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Why Pearl Is Not At Westminster This Year

February 13, 2012

Pearl

Why Pearl is Not in Westminster This Year

Because when she was a puppy and was groomed
professionally, she would
sit on the couch for several days afterwards
the only part of her not trembling
a bright pink bow the groomer had
stuck on; and

because after that, when I began cutting
her hair myself–I can’t
call it grooming–she would end up–
with splotches of fur and
baldness, since, I confess,
I’ve been known
to wear mismatched
socks and to fix my own ‘do
by rubbing palms through it
like a balloon that you want
to stick to a wall or sweater; and also
perhaps,

because her breath
smells an awful
lot like dead fish these
days, though
after sixteen years
you tend to
be sort of glad for things like that–
breath–
especially in the warmth
of speckled, oddly-
furred, tummy.

(Check out a “Truest Love Poem” for Pearl, from Going on Somewhere, my collection of poetry.  Check it out too!  And NOSE DIVE!)

Categories: dog, poetry
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Comments: 3 Comments

Chocolate/ Blonde Hair – (Lady Godiva replaced by H. Kisses)

February 12, 2012

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I wrote the draft poem below for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales, where Tess posts a weekly photo prompt.  This week, I’ve really just used Tess’s photo as a springboard;  my drawing and poem are not meant as direct interpretations.

Chocolate/Blonde Hair

I.

Some people have a real hankering
for long blonde hair.
Do you really think
there would be a certain overrated
chocolate chain,
if Lady Godiva
had paraded atop her nag
with a short shag?

II.

“You can’t get that out of a bottle,” strangers would
say about my hair as a kid, when it was
long and straight and naturally
blonde.  Dyed hair, my mother
declared was blocky, all one
shoddy shade, nothing that could even compare
with what I grew, and so, for a while,
I felt a certain halo, until growing
tired of halos, I
insisted on hair cut short, though because
it was my hair,
collected the swathes in
a small and dark brown
box, which both amazed and
hurt me, for what had felt so long
(for so long) and golden, had spun down
to a handful of softish straw.

When I looked in the mirror,
what I saw there too was
diminished, not the sly pixie,
but a confused Delilah,
shorn by mistake,
whose face was round and
who didn’t even have the name
right.

III.

You can’t get that out of
a chocolate– 

a memory:
tobogganing, the sky turning lavender above
tracked speed, as if
we were a flexibly flying flame
amidst the drifts, and below the
blur of snow-flaked lashes, everyone’s
skin shone, till legs trudged (toes urging faster),
to get to the burnish of gas-fired
stove, pot of milk, melt–

a taste:
it was Colombian chocolate, cut in squares
sprinkled with brown sugar, leaving a trace
of smoke in the throat, the kind of smoke that, bluish, always
carries dawn or dusk as it slinks down
steep altitudes;

a friend:
she was my best, and on different visit, when the wind
chilled and I’d had to wear some older sister’s old beau’s sweater
and thick shoes, she’d laughed at my discomfiture, till I learned not to care
about such things for a short
while–truly not at all–the look of them–not
once she re-filled my cup.

(As always, all rights reserved.  Sorry this so long–a draft!)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 23 Comments

Descartes With A Dash of Popeye (“I think, therefore I yam.”)

February 11, 2012
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I Think, Therefore I Yam

After Descartes (With a Dash of Popeye)

I think, therefore I
yam.  I think,
I truly love
the yam.  I bake
them almost every day,
not lining their pan
with foil (as advised by those
who think before
they yam) because
almost every time I yam–late–I
yam also
hard put.

Not having planned
for existence, I slam
them fast in the oven, unable to break
for foil, the need
for sweet hot
earth-grown sustenance
surging with a force that must be
met immediately (plus
the baking time) and so
my yams’ essence
overflows, burns, and
later (usually the next day)
must be scraped away
from the pan, to
get down to something
grey again, stained perhaps,
functional.

I break then,
at least, from the brusque
thrust of scrub,
for saved slices (that soft
bright orange), finding,
though I do not think
of anything very much,
that I still
yam, the cold leftovers of being,
sweet,
in morning’s light.

