Trying to stay in the creating and posting game. 

Spent a weekend with girlfriends so mostly talking, making food, hiking and football. Not much alone time, but wanted to post something to keep momentum! Back at home.

The Problem With Immortality

This poem was about something, and then it became about something else so I went back to change the bits that didn’t make sense any more, and now I’m frustrated because I wanted to write something that was a certain thing and instead I have a thing that’s neither here nor there and basically collapsing under the weight of its own allegory and ugh.

Oh well.

The Problem With Immortality

I, PheoSphinx, firebreather and stormbringer

Succumb to inevitable tragedy.

When the sound of weather

Against city walls

Drowns out breaking glass and beating wings

And the fire in my eyes and heart spills over so

That even I am dizzy with the might of it -  

Ah! Sweet mystery.

In the hours before I scream down the sky

Dreams weigh heavy

Of forgotten futures

And never-pasts.

For I am among them but not of them.

In a crowd of thoughts that I recognize, but cannot reach;

Alas.

All journeys are the same; I am the same

Back and forth through the years

Seasons change and I roar back again

Enlightenment

Is solving the riddle of the abyss

And continuing.

Smith Rock

Soooo much amateur fucking about. But I ... Like it? At least for the next five minutes.

Genre departure

My contribution today is an uncharacteristic one. I'm no visual artist, but I was painting with the kids this afternoon and am rather proud of what I managed to come up with using only primary-shade blue, yellow, red, brown and white crayola tempera paint and no, you know, painting skills. So I'm posting it!

<3 you guys for doing this with me. Keep it up! It's harder to keep going toward the end of the first week you start, when inspiration flags and habit hasn't set in yet. If you make it a whole week, week 2 is easier, I swear.

Messing around with Pilot Varsity fountain pen

A friend gave this to me for the holidays. It does feel good to work with.

Its the foot that really gets me the most in this photo

11:51

I sat down to write something

anything

This is not a poem. This is a heap of

red

wet

things

that used to be in my throat.

Sometimes it doesn’t help to talk about it.

Peeking Over His Shoulder

Talk to me, Shel

LISTEN TO THE MUSTN'TS

Shel Silverstein

Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child,
      Listen to the DON'TS
      Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WONT'S
      Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me-
      Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be

Oh, Shel

how I want to believe you meant this.

How my childhood self lay innocently down

the weight of truth on everything you wrote.

How I wish you had been there to ask last night

when I walked a short distance up the street

in a slightly sketchy part of town

alone, in my short skirt

and calf-covering boots,

when the “shouldn’ts” came flooding in

when my vulnerability arched up over my head like

a question mark or a hooded cobra

or a neon sign

I would have asked you,

white man from my parent’s generation,

do you think this is a bad idea?

Because don’t walk alone at night

Is the air I have breathed all my life

From my night professors with their classes of adult women

don’t go into the parking lot alone, walk with a buddy

To the internet commenters

she should have known better than to wear that

what did she expect was going to happen?

To my friends who walk out of their way

to accompany me to my car as a matter of course.

And so I’m not sure, Shel,

despite your empowering poetry,

that you would have backed your message up with a

go for it.

Because the cultural lesson is that

if a man is not protecting me

I am a treat offered up on a plate.

It’s very confusing

I was taught that America is in the “first world”

and that people in “third world” countries live in fear of violence.

I was also taught

to live in fear of violence.

I must conclude that men here

live in the first world

and I do not.

Shel, it is so disappointing to realize

that you wrote your reassurances from a land

I have never visited.

In this Pew poll from 2013, forty percent of Americans said that men and women are treated equally by society.

ambivalent

Day 3 and I'm late! It's been a very full day. But I did write the following before 9pm, I just didn't get a chance to post:

Loud & rowdy
crowd at Chuck's
makes me happy
warms me up

Asked barkeep to
recommend
a yummy porter--
all he has

Is coconut.
I nearly shudder.
But I tried it--
it's not bad.

Waiting for
a laggard friend
wishing I
could go to bed

But the real thing I wanted to write about is the 7-minute walk up Union that I took to get there, alone in a skirt and tall boots, feeling angry that there was a voice in my head telling me that it was stupid for me to walk up Union alone in a skirt after dark, feeling angry that I can't just walk somewhere at 8pm without feeling fear because I'm a girl, angry that the male friend I was meeting wouldn't think anything of it, wondering if I was wearing jeans if it would have been easier on me, wondering if I should have called a cab to take me 5 blocks, wondering if half the population even knows that at night the friendly city somehow turns into a war zone for women. Clenching my fists and lowering my stance in case I needed to punch someone. Maybe I'll write that poem tomorrow.

Mostly, though, it was a really lovely evening.