Assignment

Bloodorange, the Big Boss,
assigned me to report on my own death, 
presenting a ticklish situation, both logistically and ethically. 

Cockrobin, my first journalism professor,
wrote "REPORT the story" on a blackjack and let me have it.
I saw stars indicating the edition with my byline on it, Chickpea, girl reporter.

Now, Bloodorange and I used to be a thing
until he undrowned his wife and family, up from the river, reborn.
I'm a loose end, an extra column, and the new ace of a dying profession.

Bloodorange is as crafty as he is cheap,
with two dicks that duel each other constantly, resulting in
his slightly gassy, somewhat bemused expression, commented on by all.

Concerned for my career, not to mention my mortal flesh,
I went to see Cockrobin, down under L Street where he lives in a funeral urn.
I kissed him by way of interview, and he bade me live just to spite his rival.

Like any good reporter, I wrote what I could long before deadline,
plumbing the morgue for basic bio stuff about myself, all news to me.
Then I composed several endings and demises, stored in a cloud like akashic records. 

Oh how Bloodorange and I used to dance, but now
one of his brats has killed me with a ball peen hammer, emerging from a high cupboard
to bash my brains in. How'd the little darling even get up there?

CHICKPEA, HOTSHOT INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST, 
BOUGHT THE FARM TODAY, DONE IN BY LOVE AND AMBITION.
(Bloodorange hates vernacular, that's why I used it.)

The next afternoon, the newspaper folded,
journalism died, and Bloodorange became a Hindu,
reincarnated, single again, and using my skull for a doorstop at his ashram

Where the ideals are advertising revenue, and survival of the fittest.
__________

for the weekend challenge at Toads: the news.

Robins

Every year, robins nest at the side of my house,
They keep the world on its axis. They raise babies. That's it. That's enough.
This year, they began,
but were fooled by a warm February.
Now it is May and there were never any babies.
Something went wrong, though there's a heartbeat inside the wood.

Non-robins that never were
fly out and erase what is. Worms survive, but who cares?
Spring is here, with all its renewal, but it isn't right, the world has tilted.
Next year, will the robins try again?
Or will non-robins nest and create negation?

Wait and see.
By this time next year, I'll either be right here
or gone, under ground, in the teeming roil of things that are, are not, and never should be.
_____

For Bjorn's prompt at Toads. His treatise on physics was just blah-blah to my poor brain, so i wrote about a thing that expresses itself dually, and I hope that is enough.

Fearless Journeys Into Foreign Lands

In my 20s, I loved the newsstand.
Neatly stacked out-of-town editions might have been
pillows for my future lovers, just arrived, or
stepping stones across a river, never the same one twice.

Daddy would have been proud, seeing my devotion
to the early street, the Sunday supplement and the sports final. 
All of my poems, then, were papier-mâché,
and I wrote them around the crumbs from French bread,
and between bottles of Milwaukee beer.

These days, I have become a homebody,
but when I press my face to your skin, 
I always smell newsprint along with shea butter and lavender.
Part of the pleasure in loving another woman is the feeling of being on home ground,
as easy as raiding your own kitchen in the dark.

Still, love is always a fearless journey into foreign lands.
Even though I practice a daily discipline of advice columns and horoscopes,
having learned the language of you the way a novitiate learns about faith;
and even though I find home in your hair, your eyes, your voice,
you will always be feathered with a thousand pages that I somehow missed.  

So, here goes:
down the hatch, take that turn, trust that guide.
I love you,
fearlessly,
and always in the manner of front page news.
______    
          

If You Seek A Pleasant Peninsula, Don't Say "Vagina"

"If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you" --Michigan state motto

You just can't say it. Not if you want to go on to say anything else. I'm talking about the word "vagina", which some of us use in preference to "down there" or "my hoo hoo". 

Shocking, I know. Let's face it, women are out of control these days. Michigan state representatives Lisa Brown (West Bloomfield) and Barb Byrum (Onandaga) used the V word during active session of the Michigan state legislature. The Republican majority, in an effort to lassoo these wild fillies that have run amuck in our society for far too long, getting abortions willy nilly and generally being uppity, were duly trying their best to curb these wanton behaviors when Brown and Byrum offended them to their cores with their comments.

