How To Write A Poem

Start with a blank page.
Fill it with what excites you the most,
the thing that causes you the most pain,
the thing you are most afraid of being judged for,
and that you least want anyone to know about.

Don't lie.
Don't hedge.
Don't worry that the wrong person will read it--
they will.
Don't worry that no one else has ever felt this way--
they have.
Don't think it's not good enough--
it is.
Don't think it's the best you can do--
it's not. Do it again.

Now,
dress it up in the most beautiful language you can imagine.
Then,
throw out two thirds of it.
Start over.
Do it better.
Make yourself cry.
Make someone else cry.
Never be satisfied.
Never let yourself off the hook.
Never stop saying the thing that you're terrified to say.

Otherwise,
don't waste my time, princess.
_________

For Kerry's challenge

E Z Off

Sylvia Plath's spirit spoke to me
as if she were the
god damn Oracle Of The Oven.

Sylvia say,
"Oh, girl,
give it up.
You think this world gonna change?
You think the rain gonna stop half way down the sky
to save your fuckin' 'do?"

She say,
"Do what I do.
Pretend it's a workout show.
Crawl in like this,
and breathe in deep and slow."

So I say,
"Who is Sylvia,
what is she,
that all our swains commend her?
What kind of half-assed soul was she
that a kitchen appliance should end her?"

I say,
my Love, she leave me last on her list.
Not feelin' loved,
it sucks dead donkey lips,
but
still...

Damned if I'm gonna snuff it here
with chicken grease in my hair.
Damned if Pete the repairman say,
"It don't work because
there's a damn dead girl in there."

Anyways,
something good might happen any time.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh look, that made me laugh.
_______

Do My Exciting Prompt!

Do my exciting prompt!
Drop what you're doing--
Drop the kid, he's ugly anyhow.
Drop the job, ditch the boyfriend.
Come back early from your stupid vacation, 
DO MY EXCITING PROMPT!

Let's do MY prompt, not YOUR prompt.
Yours is meh, mine is wow,
cos mine is mine.
See?
Try to keep up!

This is going to be so cool!
First, learn Albanian.
Get secret clearance.
Join the Order of The Camellia. 
Sell your house.
Shave one side of your head.
Go like this.
No, like THIS.

Don't forget rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules rules and etc.
It's easy!
Get a degree in my prompt.
Take out a student loan.
Sell your ass on the quad, 
Do whatever it takes!
Do my exciting prompt!

Partner up.
Pony up.
Just do it!
It's sort of like Zenga and sort of like being hit on the head.
It's like falling out of an airplane.
It's sort of like having sex with an alien.
It's sort of like being audited.
It's MY IDEA!
Do my exciting prompt!

It's MY turn!
When is it your turn?
Later!
Maybe!
Maybe never!
I don't have time.
I don't slum.
I don't join.
Do my prompt!
Do it
Do it
Do it
Do it
Do it!!!!!!!!!!

I'll be able to tell if you don't.
_________

My Happy Place

The New Year arrives at My Happy Place late in the afternoon
By postal motorboat.
We pick it from the splinters and debris in the churning surf,
And carry it up to the house;
"Welcome to My Happy Place," we tell it,
But it only stares fixedly, as if dead.

We put The New Year to bed in one of the guest rooms,
After taking away its shoe laces and belt.
At My Happy Place, we are always at the ready for visitors--
We keep soft restraints in a drawer,
And kindly old Doctor Bubo looks in, though we are never sure that he really understands
Us,
Our guests,
Or My Happy Place at all.

At twelve, The New Year steps out into the night
Near the cupola.
It uses its torn bed sheets to communicate by semaphore
With various monsters and suicides
Out in the deep.
We want to release a flock of doves from the lawn of My Happy Place,
But all that we have is a dead pigeon;
We toss it up into the gale, and it seems to fly for a moment
--noble creature!--
Before thumping listlessly against the bricks and then the ground.

