4.2.13

Writing a poem that tells a lie is so freeing.  Mine usually turn into flights of fancy, and this one is no exception.  My secondary "color" prompt for the day was yellow.  I always remember my creative writing prof telling us that poets lie to tell the truth.  I'll provide the lie for today...you bring whatever truth you care to.

Lie

That's the hat I wore.  That night—

the night we made a run for it. 

You wore white--I wore black except

for the hat. Its gold roses were stars

lighting our path.  Our shoes

had wings, our fingers were canary feathers. 

We tore free of the city's claws.  We rode

your motorcycle past ghettos and gravestones,

 past corncribs and coal mines, rode

until the highway rippled away, until the red mouth

of sunrise swallowed us.  We were cowards.

We were heroes. 

It spit us out again, new.

 

4.1.13

It begins!  NaPoWriMo launches today!

The prompt for today was to use the first line of a "famous" (or otherwise) poem as a starting place.  I'm combining this project with a photo project on another site (which will be updated every couple of days...mace508 on www.365project.org if you're interested...I will post the photos to this blog as well).  My secondary prompt from 365 was "red," so I added that to the "famous first line" thing...which led me to come up with a poem about something red, or with the color red mentioned, that has a first line I can work with.  Well, that got me thinking about red wheelbarrows, so I decided to take my own slant on William Carlos Williams, and borrow that oft-borrowed, very famous first line.  Here it is, folks:

So much depends upon

what isn’t said.  A red tulip begs

to be a kiss, a chipped nail

tells of heartache. A footprint

in alley mud could be headed anywhere—

how could you leave

only fingerprints behind, only

my dull red heart, dropping petals on the floor?

 

30 Days of Poetry?

Shout out to the poets...April is National Poetry Month!  I'll be participating in NaPoWriMo this year (National Poetry Writing Month) and listing my blog on their website, so follow along for my poem-a-day!

Anything But a Baby Toy

Miss N, The Baby, is now eight months old, and is quite a curious little critter.  We can't crawl yet--but we're almost there.  We can army crawl, which is an upgrade from what we called "the Tripod," which involved baby, while lying face-up, arching her back so that she rested on three points (two little legs and head), then scooting the legs inward and tipping her chin down, which would sort of flop her in the direction she wanted to go.  From the army crawl, we are trying to stand up.  I am thinking it won't be long, folks...

Little Miss N makes REALLY good time in the army crawl.  Usually, she hangs out on the living room floor.  We have a couple of large toys there for her entertainment, and a legion of small ones.  But what really interests this child is the stuff she's not supposed to have.

This includes Miss L's toys, which are supposed to stay in her room, but rarely do.  I swear they move when we're not looking.  It's like I'm living in Toy  Story some days.  (This train of thought leads me down an interesting path, like what the stack of naked Princess I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-Barbie-dolls talk abort when our backs our turned...but I digress...) Dollhouse furniture, little tiaras and shoes (to fit the naked Princesses), Hot Wheels cars, loose change (one of Miss L's favorite things to play with)--Miss N wants it all.  She wants it now, and she wants it in her mouth.  *cue paranoid squawking from Mommy*

She also likes things that shouldn't, EVER, go in anyone's mouth.  Little fluffs of cat hair.  Scraps of paper from Miss L's art projects. Unexplained particles of...stuff.  Is our floor REALLY this dirty?  I swear to God we vacuum.

Miss N will army crawl over to the piano, and attempt to get into Miss L's backpack for preschool (which lives under the piano when not on Miss L).  She will try to break into the diaper bag.  If it's left on the floor, and it doesn't belong there, she's all over it.

Why???  This child has hundreds of dollars worth of attractive, well-made, and perfectly child-safe baby toys.  We have things that rattle. We have things that sing.  (LOTS of those.)  We have brightly colored toys, balls, rings, friendly stuffed animals, we have a carpet of beautiful baby toys.  What must the child be thinking, to look at all those toys, then look at a dust bunny that's crept out from underneath the couch and go, "Oh, hey.  I should eat that."

I suppose it's human nature to want what we can't have.  I SHOULD be grading things, or cooking things, or cleaning things, or something, but instead I dork around on Facebook, which I shouldn't do, because it's meaningless and wastes time.  And then I think, why am I dorking around on Facebook when I could be writing something?  Like, for real?  I WANT to write--at least I think I do...but do I want to screw around more?  When did my "real" writing become work, something to put off, to procrastinate about?  Is it because it takes effort, because it's less shiny and streamlined than the virtual "places" online where I fritter away my time?  Sometimes I feel like my writing is a turd...but when I DO manage to write something, I'm in a great mood all day.  No effort, no payoff. 

