Melanie Mitzner
  • HOME
  • BIO
  • FICTION
  • SCREENPLAYS
  • PLAYS
  • STATES OF MIND
  • CONTACT
  • REVIEWS

Identity Crisis

11/13/2016

0 Comments

 
In a car accident, everything happens in slow motion. You see it coming and you can’t stop the outcome. As time slows, the anticipation of devastation and destruction intensifies. Adrenaline courses through your veins but it won’t help you escape your destiny. Sweaty, shaky, heart pounding, you know you’re losing control. The blood rushing to your brain brings a clarity that is terrifying.

Then it’s morning. You wake up bleary-eyed in a state of disbelief postmortem. You survived but your country is the casualty. For the first time in your life you sense what it must've been like for Native Americans. Disenfranchised, displaced, dismissed, attacked and invaded, unable to survive without the resources that belong to them.

This is America? Your ancestors tried to warn you but you succumbed to the veneer of material comfort, or the lack thereof, believing in the fantasy of the American Dream. Your so-called democracy was used against you, your media complicit. Never before have you witnessed the free fall as your institutions dismantled The Land of the Free.

All the DREAMers who must hide in the light of day and move from place to place to evade capture and deportation. If the behavior indicators of the TSA don’t spot them, sending money back home makes you a moving target. Impoverishment our new export. Child bearers will be denied care, contraception and abortion with the destruction of Planned Parenthood. Some forced to abandon their children in the streets. Married queers will live in dread fear of annulment and the resurgence of hate crimes against friends and family. Muslims will be profiled, discriminated against and accused of extremism as they're victimized by their xenophobic neighbors and their own community. Women must accept sexism and misogyny so evident in the outcome of this election as standard operating procedure. While the working class has been lulled into a state of amnesia about who and what is responsible for their poverty, all minorities, each and every one are sinking slowly in the quicksand of fascism, racism and hate with This Land is Our Land, the hue and cry of White Anglo Saxon America.

As with all great loss we suffer anger and grief, untethered and disoriented.  We live in fear of instability and uncertainty, acutely aware of our mortality. A citizen without a country is like a planet without gravity. We float unable to grab onto anything and look down over the dark abyss. How can we possibly lift ourselves out of a nightmare that never ends?  

Please, oh please, wake me up.

0 Comments

induce & deliver

3/5/2015

0 Comments

 
Without intent you trip
and recover
succumb to the fear and regret
through the kaleidoscope of theological politics.
Attempts to seduce and consume an essence
are reductive.
Who can digest the ridiculous,
the certifiable,
the madness of the desperate and confused?
In spirit you trust the expanse,
you trust the mystery of uncertainty
without the need to know.
Loss of control is deliriously rich.
You taste the sea,
speak a foreign tongue wordlessly.
So innate the incarnation,
you never bother to ask from where it comes.

0 Comments

The Economics of Survival

10/1/2014

0 Comments

 
How many of the dead,
how many lay dying
before life goes copper,
becomes a penny,
a useless coin deposited in a waxy paper cup by the register.
A magnanimous gesture of humanity?

In the end, why say good bye?
Because in the universal scheme of things I am
but a fly on the wall,
a speck in the universe,
a nail biting child who is always accused
of going to extremes
when I witness the torment
the anguish
the helplessness
the futility of hanging on.

Please
deliver me without warning
so I do  not have to face the struggle
of those I have loved
of loved ones I have lost.

Tell me, please
Is this what we call eternity?

0 Comments

you in me

2/19/2014

0 Comments

 
run like a river flow through me
your velvet banks soft and silty
i taste the mineral rich
of your longing
bare foot on stone
worn smooth from years of your gentle waves
your current
trapped in whorls and swells
we long to wade deeper
ripple with desire
slip beneath the depths

0 Comments

the past

12/28/2013

0 Comments

 

engulf me in your watery prison of quiet desperation

0 Comments

we are the oxymorons

12/27/2013

0 Comments

 
do you ever get the feeling that all is lost, that we're back pedaling
trying to reclaim it?

yesterday
we had an art life.
today we don’t want to own it.
we don’t want to own up to the fact that
we live to die,
die to live
each and every endangered moment.

ex-pats of indentured servitude
living life on the margins
undamaged,
wildly imaginative
desperate,
unconditionally free.

we, my love, are the
oxymorons
all that is you
and me
.

