...and the long of it

Monday, 14 September 2009

  • Scene

    In the jigsaw puzzle on your basement table
    (the one you started by candlelight last winter)
    I'm the piece that belongs in the corner
    over by the edge,
    one in a myriad of
    bits of cloudless sky blue.
    If you notice me at all,
    it's because my cardboard layers
    are slowly separating,
    loosened by a toddler's slobber,
    nervous red fingernails, or
    maybe the spreading condensation from a neglected glass of iced tea.

    The first pieces placed are the obvious ones
    the horse's face, the flashing scarlet of the woman's dress,
    the stable, solid lines of the edge.
    And then the frustration of placing the commonplace
    using as a reference
    uncertain, looping edges
    that don't complete an object.

    In my tumbled pile of blue I wait
    for eyes perceptive enough
    to make me fit.

    If I could urge my paper fibers into motion
    creep to the edge of this endless plateau of tableland
    -wood grain showing conspicuously through the blue sky pure
    in the hole that I leave-
    and drop quietly to the
    stains of the dusty second-hand carpet,
    try out that existence for awhile...
    Maybe then,
    with the near-completion of a picture perfect scene
    above me,
    Someone
    might drop to their knees,
    crawl around in the grime
    and with searching fingers
         find me.


Saturday, 01 August 2009

  • #40 Bucket List

     I’m not a very ambitious person. I always wanted to - a) get married and b) have a baby - before I die, and I’ve done both of those things. But I don’t think I’m ready to go yet, so there must be something else that I’m living for. Here are a few things I’d like to do during the rest of my life:

    - Celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary.
    - Make memories with my grandchildren.
    - Get my life in order enough that when I’m gone my clutter doesn’t cause my loved ones frustration. One of my favorite song lyrics is by Mary Chapin Carpenter: “The key to traveling light is to not need very much.” I want to not need very much.
    - Make a pumpkin roll.
    - Own a second vehicle – a nice little car that’s not big enough for the whole family.
    - Put together a cookbook and fill it with stories.
    - Raise four teenagers who talk to me. (And the year I turn 40, they will all be teenagers.)
    - I’d also like to turn out four children who are more spiritually sound than their mother.
    - Organize my photos. (Who knows what that means.)
    - Knit a sweater and wear it. (It won't count if I make it and hate it.)
    - Have a file of letters to each of my children for them to read when they are older.
    - Travel west with my family. I’d like to see the Grand Canyon, Mt. Rushmore, Old Faithful and all of those famous sites that feel out-of-reach to me.
    - Finish the laundry.

Thursday, 23 July 2009

  • #38. Create a story/post out of notebook doodles.

    This one is beyond me. I don't doodle, and I don't write in notebooks. The only things I write by hand are shopping lists and the occasional card to a friend. I get impatient writing down something as simple as a telephone message - my handwriting is horrible in a hurry. Occasionally I decide to concentrate on improving my handwriting, but.... that never lasts long. I was never one of those girls with beautiful handwriting. (Although I have spent time analyzing people and their personalities and their handwriting. I have theories.)

    My fingers love computer keyboards. 

    One time in college, I drew a picture of my hand that looked really good. It's the only realistic drawing I've ever done - probably the only one I ever will do. I have nothing else to say about that. 

    The only other possible way for me to correctly do this post would be to string together a crown from all of the daisies that I've doodled in my margins, plop it on the top of a smiley face and call it a princess. Then I'd send her on her merry way, down the swirling, looping lines of "hurry up and write, you good-for-nothing ink pen" scribbles. And when she leaves the room in a crumpled ball of paper aimed in the vicinity of the trash can, I can be done with her and all of this doodling nonsense at the same time. Have a nice day!

Sunday, 19 July 2009

  • #36. Write a sex scene. You know you want to.

    Wrong. I honestly have no desire to. Sex scenes ruin good books for me. It’s not something that needs to be discussed or written about. Sex is a definite (and good) part of life, but when it comes to literature, writing about sex is almost always unnecessary. It rarely adds anything to the storyline. When I mentally pull those parts out of the book, the story is just as good - if not better. Once sex is thrown into a novel, you’re no longer holding a book that you can read aloud to your whole family or leave lying where your bookworm son or daughter may pick it up.

    One of the better books that I’ve read recently is also one of the books that I most despise  - The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Neffeniger. The writing and character development were amazing enough that the book kept me awake at night, and even found its way into my dreams. But the author was so obsessed with the private (very private) life of the main characters that I was completely turned off from the book. (Unfortunately, I was so sucked into the story by then that I couldn’t just put it down.) I was glad to be reading the paper version of the book. There are few things worse than listening to a sex scene in an audio book. (Death by meteorite would probably qualify….)  I do wish the author realized how incredible her writing is before she published The Time Traveller's Wife - she didn't need sex to sell her book.

    There's lots more I could write about this, but..... I would just be ranting. This isn't a ranting blog.



