CARRIEANN THUNELL | |
CarrieAnn Thunell is a freelance artist, columnist, and poet. She is the poetry columnist and a chapbook cover artist for SP Quill magazine. She will also be doing on-going haiku book reviews and interviews for White Lotus, Shadow Poetry’s new haiku journal. She is a member of the Olympia Poetry Network, the Washington Poet’s Association, Poets Against The War, Haiku Canada, and the Haiku Society of America. The second edition of her Sonnets From The Scandinavian is out, with many new poems. It is 60 pages and retails for $7.50. (The first edition sold out). Ms. Thunell's work has appeared in Amaze, (The) Aurorean, Beginnings, Bible Advocate, Black Widow’s Web, Blind Man’s Rainbow, Blue Collar Review, Bottlerockets, Candelabrum (England), Curbside Review, First Time, Flesh From Ashes, Freefall, Free expressions (Australia), Frogpond, Haiku Canada, Heron’s Nest, Hidden Oak, Hummingbird, Joel’s House, Kokako (New Zealand), (The) Lyric, Mayfly, Midwest Book Review, Mindprints, Mobius, Modern Haiku, Moonset, Neovictorian Cochlea, Nisqually Delta Review, Paper Wasp (Australia), Parnasus, Pegasus, Penwood Review, Percival Review, Poetic Hours (England), Point and Circumference, Presence (England), Red Lights, Silver Wings, Storyteller, Skyline, SP Quill, The Hypertexts, Thorny Locust, Time Of Singing, and Write On. More of her work may be viewed at www.shadowpoetry.com/members/epiccove/202/carrieannthunell.html
Contents Commercial Jingles Blot Out People's Cries * Frost on a Tilting Painting by Van Gogh * Homeless in Seattle * What's Become of the Land I Used to Know? * Muriel Rukeyser, Poet-Woman * A God Who Has Eternity To Play * I Learned, God Meant to Spare Us Pain and Strife * Siberian Tiger * Hard Physical Labor * Jane, Jack of All Trades * Just Another Dirty Laundry Day * Human Services * In a Minor Key * Caught in the Web of the World * Free-Falling in God's Universe * Poets are Prophets Who Create New Worlds * Mighty Clouds * The Business Man Consults a Toad * The Light Passed Through Me Speechless With Surprise * The Ten Thousand Religious Quick-Fixes * A World Within a World * San Juan Remembrances
Commercial Jingles Blot Out People’s Cries
Can you tell poverty is on the rise? On downtown street corners, alleys, and slums. In farmlands, small towns, cities, smog filled skies, More people sleep in corners, live off crumbs.
On downtown street corners, alleys, and slums The politicians broadcast empty lies. More people sleep in corners, live off crumbs, Commercial jingles blot out people’s cries.
The politicians broadcast empty lies, The war on hope and war on peace are chums. Commercial jingles blot out people’s cries, Shop till you drop, while our soldiers beat drums.
The war on hope and war on peace are chums, Designer addictions, holiday highs— Shop till you drop, while our soldiers beat drums, Buy Prozac, tobacco, chocolate, and pies.
Movies, and porn, titillate the humdrums. In farmlands, small towns, cities, smog filled skies, Prosperity doctrines sedate ho hums. Can you tell poverty is on the rise?
Published in the Blue Collar Review, Spring 2004
Frost On A Tilting Painting By Van Gogh
The midnight street light’s circular bright glow, Creates a mood of unreality, A slightly tilting painting by Van Gogh.
Is this the street Frost crossed beyond the snow? Half past the watchman’s hospitality, The midnight streetlight’s circular bright glow?
What did the luminary clock then show, To make one think of drink; mortality? A slightly tilting painting by Van Gogh.
What barely perceptible tale of woe, Was brought to mind with sensuality? The midnight streetlight’s circular bright glow.
Within each heart lives one’s own feckless foe, Propelling us to some fatality… A slightly tilting painting by Van Gogh.
Acquainted with the night, heedless we go, Towards fate, too late, for frank formality. The midnight street light’s circular bright glow, A slightly tilting painting by Van Gogh.
Published in the Penwood Review, November 2004
Homeless In Seattle
Homeless, no one wants to talk about it… I remember—being homeless, the fright, The dreams return—fear so real, I shout it.