0 Comments

burn in hell with me

9/23/2013

0 Comments

 
down the road of wreckless dreams
running in place
after me, after you
running so hard i cannot see
the blinding light
brilliant
blameless
blazing like flames
burn in hell with me

the pounding, angry hell of wretched passion
a hell called love
a hell we cannot harness

surrender, i hear you think
surrender, i repeat
and in the repetition
i release the fear, the threat.

i look into those hazel eyes
the light ablaze
blameless
when you dynamite my hardened exterior
exposing all of me.
0 Comments

for what

5/18/2013

0 Comments

 
i want not
do not want what you give me
to think about
there are no consequences
no conclusions
the white, the black, the pattern
of love, the colors...
the longing
why do we forget?

0 Comments

the Remains

2/17/2013

0 Comments

 
the soprano down on 12th street unleashed the firestorm.

she sucked all the oxygen from the room

filled with despondent artists seeking redemption

from self denigration, despair, uncertainty and chaos.

you must look into her eyes, hold that gaze

and do not waver.

the turbulence unbearable,

the intensity, the burn

of years confessing all but love

that sat in an unopened box

waiting to be claimed.

we were fearless companions in the name of art,

excess and social justice.

oh but for the night of splendor when we touched

the hunger fathoms deep as if we would die of starvation

when our plates were full

the curtain of torrential rain

as the wind shear strengthened

fire whirls exploding, darting about

aimlessly.

compensation for obliteration

of all things known and unknown.

do not look back, do not turn around to see the carnage.

that is what we told ourselves

because it seemed we could not bear

the loss as we watched the dissolution,

as if we would lose everything,

lose it all.

our lives, our loves, our freedom, our history

as confidantes in a reckless and morally incomprehensible world.

we watched as it all burned up

and found

among the charred remains

the box.

0 Comments

In Paris with No Clothes

1/1/2013

0 Comments

 
Tracing the lines to Orly Airport
baggage gone missing
$200 in my pocket,
two months across the lonely continent.
So tell me, where does the time go?

Thirty years, another opus
stripped bare of non-essentials.
There are no fictions
only roads that lead to impasse.
Or the rotary so notorious
it circles endlessly,
the mind unyielding.

I am the architect of my dreams
I am floating, iridescent on the necklace
of the sea, the horizon
wavers in the distance
unconditional
without intention.
I am fearless
at the center
of truth.

0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>

    Author

    Writer first.

    Archives

    April 2022
    January 2022
    October 2021
    June 2021
    September 2020
    February 2020
    November 2019
    July 2019
    January 2018
    January 2017
    November 2016
    March 2015
    October 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    May 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    May 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009

    RSS Feed

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Categories

    All
    90th Birthday
    911
    Aging
    Alzheimers1f8f94b7fd
    American Poets
    Angst
    Art
    Astronomy
    Atwater Marche
    Aunt
    Baby Boomer
    Baby Boomers
    Best Friend
    Betty Goodwin
    Birthday
    Black Holes
    Books
    Breath
    Breathing
    Caregiver
    Catholicism
    Childhood
    Christian Militias
    Christine Davis
    Civil Rights
    Contradiction
    Creative Blog
    Creative Process
    Culinary Arts
    Death
    Death Of A Parent
    Democrats
    Dennis Hopper
    Depression
    Destiny
    Dignity
    Dysfunctional Family
    Elderly Parents
    Ethics
    Eulogy
    Excerpt
    Excerpts
    Existential
    Existentialism
    Faith
    Family
    Farewell My Love
    Fiction
    Fiction Writer
    Frank Rich
    Gay
    Gay Pride Montreal
    Geriatric Angst
    Gorney
    Grief
    Health Care
    Helplessness
    Henrietta Mitzner
    Homophobia
    Invasion Of Privacy
    Jean Talon Market
    Les Anciennes
    Life
    Life Force
    Life Imitates Art
    Literature
    Lobbyists
    Loie Fuller
    Longing
    Loss
    Love
    Mallarme
    Melanie Mitzner
    Montreal
    Mortality
    Mystery Of Life
    Novel
    Novel Excerpt
    Ny State Tax On Self Employed
    Parents
    Patron
    Philosophy
    Physics
    Poem
    Poet
    Poetry
    Politics
    Process
    Prospect
    Racism
    Raison D\'etre
    Reality
    Relationships
    Relatives
    Religion
    Republicans
    Sanity
    September 10th
    September 11th
    Sheila
    Silhouette City
    Social Conscience
    Social Justice
    Technology
    Telus
    The Final Act
    The Media
    The Pursuit
    The Real Thing
    Thought For The Day
    Transparency
    Truth
    Unexplainable
    Us
    Vision
    What If
    White Supremacy
    Writer
    Writer\\
    Writer\\\\
    Writer\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\
    Writer Blog
    Writer\'s Blog
    Writers Blog
    Writing
    Writing Blog
    Yarzeit

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.