Category Archives: Poem

“The Monster” Short Film

Posted on by under Music, Poem, poetry, short film, Short Story

Hello friends!

I have a surprise for you….

I turned one of my poems into an animated short film! I got to collaborate with an amazing animator whose work I’ve admired for years: Patrick Smith. The film is quite short (under 3 min), and it includes a surprise twist & a song!

I’m excited to share it with you!

WATCH “THE MONSTER” HERE:

HOW I MADE THE FILM:

Fun Facts:

• I didn’t originally set out to make a short film. A few years ago, I was at my typewriter, and I wrote a very quick stream-of-consciousness poem about a monster. When I shared it on instagram someone commented that it would be great as an animated short film. I thought so too. So I made it!

• The score is me on piano and my dad on bass. On one track, I’m playing the piano like…a piano. On a second track, I have the lid of the grand piano open, and I am strumming the strings of the piano. That’s what creates that eerie cascading harp-like sound and the plucking sounds. 

• The song at the end of the short film was not planned. As we were recording the narration, I was goofing around by the piano, and I started making up the song, and singing in a Brittish accent, like a British 70’s rock n’ roller. It felt fun and zany and very “me” so I tagged it onto the end of the poem. Once we had the animation, the song ended up really tying the whole piece together. 

• My dad is the voice of The Monster. This was not planned either. After we recorded the song, I thought, maybe Phillip should also sing something. I thought maybe, like Groot – the character from Guardians of the Galaxy who only says “I am Groot” – perhaps Phillip only says his own name. So my dad hopped in the booth and sang a few “Phillips”. I think we can all agree this is his most genius work to date. 

•  The way I found Patrick Smith’s amazing animation was through a video series he did called “Blank on Blank”, where he animated lost interviews of actors, musicians, artists etc. The very first video I watched of his was a “Blank on Blank” of my favorite actor. I asked Patrick if he could draw that actor into our video as one of the background characters. He did! I’m keeping it secret who it is. But you might spot this mystery actor 31 seconds in. 

• Projects take time to make. I wrote the poem in October 2018. And now it’s October 2021 and it’s out in the world! 

Love,
Lucy

P.S. Here is the original poem! Some of you may remember it from when I posted it on this site 🙂

The Hallucination (Fool’s Gold)

Posted on by under dialogue, Poem
Milestone DVD Hampton Man with a Lantern

I’m looking
I’m looking
I’m looking for the light in the dark of the night, and the fear is that I might
Not find the holy sight
Of the light
The light

Ten long days in the caves
And I already fear I’ve gone mad
The walls are shivering
The dirt is talking to me
Calling me “sweetheart” and “sugar”
And threatening to strangle me while I sleep
And my head plays the sound of a honky tonk piano on repeat
Dee Dee Dee
The man who plays the piano in my head is drunk
Again
He keeps playing the wrong note
Ooo – how I hate the sound –
The misaimed note screeches like chalk on a board, a car scraping against concrete, the howl of a stray cat in heat,
And it never resolves

I’m looking
I’m looking
I’m looking for the light in the dark of the night, and the fear is that I might
Not find the holy sight
Of the light
The light

Was he right?
Was I a fool to go looking?

– Lucy Schwartz

BFI Blu Eastman Man with a Lantern-1

Note: I do not own the photographs in this post. I always try to credit photos when I know the source.

Stream of Consciousness Poem

Posted on by under Poem, poetry

Stream of consciousness
Like a ribbon
That can’t be caught
Or held onto for very long
But which keeps unfolding
And revealing itself
If you allow it to

It’s strange what exists in there
Those thoughts that you weren’t even aware you were thinking
Those foreign feelings
Unknown to you before, in murky depths,
But which seem to have been a part of you all along
Those images, shapes, signs
Of a universal language
Which seek you out
If only you listen

I wish I could always live in that exalted space
Of universal wisdom
Of electricity
Electric thought.
Buzzing and whirring at a million miles a minute
Receiving.
Yes, that’s it.
I like when I’m a receiver of the great beyond
I like to sit in my little house
At my desk
Beside my telephone
Whose chord reaches up to the sky, past the viewing point,
A universal hotline, if you will,
That’s where I like to live
Waiting to receive.
Waiting for the call.
And then hearing it.
And picking up.

-Lucy Schwartz

​

 

Unconditional

Posted on by under Poem

You are lovable when you feel crazy
You are lovable when you feel sane
You are lovable in the sunshine
You are lovable in the rain
You are lovable in all circumstances
In all places,
In all moods,
In all of your emotions,
And desires,
In all your certainties and uncertainties,
In all your fears, worries and regrets,
In all the things you’ve done,
And all the things you haven’t done yet,
And in all the ways you simply, incredibly EXIST,
Without doing anything at all.

You are lovable at your worst
You are lovable at your best.

Darling,
Believe me,
You are as lovable as lovable gets.