Most folks want to overlook or doubt it, In self-told lies, avert eyes from the sight. Homeless, no one wants to talk about it…
This lifestyle is not a fad, to tout it, Nor is it the result of one bar fight. The dreams return—fear so real, I shout it.
Women and children; prayerful, devout, it Does not overlook gender, age, this plight. Homeless, no one wants to talk about it…
Young teens, grow up on the streets, they spout it, Act tough to cover their shame, fear of night. The dreams return—fear so real, I shout it.
If you doubt it, look on the streets, scout it. Listen to them; look, can you brave the sight? Homeless, no one wants to talk about it… The dreams return—fear so real, I shout it.
Published in Mobius, May 2004
What’s Become Of The Land I Used To Know?
What’s become of the land I used to know? Rich corporations bought our government. The lines at every food bank grow and grow.
Gutted labor laws push workers below, Unions ignored, to contracts, work is sent. What’s become of the land I used to know?
Every day labor is dealt a new blow; No funds to protect the environment. The lines at every food bank grow and grow.
The less we all make the more we all owe. Folks work full time, but cannot make the rent. What’s become of the land I used to know?
Civil rights are stolen; resources flow To rich folk at the top, the rest lament. The lines at every food bank grow and grow.
We’re a wasteland of poverty and woe, Greed, pain, and betrayal, we represent. What’s become of the land I used to know? The lines at every food bank grow and grow.
Published in Blue Collar, Spring 2004
Muriel Rukeyser, Poet-Woman"I need a language of a changing phase for the poem," Muriel Rukeyser, from her book, "The Life Of Poetry. Muriel Rukeyser, poet-woman turned wars and racial strife into leaven. Her powerful poems poured a geyser, poet-woman, Muriel Rukeyser.
She forged a change with word-art alchemy. From angst of passion, human misery, formed physics of phasing to rearrange. With word-art alchemy, she forged a change.
A well-read lady of gestalten mind, wove idea-baskets from disparate kind of sciences social, hard, and shady. Of gestalten mind, a well-read lady.
The spires of trees were her church and steeple. From clay God is said to have made people. Humans from humus, from Earth do we stir, her church and steeple the spires of trees were.
Muriel Rukeyser saved from the dust great minds whose volumes were starting to rust. Her prose and poetry soothed, poked, and raved, from the dust Muriel Rukeyser saved.
A God Who Has Eternity To Play “A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." (Albert Einstein)
The wonders of God’s bounty manifests, In the vast beauty of the natural world. The intricacies of each flower attests, To hues, and order no happenstance hurled. Evolution is the mark of patience, A God who has eternity to play With cells from amoeba, to sentience. In God’s economy, love will hold sway. No thing brought forth into being is lost, It simply changes its form and it’s state. Yet life from us exacts the highest cost, A share in death, pain, suffering, and fate. Yet when each life seems to be at an end, A bright angel, heaven’s guide, God will send.
Published in The Nisqually Delta Review, Jan/Feb 2005
I Learned, God Meant To Spare Us Pain And Strife
Like Doubting Thomas, I could not convince Myself of God or faith from other’s tales. God knows I’d read most books to lift the veils, Thought faith was knowledge, not experience. Life seemed but a pauper, and Death a prince, Over doctrines Life’s bitterness prevails. At last to learn I drank of Her entrails. In tending hospice folks, Life’s core evinced…
‘Twas on deathwatch I reconciled with Life. And at my own gravestone I learned regret. It was in breaking God’s commandments that I learned God meant to spare us pain and strife. Through grief I made amends lest I forget, The draught of painful lessons, Life’s caveat.
Published in Mobius, May 2004
Siberian Tiger
Siberian tiger padding with grace. Her face appears, disappears in the fog. At one with sinuous muscles, no trace Of hesitation, she skirts the dank bog. Hematite cold eyes contemplate and sere. Her every move, a dance of tai chi. I am mesmerized with awe and stark fear. Her full belly turns disregarding me. I live at her pleasure, gift not to waste. I long to lope by her lithe graceful side. Of danger, animal instinct I taste. From jungle-omnipotent eyes few hide. Parting tall grass in a silent furrow, She knows every scent, scat, leaf and burrow.
