Nightfall

Nightfall
Dying stars still shine
pearly opalescence
shimmering and trembling
before they shoot
and fall
All is quiet
Preternatural stillness
Not even the slightest
gust of wind
dare disturb tree leaves
Somewhere
along the avenue
a failing streetlight
flickers
and whimpers
its small electric
demise
to an uncaring
audience
Suburban tranquility
is a mausoleum
where the dead
do not yet know
they are gone
Nightfall
is but a breath
before a more uncertain
dawn.

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

The Seed by Helen Valentina

Ionia has been so incredibly generous to me with her kind and thoughtful review of my novel The Seed – I’m kind of stunned right now. thanks Ionia, thanks so much again!

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The Seed

Okay you guys–Here it is…I have been super excited about this for quite a while and have mentioned it in previous posts. I finally got the chance to read Helen Valentina’s book, “The Seed.” This is a total Knockout. Get it, buy it, read it, tweet it. Fantastic. Beautiful. Original. Go ahead and say I told you so.

 

https://helenvalentina.com/

 

 

The Seed by Helen Valentina

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

 

Sara Fraser, a solitary artist, is haunted by her dreams of a past life where she is deeply in love—a concept and experience foreign to her waking existence. Just as she is becoming known for her artistic endeavors, Sara launches a new series of paintings based on her dreams.

Robert Masters, a journalist in a passionless marriage, interviews Sara about her latest work, only to discover a personal connection to her paintings: it seems he is…

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Posted in Poetry | 4 Comments

WordPress Rules re Linking to Externally Hosted websites

WordPress

WordPress (Photo credit: Adriano Gasparri)

 

 

Hi

Does anyone know if WordPress has any rules about linking a WordPress blog to an externally hosted website? I know you can link to social media sites like Facebook et al, but I seem to remember – in the dim recesses of my mind from when I first started blogging – that I read the story of someone who had their WordPress blog shut down for linking out to an externally hosted website they had.

Does anyone know if that is a rule? Can you only link the external website to WordPress and not the other way round, and even I you can’t link out can you promote the website on WordPress or is that a no-no too?

I am soon to launch an externally hosted author website for my novels and would like to connect it to this blog somehow but will only do it from that website to here, rather than vice versa, if such rules exist.

Am I right to be cautious or is my mind playing tricks with me, making me jump at phantoms?

Any advice would be very much appreciated!!  Oh, and I won’t take offence if there is an accessible set of rules I just don’t know about that someone can refer me to – I can be a bit vague about details at times so could easily have missed the  (expletive deleted) obvious about this!!  🙂  🙂

Cheers

Helen V

Posted in Air, Conversation | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Serendipity

Peru - Salkantay Trek 126 - bright flowers

Peru – Salkantay Trek 126 – bright flowers (Photo credit: mckaysavage)

I am a slave to serendipity
Just a creature who lives by chance
Whatever fate will do to me
Whatever may be in its plans

I admit that I am choice averse
I prefer to seek for signs
And it’s not that I’m perverse
Or that I am just resigned

No instead let me be willing
Let my mind so open be
That I still find it quite thrilling
To find serendipity

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Beguiling Contradiction

You sing your songs of
half mystery
half regret
Calling across distance
for my sympathy
and yet
my cause for confusion
and fear I cannot
forget

You prowl your stage
part hunger
part fire
Beguiling contradiction
both wrath and
desire
Leaving all your followers
still trapped in
the mire

Once face of an angel
just before
the fall
Now aging, revealing
root cause of
it all
But your own undoing
you will not
recall

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Global Domination – Ooopps I mean Distribution Continues Apace!!!

The Earth seen from Apollo 17.

The Earth seen from Apollo 17. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Seed2

The Seed journey continues in its spread across the globe!! You can now not only buy ebook or paperback versions at lulu.com and ebook on Kindle, but via the lulu.com link you can also download the novel from iTunes if that is your preference!!