I need to take a cue from Miss N: ignore all the flashy stuff that's designed to suck me in, and put that dust bunny in my mouth.  Writing needs to be forbidden fruit...even if it's fuzzy forbidden fruit.

Paybacks

Flash fiction piece for Thursday Threads at www.siobahnmuir.com this week...no title, but there is a penguin thong, which I think makes up for that.

“Luke, I said I was sorry.”

“Sorry’s not good enough this time, Jerry.”

“But we’ve pranked each other for years.”

“This one went too far.  I was going to PROPOSE that night, for God’s sake.”

“You still could have.”

“Lisa’s family never wants to see me again!”

“No sense of humor.”

“A ruined living room isn’t very funny to most people. Especially prospective in-laws.”

“That was a freak accident.  It was just honey.”

“On my girlfriend’s ass!”

“That was meant for you.  How was I supposed to know she was going to sit in the driver’s seat?”

“She’s allergic to beestings!”

“And who knew there would be bees in their front yard?”

“It’s a YARD! ”

“Well, she panicked.  I mean, who runs off and leaves a Jeep in gear?”

“Allergic!!”

“It was pretty irresponsible.”

“Nothing is ever your fault, it is?  You’re lucky she wasn’t stung.  You’d be dead.”

“See?  Bright side…I really have to wear that?”

“Jerry, the Jeep went THROUGH HER PARENTS’ LIVING ROOM WALL.”

“No one was hurt.”

“No, just banished.”

“But it isn’t enough for me to rot or repent here where none can see?”

“No.  Put on the thong.”

“But it’s got a penguin on the—“

“That’s why I picked it.”

“All right…now what?”

“Clown nose.”

“Seriously?”

“It honks.”

“And?”

“You’re going to apologize to Lisa, for putting honey on her ass.  You’re going to absolve me of guilt, and you’re going on youtube tonight.”

“This is really necessary?”

“Paybacks, Jerry, are hell.”

Falling Back

Today begins the slide
the spiral
into the twilight season,
daylight whipping past
like sharp-edged petals in the wind.
Most of the leaves are
gone, exposing
winter's framework of branch
upon branch, bone
upon bone.  The overgrown grass
blades tell stories to each other
in the dark, remembering summer's scatters
of light, long steaming days
and warm rains, pushing them higher
They are bent like old men,
waiting for frost.

Election's over. Coffee, please.

White mocha, shot of hazelnut, HELL YES whipped cream.  $4.82.  I bought fluffy coffee on the way to campus today.  One reason for this is that my Comp 1 students are having an exam today, and I always reward myself with an overpriced beverage while they're taking their exam, because we all survived another unit of study.

 I also wanted a post-election latte.  It would up being a celebratory latte, since I did vote Obama.  (If Romney had won, it would have been a consolation latte.  It's all a matter of justification, folks.)  I didn't stay up late last night to hear the election results; I crashed at 9:30 when my kids went to bed. I was pretty sure they'd be up when I woke up in the morning, and my getting eight hours of sleep wasn't going to change them.  (I was right.)  I rarely make political posts.  I have my views, but I like to talk about other things instead.  Poets are egocentric.  So here's my one and only political post for this election year.

I, for one, am glad that the whiny bitchslapping that was the election--especially the last month of it--is over.  In theory, the flood of recycling-bound glossies from both parties in my mailbox should be more or less through now.  I'm sure our recycling man will appreciate that.  I am glad Obama won, because I dislike Romney's Beemer-salesman mojo.  And a lot of other things about him (okay, everything).   My own views aside, what I also dislike is how election time brings out the worst in people, and I don't mean the candidates here (although that's true too).

So kudos to those who are neither gloating sanctimoniously nor bitching and grumbling this morning.  To those trumpeting "I told you so, bitches!" all over every form of social media, to those being rude and rubbing victory in the face of those Facebook friends whom they know have differing opinions: let's dial it down, all right?  He won.  Mission accomplished.  To those who react to the results with disappointment, kudos to the ones who are not dissing the opposite party with swear words, slurs, or other forms of verbal abuse.  The rest of you, grow up.  To those who didn't vote, and who are bitching about the election results:  shut the hell up.  You didn't vote, you don't have the right to squawk.  Well, okay, actually you do, if you want to get Constitutional about it...but the rest of us who DID vote yesterday don't really want to hear it. To those who are, in short, being good winners/losers and being respectful of the other guy: GOOD FREAKIN' JOB!

I am all for voicing your opinion.  However, there is a difference between voicing your opinion and being a jackass about it.  The election brings out the jackass in people.  Now that it's over, I am hoping that we can all put the inner jackass back in the pen and be nice again, at least until the 2016 Circus begins.

Political post over.  Drinkin' my coffee now.