I cannot figure out if the glitter in the air is a sign to turn back around, or a guiding light towards new territory.

– Valerie Parente (11-6-2017)

she could not master astral projection

May 17, 2017May 17, 2017Leave a comment

she could not master astral projection by Valerie Parente

The girl with the mysophobia could not master astral projection.
“This fear and this feeling of germ infestation tainting my skin locks me into physical awareness. To be so in touch with my material self blinds me to the ethereal possibilities of consciousness beyond the body. To open the mind to a realm that needs no space or time is impossible as long as this germ fear persists.”

And so it seems, anxiety is the greatest barrier between us and connection with our true essence.

"Astral Projection" by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (5-17-2017)

The Silver Screen

February 25, 2017February 25, 2017Leave a comment

Bloom

The Silver Screen by Valerie Parente

My daydreams bloom from whatever prominent emotion I am feeling.

My daydreams seem to subconsciously and intuitively unravel themselves into ideal scenarios.
Like a movie the daydreams play out in a succession of mental frames on a cortical film reel. At best the mental fabrication distributes its duty between the two-track mind and I maintain my presence; above the absolute threshold I am in the audience and below the absolute threshold I am in the director’s chair. The dialogues between imaginary friends on the silver screen happen so instantaneously that the script’s origin teeters on the line between voluntary and involuntary awareness.

My daydreams are finalized by obsessive and repetitive hindsight.
When mentally reviewed these fantastic mental purges reveal subliminal truths. The loose reigns of control over the internal screenplays, regularly referred to as “imagination”, masquerade as intrusive images too appropriate and too satisfying to be resented.

– Valerie Parente (2-18-17)

The Creeper

December 15, 2016December 15, 2016Leave a comment

creeper

The creeper only came out at night, terrorizing the community with messages of vanity. The creeper swore she meant well, but no member of society believed her.
The creeper had one argument to make before the angry mob in order to defend her vanity.

“Is it so wrong to be a visual person? Is it so superficial to prefer what is aesthetically pleasing to the pupils? If so, I can pinpoint exactly where on the spectrum my thoughts go wrong. Because I possess a black or white mindset that can only think in extremes. Dark or light to touch the eyes. And I chose the dark because the light is blinding.”

As the bold civilians sympathized, the timid civilians empathized.

-Valerie Parente (12-15-2016)

The Keeper of Time

December 4, 2016December 4, 2016Leave a comment

The Keeper of Time by Valerie Parente

Chronos jolted out of his sleep to what sounded like a crackling firework.

He knew exactly what he was about to see. Only seconds ago was his brain generating a bizarre dream that would predict the day to come. For the past few months, this had been the case- Chronos having precognitive dreams and experiencing a more potent version of déjà vu as the dreams unraveled in the following day’s reality- but Chronos didn’t dare tell anyone this secret. People would think he was a liar. Or worse, sick– only to be rendered incompetent and unfit to teach. He couldn’t afford that.

Chronos ripped off his sheets and hurried to the bedroom window where he saw a burst of silver sparkle amongst the long grass in his yard.

“I knew it,” he gasped between the windowpanes.

Not a second was spared as Chronos bolted out of his room. He didn’t even care to tiptoe out of courtesy not to wake his dying grandfather, the guardian who had given his life to raise Chronos into the mathematician he was today.

Chronos flung open the doors to his lot and ran onto the lawn, still in his boxers and T-shirt. The Canadian summer night was cold, but adrenaline made it near impossible for him to notice.

Determined to prove what he eerily dreamt about the night before, Chronos stumbled to the la femme creature in the middle of his yard. The humanoid born from the stars, whose lavender flesh was sprinkled with silver stardust, sat ever so patiently with her legs crossed.

“You”, Chronos barely choked into the bitter 2:30 AM air, “I knew you were coming…”

As the glittery humanoid nodded the moonlight ignited the sparkle of her violet eyes.

“Something…” Chronos faltered on his words, hearing the insecurity fragment his distinct tone, “something strange has been happening to me… and… I think you know what it is.”

The humanoid’s glistening mouth stretched into a smile while her pupils dilated. “I do…”

“What is it?” the young man begged. He was just starting his long coveted career and nearly collapsed at the thought of losing grasp of his aspirations to these increasingly frequent paranormal occurrences of precognitive dreams.

“Chronos,” the celestial being addressed him knowingly. There was an old-friend-like quality in her demeanor that contradicted all Chronos assumed a stranger from the stars would possess. “Do not lose any more sleep than you already have by worrying. You were perfectly made.”

