Illustrated Ode to A British Actor Whom I Dig Large.

Alan Rickman!



Your voice is velvet
with a touch of cold.

Cold velvet in your throat.



You are totally cool
so smooth
so suave
or are you?




Alan Rickman!




With your long face
and heavy eyelids.

That stiff upper lip.

You.

8:15.

You.

8:45.

Bring a friend.

And cancel Christmas.

CHAOS FOCUS

Me with my big ideas
small feet
untrimmed hair

I'm calling for action
begging for a reason
asking for too much

Who decides what's deserved
and what's uncalled for?

Me with my half baked plans
and scuffed up boots
and scary eyes

I'm feeling my crooked teeth
cracking my knuckles
wanting too much

Who decides what happens
and what gets left unsaid?

Me with my nightmares
big lips
road rash knees.

I do.

WHAT IT WAS LIKE

cold in winter
breath in the air
upstairs
hot in summer
slow moving heat
heavy sky
flies
roll the car windows up
never leave
the windows down
it was louder back then
the fans in the barn windows
the squealing
all over the barn
squealing and snorting
the bus picked us up
we stood
waiting in the weather
we looked both
ways
when we got dropped off
but I can still hardly
cross a street.






Bonus- End of the world footage! Mutant sheep! Seven bowls of wrath! All that and more in the Comments Section!

Last Day Of School

Heat pours out of the sky, into our skins
Off the pavement and the yellow bus.

Only a few more hours and they're free,
No bells dictating the day's divisions

Just me ordering them to brush their teeth.
There's no such thing as a hygiene holiday.

Knapsacks emptied, notebooks spilled
Taped back together for next year- inventories

Kept for another grade up, another age.
Report cards rule some families. Importance

Misplaced. I'd still love them if they failed.
They didn't. I note the improvement proudly.

New pencils bought, old markers gathered, all
In last year's knapsack, to hide in the closet.

Forgotten. All summer we can ignore them
Until the first weekend in September. Summer starts

Now. Othermothers groan. They roll their
Eyes and moan. Don't know what to do

With their kids. I know. Enjoy them.
Ride horses, ride bikes swim eat do nothing.

Books to read and movies to be made. We are
Free. Wipe my wet forehead and greet the bus.

For the last time this summer.

The Dilemma of Poetry (or, Why I'm Still a Struggling Writer)

A couple of days ago I got a postcard in the mail with my own writing on it: my address on the right, and on the left side, a note stating that Slick Little Western Canada Literary Magazine had received my poetry submission. Under my black gel pen the poetry editor had added his note thanking me for the submission but "regret that we cannot offer submission."

There are lots of possilbe reasons why my little piece of art didn't make it. Maybe they were full up their eyeballs with poems this quarter, or it didn't fit the season or theme, or they just plain didn't like it.

I've noticed a trend in poetry. I don't know how to describe it though, being unedyoumacated like I am. It seems that poetry today must NOT rhyme and further, mayn't have any rhythm of any kind. There can't be any form. It reads like a series of sentences that have been chopped up into lines regardless of where the punctuation falls.

In Canadian poetry it looks like there have to be references to rocks, dirt, water, and bleached animal bones in order to qualify.

Oh, and throw in the odd piece of rusty farm implement too.

Well obviously I'm good with those things. The use of strings of words that don't normally go together? Totally up with that too. No problem.

However. I don't know. I don't get it. I commented earlier this week on a blog I read that I have an uncomfortable relationship with poetry and I guess this proves it.

I sat my butt down for some WRITING THERAPY and did a little experiment. I took something I wrote in the middle of winter as a fast exercise in catharsis- just write like mad for a few minutes. This is what I came up with:

drive

Why are you all crowded around me? Where’d you all come from and where are you going?
The world moves too slow for me. Cars creep by and then languish in front of me. I am trapped. A lane on either side and full of somebody else. I deserve a clear spot ahead- who the hell do you think you are, commuter? It’s not your road.
Space- as soon as it opens it closes. check and check again. Make my move before my competitor does. I have to get away. They’ll trap me. I can’t breath.
Freedom rises- break from the crowd and make my offramp escape. Eat my tire shreds, ****ers.

January 18 2007

Then I turned it into something else:

drive

Why are you all crowded around me? Where’d you all come
from and where are you going?

The world moves too slow for me. Cars creep by and then
languish in front of me. I am trapped. A lane on
either side and full of somebody else. I deserve
a clear spot ahead- who the hell do you think you are,
commuter? It’s not your road.

Space- as soon as it opens it closes. check and
check again. Make my move before my competitor
does. I have to get away. They’ll trap me. I can’t breath.

Freedom rises- break from the crowd and
make my offramp escape. Eat my tire
shreds, ****ers.

