Category Archives: Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine

COOL SALE for Read an E-Book Week

Once again smashwords.com is celebrating Read an E-Book Week with an awesome sale! For this week only my books there will be 50% off. Links below. Enter coupon code RAE50 upon checkout. Here is one poem included in both books:

10/17/09

From Mary Jane D. and Stephenie Meyer
For Ira, Bob, Geary and Eric

Something that shatters
pre-existing life structure
stretching out to the foreseeable future.

No restoration
of equilibrium
or the familiar,

the details
don’t matter:
a choice point where

all is divided into
before…and after
and darkness is the dominant color.

The decisive end…of what was,
the promising beginning…of what is:

verdant, vivid vibration,
riot of sensation,
vibrant colors of all description,

almost beyond bearing.

You get to the point
where you say: This
lightening bolt that struck me

was the best thing
that ever happened.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2009

Letting Go and New Beginnings: A Mother’s Poetic Journey
($.99 this week only)

Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing
(50% off the usual price of $4.99!)

Remember to enter coupon code RAE50 upon checkout. You can also give E-books as gifts. Please share this with your friends. Thank you for your support!

Weaving Reality with Fiction: Contemplating Healing

For almost as long as I can remember, reading has been my escape, distraction, teacher, amusement, consolation, friend, and a welcome alternate reality. When my Mom passed away in 2012, it was natural for me to seek comfort in reading. One of the books that drew me in was by Laurie R. King. This poem (from Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine) came to me, weaving my real life with her fictional world, making some kind of sense from the (temporarily) numb place I was in. How about you? Any books that moved you or gave solace or understanding?

9/6/12

Reading Garment of Shadows
by Laurie R. King

I couldn’t see myself
on the other side of darkness
you lose a mother only once

what is broken cannot be fixed
what reassurance
could be offered
what meaning or strength

found in contemplating healing?
It is as if I woke with amnesia
unaware of who I am

clues all around of someone
who lived where I lived
and worked and was a friend

but who she is now
or who might know
or what road to follow…?

In the meantime…
sun rises…sun sets
the day is sunny or gray

put one foot in front of the other
the nights blending together
I dream in language I do not understand.

Margaret Dubay Mikus
© 2012

From Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing. Print edition now on amazon.com. (Also widely available as an ebook.) Thank you for sharing!

THROWN AGAIN into the FRAZZLE MACHINE: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing

Love poem from “Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine”

Not too late for Valentine’s. It’s really the whole weekend, right?

One of the narrative threads running through my new book, Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing, is love. (The book is dedicated to my husband.) Here is a love poem written before major surgery:

11/21/13

Safe and Spooned

I am safe
lying here spooned
with my sleeping husband

who is warm
and smells slightly of cloves.
We are softly breathing

and music is playing.
Lying here under a thick duvet
it is a warm cocoon.

I am safe
pain-free
breathing easily

heart beats regularly.
When I rise
I slip back into the room

and walk effortlessly
out the door
down the hall into

my own silence.

New! Print edition of Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine is now available at Amazon.com!

“Startling Starlings” from Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine

12/12/11

Startling Starlings
Everett Road west of Riverwoods

In the middle of a murmuration
landscape and sky covered by wings
myriad dark apparently separate bodies
climb and swoop and soar in evident synchrony,
how can that be? Mysterious symphony
immersed in all that majestic energy
a blessing particularly chosen for me.

From Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine

I am posting this poem here for Harold Grandstaff Moses who mentioned this phenomenon today on Facebook. This is my experience of murmuration. If you don’t know this term, it is that swooping, soaring sky-dance of a huge flock of starlings that stay in perfect synchrony. Amazing to witness! I was near my house, driving by an open field and into the middle of this awesome spectacle. I stopped the car to watch and laughed out loud at the wonder of it.

Thrown Again into the Frazzle Machine: Poems of Grace, Hope, and Healing is now available in print as well as popular E-book formats. (The paperback has black and white photos and the E-book has 11 full color pictures with the poems.) Check it out! And spread the word! Thank you!