“Perfect?! Everything I thought I knew about the fundamental quantity of time has been tipped over on its head!” Chronos cried out. He wouldn’t have been so brash with this amicable being if he didn’t have such a heavy load of additional stress from playing caretaker to his grandfather, all the while grieving a man who had not yet crossed the threshold into death but was on an imminent way out.

“I know you’re scared, Chronos. But fear is often the result of misunderstanding. Time is a form of perception mankind has long misunderstood. You see with the eyes… You smell with your nose! You hear with your ears! You taste with your tongue! And you feel with your skin!” the female, equally silver-tongued as she was silver-skinned, gleamed in a raw and impassioned voice. All the while her eyes began to smile and brightened, invigorated by the very information she was verbally bestowing onto Chronos. “All sensory receptors, sensory nerves, sensory cells, work with your brain to manipulate a flux of external stimuli into the perceptions we call reality. Your conscious, your remarkable human conscious, has been immaculately designed to interpret life through sequential experiences which have come to form the illusion we understand yet understate as ‘time’?”

Chronos’s head felt light. Determined to come to terms with his worrisome dreaming tendencies, he hardened with assertion. “What are you saying?”

The humanoid took a deep inhale, trying to reel in her excitement, then exhaled. “To be impressed by an existence through the flow of time is the natural way of human beings. Time is no more than a sixth sense.”

Chrono’s throat tightened. He didn’t know what to say. So, naturally, the girl from the stars carried on in her passionate voice.

“You see Chronos, when you are overcome by an ethereal wave of déjà vu or when a precognitive dream merges with your slumber you are really experiencing a neurophysiologic glitch. An error in the programming of your brain! As I have said, you see with the eyes- but that perception makes an impression in that intricate brain! Recalling the future is as much a sensory impairment as blindness!”

This newfound information was too much for Chronos. It targeted a portion of his mind that he had never been honed before. Sure he was a mathematical genius whose was used to thinking in overdrive, but this talk of time concurrent with his anatomy was testing his mental capacity, not because it was intellectually revolutionary or mind-bending, but because it was personal.

Slowly Chronos pieced together this other-worldly being’s words. “So what you are telling me is… I- I am not gifted…” he concluded as he felt the boiling hot tears pool into his vision. “… I am sick.”

“No Chronos,” In one fluid motion the celestial girl rose from her cross-legged position and stood before him. She cupped Chronos’s quivering mandible in her warm hands. Her violet irises softened as her pupils sharpened onto the vulnerable human being before her. “You are deeply blessed! All that has, is, and will occur in this realm can be tuned into with a particular combination of brainpower that you miraculously possess! All that is existential in mankind and the universe itself is accessible to your brain.” The fresh essence of awe in the humanoid’s voice, as if she was also discovering this incredible phenomena for the first time, eased Chronos into a serene state.

Valerie Parente (12-4-16)

The Daydreamer’s Inner Playwright

October 29, 2016October 29, 2016Leave a comment

The tough part of being mindfully present when you are an introverted daydreamer is separating yourself as the existential human you are in reality aside from the inner playwright tinkering away within your brain. Daydreamers always have that anticipatory screenwriter designating mental energy, time, and focus onto future “could be” situations. The screenwriter’s role is to fantasize, modify, and mentally record dynamic imaginary scenarios onto the false memory film reel of the brain. They hone a future-oriented duty to wonder how events might transpire in the best possible way- “best” determined by an idealism based on multi-dimensional enlightenment from both profound and simple life lessons, not the same “best” seen as consecutive achievements of one-dimensional pleasurable experiences. Like any good book, the anticipatory daydreamer cares about writing your lifestory so that it conveys important messages and strikes as interesting.
But here’s where the dilemma arises. You are not an omniscient author of your lifestory. You cannot control or inherently understand the underlying workings of the external world, other people, and forces. You can only control and understand you.
To be grounded with your head in the clouds poses an impossible Schrödinger’s cat kind of dual state. A grounded, mindful person makes the most out of their experiences by coexisting with nature, observing and recognizing the sensations in the present. Meanwhile, a person with their head in the clouds is figuring out how to control and create nature- too busy being a superhuman scribe to be an affected character in the cosmic blueprint. Daydreamers are omniscient playwrights heedlessly attempting to define real people and real settings into character roles and plot lines. They are compelled to think up ways in which events will unfold, how Person A will come to meet Person B, and what the underlying motives for all parties involved might be… these are tasks no human being can do with their reality outside of penning a fictitious narrative on the sidelines.