Sunday, 12 July 2009

  • #2 a poem using: rabbit, glass, mud, super nova, motel 6


             Desperation

    some days
    I'm grateful to you
    for loving me.

    apart from you
    (I'm almost positive that)
    no one would ever look at me 
    with desire,
    humor my sense of novelty,
    willingly wander down
    the rabbit trail of words that
    I bring to our late night talks.

    only you would kiss me
    in the car
    in the parking lot
    at the motel 6
    while we wait for the rain to slow
    enough for the wipers to clear the glass...
    then brave the wind and the mud
    for 2 scoops of Baseball Nut
    (which I feed to you as we drive
    down forever roads)

    not a super nova romance,
    flaring brightly, gone in a moment,
    we are a river... swirled together with strong currents
    and dull, lazy stills...
    but lasting, long and long
    and narrowing down
    until one day
    when I look up and realize that
    it's just lonely me,
    trickling
    between two barren shores,
    (they are) empty from the loss of you.

    don't leave me.




Friday, 10 July 2009

  • #26 in which death is a central theme

    (I admit it - I'm a cheater. I wrote this 4 years ago, but I like it. And I don't feel like writing about death right now. So... take it or leave it. The visual in it came from a dream I had once that has stuck with me for a long, long time.)
    _______________________
    death...
    that cool and gentle hand
    on your arm
    that calls you away
    (to life)
    the ever longed for place of
    tranquility
    peace
    foreverness, of being

    on to the unknown
    to what i've only seen
    (or imagined)
    in fleeting visions

    a picture of white columns,
    cool tiles,
    long white curtains closing me in
    in a quiet, airy space
    and somewhere, in another room
    a fountain?
    or a soothing bath
    sunk low in the stone floor
    in a time to relax

    a nice picture,
    but it's missing a focal point...
    the face of Jesus,
    which I have yet to see
    and don't always long for.


    -rv '05

Thursday, 25 June 2009

  • #24. Write stories or poems inspired by daydreaming to the following:

     three Carolyn Coalson paintings ( in order "Element of Merk"," Revlon 1957", "Untitled Blues") 
       



    not quite a trilogy

    ii.
    in an anne shirley moment,
    you waxed poetic
    (your mistake was in thinking you were alone
    and speaking out loud)
    in that misty, mystical spot
    where, out of all fairness, dreams should come true.
    if you had known that i,
    like you,
    had escaped the group
    to re-admire - minus the informative chatter-
    would you have said
    something different than what i shouldn't have heard?

    i.
    We were out behind the shop, ten-year-old toes dodging ant hills and chestnut burrs on the cracked red clay, when something between us changed. For the first time, our walls of time and distance became a screen door through which laughter carries clearly. The stories inside my head and yours got mixed up together until, finally, the door swung open, and you reached through and touched my hand. We never did remember to close it.

    iii.
    she stands forlorn in the puddle of a rainy day streetlight
    in the night-dark afternoon
    while the world melts around her
    and drips off her drooping shoulders
    in her perfection that no one sees
    with her frazzled mind that wants
    -more-
    and her slim, sweet body that wills her to experience life
            (abundantly)
    just a little longer in this haven of damp solitude
    where the wise never do enter for more than a dashing moment.
    soon, soaked,
    she'll shake out her curls,
    and go home to a dry dress and heels and
    dinner on the table at 6.


Monday, 22 June 2009

  • #29 something that scares me



    I fear
    being angry or sarcastic or
    just lost in my own little world of solitude
    during my (unknown to me) last moments
    with you
    and spending the rest of my life
    regretting,
    wishing i'd done
    something different-
    said I love you,
    made you smile...

    I fear 
    a bad ending to a good, good story.

                                       6/22/09

Sunday, 21 June 2009

  • #9 - Write a travel Haibun

    I'm not sure how I really feel about this, but I think I'm just going to call it good enough and post it like it is - for now.



    from the place that i now call home

    Leaving sleepy green, misty quiet. Campfire evenings and rising bells. Down winding roads now bypassed for the straighter, wider. Clayhole, Rowdy, Hindman, Gate City. Reverse order of directions dad gave his teenage girl. 

    your old grey honda
    traveled three hundred thousand
    in one accord – us.

    Somewhere in the middle, (in the middle of the middle) so many daisies that everyone passes by. “If everyone stopped to pick a flower…..” But we’re not everyone. And anyway. How many people walk across an interstate to pick a daisy bouquet? Just you. And the girl in the picture - in the floppy leather hat -  the big brother hand-me-down from a family Ghost Town trip. The one with the goofy smile because she still can’t believe that someone…. is in love with her.

    grab the memory
    daisies long preserved in oil
    green ale 8 bottle

Saturday, 20 June 2009

  • #39 - a post about flying



    I used to dream 
    of flying.
    I'd start out swinging in wide circles
    that got wider
    and higher
    and frightening.
    Sometimes when I woke up, I could hold that feeling
    -suspension-
    and believe (dizzy) that I couldn't feel the bed beneath my skin.
    (Only for as long as I could remain perfectly still.
    As soon as I'd move a muscle..
    ...the sheets, the mattress, the covers... there.)

    Now I dream of running.
    Away.
    Not from - just running. Untiring.
    Fast.
    -er than I ever really will.
    Even in my brown, light shoes 
    with my light-footed, scarred husband
    where a train used to carry
    coal...or logs. (A more observant me would know which.) 
    With long even breaths.
    When I wake up now, I'm just there.
    I feel the sheets - and that light-footed man. 
    It's less dramatic.

    But more grounded.