Published in SP Quill, Summer 2004
Hard Physical Labor
Labor Ready. Show up early. Sign in before dawn. Watch the guys from the mission watching me close. Leering. Making rude jokes about the oldest profession. Riding to site amidst hard-up blunt unshaven suggestions of how I could make more money servicing their sweat. I look away. Try not to show inflamed cheeks and salty tears. To hide poverty and shame.
Published in Blue Collar Review, Spring 2004
Jane, Jack of All Trades
I sit at Employment Security again. Go for……………..any temporary job that will hire, and interview me. “But you’re just a Jack-of-all-trades. Don’t you have career goals? Don’t you have a dream of what you’d really like to be?” My dream has been……..to be able to make three times the amount of one month’s rent. To have enough to pay child care costs. A car that runs. To not need to have to choose between food and heat, or leave the kids alone….. To make ends meet. To buy the clothes I need for work. To be able to afford work. To save a bit, to live.
Published in Blue Collar Review, Spring 2004
Just Another Dirty Laundry Day
Battling in refried rage, I angle my Saturn to shimmy through its rings of turning trucks and cars. Wishing I had a foghorn. Wishing I had oars. I park in front of the all-night Laundromat past the noise of brawling bars and radios detailing threats of wars. I open the shrunken trunk and prepare to disembark last week’s aromatic mountain of mismatched, dirty laundry. Inside, I am assaulted by a cornucopia of obnoxious odors copulating: stale cigarettes, scented detergents, fabric softeners, colognes, and perfumes. I perch nauseously upon a stool’s edge. My eyes drift randomly about the sallow yellowed walls, rolling like pin balls. There are potted artificial houseplants, and genuine bums. There are apartment complex dwellers with sticky, sugar-coated, lice-encrusted kids. I get the fishbowl effect, but fortified with Exxon-Valdez. my eyes alight on the TV. like a random fly stopping to groom. The people on the soapy screen sit talk-show style and yell at each other. The sordid details of a sleazy extra-marital affair are laid out by the participants and casualties each vying for the world to take sides in this “private” cold war, hoping to elevate the status to world war. The women screech, and pull each other’s hair, ripping holes in clothes like unbalanced washing machines. One of the bums pauses to watch flayed clothing expose skin while absently eating cigarette butts by the handful, scooping them out from the silver bowl off the tray of Angela’s ashes. His eyes never leave the screen. At commercial time, Tide and Weyerhaeuser bleach and clear cut my soul. The news brief informs me that the American War Machine is preparing to defend Our Great Country from all outside threats simultaneously. Meanwhile, inside; school funding and Medicaid are being cut, and life is reduced to just another load of dirty laundry.
Published in Freefall, July 2003
Human Services
I get off the bus for work at institutionalized purgatory. Upon entering the heavy double doors, I am blasted with the wind of Buddha’s three confrontations: old age, sickness, and death: rancid body odor, acrid oozing sores; loose bowels. Housekeepers here work overtime to beat it down with industrial strength disinfectants and scented fumigants. Wrinkled pink, brown, and red raisins lift rheumy eyes and smile wanly as I make my morning rounds. An overdressed cheerleader on a comatose football field. With my huge arsenal of hairdressers, activity calendars, jigsaw puzzles, bible studies, and art classes, I can’t have one tenth the impact of one fuzzy kitten purring. Purring fears away. One toddler blowing bubbles, blowing bubbles of cares away.
By the end of my shift, my allergies are on red-alert. I stop by human services, pick up my minimum wage check, Lift rheumy eyes, and smile wanly.
Published in Blue Collar Review, Winter 2003-2004
In a Minor Key
The yearning to merge fuels my sexual urge. Yet in our nakedness, less of our true selves is revealed.
Sex becomes a diversion. A psychedelic drug. A hallucinogenic panacea
to wall off the risk, and the possibility of true intimacy. Intimate strangers dance and tangle in a pseudo-strangle in the night.