Byrum suggested that a proposed bill govern vasectomies as well as abortions. Brown, evidently a puppet for feminist anarchist devils, said, "I'm flattered that you're all so interested in my vagina. But, no means no."

We can't have this, America. And so, Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamos (R-Midland) henceforth refused to recognize the offending hussies or to allow them to speak. Below, find a picture of Mr. Stamos and a picture of a jackass. You have five minutes to identify which is which, but please do it without saying "vagina".

Never mind that Michigan is one of these United States, and therefore supposedly part of a democracy where the free interchange and expression of ideas is permitted. These things are complicated. Don't worry your pretty little head! Just let Jim and his Republican friends decide what's best for you.

Oh, I know, it's impossible to get through the Nightly News without having to see five ads dealing with "erectile dysfunction", or what used to be known as impotence, before there was money to be made from it by pharmaceutical companies. I don't suppose an ad would be effective if it began with "Meet Jim...he can't get it up." The thing is, even though those ads dealing with flagging peckers are ubiquitous, they are apparently not as shocking as the whispered word "vagina". The V word might send the entire culture hurtling off into space!

And yet, still more brazen females keep popping up out of the woodwork, instead of staying home making meatloaf like they should. Want evidence of the total decay of America? Rather than blushing, playwright Eve Ensler is flying in to Michigan on Monday to perform "The Vagina Monologues" on the Capitol steps. The jaws of Hell gape.

Before I close, let me mention another fine Michigander (are there Michigeese as well, I have always wondered? There must be! But they do not say "vagina") Mayor Janice Daniels of Troy ("City Of Tomorrow...Today!") is facing a recall after telling a high school gay-straight alliance group that she would like to have a doctor come in and speak to them about the dangers of the gay lifestyle. Speaking recently on WXYT-AM, Daniels defended her remarks. "I said that a doctor could be brought in ... and talk about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle. Just the same as I could find a doctor to come in and talk about the dangers of the smoking lifestyle." So many lifestyles!

In conclusion, readers: in Michigan you may discuss peninsulas all you like, but do not say "vagina". 

Source: The Detroit Free Press, June 16th, 2012.  

Everyone's A Critic

Yesterday morning on my way to work, I made the sudden acquaintance of an SUV's bumper . The driver had pressing business off to his left somewhere, and did not find it necessary to look where he was going. 

Anyway, he ran over my bike, which is better than if he had run over my head. I am banged up and sore but not seriously hurt. I guess he objected to my choice of a two-wheeled lifestyle and took a moment to pray for me. It worked, as I immediately took up a new lifestyle on the fucking pavement. Or maybe he just hates bicyclists or poets. Or bloggers.

Please Be Stupid Someplace Else

Darlings, sometimes something or someone comes along that is just so stupid I have to sit up and be ill. Michigan Republican Paul Scott (Grand Blanc) is the latest human syrup of ipecac to stand up and take a stand for good old-fashioned idiocy.

As has been noted, I live in a place where the best minds in the biggest local industry thought that the Edsel was a good idea. Not so much, guys. As has also been noted, our state has plenty of pressing problems, including rampant unemployment, crime, an eroding tax base, loss of population and corruption. Also, the Tigers just can't catch the damn Twins.

Into this grab-bag of problems to be solved, leaps Paul Scott. And which, of these many worthy issues, has he decided to involve himself in? Mr. Scott is vigorously opposing relaxed regulations in granting transgendered people passports. Um, that's a federal issue, for one thing, Paul. See the big map? That's fed-er-al. See the little mitten? That's Mich-i-gan. Oh for pete's sake, let's go over it again for Paul.

Mr. Scott is also opposed to state driver's licences being changed for the transgendered. Ever. Under any circumstances. Quoth Paul:

I'll make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver's license in any circumstance.

"It's a social values issue. If you are born a male, you should be known as a male. Same as with a female, she should be known as a female."

Way to set those priorities, Paul. If the transgendered are allowed to change their driver's licences, what would be next? Parallel parking?

When asked to explain how such a mandate from the Secretary of State would benefit Michigan, he said it was about "preventing people who are males genetically from dressing as a woman and going into female bathrooms."