(Happy Saturday!  I think–and I’m jumping the gun a bit–that dVerse Poets Pub, hosted by Charles Miller, is waxing philosophical today.  I am also linking this to Painting Prose.)

If you have any time, and need an escape this rainy cold weekend, check out NOSE DIVE, a comic romp through the brain and life of Celia Pratchett, big-nosed, big-voiced, New York City High School student with a friend in trouble. Only 99 cents on Kindle!  Or if you don’t like teen novels, check out my collection of poetry, GOING ON SOMEWHERE, or children’s counting book, 1 MISSISSIPPI.  Thanks much!)

(As always, all rights to all aspects of this post reserved.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 27 Comments

Friday Flash 55 feeling bedraggled before dinner out

February 10, 2012
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Not looking one's best

Going Out To Dinner Straight From Work (Not Ready)

As a child of the sixties,  a child
of a child of the Depression, it is hard
to feel deserving of a dinner at
a fancy restaurant, even if
paying for it,
without running home first
for a shower,
freshly-washed hair.  Eating
out requires
clean hair, at least until
a first glass of wine.

(I’m going to tell it to the G-man.  AND while you’re at it, check out NOSE DIVE , comic novel bargain on KINDLE and AMAZON.)

Categories: elephants, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 9 Comments

“First Grade, November 1963” – overly serious odd attempt at French Ballade

February 9, 2012
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(Doesn't Really Go With Poem, but Nice Drawing.)

Agh!  The wonderful dVerse Poets Pub, hosted by Gay Reiser Cannon, has a prompt to write another French Ballade today.  I find this a very difficult form–not so much because of the rhymes, but because it has a relatively short line–8 syllables, rather than my usual 10 or 11.  At any rate, here’s my second attempt.  (My first was two weeks ago and probably a bit better.  Both are a bit heavy for ballades–sorry!)

First Grade, November 1963

The day Jack was shot they put us
on the playground, our place for fun,
our place for recess, only dust
seemed to fill the air, a strange one
for November–was there some sun
showing overhead? Blur defied
blue; the word “assassination”–
we didn’t know that it meant died.

I mean, they told us, with some fuss,
the exact time, Dallas–and gun
flashed through our minds, surely it must
have, with that next combination–
“shot” and “head”–a conjugation
of the past tense (rarely denied).
But on the blacktop, our place to run–
we tried not to know that it meant died.

The older girls joined arms, their busts–
for their breasts had at least begun,
they ten or twelve–heaving with gusts
of young hearts’ plunge to the undone;
we feigned a game of horse, hair slung
about like reins, but the chase cried
out its halt, could not be won;
we could not not know that it meant died.

What to feel?  How not to let on?
Watching the big girls–hard they cried–
President shot–his name was John–
We didn’t know what it meant–died.

(As always, all rights reserved.)

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 8 Comments

To The Catholic Bishops

February 9, 2012

To the Catholic Bishops.  I would point out that many times people pay for expenses with which they are not in total agreement.  Think, for example, of the many donors to the Catholic Church who really did not intend for their contributions to go to the settlement of law suits related to sexual assault and child molestation, law suits whose damages grew exponentially due to years of official cover-up.

Contraception is, unfortunately, still largely a women’s issue.  The government has mandated its coverage not because they are pushing a pro-sexual freedom agenda or an anti=Christian agenda, but because birth control is, for many young women, their major medical expense.  Historically, medical expenses that were largely women’s were not covered nearly to the extent of expenses relating to men.  (Anything related to women received short shrift.)  New laws are, to some degree, trying to right that.

If one were to listen to the current debate, some might get the impression that the government is forcing contraception down people’s throats, i.e. actually taking the little wheels of pills and shoving them down.  That the government just wants to beat up on churches.

In fact, it seems to me to have started as a matter of equal protection of women employees. The government has said insurance provided by secular employers (we are not actually talking churches here) that receive  federal funds should provide insurance that allows for full health care to women. The institutions are not obligated to accept the funding; the women are not obligated to use the health care.

