Moonchild Manifesto: A Poetry & Prose Collection by Valerie Parente AVAILABLE NOW

July 2, 2021July 2, 2021Leave a comment

Moonchild Manifesto by Valerie Parente is a body of work that documents the parallel between two acts: feeling a profound connection and making it your whole mood, and taking a topic and making it your artistic muse. There is a similarity between poetry and the spell we call love. A Moonchild is hyper-sensitive to this similarity and understands how it is equally enchanting as it is taxing. Divided into three moon phases, this poetry and prose collection follows the subconscious trajectory of The Hurt, The Heal, and The Hope.

Valerie Parente’s third poetry and prose collection manifested out of what she does best, mixing psychology, spirituality, and fantasy to make sense of her mental experiences as both a human being with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and a whimsically dark artist.

Black and White

April 14, 2021Leave a comment

Black and White by Valerie Parente

They say the higher you climb,
the harder the fall,
but if you ask me,
that doesn’t make sense at all.
When I’m sky high,
the clouds are my cushion,
the sun is my eyes,
and the moon is my vision.
I see a gradient in everything,
life is not black and white,
“all is good, all is evil,”
is a fallacy old as time.
I see it from the cliff,
the gifted and the damned,
and there’s really no difference,
between those two hands.
Every blessing has its dark hours,
every curse can shed a light,
it’s about finding the gray area,
between the black and white.
The hurt feels so dark,
the hope, a bright light,
the heal, a full moon,
connecting day to night.

– Valerie Parente (4-14-2021)

The Beauty of Darkness (I)

November 1, 2020November 4, 2020Leave a comment

The Beauty of Darkness (I) by Valerie Parente

I find
the most unwavering comfort
in my dark moods
because they remind me
that I am human
just like you.

– Valerie Parente (11-1-2020)

Untouched

May 20, 20201 Comment

Untouched by Valerie Parente

My 25 and a half years of suffering doesn’t come from not feeling good enough.
This is a constant issue of feeling like I am good enough
but like God keeps setting me up
for a million and one lessons
about how there’s absolutely no one
who could ever give a fuck
about the body I managed to save
when I tried to die young.

And you can go ahead and say I’m insane for being so broken up
but maybe you’d understand my kind of hell if you spent 25 and a half years untouched
while your mind continues to level up
I get better every day
but the night never comes
where I go to bed with someone
and maybe that’s God’s way of saying
I’m not meant to be loved.

– Valerie Parente (5-20-2020)

Noise

February 19, 2020Leave a comment

Noise by Valerie Parente

Chaos is noisy.
When you finally get out
Prepared for the silence of safety
But for some reason there is still noise
That noise is the trauma.
Echoes are normal as you distance from the moment of chaos
Music is normal as you feel newfound inspiration
But noise,
Noise is the sign of post traumatic stress.
If it is noisy instead of quiet, that is how you know you have been traumatized.

"Noise" by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (2-19-2020)

The Artist, The Muse

November 20, 2019November 20, 2019Leave a comment

dark angel

The Artist, The Muse by Valerie Parente

What if the artist is her own muse?
Well then the art is her own truth.

This girl, a mastermind of the English language,
This girl, unmasked, has a mind of ink and pages.
Her metaphors have a way of making the literal very literary.
She believes in foreshadowing, the act of oncoming clouds.
Though it’s make-believing… for shadows, in fact, are uncommon in clouds.
A dreamer, she is.
A dream, where she lives.

She makes stories and tales
Making up stories entails
Being in private
There she writes this…
Man invested in an emotional girl
Manifested in the motion of words
Written on many sheets that hide
Ridden of men, she confides.

When she finally decides to share a work spawned from her mind
Then you find that she designed a rare world flawed on the inside.
Still, each of her works expressed.
Will teach of her worst and best.

Interesting how brave she is
In trusting the reader to read her.
She is the author who yearns as affliction writes her unique imagination.
Shares another, you soon learn as a fiction writer, you need image innovation.

A motif is a treasure.
A treasure is her motif.
Therefore, when the artist is her own muse
She makes use of her own truth.

Buy The Artist, The Muse : A Poetry & Prose Collection

The Artist, The Muse by Valerie Parente

– Valerie Parente (11-20-2019)

A Poetic Manifesto

May 30, 2019May 30, 2019Leave a comment

A Poetic Manifesto by Valerie Parente

What it means to be an artist is that I take my life experiences and process them through a creative filter. My internal world manifests best through the art of written word. As a result, when I’m in pain I might write a “dark” piece. To those who find this work disturbing, this is my rebuttal.

"Scar Tissue"

I have every right to say anything I want to say
because this page is my stage and this is my brain
and the reason you felt uncomfortable when you read it
was because you have resonated with it.
If you become upset knowing that I am broken
then please understand that writing about my mental health
is how I begin to heal myself.

I will never stop emoting and hurting and healing and if any of this is problematic for someone then I pray you find the strength to learn how to be human one day.

– Valerie Parente (5-30-2019)

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

Buy THE ARTIST, THE MUSE Via Amazon

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

Lady Luna and the Light Inside

August 26, 2017Leave a comment

Lady Luna and the Light Inside by Valerie Parente

Lady Luna has so much light confined inside a heart as dark as night.
She loves being near the sun but it hurts to shine
Because the light she feels inside grows bigger and bigger every night
But the heart of night remains the same size.
Lady Luna does not want to waste the limited time
Determined by a stubborn sun as beautiful as the very light she hides.
She does not want to embarrass herself with another try
Like a pessimist tries to embrace the bright side.
Lady Luna tries so hard to meet the sun at night
Longing to split apart and reveal the light inside
And show the waves the blinding spot provides.
But she is too fragile and shy in her lunatic state of mind.

Lady Luna

Until she can find the right time she writes…

“I have so much light for you crammed inside my heart, and it just keeps growing and growing and becomes more painful to hold inside me and only me. I long to give this overflowing light to you but you are so locked shut. I keep reaching out to share these rays with you but you only open tiny fractions at time. And I am getting so physically exhausted by the mental strain of this effort. Believe me, it is always worth giving another try, because you are worth more than anything this universe can comprehend, but all this energy exertion is taking its toll on me. My heart has so much light inside, and I do not think the light can fit much longer without breaking my heart in half.”

– Valerie Parente (8-26-17)

Pretty Darkness

December 9, 2016December 9, 2016Leave a comment

The aesthetic of pretty and dark is an interesting one because it poses a sort of juxtaposition that never gets old. When it comes to portraits and doodles the pink ribbons, heart tattoos, and vibrant roses printed among the la femme drawings capture you in but the provocative gothic tones of mascara stains, bloody tears, and decaying branches dare you too look away. Look, but don’t look. Dismal, yet dazzling. There is this perpetual captivation fueled by the melancholic intimacy behind pretty darkness.
The same juxtaposing state exists when the art of written word hones this pretty darkness. The proper dosage of negativity in text can elicit the rawest and rarest of emotions- and emotion on any level is a beautiful and breathtaking part of being human. Any aesthetic that can celebrate or examine human nature, in any of its mysteries, simplicities, miseries, and revelations, is a pretty dark one.