Oh dear. Bathroom fear. What is it that Congressman Scott thinks it is that transwomen want to do in there? Darlings, I think the answers are obvious. First, ladies' rooms have flowers and a sofa and men's rooms do not. And then of course, is the real reason...they want to go to the ladies' room for the same reason that women have always gotten up from the table and headed there in a pack: they want to get away from clueless blowhards like Paul Scott for a few blessed minutes.

He said his mandate would be in place even for those who had completely undergone sex reassignment surgeries.

Um...using the urinal is really going to be a problem, Paul. But hey. No whiskers in the sink. Speaking of the sink, Paul don't, no, oh Paul don't.....jesus, Paul. That's disgusting.

"That's who you are. You can have cosmetic surgery or reassignment surgery but you are still that gender," he said.

No pulling the wool over Congressman Scott's eyes. Someone has to stand up for traditional values. You are your plumbing. A black man is only three fifths of a person. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. God hates fags. Amen and God bless America!

As for me, my driver's licence and passport both say "F." Some have argued that in my case, the F stands for "fluffbrain." I say it stands for Fuck You if You Don't Like Me. I would make a lousy man anyway. I don't like chili cheesy fries.

All right then, anyone want to visit the ladies' with me? Thank Goddess for our own space. I understand that, in that other restroom, there are Republican family-values Congressmen in all the stalls, tapping away with their black FBI shoes. Omg. So that's why there's no sofa in there! It would only encourage them!
__________  

Thousands Die In Quake

They are both survivors--
One of a man and religion,
The other of a girlfriend's fists.
I know that
Summer ends,
And it ends like this:
Diane and Cindy
Are calling it quits.

Life pushes hard,
People die;
Bills go unpaid,
But the thing is, I
Always felt like, as long as
Cindy's head was on Diane's shoulder,
The world could get
Crueler, grayer, colder,
And there was still one thing to count on
That wouldn't go bad,
That wouldn't be gone.

Tonight I found out
That Cindy's moved out,
And that just makes the world seem bitter and fake--
The tv news says,
"Thousands die in quake."
I believe it,
Because tonight I could feel it tremble;
Tonight I felt it
Shake.
______

Jasmine Nation

When the Big One came,

Jasmine Faulkner, the biggest star since stars were made,

Had just stepped out of her limo--

Just stepped out in time for her shadow to be scorched onto a wall;

Now Jasmine will never fade,

Never fall.

When the Big One came,

Not everyone was prepared--

Not every secret stood up to that kind of light;

Not everyone came out of that night

And into post-apocalyptic L.A.

When the Big One came,

Can openers became more valuable than Cadillacs.

We are the Jasmine junkies,

Using the only working disc player in the nation--

We are the stewards of culture and beauty, wearing our tin foil hats;

Collecting and keeping

Surviving and seeking

Final obliteration.

________

Lipstick

The world's most beautiful woman writes an apocalyptic message on the mirror of the bus station restroom in Hell, Michigan.

Some say it is written in blood,

But it is only lipstick.

Because it is written by a woman, in lipstick, on a bus station restroom mirror in Hell, Michigan,

There is no buzz;

It does not go viral;

The world goes

tic

toc

Balanced precariously like an unwatched baby on a diving board.

The world's most beautiful woman goes on tv with the intention of delivering her message,

But some little fuckwad with a five-day beard and a ponytail wants her to endorse salon products instead.

He hands her a plastic bottle of shampoo and urges her to toss her head and smile.

When the most beautiful woman in the world gets angry,

Cars won't start,

Fountains run dry,

And everything is like herding cats.

Other women say,

I hope she falls.

Men say,

I want her to toss her head and smile.

Meanwhile, the world goes

tic

toc

Like a ball bearing balanced on a paper clip, balanced on a gyroscope balanced on a seal's nose.

The most beautiful woman in the world writes an apocalyptic message on a plate with lipstick at Nikos' Coney island in Hell, Michigan,

But because it is written by a woman, in lipstick, near a kitchen,

No one pays any attention;

And because she is

The world's most beautiful woman,

No one can see her at all,

And the world goes on as it always has--

tic

toc

Like a blind man reading the news to his deaf wife by cell phone in calm and authoritative tones.

______

Fire Blossom's Day Off :-)

Fireblossom doesn't have anything poetic to say today. I'm waiting for inspiration to strike! :-)

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