Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: creative writing

  • Beautiful Santa Barbara

     

     

    To see the pretty summer sky is poetry breathing life. The world outside books provide the optical pleasure that sparks up otherwise monotonous landscapes of everyday life. Indeed, it was such a beautiful morning that would make you forgive your persona non-grate with the love of mankind. It was a kind of jolly morning that made the whole world seem kin.  So Tuco took a lovely jaunt in the beautiful historic Santa Barbara County Courthouse this morning. He went there alone in the bliss of solitude that always flashed upon his inward eye for creative inspiration. One casual glimpse at Tuco might give you an impression of an ordinary guy with beer-belly spending his evening time and Sundays in front of a TV set. Contrary to his embonpoint, avuncular physiognomy, Tuco is an artist, a poet, a thinker. He is, what Edgar Allam Poe would call without hesitation, an intellect with passion.

     

    Tuco chose the Santa Barbara Country because its Spanish colonial architectural style reminds him of the familiar civic landscapes of his childhood hometown. The Courthouse, located at 1100 Anacapa Street, in downtown Santa Barbara, California, is famous for the Spanish Colonial Revival Style building designed by Charles Willard Moore and completed in 1929. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2005 for its beautifully distinctive colonial-style respective of the Spanish cultural heritage harmoniously attributing to the aesthetic character and history of California.

    img_1982While strolling around the Courthouse, Tuco’s eyes were suddenly fixed on a white doll attached to the palm tree. It was a tawdry but scary-looking doll that gave him the creep down on his spine. ‘Did someone who had a beef with the court’s decision put this voodoo doll here as a curse to the Courthouse?’ Trepidation for the unknown terror began to spring from his tactile sensory organs, making him momentarily delirious. He was becoming unsure of whether it was a wise decision to take a picture of the evil doll or even to come to the Courthouse. Was it an omen? ‘Oh, come on. Are you kidding me? It’s just a doll, more or less. No need to waste your energy on contriving meaning to the ugly voodoo doll.’ With this sudden forceful exercise of affirmation, Tuco wended his way toward the beautiful scenes of the earth, the sky, and the view of the world.

     

    Tuco exclaimed, “How hard it is to hide the sparks of nature!” The sky was high and blue, the lawn was full and green, and his eyes filled with pleasure. Today was the end of his vacation, and he lamented about returning to work for livelihood. However, the beauty of the scenery made his otherwise grim and dreary Sunday lovely, and Tuco thought life was not supposed to be all that hard and unbearable.

     

     

     

  • marine haiku

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    The high stars

    in the black sky

    On a wide ocean

    Light a scene

    Of play on stage

    In three acts ere

    the curtains are

    Drawn for a new.

  • Truth of Nostalgia

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    For all those years gone away,

    The home I have left behind anon

    where the sun lingers in the west

    draped in the soft fluttering chiffon

    of the twilight of the mystery unknown

    beckons me with memories of mirth

    that are lost beyond the innocent mist

    but I can’t go home again, not now, not ever.

     

     

  • melody of hope

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    The old pictures I have drawn

    With colors and shapes of

    The images I see in a vision

    Thru the eyes of the Bluebird

    on the balcony of a bastion

    of solitude in the soft sweet

    twilight with the pale hues of

    the sun lingering in the west

    beckon me with the promises

    of the Stars yet to arrive from

    the Milky Way across the Universe

    with the dazzling radiance of Light

    that the Bluebird, the troubadour

    has once seen in a flight of fancy

    to deliver tweets of Hope in melody.

  • treason of fate

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    The stupendousness of darkness

    In a vortex of chaos in treason

    Against sovereignty of ambition

    By divine immaculate conception

    From the union of Psyche and Eros

    In the spiritualization of sensuality

    thru the enslavement of the Sense

    into the ecstatic hands of desire

    for absolute adoration evermore

    touching the soft tissues of delicacy

    of the latticework for the casement

    of the soul thru which her majesty

    is seen spinning a wheel of mystery

    with an eagle telling her the world

    he has seen, diffusing the wind of

    wisdom to his beautiful solitary queen

    whose heart thrilled, reason satisfied

    defies her freedom of Love and Reason

    and keeps her in his cellar of isolation.

     

    P.S. What has happened to the departments of the cerebral control tower? Common Sense is falling out; Cogitation is shaking; Memory is debilitating; Imagination is trying, and Estimation is fumbling. Is this case of Aphasia? Or in the worst scenario Dyslexia, even? If so, then let it be. But memento this. Writing is not a prerogative of the pedantic. You can be boastful of writing excellent prose with a talented assistant of the brain, but never be full of yourself of touching the more excellent tissue of the heart with passion. Shakespeare was of small Latin, less Greek. 

  • My Bluebird

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    I walked in all wither in the dark alley

    A long, narrow, serpentine labyrinth

    Of fake hubris, false hopes in dismay

    as Reason began to revolt from within.

     

    Then I heard the melody from yonder

    High over the mean concrete fences

    Like a dryad’s melody from a flower

    twinkling twilights on her wings.

     

    There I arose from the dark slowly

    And walked into the sound of light

    In the felicity of the unknown suddenly

    Beckoning me with the promise of delight.

     

    As I came to the corner of the maze

    Beyond the alley of another corner

    There it was in the distant misty haze.

    I saw a bluebird waiting for me pretty, ever.

     

    P.S.: The bluebird, as a symbol of hope and happiness because of its fanciful prettiness and rare presence in nature, has been a popular element of folklore. Albeit the French version by Mme D’Aulnoy is famous, my choice is a Russian version of the bluebird, as called upon by Anton Denikin, a military leader of the Volunteer Army in the Russian Civil War during the ill-fated Ice March. And this is my version of recreating the bluebird as a paragon of beautiful hope, the last saving grace for the forsaken left in Pandora’s Box, twinkling like the stars in the Milky Way embroidered on the nightly sky.