Welcome, New Year, to My Happy Place!
Be mindful of our pitched and slippery roof;
Hold that rose firmly between your teeth,
While stretching out your arms like an aeroplane.
They say that
Birth and Death are less different than the same,
And that all the doors at My Happy Place
Open as easily outward
As in.
____


Happy New Year's, my second least favorite holiday after Independence Day.

Question

I took the perfect picture
of the perfect girl
I always wanted to be--

So smart.
So sexy.
So fearlessly,
flawlessly
me.

I wanted to offer myself to you
like a thin mint on a tray--
so undeniably fine,
so de rigueur and avant-garde,
so gay.

But I put it in my pocket
and it got bent up.
I fell off the rails,
went outside the lines,
and got
thoroughly
worrisomely
fucked up.

And so I'm wondering--
if I'm not quite intact,
not exactly all that,
a little worse for wear with leaves in my hair--
would you still love me as I love you?

As is?

As I am?

______

Live Poets

You said,
"We'll be famous when we're dead"
And the tarot told me that it's true.

Do you suppose we'll care, baby?
Or by then will we have
Better things to do?

Here's what I think--
An open page
Is like an open road,
Just point that thing and go.

No speed limit,
No cops--
At least none with power to stop us,
That much I know.

So if you'll just put your arms around me
Or let me put mine around you,
I promise there is nothing we can think of
That we couldn't do.

No one needs to know where we went
Or what we did--
Just keep that open mind...
"We'll be famous when we're dead"
But til then,
Sweetheart, what a ride.

_________

linked to dverse OLN

Succor From Saint Fireblossom

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident....

....that some are more equal than others?

Recently, New York Rangers hockey player Sean Avery made a video in support of gay marriage. You can find it HERE at the Human Rights Campaign. He is the first NHL player to publicly and formally support this cause. Good for him!

Enter Todd Reynolds, vice president of Uptown Sports Management, which lists eleven NHL players as clients, Mr. Avery not among them. Reynolds says:

Well thank you so much, Pinocchio. Aw, Pookie, of course you're not a hater or a bigot. You simply wish to deny other people basic human rights. How nice that this is just your point of view WHICH YOU WISH TO HAVE IMPOSED ON EVERYONE.

Personally, I am sick to death of hearing the Todd Reynoldses of the world piously spout how the way they happen to be and feel, is how everyone should be and feel, or they are somehow less human, and beneath basic dignity. To suggest that this bigotry (oh yes it is, Todd) is somehow divinely endorsed is ego and bland arrogance at its worst.

Todd Reynolds says this is just the way he was raised. Time was, people were raised to believe that a black person or a woman was less deserving of basic human rights. Now it's gays. Always, it is a group seen as too weak to fight back. In school, we called this bullying. Todd Reynolds calls it moral values.

I think he needs some time in the penalty box to think about it.

_______

Seven Things

Sioux has saddled me with given me the Stylish Blogger Award. This means I must spill seven things about myself. Here goes:

My seven favorite poets:

1. Emily Dickinson
2. Pablo Neruda
3. Frederico Garcia Lorca
4. Joy Jones
5. Edgar Allan Poe
6. Walt Whitman
7. Christina Rossetti

Seven books that changed my life in some way:

1. "Lady Chatterly's Lover" by D.H. Lawrence
2. "Tess Of The D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy
3. "Jude The Obscure" also by Thomas Hardy
4. "Keeping You A Secret" by Julie Anne Peters
5. "East Of Eden" by John Steinbeck
6. "The Wounded Breakfast" by Russell Edson
7. "The Runaway Bunny" by Margaret Wise Brown
Nope, no self-help books or religious tomes.