In this political year, it is likely that some compromise will be reached. And I do understand that some in the Catholic Church feel outraged.  (The Church has not always been particularly supportive of women; and feelings about contraception quickly mount to a crazy pitch.)

But in the media (at least talk radio), it seems that the high ground is immediately granted to the churches, the government is vilified–and issues of equal protection for women workers get lost.

 

 

(PS – just want to note here I’m not anti-Catholic, or even against the Catholic Church.  I just hate the whole bandwagon that gets started about these things–as if there’s a huge anti-religious plot in the country.  This started over an attempt to give women’s needs some equal attention.)

Categories: news
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Crazy (in Pic)

February 8, 2012

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Not feeling terribly well (physically) today so sticking to a picture rather than words.  Or maybe I’ll hazard one word: crazy.  

Categories: iPad art, news, Uncategorized
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“Hands On” (Steering Wheel Poem)

February 6, 2012

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Here’s a new poem for dVerse Poets open link night, and also Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads.  (Check out the great poets at both sites.)

Hands On

When I think of why
we are together,
I think of your hands
upon a steering wheel.
The night was cold,
dark (the car seats stiff with it),
but the tendons–had you given me
your gloves?–ran along your grasp
like lifelines, and I needed
a lifeline.
They caught the ambients
from the headlights–inverse shadows
that I could not turn from
as you took
the curves,
then straightened;
as you laughed
about something seemingly
inconsequential;
as I laughed too, all the time
watching them
heatedly.

(P.S. And while you are checking on things, check out NOSE DIVE, my comic mystery novel, which has been reviewed with great kindness by Charles Mashburn of Marbles in My Pocket and Victoria C. Slotto of Liv2Write2day on Amazon.)

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 24 Comments

Magpie Tales – “You Too” (Light After Death?)

February 5, 2012

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Here’s a poem for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales.  Tess puts up very interesting photoprompts.  The above and below are my take on this week’s.

You Too

There is that will
in some
that assays a reach
from the grave, that
would pull from raw earth
gems
for barter, that would store
oxidation; that, below
the mine, will still insist, “that’s mine–” those
whose fingers grasp
even as limbs moulder.

And then there are those
who proffer treasure, who, in
their last sighs and beyond, exhale
a gift, their life’s blood like a current
of air a bird
might sail upon, or you too might feel
ruffling your hair beneath
the noon or setting
sun.

These last do not just raise flowers
from their remains, but instead,
a hard brilliance: someday, you too will
pass; someday, you too
will be faceless; someday,
you too will know life
as a stone; catch
light
now.

Categories: iPad art, poetry, Uncategorized
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Comments: 16 Comments

Poetics, Ponge, Sheets,

February 4, 2012

Brain In Bed

Mark Kerstetter at dVerse Poets Pub has given a prompt based on the wonderful French poet Ponge today and his poetization of objects.   (I urge you to check out the article.)  My brain is a bit fried tonight, which may be what led me to write the poem below.

Sheets

They are wide and flat and blank with the wide
flat blankness of sound sleep,
white noise, the sky
on those heavy days when summer’s head
can barely be lifted, those other days
when winter’s head
is weighted down with snow.

Except when they are not blank (or wide or flat) but
rumpled by the chased dream that moans for surrender,
ruffled by the soar of inner flight,
tangled around the angled limbs of those who are thrust
by their unconscious into a straitjacketed thrash, knotted
and wracked by those who weep, covering their faces.

Hold me tonight, sheets, like an envelope that is
mailed to tomorrow, and let me stretch
out in your cool crannies, those slices
of stillness, where, encompassed nightly
by the repeatedly touched and
untouched, I find place
for every square of my being, even
the enfisted heart.

P.S. for those who have been following this blog–I finished the novel manuscript, at least enough to submit to a silly (unwinnable by me) novel contest.  Still, a lot of revising to be done, but it has a very good story and does hang together more or less.  It is not, however, nearly so finished as NOSE DIVE!  (Check it out!)

 

Categories: poetry, Uncategorized
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