-Lucy Schwartz

Eclipse

Posted on by under Poem

 

A poem written by the sun for the moon:

Come towards me
Hide my light for a moment
So that I can unearth truths
That have been lying in your shadow

Slow dance with me
My sweet companion
Even if it can only be for one song
Too many years have passed without your touch,
And it won’t be long before the fates separate us once again
So while we are here, together at last
Let us not weep for lost time
Or the coming goodbyes
Let us pretend
In this moment
That we have all the time in the world

As the morning birds sound “our song”
I will hold you in my arms
And dance with you cheek to cheek
And we’ll turn morning into night
With a fire so piercing it could blind
And all who witness us will be mesmerized
Standing on mountains
Sitting on cars
And porches
And lawns
Families and friends huddled together
Eyes shielded with spectacles
Hands pointing
Mouth agape
Some standing in new, unfamiliar plots of the earth
Travelers
Migrating
Just to say they caught a glimpse
Of you and I

And we’ll shake the world into remembering
That each being is a perfect union
Of both darkness and the light

Just like you and I, darling
Just like you and I

So before our song is through
Look into my eyes and
Hold me
In the way that only you know how

-Lucy Schwartz

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Note: I do not own the photographs included in this post.

Message From The Trees

Posted on by under Poem

They say every 100 years there is a great storm
They say the winds are so destructive
That they could knock down an entire forest
As a tree myself, well, I’m concerned,
Especially since the clouds have begun to hover
Dark and ominous above me

Lately, every waking hour,
I find myself thinking about this storm
Fearing it
Staring up at that great expanse of grey apocalyptic sky
In hopelessness
The thing about being a tree is
You aren’t able to run from danger
If a fire or a storm is headed your way
The only thing you can do is sit there and wait for it to hit you
And pray that somehow, miraculously, it doesn’t
It’s like in the movies when the character’s been kidnapped and tied to the tracks
And they’re waiting for the oncoming train
Waiting for impact
That’s how I feel lately
Like I’m waiting for impact

I guess I must’ve jinxed it, thinking about it so much
Because the next thing I knew
I felt the first few drops hit me
Light as could be
But boy did those clouds look heavy up above

I closed my eyes
Fearfully
Panic rising in my hollow chest
And that’s when they all fell
An entire ocean raining down
Heavy as buckets
Pounding against my head
Water turning colder, turning to hail
Bits of ice falling
Like so many sharp pieces of glass against my skin

And then the winds came
I’ve never felt such winds in my life
I dug my roots into the earth as deep as i could
And held on fiercely
I saw two trees in front of me break in half with an awful SNAP
And the third tree – my neighbor, my friend – Isabelle – fell straight over
How gracefully she fell
Like a ballerina on point
Who had lost her footing
But at a deathly cost

I was afraid
I looked to the left to my brother
And the right to my sister
They were both as terrified as I was
I reached out two branches
And intertwined my arms with theirs
We steadied ourselves
With the three of us linked together the wind seemed like less of a burden to carry
But around us our friends, neighbors and strangers were still struggling
Falling
Losing limbs
And so we reached out our arms to them
One by one
Each tree adding to our chain link
Our offering spreading down the line like a wildfire of hope, until it reached the very last struggling tree

The entire forest was now one unit
Bearing against the turning of the tides
Oaks, Elms, Pines, Junipers
It no longer mattered what we called ourselves
We were no longer divided by names
We were one
All around us the storm raged
The air a battleground
But somehow I felt steady
Held
Calm
Loved
I was a part of something greater than myself
And that made me stronger

…………

Eventually the storm passed
And we all sighed in exhaustion
Some of us weeping
Some of us laughing
Some of us in a state of shock
Slightly out of our minds, numb, and invigorated all at once

Water covered the soil below us like a newly formed lake
Looking down
I caught a glimpse of my own wavering reflection in a puddle between my roots
And I realized that I had lost all my leaves
My beautiful leaves
My oranges and yellows and greens
All gone
I was only wood
I didn’t recognize myself
Who was this barren trunk, strong like a brick wall?
This warrior woman
With the sharpness of truth blazing in her eyes?
The longer I looked
The more I realized
That something deep had changed inside of me
My leaves would grow back
As leaves always do
But I would never again be the same tree
For I had been a part of something that was greater than myself
And that had made me stronger

-Lucy Schwartz

The Box

Posted on by under Poem

I started to wonder what would happen if time could be contained inside a wooden box
And if every New Year’s Eve
When the clock struck twelve
Each person on Earth was presented with a box and a key
Upon which they could choose to open their box of time
And see forth into the future
Of the coming year
Through dusty crystal ball
Or talisman
Or hand-scribbled clue left in the box
Perhaps each person’s box would contain something different
Unique as the person themself
One soul might open their box and find a roll of film and a projector
From which they could literally watch the entire year to come
Agonizing in advance over certain unpleasant chapters
And rewinding to watch their favorite scenes over and over
Reliving the best moments before they’ve even been lived
Another person might find a hefty script or a novel
Their life in print
Every word of their future dialogue written down, play by play
And seemingly unchangeable
Written in ink, not pencil
Or perhaps for some, this mysterious fortune-telling box would contain something much less concrete
Maybe the only thing they’d find in that large wooden box would be a small, simple, poem
Cryptic but telling
Words that could be interpreted and misinterpreted a thousand different ways
The box would deliver them truth and still leave them guessing
Or maybe for an unlucky few
When they opened their annual New Year’s box, they’d find –
Nothing –
Just an empty box
The end of their future near

Imagine the possibilities
And the danger
If the future was not this foggy thing
Unclear and out of reach
But instead something that you could hold in your hands
And if it were so
And your very own box was laid out in front of you
Would you open it?
Would you look?
Would you dare?
Would I?

-Lucy Schwartz

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