Seven women I am dying to kiss:

1. Never mind, but she knows who she is!
2. Emmylou Harris
3-7. there is no 3 through 7

My seven favorite possessions:

1. my books
2. my couch
3. my netbook
4. my Joan Jett barbie
5. my favorite old white sweater
6. Sundance's old leash
7. my three cards from Beatrice (yes, I know, suckerrrrrr)

1 book and 6 movies that made or make me bawl:

1. "Pages For You" by Sylvia Brownrigg
2. "Ordinary People"
3. "Rocky" (Adrienne!!!!!!!)
4. "The Spitfire Grill"
5. "The Crying Game"
6. "The Bridges Of Madison County" (the movie)
7. anything with a hero dog in it

Seven Songs I love:

1. "Memory" from Cats
2. "Gimme Dat Ding" by the Pipkins
3. "Comin' Back To Me" by Jefferson Airplane
4. "Marcie" by Joni Mitchell
5. "Michelangelo" by Emmylou Harris
6. "AC/DC" by Joan Jett
7. "She Moved Through The Fair" (Irish traditional)

Seven things I would not miss if they vaporized tomorrow:

1. professional football
2. reality television
3. the republican party
4. boom cars
5. rap and hip hop
6. guy talk
7. frantic announcers on commercials

Seven things I would like to be, but won't be:

1. prettier
2. out of debt
3. living next door to Emmylou Harris
4. crash landed on the Planet Of The Lesbian Poetry Lovers
5. able to see one more game at Tiger Stadium with my father
6. slimmer
7. satisfied

I pass this on to Mama Zen, Hedgewitch, Lolamouse, Raven, and Ellen.

That's all, folks!

In The Hospital Cafeteria, All Unbidden

In the hospital cafeteria, all unbidden,

Miss Aqua Net Extra Hold at the next table tells me,



"You're using way too much salt."



I turn to a pillar, shaker in hand.



I smile.

"Why, thank you Pinocchio."

A practiced flourish of the wrist brings a white rain.

I look back.



She has gone back to attacking her salad.



Longevity runs in my family, but,

I would rather go down,

Back into the earth;

Give me all the seasons now,

Cos, dearie, for what it's worth--

I have no wish to linger on,

To go quietly,

To fail slowly,

To grow old.

___________

for One Shoot Sunday

Art Critique

She is not that beautiful,

Many agree.

Not as much as

Melody Farnsworth

From 14 B,

Nor as several of the bricks

In the masonry.



Her hair is lank,

Her fingers fat.

I quite prefer

The landlady's cat.

Melody Farnsworth

From 14 B,

Says she is a tiresome example

Of the bourgeoisie.



What has she ever done that was noteworthy?

Or good?

She is too pale and passive, it seems to me,

And should be made to wash the floors

And the upholstery.



Melody Farnsworth

From 14 B,

Does not like artists

Particularly.

To create such a hag

With such lashless eyes

Is completely indefensible,

Morally reprehensible.



A moonbat from hell*

Is what Melody sees,

And makes her pronouncement

With which I agree.

Melody and I

Are smart, hip, and gorgeous,

And bear a distant

But telling

And very cool

Relation

To both the Roosevelts

And Borgias.

________

*thank you, Hedgewitch

for Magpie 59

I actually do claim a slight familial connection to the Hyde Park Roosevelts. Or maybe it was Fala.

________

Northfork

Hello there my little popcorn puffs! (that's a tribute, Senorita. Not a "blatant rip-off" lol) 

Occasionally, I like to share with all of you about certain movies that I love. Today I'd like to tell you about the Polish brothers film "Northfork", which came out in 2003.

I am nothing if not cutting edge here at Word Garden. I mean, give a girl some credit. I'm watching "talkies" now and everything!

Northfork concerns, at its simplest level, a fictional town of the same name, in Montana. It is 1955, and a new dam has been built. Soon, little Northfork will find itself underwater and gone. 

A group of six men in dark suits have been dispatched to evacuate the people living there. This crew includes James Woods and Peter Coyote. They find some odd characters in residence.

There is a man living in an ark with his two wives.