From true self-revelation, each takes flight. Their tryst resembles a wrestling match in æ time, in a minor key… b flat my love, b flat
and turn down the volume of your soul lest I am burned by its intensity in a minor key
there is no solidarity in the hunger of one dimensional sexuality
Published in Thorny Locust, Spring/Summer 2003
Caught in the Web of the World
Once in a beggar man’s eyes swollen and faded with strife, you broke out of Satan’s lies caught a glimpse of the meaning of life.
And all of your visions of what you would buy, perfume and make-up cheap love in a lie
soured like fruit in the sun. Pale before truth in time. Without shoes this ragged one stretched cupped hands for a dime.
And your heart was laid bare before Emmanuel. In the tramp’s lonely stare all your fast-buck dreams fell.
You felt the void in his soul and the nudity of birth and death fall free. You saw your own superficial goal as a band-aid upon World War Three.
But soon you are walking away and the temporal closes in. Planning by year living by day, remembering then anticipating when.
A glimpse of eternity lost again in the clouds that cover the sun.
Published in Joel’s House, November 2004
Free-Falling in God’s Universe
We are all the descendants of an ego-maniac inventor, sculptor, watercolorist, great composer, master-mathematician sheer genius, world-class-lover and All-Mighty CREATOR.
So of course, we are destined to battle huge egos, highly creative disasters, great talent, limitless potential and little practical usefulness our entire lives.
This First Progenitor never did anything by halves, as I recall. If there was foresight involved in opening the Pandora’s box that is humanity, then He can surely see a lot farther down the road than I can.
So, thank Him for the genetic mixed bag, and don’t worry too much about being a lonely misunderstood genius. I’m pretty sure He feels that way a lot of the time, too.
Published in Joel's House, November 2004
Poets Are Prophets Who Create New Worlds
In the beginning there was Naked Thought, the Thought that shaped itself into the Word. The Word cooled and commingled into Form, gaseous clouds condensed from Thought to Word.
Spun round to form the Matter for planets, planets that Matter, born of the Thought/Word. New life forms spun from out of one planet, in joy they mated, bearing new Thought/Words.
Words led to Speech, shaping men’s Consciousness. Consciousness bloomed to shape a new culture. Culture bloomed to shape a new Consciousness of human pride that shared no sphere with life.
All species were then endangered and doomed. No one knew how to turn this course around. Humans forgot Matter came from the Womb of Word, and Word out of the Womb of Thought.
Nothing Matters when our Words Matter not. Poets are Prophets who create New Worlds. The Word has power to give back the Form that flowed from Rivers of Life in the Tao.
Poets are Prophets who create fresh Words. They call forth new Consciousness giving rise to fresh Matter as Life Matters once more. The Word has power to name life, Sacred.
Poets are Prophets who create New Worlds. New Worlds of vibrant creatures that flourish, they birth and manifest from healing Words. The Word calls Sacred all life on this Earth.
Mighty Clouds
Oh, mighty clouds elusive clouds timeless drifters over endless plains. Water sifters, making rains…
You melt and flow away as though, by the sun’s heat, to rain. Over the valley and plains…
You melt into blue lakes and dreams. You splash into sparkling streams. then you rise up again, and are reborn when…
Misty changing shades of gray. Shades of night and shades of day, drifters passing by…
Flowing forms, yet formless. Nomads of the sky…
Colorful, yet colorless mirrors of the sun…
Note: This poem won first place in the Storyteller’s Nature Comes Alive Contest and was published Summer 2004 in The Storyteller
The Business Man Consults A Toad
He came into the stillness of the woods, He came into the stillness in himself. He leapt past all the bridges built of “shoulds”, Beyond the knowledge of books on his shelf. He soiled his suit in mud to meet the eye Of an inglorious and bumpy toad. He stripped to better soak in sun and sky, And felt himself much lightened of his load. The toad communicated such a calm In his unhurried squat and acceptance, The man was soothed as though some healing balm Had melted all his qualms and reticence. “Both you and I live, breathe, and die,” said he. “On sun and rain, pond and pain, we agree!”
