Copyrighted by Valerie Parente
I own exclusive legal rights to the words from this mouth
drawn by my tongue
always right and never wrong
because I feel how I’m meant to
in the phrases that come through
they’re from me to you.
If you love it, I do too
but if you hate it, I don’t know you.
– Valerie Parente (10-27-2020)
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)
Too Much Loss For One Year by Valerie Parente
This has been a really devastating year
with more loss than our brains can comprehend,
some said with goodbyes
some with unfinished sentences.
It’s not that we’re okay with the loss,
it’s that we didn’t have a chance to lament.
It’s not that we’re dwelling in the past,
it’s that there was no proper end.
And it’s not that I’m mad or insensitive,
but there are some goodbyes I simply cannot accept.
Some explanations are not just explanations
but a farewell, my dear friend.
And I guess the collective conscience within all of us
is learning a very hard lesson,
that the world will keep on turning
no matter who’s lost interest.
– Valerie Parente (10-17-2020)
Being Abnormal by Valerie Parente
It’s just lonely…
when you’re not allowed to express pain
because you’re the mentally ill girl who can’t be taken seriously,
when you’re not allowed to drive the freeway
because no one has faith in the skills you’ve achieved,
when you’re not allowed to paint your face
because you never give in to a normal level of intimacy,
when you’re not allowed to respond to hate
because defending your mental state is a luxury,
when you’re not allowed to remember heartbreak
because normal people don’t take this long to grieve,
when you’re not allowed to cut to the chase
because only crazy people act with so much honesty.
It just gets kind of lonely inside my brain
when even your loved ones can’t understand how you operate,
because I know that my honest-to-God pain only frustrates,
adding a whole new layer to what should be normal heartbreak.
I guess what I’m trying to say
is that ordinary things like a broken heart or a common sickness
are a lot harder to cope with when you have a mental illness
because people always have a million rational reasons for why you’re incorrect
but your hyper-sensitive mind has never been dictated by such logic.
– Valerie Parente (10-9-2020)
Sitting on Skulls and Bones by Valerie Parente
A pile of skulls and bones,
she sits on them like they’re her throne,
resenting the death that rots beneath,
while presenting the depths of her beliefs.
So much destruction from perfectionism and ultimatums,
so in love with what she had, but love’s what made it complicated,
she was suspended in a bittersweet purgatory,
still existing, but never free,
not quite in heaven, not quite in hell,
and you’d be surprised how bad that felt,
so she did what she does best,
she poured her heart out then she left,
convinced there’d be a savior,
but no one came to save her,
now she mourns all the love she once had,
while the things she loved don’t mourn her back,
it’s a truth she has yet to accept,
so she built this throne out of death,
coping by spinning gold,
out of moping that has grown old,
so regal in all of her grief,
turning life lessons into a trophy,
because there’s so much value in every loss,
you don’t fully see it until it’s gone,
now she sits here in grateful defeat,
honoring the things she willingly reaped,
dead and gone but not dead inside,
because this gratitude is still raw and ripe.
– Valerie Parente (10-9-2020)
Subconscious Effort by Valerie Parente
Nothing makes me believe in the divinity of the universe
more than the synchronicity between art and the subconscious;
because I could write and write and have no idea what I mean
but when I take a look back I can see what I needed to see
and to think that I initially didn’t understand what I was referencing in my piece
yet it found a way to acknowledge and explain my mentality
that to me is proof that the universe and all its cosmic incredibility is responsive and alive
even inside the deeply hidden facets of my mind.
– Valerie Parente (10-8-2020)
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)
Like Fine China by Valerie Parente
How can one be so strong and indestructible
yet appear like fine china, so fragile.
Royal blue details drawn on clay
art on top of an artistic display.
Breaking as I break down
a million pieces so jagged and profound.
I could use them to separate my skin
instead I made a vase out of porcelain.
I filled the china like a beautiful bouquet
with flowers that had already decayed
and everybody calls me a sick freak
because I can still see their beauty
but it’s them who fail to see
that dead flowers make great tea
and I’ll sip it as I grieve
remembering how it felt to be
like fine china, too pretty to comprehend
until they break me down again.
– Valerie Parente (10-5-2020)
Features “Grand Scheme”, “The Fear I Long For”,
and “Ghosts In My Room”
from Rather Be Haunted on Amazon.com
Pick A Side by Valerie Parente
I’m either a threat or I’m a mess.
This cannot be a dual process.
Because you say that I’m problematic
and then in the very same breath
that I have no influence on your conscience.
You cannot have it both ways,
I’m either intelligent or I’m crazed
and if you think I’m a combination of both
then you’re in support of the role I chose.
– Valerie Parente (10-2-2020)
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