There is the preacher, played excellently by Nick Nolte. 

There are four celestial beings, Happy (Anthony Edwards), Cup Of Tea, Cod, and Flower Hercules (Daryl Hannah), "the strongest man who ever wore a skirt." They are looking for the Unknown Angel.

There is an exceedingly odd creature who looks like a cross between a giraffe and scaffolding.

There is the couple, some guy and Claire Forlani (sighhhhhhhhhhh), who have brought back their adopted son, who is ill, to the preacher. The boy, when he is awake, claims he is an angel who was shot by hunters, and his halo and wings removed. 

What the movie is really about is death and rebirth. One reason I have posted about it here, is because it reminds me of my own story poems. If one of my poems were a movie, it would be this movie. 

The reviews at Netflix are divided. Half find the film glorious, as I do, and half just didn't get it, and hated it. Me? I can't recommend it enough.

See you at the movies! ;-)

Fireblossom

_________

Creatures Of The Sea

I was lonely, so I decided to get something to eat.

Restaurant awnings leaned out all along the street,

Like New Orleans whores...

And I,

I was a dainty and soft-spoken sailor, twirling my parasol in their midst.

They said, "Girl,

You don't fool us."



Being a poet is an odd thing.

One must mix stars with mud--

In a hotel room,

In the bathtub,

Wherever one happens to be.

This is why we are cousins to bootleggers,

And this is why our heads often feel as if they might explode,

Causing us to insist on silence.



In a deli on Cherry Road, near Catalpa Street,

I found Rod McKuen behind the counter, wearing a white apron and surrounded by fluttering women.

I was so surprised that I gave a start,

And my blade du jour, a silver double-edged knife made in Paris,

Fell out of my bible,

Where it had been nestled in the book of James.

It clattered to the floor,

And the women went quiet, some with their hands to their lips.

Rod McKuen stopped making a pastrami on Russian black, and looked up.

"I thought you were dead," I said.

His laughter was like a great fish jumping out of a lake,

And there I was,

A dull brown Selkie amid all the Mermaids.



So far, I have spoken about

Isolation, illegalities, seafaring, and hidden hungers.

It is prose, you'll say,

And that is when my little French souvenir comes home to my hand.

Shedding my seal skin, I emerge as a human woman, a Selkie, water dripping from every perfect limb.

The Mermaids fade back gently, like waves from a sunset beach.

Rod McKuen places a finished sandwich on a plate, wipes his large skilled hands on a clean towel, and melts us all with an easy, casual smile.

In that moment,

I could kiss him and never think of doing anything else.



But I have a class to teach.



In one smooth motion, I deliver my lesson like a love letter into a mailbox,

Up to its hilt in your heart, your guts, all that keeps you standing and breathing.

That is poetry.

That is how it should feel.

The best poetry is always beautiful, and always fatal.



Then I am dull and brown again.

Rod McKuen says, "What would you like, Miss?"

I have always liked him.

I lower my eyes and say, "Black forest ham and baby Swiss on baguette, please."

He turns to his work and, ever the gentleman, says nothing

Though I know he has noticed

My face with its

Creeping

Pink

Blush.

_______

Bosco's Review Of Music

or, "I'm Getting Sorta Mental Over You"

I have a habit of falling in love with a particular music cd for a couple of days and playing the heck out of it before switching to a different one. For the past couple of days the favored cd has been "Jazz Moods: Feeling Sentimental", which features performers such as Karrin Allyson, Rosemary Clooney, Mel Torme and Dennis Rowland, among others.

This morning, as I dozed and tried to convince myself to get up and get ready for work, Bosco came in and plopped down on the floor next to the bed and began merrily destroying something which I assumed was one of his toys until I heard a cracking sound. When I raised my head and looked, his prize was, in fact, the (mostly cardboard) Jazz Moods cd holder which I had left on the floor next to the stereo.