I’ve also just registered it on Goodreads but I’ve only just joined that group so am still navigating how to interact in that forum so will update more on that later. Today I will be trying to learn how to get the cover image uploaded there, so one step at a time!! 🙂 🙂 (any hints welcome!!)

It’s exciting to see the reach of the book slowly but surely grow. Lulu.com have been fantastic support and guides in this process, and seeing each step is like an achievement in and of itself!

Lulu.com also sent me the first version of my author website this morning, so it’s all starting to come together. Lots of work yet to do on that website, but it will be great to link it to this blog and so have a connection between a mainly poetry blog and a mainly novel focussed website.

It seems amazing to know that the goals I first formed only in January this year, and articulated more clearly when I joined the Rome Construction Crew, are now becoming more and more real.

And it’s funny in a way because the theme of The Seed is about dreams apparently becoming real and what that means in terms of life choices, so I’m kind of living the dream and in some senses the novel’s theme right now, albeit not in a romantic sense.  🙂  Life and creativity are odd like that!! 🙂

So, if you’re intrigued by the novel, please read more on the page dedicated to it above. Thanks again for the support from all of you – you cannot know how important it has been to me going through this journey, and I hope to help others similarly on their creative journeys too.

Cheers

Helen V

Posted in Conversation, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Never Was

This friendship never was
This bond never began
It lived only in poetry
And sad songs which you sang

No word was ever true
All glances but a lie
In promise we began
In enmity we’ll die

You’ll say I broke your heart
Or even more your trust
You showed through your invasion
A dangerous form of lust

But then in your denial
The deeper truth we find
The opportunity that you craved
Was what you left behind

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Air, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

Just a Dream

Feral Rock Dove

Feral Rock Dove (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Where have you gone to my dear love
Over the mountains, fly like a dove
What are you seeking my true delight
What destination will you alight?

What song you sing now dearest friend
Which of my suitors just pretend?
What love is pure, what love divine
What love will wither or grow on the vine?

Where have you gone to my dear love
Seek you in depths or in heaven above
Bird in the air or quick fish in the stream
Were you reality or just a dream?

(c) Helen Valentina 2013

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Seek

Depth of feeling with you is a sickness;
bleeding wound that never heals; no clinician
can diagnose or remedy the cavity within,
this lacuna of the soul or fill this lack
which kills all truer feeling
before it can begin

An open heart is vulnerable; I know this now,
I lay for years splayed on your table,
sawn ribcage drawn back and skin flaps
open like the curtains of the stage
to your own private show;
beating heart observed
like a vulture may consider its prey

Incremental, intermittent,
deceptive reinforcement of the
hug, slap, hug you mastered
in your teen years and never relinquished;
king of confusion you rule a barren land
you created out of paint and canvas
and ephemera, and your laughter born of pain

You look into the agony of love
to find its truth; it will elude
you there, for in such darker climes
it never truly dwells; seek instead
in the simplicity of sincerity
and do not disdain this as a lack
of intelligence, kindness is not stupid,
it is decent, a concept beyond
your mercurial, caustic mind;
but alas, all these are foreign thoughts
to you, only agents in a distant world
and friends you will never truly know.

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Fire, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

Jealousy

The Mask of Jealousy

The Mask of Jealousy (Photo credit: frankhg)

Your eyes have wandered from me
Brevity
Your gaze a flickering moment
Lost to me
Within your regard I once dwelled
Blissfully
But now your words are given
Listlessly

The joy once shared is defeated by
Solemnity
And for the other women, from me
Enmity
I see your lust as broken, dark
Depravity
The funeral pyre of our love, now
Gravity

Where once I gathered all your time so
Fruitfully
Now any moments given are just offered
Dutifully
I once would have declared such doubt as
Heresy
But now my only feeling left is
Jealousy

(c) Helen Valentina 2013, All Rights Reserved

Posted in Poetry, Water | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments