you & me

I to My Simple Joys and You to Your So-Called Pleasures.

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Are the joys of your life as simple as they should be?

The joys of my life are simple: Reading and finishing a book in a day, writing poetry because I believe life and all its pains can be written with metaphors into something more beautiful than it was before, music because a pounding bass and a sliding guitar remind me I am here and this pumping heart and dancing feet mean I am alive, and art because art is life and this earth without the art is just eh after all and we should constantly be creating beautiful things regardless of whether or not we are good at it but simply because the grays of our days should be colored in.

These are the simple things. They are all we really have in this life. And to be lucky enough to share it all with someone, maybe even more than one, everyone, well that’s success to me.

Making money off it is nice, I won’t lie. I would rather make my living off of doing what I love, but I’m not there yet, maybe will never get there, ever, but to share my words and my color with the graying world so lost to its greed and violence and broken souls, perhaps that is enough in this life.

To share a little stardust and bring people back to themselves, the selves that have been led so very far astray.

We have drowned out the light of the stars with our oil stains of politics, of money, power and lust — the drugs of our society. It’s no wonder we are all so lost; we can no longer see the North Star that had always guided us through the forests of our nightmares.

The monsters under our beds and in our closets finally see a safe place to come out and walk among us. And we greet them with smiling faces because we can no longer tell the difference between us and them.

But suppose we were to stick up to our demons? What a noble choice, valiant and true. However, it is my understanding that those noble knights who wield their swords of honor, who deserve respect sticking up for the light flailing in our darkened hearts, receive only disrespect and dislike.

Shut out from the inner walls of the castle and shunned, made to look like the evil wizard on his dark horse — stirring trouble, the pariah, the villain. We’ve abandoned our saviors and traded them in for filth.

How simple are your pleasures if they only tarnish the soul?

I, for one, resolve to hide in my carved-out cave in a distant corner where I’ve decorated the walls with colors not yet named by man, scrawled the words of my soul over the floorboards and doors, stacked the corners with leather-bound tomes forgotten by tech-savvy fools.

If you are passing by one day, you’ll know it by the pounding drumbeats shaking the walls and the slide guitar slipping out into the night like the mist slips off the sea and rolls over the docks while the moon watches over the dunes.

And if you seek refuge from all the filth that day, I would welcome you.

 

*****

 

{These are the simple things…}

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Alise Versella

Alise Versella

Alise Versella is a twice Pushcart-nominated contributing writer for Rebelle Society whose work has also been published in Apricity Magazine, Crack the Spine, DASH Literary Journal, El Portal, Elephant Journal, Enclave, Entropy, Evening Street Review, Grub Street, Midwest Quarterly, The Opiate, Penumbra Literary and Art Journal, Press Pause Press, The Rail, Soundings East, Ultraviolet Tribe, What Rough Beast, Steam Ticket, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. She has recently published a poetry collection When Wolves Become Birds (Golden Dragonfly Press) and Maenad's of the 21st Century (forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press) and was nominated for Sundress Pub’s 2021 Best of the Net award.
Alise Versella
Alise Versella