Feature: Lisa Vicious Day 1

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Lisa Vicious when she featured at a Poet's Haven venue. I have to say, her performance was impressive. The emotion she conveyed during her performance was an attention holder and evenly interspersed with wry humor that was effective in engaging the audience's participation. She is very dynamic. I found too that, even though she deals with hard subjects and personal issues, I can easily identify with and relate to her writing.

After hearing her read, I jumped at the chance to buy her chapbook "Take for Pain as Needed." Now, months later, I find myself running across it at random times in my house. I get in trouble because I can't help but open it again once I've found it. When I do, I'm pulled in and forget what it was that I originally set out to do.

That being said, we are very excited and pleased to feature her here this week.

Welcome to *Mnemosyne*, Lisa!

---Jen

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BIO:

"The only way to define Lisa Vicious is not to."

At the age of 13 I began writing poetry and short stories. For an extreme novice, I never lacked creativity. I wrote for the sake of writing, not knowing it was subconscious therapy and an escape from a broken home, an abusive foster family, and my own self-destruction.

After a stint with hospitalization in 1994 for depression and a miserably failed suicide attempt, I had stopped writing; thanks to the wonderful opinions of my immediate family and the medical "experts" in the hospital who saw it fit to tell me my writing was "unhealthy and disturbing" - their descriptions not my interpretation.

It was eight years later that I put the pen to the paper once more and this time what transpired were words that I understood. Words that mattered. Words that flowed through my veins as natural as the blood of my Mother who almost sabotaged my gift...and through many a metamorphosis Lisa Vicious emerged.

"If Nick Cave and Leadbelly fucked a baby into Lydia Lunch, she'd be Lisa Vicious" - musician, tortured soul artist Buddha JuNk.

I feel I am far more intellectually curious and sensitive to beauty (even found in decay) than most. I am an artist of many creative endeavors which includes photography, painting, sculpting, and revamping odds & ends. Poetry, which is my main soup dejour, is derived from the bloodiest of raw emotional meats, the softest virgins with the palest eyes, and the sweetest smelling cotton candy in the most fucked up circus you'll ever see...

I am a survivor of abuse, addiction, stalking, and self-destruction - this is my story as it has unfolded thus far.

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A View A Skewed

I am what I am,
is what I am what I am?
What am I to you?

I had a dream Joe,
I cut myself off from the world with one bad lyric,
a razor sharp line,
just another cockroach on its back
waiting for a Jihad,
a revolution that might never come
and what have I done?

Listening to storms of static ‘tween my ears
for years,
it's all a blur, a mindfuNk,
fuck if I know,
I never did what I was told,
in my tormented years -
still just 7 years old,
and beauty done raped me,
there is no one...
not one who hasn't been scorned
by a self-love-loathe-antisocial-school girl-joke,
where have you been?

© Lisa Vicious