For today’s poem, I simply include the note from the poet herself:

The story behind this poem is two fold: First, it was in response to artist Jackson Pollock’s work ‘Untitled. C.1950.’ This poem is also in response to the recent ban on immigrants and refugees, and a growing increase of intolerance in the United States. According to Carl Jung, everyone has parts of themselves that they suppress and ignore. These parts make up what Jung referred to as our shadow. Jungian scholars pose that just as an individual has a shadow, so do societies and nations. According to Japanese author Haruki Murakami, ‘At times, we tend to avert our eyes from the shadow, those negative parts, or else, try to forcibly eliminate those aspects. No matter how high a wall we build to keep intruders out, no matter how strictly we exclude outsiders, no matter how much we rewrite history to suit us, we just end up damaging and hurting ourselves.’

A link to the referenced artwork can be found at: Jackson Pollock, Untitled (c. 1950)

we are a land of shadows


sometimes they break through
the veil
dark, dense and outside
the light
black winged things
swishing saurian tails
dancing
encircling
containing
what we cannot reconcile
thought and memory
blur
incite 
the primitive
to rise 
a fevered frenzy
of feathery trails
engulfs us
lifts and carries us
not above our own wounds
but the world’s

© Mary Katherine Creel – 2017

Bio:

Mary Katherine Creel lives in the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband and their animal collective.  Her poem ‘we are a land of shadows’ first appeared in What Rough Beast. She has worked as a journalist, freelance writer and counselor, and currently serves as communications manager at an art museum. Her poems have been published in Paper Rabbit, Tar River Poetry, Pittsburgh Poetry Review and Avocet. Her first poetry chapbook, Exit Wound, is forthcoming.

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For the first 100 days of the Trumpet administration, this blog will feature a new poem of protest, by my own hand and by others. They will be polished gems, or rough cut drafts of rage, or in process pieces searching for peace. They may be haiku or tanka, limericks or lyrics, verses free or fettered. If you would like to submit to this endeavor, please send an email, with poem saved as a word document (.docx) to waxyandpoetic AT gmail DOT com. All rights remain with the author. VISUAL ARTISTS ! Do you have something visually poetic that you’d like to submit? GO FOR IT!

Please address any formatting preferences in your email. I will post submissions time permitting, with at least one per day. Editing will be limited to obvious errors of spelling and the like.

Read, follow, share, re-tweet, submit, live, love, spread light! Don’t forget to use #100Days100Poems !

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