Published in Nisqually Delta Review, Jan/Feb 2005
The Light Passed Through Me Speechless With Surprise
I slept under a clear star studded sky On Orcas Island, sea tang in my nose. Naïve and young, I looked up and blood froze As every star plunged down, heaven awry. My first meteor shower gave the lie To all solid predictable fixed shows. My veins had slowed and become cold ice floes. My universe had shifted, so must I…
I remember an earthquake long ago When the bay window rippled like a tide And waves of solid glass betrayed my eyes…
A time lightning hit transformer box so That reversed charge opened bolted door wide. The light passed through me speechless with surprise… In trusting God and not my eyes, Survival made me old and wise.
Published in the Penwood Review, Fall 2004
The Night Shakes Out Her Wild Black Raven Hair
The night shakes out her wild black raven hair, And spills like pearls, her stars in filaments. Like Christmas lights, they light the firmaments. In scattered sparkles dense as dust in air, Swirl bright spiral galaxies everywhere. Black night’s glow, this light show of elements. Of such star stuff we are embodiments, From finite building blocks that we all share—
Unseen Benevolence behind it all, Scoops up bits of matter and energy Forms snowballs of potential hurled in space.
In our genetic make-up hums the call A whispered, “I’m in you, and you’re in me,” In my body swims star bits and sky lace, God of Einstein, without, within to trace.
Published in The Penwood Review, Fall 2004
The Ten-Thousand Religious Quick-fixes
The local used bookstore has a huge section devoted to New Age Spirituality and Asian philosophies. There are angry feminist Castrating Goddess books, ten thousand translations of the Tao Te Ching, as well as The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet. There are books on all manner of gurus claiming to be the latest incarceration of Buddha. It all spills over into the section on comparative mythology, just before you get to self-help. One book is a handbook of household Goddesses done in watercolor. It includes Aquaflushia ,Goddess of the toilet, Microwavia, Goddess of the modern kitchen, and Liberalsexalalia, Goddess of liberated kinky sex. This particular book sits between self-help and feminist spirituality, hedging it’s bets, some sort of hybrid book for The Lost Modern Woman.
The Christian books section is very small. Mormonism is mixed together with Catholicism, Lutheranism and Unitarianism. A crazy quilt of the ten thousand denominations. There are a lot of books on the ‘feminine face of God’. Books with titles like, “Pray and Grow Rich,” and, “Liberation through Evangelical Nudism.” So what does it all mean? I am plagued by disturbing thoughts, as I wonder if America is sinking in a plethora of ten thousand supermarket brands of spiritual angst.
While I thumb through yet another modern translation of the bible, some guy tries to pick me up. He says, “Man, the only way to know God is by direct experience. Since we’re all made in the image of God, what do you say we go somewhere and experience each other?” I mumble some excuse about needing to go to the bathroom, buy a book called, “Prozac: Get Rid Of Disturbing Thoughts Once And For All,” and leave the store.
Published in Freefall, Fall 2004
A World Within a World
In a world within a world, the sun’s on fire and the moon is pearled as myriads of possibilities through the universe are hurled.
Every drop within the sea, trapped in its small entity can never experience, the larger whole’s reality.
How much of what we perceive, conforms to that which we believe. We measure, classify, and diagram, and think our thoughts contain the I AM.
With neither humility, nor prescience wallowing in over-bloated self-reliance, adrift in the anxiety, of our relativity our ad nauseum struggle, is to be free.
Without a deeper search for God, our souls atrophy and corrode. By choosing randomly our selfish fate, we are wedded to what whimsy ,we create.
Melting from the sudden heat, re-making life’s parameters in a rush. Evolution skipped a beat, as the painting grabbed the brush…
Published in Write On, April 2004
San Juan Remembrances
Morning fog hovers, anxiously enfolding her clutch of tree-spiked islands. They are hidden in a billowing down comforter. She broods protectively over her tiny landmasses.
By noon, she relents. She rises up, dispersing into fine mist. Her brood of surreal islands and sea stacks sharpens into focus.
Dark green silhouette trees poke through, piercing the cumulous clouds. Marshmallow skewers before the sun’s radiant heat. Waterfowl bob on pthalo blue currents. Hawks circle overhead.
A foreboding dark fin slices through rough waters. The shrill melancholic cries of island creatures challenge the pale opulent sun.
I slip my canoe into the water, like sliding a glimmering sword into its custom-made scabbard. I dribble my fingers over the edge of my craft into trails of liquid blue-gray ice.
Published in Freefall, 2004
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