And that's what Bosco thinks about that. Maybe I should have played Bow Wow Wow or Three Dog Night?
_______ 

Mercy!

Do any of you watch the television show "Mercy" on Wednesday nights at 8 o'clock on NBC? I just discovered it about a month ago, and I'm hooked. It's about the lives of three nurses who work at Mercy Hospital. The show has a pleasing mix of serious and silly storylines.

Will any of my readers be surprised if I begin with the phrase, "There's this woman..."? LOL. Thought not. And the woman is the character Veronica, played by actress Taylor Schilling.

Veronica likes to bend the rules, but not just because. She bends them when they are in the way of what she thinks needs to be done for one of her patients. She isn't always right, but she can never be accused of not caring. She's passionate about what she does.

Also, she is in early sobriety, and so you know I am pulling for her all the way, to stay that way. Go, woman! One day at a time! You can do it because you're worth it! Rah rah! Oops, er, sorry, but I reallyyyyy like this character. Oh, you say you got that? Cool!

And...she seems to be unlucky in love. Mister Handsome Doctor kicked her to the curb last night because, well, y'see, she might have had to tell him just the teensiest little fib, and he found out, and he huffed and he puffed and he blew her hopes down. The cad. That's my girl he left standing on the sidewalk like that. Who does he think he is? C'mon honey, you can do better. Let's go get some chocolate. 

All right, now I have to confess a tiny smidgen of a resentment. The woman looks TDF in scrubs, with her hair clipped up, at the end of a kazillion hour shift. It isn't right. By the way, still pictures don't do her justice. It's something about the way expressions animate her face and about just how "her" she is. 

So, all of you are invited to my house every Wednesday to watch her on "Mercy." But I warn you. I tend to punctuate my viewing with swooning cries of "Oh my god, she's sooooooooooo beautiful, I'm SO in love with her. The woman is on fire!" Um, I'm just, you know, reviewing as I go. For everyone's benefit. Okayyy, I better go now. *clears throat, fixes hair, walks away briskly*

    _________

*comes back*

A week ago was my second blogoversary. I was having my Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown and forgot to mention it. Now I'm mentioning it.

*tosses hair and walks away again*
___________

Duality And Homogeny

See the two pictures above? Take a good look, if you would, and then set that thought aside for a moment. I'll be coming back to them at the end of this post! Meanwhile...

... I've been thinking about duality and homogeny. Well, after all, I'm a Gemini, and not just a Gemini sun sign, but Gemini moon as well. Sometimes a thing--or a person--can seem to be one way and turn out to be another. Or, turn out to be both, OR combine two facets into a single face. With that in mind...

...my new crush is "plus size" model Crystal Renn. Oh, Joan Jett and Eva Larue are in no danger. But Crystal Renn's story is a fascinating one. At the age of 14, she entered the world of high fashion modeling, and was told to lose one third of her body weight. This ultimately threatened her health and even her life, a journey she documents in her book "Hungry."

 Now a stunningly beautiful--and sexy!-- size 12 (U.S.), she is in demand on runways and for photo shoots around the world. I think she's amazing. She has defied convention and transformed herself, and looks incredibly well doing it! Go, Crystal. She's got the look; what about love?....

...today I was watching "Oprah" and she had on Ellen Degeneres and her wife Portia Derossi. Who doesn't like Ellen, right? And Portia is a very neat lady in her own right. But what made the program so rewarding, was just seeing how in love the two of them clearly are, and all the strength and happiness they give each other.

Though each of them is accomplished and remarkable in her own right, together they are more than the sum of their solo selves, not to mention being a huge inspiration to gals like me. Watching them, I cried. I did, I was surprised how much it moved me to see them. It made me feel really good. (It's all right, Bosco, Mommy's crying because she's happy!) But what about those pictures at the top of this post....

...did you take a good look? Did you see that both pictures are of the same person, actress Miriam Shor? They are. And that's my post on duality and homogeny. I hope that you enjoyed it!