So sharing videos. As I do when there's not much to say.

"November 4th, 2008"


( more videos )

I also spent a great deal of time watching Melissa Ferrick's video blogs, which kind of fascinating in their own way. If you're interested, they're here.

Two hundred bodies and five prisoners will be exchanged this morning for the bodies of just two soldiers.
Regardless of the history, of the politics, or the who is on which side, the entire idea is just gruesome.

i know i've been gone a while... i'm buried knee deep in the editing process, deadlines, and beta-reading. it doesn't leave a lot of time for post-able writing.

but i've been meaning to post this thing rissa did... so...

two smiles meet mid-air
across a wingspan
weaving in and out
fluttering wingtips tapping
the impatient swoop & circle
of bobbing heads
and twittering laughter
chests puffed out
trying to close the gap
without falling

Sure, I'm awake at 6 AM. But I'm damned happy.

I'd be even happier if someone would turn off the Britney Spears music next door...

it could be that tonight
the bones will shift
like plates
one end scraping over the top
of another
creating cracks
vibrations
and a low long growl
shredding sinew
until nothing is left
to hold the fragments
together
except skin

I expect to find the hands of bodies,
frozen at the point of reaching,
breaking through the compacted loam
they're still extracting five years later,
because I don't believe
they've gone deep enough.


Thirty five odd years of stretching
the usable surface area of a city upward
collects a lot of clutter and I know
that the fractured bones,
of all that occupying matter,
cracked under the falling weight,
toppled down through the pipes and the air ducts,
clattering around
until they found the roots
that fed all that expansion,
that carried all that excrement
out to the sea.


And all those little bits of bone are down there,
clogging up the supply lines,
waiting for the back up to force them up,
through the pores,
hoping to reunite with their skin.

We can all be arrogant, nasty, selfish assholes.

What really matters is how much we keep that asshole in check.

You keep your asshole in check most of the time, so don't worry so much, okay?

Enter your approximate age/grade when you first read these female writers:

1. Jane Austen- 8th grade
2. Eudora Welty- 11th grade
3. Mary Shelley-7th grade
4. Amy Tan- late high school?
5. Alice Walker- 14
6. Nikki Giovanni-8th grade
7. Jodi Picoult- can't say I've read anything of hers
8. V.C. Andrews- 7th grade
9. Sandra Cisneros- 2nd or 3rd grade
10. Joyce Carol Oates- summer after 4th grade
11. Virigina Wolf- 7th grade
12. Aprha Behn-12th grade
13. Rita Mae Brown-13
14. Sylvia Plath-13
15. Edith Wharton- 12th grade
16. Madeleine L'Engle- 2nd grade
17. JK Rowling- some time in high school
18. Kate Chopin- 10th grade... but I didn't get it until I was a sophomore in college
19. Zora Neal Hurston- 10th grade
20. Gloria Steinem- 11th grade
21. Elizabeth Barret Browning- 5th grade
22. Harper Lee-9th grade
23. Anne Frank- 6th grade
24. Agatha Christie- whenever I went to New Mexico for SCA...
25. Jeanette Winterson- not yet Rissa
26. Margaret Atwood- 12
27. Dorothy Parker- 9th grade
28. Jaqueline Carey- nope
29. Audre Lorde - 6th grade
30. Mercedes Lackey- 13

1. Veggie crackers with roasted red pepper hummus

2. Spending three hours wandering the bookstores around Dupont while drinking coffee, AND making it home before the rain got underway.

3. The techno-joy that comes from assembling shelving units that really are simple to assemble, even for those of us who really prefer to avoid those complicated "Insert peg A into hole D while holding shelf 2 perpendicular to frame piece 1b" kinds of directions.
(They're whitmor brand stacking shelves from Target and so far it's the most solid, easy to assemble, and truly adjustable shelving unit I've ever bought. Seriously.)

you spoke of your love in colors
always light creamy shades
that could be attributed to soft things
like clouds and babies

you don't know
that your kind of love is borderline gray
because you were never in knee deep
with an ocean of ice separating you
from your capacity to love

you like to stand only ankle deep
cuz you're smart like that
keep yourself where its hazy
thin with less skin to risk

it's my scars that prove i've been all in
that my love is always angry colored
like freshly earned frostbite
or a bloody nose

the birds, like women, have found their place here.

