One more

Since it's the end of poetry month, I thought this was fitting.


Eating Poetry

Ink runs from the corners of my mouth.
There is no happiness like mine.
I have been eating poetry.
The librarian does not believe what she sees.
Her eyes are sad
and she walks with her hands in her dress.
The poems are gone.
The light is dim.
The dogs are on the basement stairs and coming up.
Their eyeballs roll,
their blond legs burn like brush.
The poor librarian begins to stamp her feet and weep.
She does not understand.
When I get on my knees and lick her hand,
she screams.
I am a new man.
I snarl at her and bark.
I romp with joy in the bookish dark.
-- Mark Strand

Another poem

The Clasp
Sharon Olds

She was four, he was one, it was raining, we had colds,
we had been in the apartment two weeks straight,
I grabbed her to keep her from shoving him over on his
face, again, and when I had her wrist
in my grasp I compressed it, fiercely, for a couple
of seconds, to make an impression on her,
to hurt her, our beloved firstborn, I even almost
savored the stinging sensation of the squeezing,
the expression, into her, of my anger,
"Never, never, again," the righteous
chant accompanying the clasp. It happened very
fast-grab, crush, crush,
crush, release-and at the first extra
force, she swung her head, as if checking
who this was, and looked at me,
and saw me-yes, this was her mom,
her mom was doing this. Her dark,
deeply open eyes took me
in, she knew me, in the shock of the moment
she learned me. This was her mother, one of the
two whom she most loved, the two
who loved her most, near the source of love
was this.

"near the source of love was this"
Mmm-hmmm.

Mama said

Ever have one of those days when you want to just chuck it all and remember what is was to live unencumbered, irresponsible, a potentiality?

Yeah.

Baby Star is teething. Again. He bit me roughly fifteen times today, and pinched me another twenty-seven.

Boy Star. Hoo boy. He accidentally kicked me in the head at the grocery story. He sassed me every ten minutes, when he wasn't hanging on me. He pressed buttons I had no idea I had. And it seems he can do a wicked impersonation of a wall, at least when I speak.

So I've had a bubblebath, and now I'm drinking bourbon to ease the fire in my head.

Poor Grammar

Kaliroz always has the best quizzes posted on her blog.

Aside from the grammar in the title, I actually liked the results I got on this one.

You Belong in Dublin

Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions.You're the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl... or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town.

What European City Do You Belong In?

So who's up for a pub crawl?

Earworm

I have a Melissa Etheridge earworm today. Maybe if I give it to one of you, it will go away.

Angels Would Fall

The rope that’s wrapped around me
Is cutting through my skin
And the doubts that have surrounded me
Are finding their way in
I keep it close to me
Like a holy man prays
In my desperate hour
It’s better that way

So I’ll come by and see you again
I’ll be such a very good friend
Have mercy on my soul
I will never let you know
Where my mind has been

Angels never came down
There’s no one here they want to hang around
But if they knew
If they knew you at all
Then one by one the angels
Angels would fall

I’ve crept into your temple
I have slept upon your pew
I’ve dreamed of the divinity
Inside and out of you
I want it more than truth
I can taste it on my breath
I would give my life just for a little death

So I’ll come by and see you again
I’ll be just a very good friend
I will not look upon your face
I will not touch upon your grace
Your ecclesiastic skin

I’ll come by and see you again
I’ll have to be a very good friend
If I whisper they will know
I’ll just turn around and go
You will never know my sin

Enjoy!

Girls are not smart

That lovely momma-blood-pressure-raising statement came out of the four year old yesterday.

Girls are not smart. Just boys are.

He meant that he and daddy are smart because they play video games well. He's lucky they play video games at all after that.

Someone please tell me he's not doomed to a lifetime of lonely misogyny.

Please.

More more more

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing
Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most.
This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

And more poetry

Dream Song 4
John Berryman

Filling her compact & delicious body
with chicken páprika, she glanced at me
twice.
Fainting with interest, I hungered back
and only the fact of her husband & four other people
kept me from springing on her

or falling at her little feet and crying
'You are the hottest one for years of night
Henry's dazed eyes
have enjoyed, Brilliance.' I advanced upon
(despairing) my spumoni.--Sir Bones: is stuffed,
de world, wif feeding girls.

--Black hair, complexion Latin, jewelled eyes
downcast . . . The slob beside her feasts . . . What wonders is
she sitting on, over there?
The restaurant buzzes. She might as well be on Mars.
Where did it all go wrong? There ought to be a law against Henry.
--Mr. Bones: there is.

Power

So ever since I read The Handmaid's Tale before bed the other night, I keep having all these creepy, surreal dreams. You know, the kind where you remember the feeling more than the details.

And then this morning, the local radio show had an interview with the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs.

It's all very troubling.

When exactly did feminism become twisted into sexuality-as-a-commodity free for all? And if we as women are going to use our bodies that way, why in the hell are we not doing more for true equality for all women?

Hummers

So, some women friends were recently having a conversation about -- how shall I phrase this as not to get weird search results -- adult oral activity.

I'm a bit sleep deprived lately and cannot quite grasp what exactly it is about this particular activity some women find so ... not nice.

Texture issues?

Anyhow, this is what I wonder about when I read The Handmaid's Tale before going to sleep.

Power imbalances. I think that's where I was headed with this. More on that later.

Today

Today was a good day.

The sun kissed the babies in the yard.

Wee one napped by himself, twice.

I talked to my best friend, and heard her new baby squealing in the background.

I had time to read.

I have work that is unfinished.

More poetry

We only get a month. I'm not sure that's long enough, but anyhow...

I've been hunting new poems lately. One of my favorites.

"What Do Women Want"
Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what's underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty's and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I'm the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I'll pull that garment
from its hanger like I'm choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I'll wear it like bones, like skin,
it'll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

So much for resolve

I wasn't going to do any more of these things.

Your 2005 Song Is

by the Pussycat Dolls "Dont cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me Dont cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me" What happens in 2005, stays in 2005!

What Hit Song of 2005 Are You?

I feel so dirty.

Lock up your daughters

Boy Star: Mommy, how do I get a wife?

Momma Star: Why do you want a wife?

Boy Star: So I can grow up and have babies. Where do I get a wife?

Momma Star: You find a girl you like and want to kiss and ask her to marry you. Then you get married and she's your wife.

Boy Star: I need to go on the computer. I think I can find one on the internet.


I am so dreading puberty.

April is the cruelest month

It's National Poetry Month. Yes, I'm a nerd for knowing that.

Anyhow, since I can't write for anything these days, how about an excerpt of The Wasteland?

APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.


Yeah, that.

Go read the rest.