April 18 2007

I examined it. And decided it still wasn't EDGY or MODERN enough. I looked at one of the poems published in Slick Little to see what was going on. It looked like a a paragraph's worth of sentences simply split into stanzas of three lines. So. Hmm. Back to work. And here it is:

drive

Why are you all crowded around me? Where did you
all come from and where are you going? The world
moves too slow for me. Cars creep by and then

languish in front of me. I am trapped. A lane on
either side and full of somebody else. I deserve
a clear spot ahead- who the hell do you think you

are, commuter? It’s not your road. Space- as soon
as it opens it closes. check and check again. Make
my move before my competitor does. I have to get

away. They’ll trap me. I can’t breath. Freedom
rises- break from the crowd and make my offramp
escape. Eat my tire shreds, ****ers.

Feeling all smug, I read it over. Ha, I thought, this just proves that poetry is a FARCE, a little joke, a bunch of people standing around chortling into their turtlenecks about how LITERARY they all are, when really all they're doing is...

Darnit, that poem actually turned out decent.

Crap.

I don't know if I can submit something that I've plastered all over the internet but I kind of don't care right now. I love writing poetry but I'm not really a poet. I write novels and in between I write short stories, none of which anybody in the business has wanted so far.

Anywaaaaays....

Yes there's a highway theme going on today. If you've lived in the country you'll know that there's a lot of time spent driving from Anywhere to Somewhere. (I don't drive much on the highway anymore.)

Here's the poem that got rejected:

ARGUING IN THE CAR
Dark envelope red blue lights
Landmarks speed past your
brewing steaming simmering wife
You could cut the tense air with a knife
driving home down the road tonight

Captive in a car for a fight
take turns being silent for fear
of never ever saying anything right
your hands on the wheel so calm and light
me sitting here feeling stupid and slight

Cold air outside warm little world
beautiful frustrating guy with
infuriating nasty lovely girl
forgive me again for the insults I hurled
cut up & stung by your careless words.

Busy. Love it. Read this.

I've been getting into a routine of going out to my coach-friend's barn twice a week. I clean her barn, then I get a lesson. It's awesome. It makes me feel more alive.

My truck runs great. My back is feeling okay as long as I exercise. I haven't had a major panic problem in...let's not count it up, let's just say a while.

I've been reading like mad and accidentally started writing a new novel.

So I've been busy and other than a lingering cold and a sinus infection that makes my head feel like it's full of cement...I'm making progress.

Here's a picture of my beautiful red horse. I wish he hadn't up and croaked on me last year.

I have totally accepted that he's gone, but I really hate this horseless time in my life.

And what the heck, here's a confusing bit of words for you.

_________________________________

Identity

I am a woman who has come home with her dog after taking the kids to the bus stop. I live in a town that is much bigger than it pretends to be. I sit at a desk with paper and pen and an ancient cat. I am about to kiss my husband before he leaves for work.

I’m here but I’m not. I’m a tiny sliver of foggy grey sky. I am too big for this pretending town. I’m the worn down run down fence following the road. I’m the stubborn blade of last year’s grass poking out of the snow. If I spread my wings I can sense the red tailed hawk swooping down on me. Stretch my long legs and let the air rush into my lungs I run, hooves pounding the earth.

But I’m the earth too and I lie here having this silent conversation with the sky.

I am warm and I am cold. I’m all the wild things that suffer while humans live in comfort. I’m the impervious oblivious tree while humans love in chaos and tension.

I’m a seed waiting patiently to turn into a bloom. I’m a brown leaf allowing the seasons to take me back to the soil I came from.

I’m rain and cloud and mist. I’m the rock that the road you travel on was carved out of. I’m the rock you could be shattered on. I’m the sun that warms you and the heat that saps you and the light that burns you. I’m the rain that cools you and the fall of tears that stops you.
When I pause to take a breath I know who I am. Who else will recognize me?

I am a woman whose sleep is disturbed by dreams of horses escaping their pastures. I sit a a desk. The bony cat demands attention. The man I love has to leave me for the day. I will kiss him with warm lips and spindly arms. I am love. I am fear. I am sitting in the silence with a pen in my hands.

_________________________________________________

I cain't stop talkin about love!

(I borrowed that from a Led Zeppelin song. You get bonus points if you guess which one.)

Here's a poem I wrote yesterday. Yeah, I know it doesn't rhyme. It's one of those poems. By putting it up here, I make it ineligible for publication in print, but I just love ya all enough to give this to you for free!

___________________________________


Love can sneak up on you
and hit you like a brick wall.
Fall on you like a tower of concrete.

One day you're just you
and the next you're
thinking about names
and what somebody will look like.

Love makes your life flash before your eyes.
Love makes you want to meet somebody's mother.

Love waits,
sitting on his haunches,
at the top of the stairs,
eyes on the door,
tail ready to wag,
waiting for his loved one to come home.

Love makes you fear your death, not for yourself,
but because you can't stand the thought of your loved ones
mourning you.

Love makes you want to fall in love again.