they've made lakes of fountains in traffic circles
rivers of the storm sewers
fishing holes of pothole puddles
gorging themselves on crumbs and trash
because that's what's left

i'm even more certain now of what i saw last night


i woke to a wet morning
slapping like your slicker against the back door
where you'd come in
wearing muckers that trailed muddy puddles
in towards me

but last night
the rubber boots bounced on in
fully loaded up
with murky, muddy water without feet
leaned back and let it all pour
mudroom to bedroom

empty, they walked out the front door
more mud stains to ignore

contempt is building here:

he pushes her tickling fingers away
grunts
averts his eyes from her little frown
puffy pink cheeks flatten
jaw drops open to release a squaling
wail, high-pitched to the point of squeaking
to which
he pops his paper
crosses his ankles
then leans back to rest


                ~


someone opened the door
to set loose some of the heat
into the night with the street
sneaking in to lace between
bodies oiled with sweat that
mix to talk with the totality of
their lungs coming from lips
inches from touching because
most of them are little more
than wingless dragons: hot
heavy breath with clunky bodies
graceless lizards with tongues
that lap outward for the cool


                ~


The most difficult part of you has always been all that bravado.

Yeah, I know it's mostly a force field
built up against those who saw your soft cheeks as pillows to land on
who saw those curling yellow locks and thought you must be cloud-like:
Heavy enough to block out the sun but easy to slice right on through.

So,
you tattooed your skin with iron and laid bare the baser parts of you,
putting the crude two steps ahead of all those cherub features.
You took care to always step heavily on dirty sandaled feet
that had virility and danger and power written with sweat drips
for ink in all that dusty dirt.

You ensure that you are always bruised and a little unsteady,
always fighting, giving off that look of a survivor with defenses,
the kind of body that you never really manage to get a good look at
because every muscle in it is nomadic and twitchy, itching
to be set loose.
(this one is from Christina, aka crearealidad)

                ~


you would have been perfect
except for your pesky price
because it must be paid
in experience used to guide
and i could lead you but
it would really only be pushing
because i'm ten years short
of useful.

1. We are officially moved.  Still doing some last cleaning in the old place, but we are now living actually in DC.

2. Moving, followed by inventory day, to be followed by two weeks of being a supervisor and a manager is a total bitch.

3. JT smashed his hand at work this morning. Ick.

4. I'm a workaholic. Quite seriously. (And the icon by the way, labeled "workaholic")

5. Sometimes I wish I had been closer to my sister. She has some major stuff going on right now and I don't even feel like I know her well enough to call her myself. Because twelve years later is way different than 24 hours.

6. I have many posts to post. But they will have to wait until I have internet at home again.

7. My phone is back on!

8. Finally, I miss driving. I miss it a lot a lot a lot.

you never smelled the same
not after that night

months later
you still taste like brake fluid
acrid oils
hospital antiseptic

the wounds pucker
then scar
heal over with oozing sores
still sprinkled in glazed blue shards
of windshield glass

you smell like roadkill
a mix of asphalt
decay and battered flesh

i have to turn away
i can't watch the decomposition of you

moving day is coming soon... within the week.

i don't know how i'm going to deal with moving with all that's going on at work, but i'm so glad to be leaving queenstown apartments behind.

you are an early morning warning
all heavy limbs and twisted cotton
i can see you have to fight for sleep
by wrestling it from consciousness
who is never one to give in easily
but the sprawl of you entwined
in bedding radiates potential

___________________________


you are a charmer in truest form
earnest presentation of self walking
upright with big feet and short fingers
not really long enough to satisfy
but your eyes silently tout your prowess
while those plump lips sing sweetness
slipping up against the shell of my ear
redirecting  my focus to the promises
of poetry spilling with a deceptive flair
away from that waist down train wreck
that's had too much give and too much
take without reciprocation or cake
you've even developed a swagger
capable of precluding the shaking
that precedes the major quake