"We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are." --Anais Nin or probably others

A little poem ekphrastic on the quote:

"We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are."

--- Anais Nin, “Seduction of the Minotaur” (1961), but also probably by others before her

Title: Funhouse mirrors, saddle up dendrites!

I'm a chicken troll, bubbling in sandy loam, farting tootsie roll songs, gulping mountains of water I keep trying to climb

I'm not ashamed to be making poop jokes, or guffawing on the ceiling, jelly belly next to bf celly

I'm not ashamed to sit upside down inside of suns that others suspect are blackholes, one toe dipped into an event horizon only I can see

See this foot? Its desiderata of the absurd.

See these eyes? They're smoky beetle juice.

Depetidation, defenestration, desperation to peel my never-ending grandiosity off your skin.

& I'd do it again. For sure, I'd

do it again.

__________

As always, I like to place an image of how the piece would look off of Vocal, since Vocal isn't poetry formatting friendly.

About the piece

The quote was recommended to me by someone I love dearly. It's one they like quite a lot so I decided to use it. Regarding the contents, I would be remiss if I didn't cite the various participants of Penny Fuller's A-Z challenge, whose interesting words I'd tucked away for later use in poetry.

In order of appearance in the poem:

• Desiderata
• Depeditation
• Defenestration

Also, I went back and forth between Beetlejuice (referencing when the two main leads pull out their eyes) and Betelgeuse (referencing the star, connecting it to the black hole reference first and foremost and leaving the eyeball reference as an echo). I went with the former because I wanted it to really be visual how its pronounced. I also felt Beetlejuice was the more absurd image and matched the quote better.

About the Challenge

This piece was written for JBaz's "JBaz Twisted Quote Unofficial Challenge". An unofficial challenge means a regular every-day-joe vocal contributor (not vocal staff) like J Baz gives a prompt they decided on by their own wee selves in order to challenge other writers to answer, and then we do, if we want. This challenge has some rules - like it has to be written off of a quote, or that it can be a poem under 300 words (this is my poetry entry) or microfiction between 300-600 words. However the core of it is the "twisted" part, which I'm not sure I can put into exact words, so I'll let the challenge author's words speak for it

Judging will be done by two people who have a twisted sense of humor, and one who likes to laugh, so take that as your hint of what we are looking for.

Enjoy, lets see where your warped mind goes.

Enter by midnight PST November 30th by putting a link to your submission in the comments of the challenge link above.

About me

I'm a long time lurker, recently popped up to do a little creative writing after having only two pieces up for a ridiculously long time.

They are my favorite pieces and you can find them here and here if you'd like to take a gander:

Butter Cream: https://vocal.media/poets/butter-cream

When we were young: https://vocal.media/poets/when-we-were-young-m7bv010dxa

Or, click these embeds that I'm flashing around, now that I've learned how to do them.

I need forty more words to meet that 600 word minimum so I'll mention something that has been making me uncomfortable: the Official Rules for Official Vocal Challenges (or the ones are up right now), so I strongly recommend everyone read them before entering. And take them seriously. I don't mean the blurb description on the Official Challenge pages, I mean the little link you click on that takes you to a terms of service looking pdf. You'll know you're there if you read an arbitration clause (one I find to be yucky, personally). That. Read that. Carefully.