I Want To Be Heard

June 7, 2021June 25, 2021Leave a comment

I Want To Be Heard by Valerie Parente

It’s not that I want to be famous,
it’s that I want to be heard,
and I know I can touch you,
if you get in touch with my words.

I took a lot of carefully constructed time,
from a child to the adult I am now,
I try my best to add a positive spin,
a piece of beauty in an ugly crowd.

There is nothing more important than a voice,
I realized that when I was a sick teen,
and if you don’t like what you hear,
you sure as hell have the right to intervene.

I saw a lot of talk about mental disorders,
that glamorized the illness over healing,
and I knew right then and there,
I wanted to patch over the bleeding.

There are always silver linings to our pain,
and it took a long time for me to see them,
but the one thing that saves me every day,
is the process of creating and artistic freedom.

I didn’t go through hell for nothing,
mental health awareness is the goal,
there’s a darkness we can manipulate,
shedding light in the shadows.

Make it meta, make it metaphorical,
make these poems layered infinitely,
I’ve got your back and that’s a promise,
if you’re kind enough to listen to me.

– Valerie Parente (6-7-2021)

Pixie Dust

March 8, 2021March 8, 2021Leave a comment

Pixie Dust by Valerie Parente

Little nymph with rainbow wings,
sprinkling pixie dust,
making the darkness sparkle,
with her magic touch.

Little fairy with sharp intuition,
seeing auras through glass eyes,
your energy is clear to her,
even when you try to hide.

Little creature of the forest,
with empathy like the stars,
she envisions how you feel,
dividing light in equal parts.

Their whimsical spirits exceed the days,
like totems passed down the human race,
so very minuscule in this time and place,
yet endless in the sentiments they convey.

– Valerie Parente (3-8-2021)

These Laurels Were Not Meant To Rest

February 26, 2021February 26, 2021Leave a comment

These Laurels Were Not Meant To Rest by Valerie Parente

Imagine, imagine, imagine.
When the world is mundane
I give it my passion
another artistic era
to rise from the ashes.

Create, create, create.
People say I should be satisfied
but I need to formulate
an endless stream of words
from this mental landscape.

Another rhyme, another day,
another opportunity for artistic display.
These laurels were not meant to rest,
in this garden I’ll always progress,
so ever-evolving, so evergreen,
like the creativity that lives within me.

– Valerie Parente (2-26-2021)

Like Fine China (Analysis)

October 6, 2020October 6, 2020Leave a comment

Like Fine China Analysis

I wrote this poem, “Like Fine China“, without fully understanding what my subconscious was trying to tell me. After reading it a couple of times I realized the meaning behind the words. Fine China is the symbol for making art (something beautiful) out of sadness. The sadness is a constant cycle that manifests itself like patterns on fine China, royal “blue” (sad) details that I’ve etched upon the surface (my writing). When I have days that I break down, the porcelain breaks down, and I could use the jagged pieces of sadness to hurt myself but instead I choose to use them to build a display out of the broken pieces in the form of a porcelain vase (art from my mental breakdown) and there I show off pretty flowers (rhymes through poetry). The problem that arises from creating art out of sadness, sometimes sadness that a 3rd party might see as “old news”, is that these emotions I’ve recited are as good as dead to the world, hence why the flowers in the fine China vase I’ve built are decaying. The wonder in this, though, is that those decaying flowers offer me, the writer, solace. The cycle of sadness and creativity continues as the decaying flowers become a beautiful floral tea that I turn to for comfort as a grieve the ongoing pain I’m still in. Other people don’t see the benefit of the flowers (writing about perpetual pain), but I do. The entire process from fine china to a floral tea is cathartic, as is the artistic process, and in the end I feel okay and like I can survive my own mental state. Alas, a new day comes, the sadness inevitably returns as I am overwhelmed with reminders from the real world, and the pretty pain goes back to being “too pretty to comprehend” (commentary on not fully understanding what I was writing in the poem itself “Like Fine China”). Thus the entire breaking down of fine china (delving into an artistic outlet) occurs again.

Isn’t it incredible how art can be completely mindless but reveal something so profound in the mind it spawns from?

– Valerie Parente (10-6-2020)

We’re Headed for a Dystopia

September 26, 2020September 26, 20202 Comments

We’re Headed for a Dystopia by Valerie Parente

The precedent we’re setting is incredibly scary
where I can’t talk and you can’t talk
unless both of us agree;
where my freedom and your freedom
is no longer free.
Our basic freedom to think
is our soul’s freedom to just be.
To recognize that opinions aren’t objective
is what marks our humanity;
to collect our differing ideas
is what make us a society.

I don’t know if we can get any more low
than our current reality
where people are in a race to ruin each other’s livelihoods
just because they don’t like the way someone else breathes
and I know we all mean well
but any form of censorship is the enemy
the right to feel is dissolving before our eyes
and I think it’s a symptom of a bigger disease
because my generation was given a broken world
and we feel more in control dictating how each other speak.
We all have a different mind
and I want to hear the different stories
but we are headed for a dystopia
if we can’t agree to disagree.

– Valerie Parente (8-22-2020)

For the Love of Fantasy

August 13, 20201 Comment

For The Love of Fantasy by Valerie Parente

Nothing has ever made me feel more alive,
than turning a stream of consciousness into fantasy rhymes,
bringing to life dark fairytales that pull at heartstrings,
taking a subtle mood and honing the art of exaggerating.
The beautiful quality of fantasy and daydreamed worlds
is that nothing is literal, it’s all a hypothetical metaphor,
and just because I am the narrator of something literary
does not mean I’ve mistaken my story with reality.
I’m inspired by what’s in my psyche, not the world outside
creating scripts for daydreamers who don’t feel whole in real life.

– Valerie Parente (8-13-2020)