With This Pen, I Thee Write
There is an anticipation in the daydreamer that can inappropriately bleed into the unfolding plain of the material world. This is not to say that anticipating life’s experiences is unhealthy- anticipation serves a very healthy purpose when used appropriately. You should anticipate your actions, reactions, and emotions, not those belonging to other people. There is a difference between anticipating how you will deal with given situations versus anticipating how the world will deal out situations. It is not your job to think up who you are going to meet at a certain setting or how people are going to feel about your choices. Leave the ‘how’ component to whatever omniscient forces dictate the universe. Focus on your current goal, focus on being the best you can be in this very moment, and do not focus on how every future person, place, or thing could play out in relevance to your goal until that person, place, or thing has stumbled its way into the reality of your present state. Daydreaming can be an exhilarating activity that can turn into worthwhile projects about alternate characters leading alternate lives, but daydreaming is not how you make the most of the life you are currently leading.

-Valerie Parente (10-29-16)

An Inadequate Reflection

October 12, 2016Leave a comment

An Inadequate Reflection by Valerie Parente

From the very core of her being she illuminated every room she walked in. In her healthiest state, her effervescent energy reflected onto all that she interacted with.
Perplexingly, as she entered a room whose walls were constructed from mirrors, she could not project her inner light onto the conspicuously ideal environment. The only radiation of light transcended from her optical form, emanating onto the boundaries boxing her in. As her being translated to the sleek canvases something equally underwhelming as it was uncanny occurred. The mirrors absorbed her energy. But this energy was not the energy that regularly brightened the moods of those around her. This shallow light was purged off of the metallic surface at the exact same angle from which it entered.
She virtually saw her own image, yet her demeanor seemed like an astral projection inconsistent of her true being. Her thriving frame of mind could not be captured by the hollow frame of mirror without warping the truth along a lateral axis. Her silhouette was inverted and her essential nature was unseen. In this limiting dungeon of a room she looked to the parallel world mounted on the walls and saw not a reflection of herself but a collection of perfectly stable atoms mocking the very imperfections that shaped her existential being. Those atoms fought to mimic a material vision, a vision far less reflective of her inner light than that of her fundamental spirit. And in a strangely empty place where a shining sheet was no more than an inherently dark plane, the optical illusion of a light-bearing presence existed.
At that moment she stopped relying on the mirror for gratification.

– Valerie Parente (10-12-16)

My Heart Thaws

September 28, 2016Leave a comment

My Heart Thaws by Valerie Parente

“You know that mysterious feeling when you smell a certain scent and that scent elicits specific memories?”

“Yes…”

“I’m feeling overwhelmed by a sort of time warp… a time warp beseeched by what I can best describe as an ethereal scent. I’m not talking an autumn aroma that invokes nostalgic memories or a specific stench that reminds you of traumatic experiences. I’m not talking a succession of frames streaming like fluid through your memory banks or distinguishable snippets flickering like consecutive flashbacks rolling through a film reel. I’m not talking mechanical reminiscing as a product of some psychological disposition or resurfacing scars brought forth from intensive therapy. I’m not even talking about a scent that hones your mind! I’m talking about the most inexplicable, indescribable, kind of scent that hones your heart… this otherworldly kind of scent that leaves your present perceptions disconnectedly attending to the world but shifts your reactions into intensely reliving the past! I’m talking nine years ago! I’m talking feelings of innocent attraction and distinct anger and vivid hopes and crazy dreams that were all alive and kicking nine Goddamn years ago! Feelings right before the mental breakdowns that broke my mentality and froze my heart! Nine fucking years of letting the cruel and cold mental disorders numb out the feelings in my heart that hurt so bad! And I forgot how much it stung nine years ago before my reality became a shadow tagging behind a haze of obsessive compulsive disorder and eating disorders. But today that haze is clearing! Today the sun is warm and I can feel it shining down and thawing my heart! And my recovering heart is warping back to a time when crushing made me high and love was totally blind! When somebody made a choice that hurt and something better could have worked! And all this heart ache violently tugging at my core is making me realize that maybe, just maybe, I blessedly became mentally ill! I numbed out my feelings as a means of survival, because to become mentally ill was to stunt my emotional development! To stunt the instrument of my emotions was to freeze time on my heart! To put my heart on hold! And maybe icing out the world behind a distorted icy lens was my way of preserving my heart right before it had the chance to break in half! But I am feeling, and I am alive, and I am okay, and I am better than ever. I am feeling it all now.”

doll-heart