Foliage by Valerie Parente
This safe haven,
where you can smell the foliage,
leaflets with an amber bruise,
the fresh green, a Godsend.
These leaves that fall,
they came and they went,
seasons of distress and joy,
while you try to comprehend.
There is pain in bare trees,
skeletal and sharply bent,
you wait, you hibernate,
every year it feels like the end.
You think your pain is gone
when you are dead,
but it’s the “you” that’s gone
as your identity transcends.
– Valerie Parente (5-17-2021)
Value In Pain by Valerie Parente
At the end of the day
you are only as valuable as your pain.
Anybody can do good when they feel good
but tell me what you gain
when you’re far from fine.
Do you learn from your broken heart?
Or do you let it deteriorate your mind?
Tell me what you create
when expression is the focal point
and everything else
is no more than background noise.
– Valerie Parente (4-21-2021)
Fishnets by Valerie Parente
Maybe if I dress as the girl I’ve never been
then I’ll never have to feel this pain again
because these bittersweet songs
have me missing it all
and I’m not one for regrets
but I regret that I left
so I’ll just slip on these fishnets
and continue to pretend
I never took anything for granted.
– Valerie Parente (12-5-2020)
The Beauty of Darkness (II) by Valerie Parente
The young girl said,
“This will either break my heart,
or save me.”
As she grew older
she realized
those were one in the same.
– Valerie Parente (11-4-2020)
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)
Idiosyncratic Pain by Valerie Parente
I don’t want to be known for my pain,
I want to make the most of my pain,
and if that entails
emotions to prevail
in a story that parallels
my particular mental hell
and I can make you understand
a specific circumstance
then all will be fine
’cause baby, I’m one of a kind.
– Valerie Parente (10-22-2020)
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)
How It Is by Valerie Parente
How tragic it must be
to know you are someone else’s life lesson
in the grand scheme.
How frustrating it has been
to know I look like the bad guy
in someone else’s conscience.
But how remarkable it truly is
that being on someone’s mind
can have an impact on their life.
– Valerie Parente (9-26-2020)
Features “Looking At The World Upside Down”, “Tangled”, and “Worth It”
from Rather Be Haunted on Amazon.com
The Vulnerability of Hope by Valerie Parente
To have hope is to be vulnerable
and open to disappointment.
When you are hopeless nothing can hurt you,
you’ve given up and everything is pointless.
It is better to be hopeful
despite the pain that will transpire
because God chose us for the human experience
and that is this life’s greatest honor.
– Valerie Parente (8-28-2020)
