Stop! The music of the spheres is giving me a headache.
Spent a couple of hours today diving into the world of woo (it was a slow evening at work). After spending time mocking brainwave retrainment, DNA expansion, otherkin (which, incidentally, I’m part dragon), I had to get back to reality, so I watched Richard Dawkins’ Enemies of Reason, episode 2, available here.
On Seeing a Silver Ford
Poetry from parking lots
Well, not posted from or written in, but conceived in, a parking lot.
On Seeing a Silver Ford
Every time I see one,
I squint, read the license plate,
see if it’s you. I hope it is,
so I can be near you,
however tangentially.
When the numbers never match,
I feel every inch between us
as if they are shards of glass
behind my eyes.
I am also relieved,
because it means
I won’t have to
pretend
I don’t care.
Naeem Murr’s “My Poet”
I live with a poet. Her boyfriend before me was also a poet, and published a book called Crane, in which all the poems are about her. She looks like a crane—the bird kind. I often find her standing on one leg, leaning against our bookshelves, very still, staring into a book as if for a fish to snatch out. Crane upset her. I remember her tearing up one of the poems, shouting, “Want to publish a book: write poems about your goddamn miserable sex life!” The poem, titled “Interdiction,” was about him having a real hankering for all those things in the Bible you’re not allowed to eat—particularly bivalves. What this has to do with The Colonel and Mrs. Whatsit, I can’t imagine.
But then I’ve never understood poetry. You see, I’m a fiction writer. If my Poet ever appears in one of my books, she shall do so as a once-beautiful, but now tragically disfigured nun. We fiction writers are a different breed from poets—alert, happy, optimistic. If you want to find the fiction writer in a crowd, just pretend to throw a stick. He’ll be the one who looks around.
Read the rest at PoetryFoundation.org, or listen to it.
Poetry Thursday: An Open Window
Any time I’ve worked based on prompts, I usually sit around until right before the deadline waiting for some sort of inspiration, then, while the last moment ticks by, have some decent idea and the poem done. This week’s Poetry Thursday prompt was a little different for me. I had a lot of half-formed ideas and images that would not coalesce into a poem. I suppose I should not complain about the stable of metaphors that will slowly ripen in the corners of my mind. And then I wrote the poem below; it only has the line “An Open Window” as the title because it was written typed at the top of the page as motivation and I didn’t have any better titles come to mind.
You draw the curtains
as I stand in the doorway.
They rustle slightly
as a summer breeze
caresses your skin.
You shiver.
I watch as your jewelry
is carefully laid in its box
and your clothes
are heedlessly dropped to the floor.
The night is warm
but the breeze is cool;
your hair dances.
My clothes join yours
and we slip our bodies
between sheets and days,
memory and dream.
po mo
The more I read about post-modernism, the more it sounds like a bunch of people sitting around whining, “that’s not fair!” And saying it in gibberish just to be extra passive-aggressive.
Frames of Reference
I’ve been reading quite a bit of science lately…
I would like to go the north pole
Stand there with no inertia
Balance the world on my toes
As I stand en pointe
The world will spin like a top
From its perspective, I will spin
And as someone else looks on
We will both spin in the void
No matter the genre, evil villains get good banter:
Yeah, check out xkcd.com. “A Webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.”
Warning: this comic occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
Poetry Thursday: Radiant Kisses
Last Line? close enough.
Poetry Thursday’s (completely and totally optional) idea was Last Lines, First Lines: take the last line of an older poem, and use it as the first line of a new poem. Perhaps it’s just me, but last lines have totally different needs than first lines, and I had quite a time finding a last line that was lower on the last-line-ness so I could use it as a first line, then I rewrote the line anyway to make it a better first line. So, the poem I posted just a few minutes ago (The Smell of Honey…) really did have the last line that was the first line of this poem, but it doesn’t anymore and I posted the other one in case anyone was curious about where the line came from. Enough blathering, the poem:
Radiant Kisses
Your insistent touch
bears the fire of your passion..
The heat washes over me
like soft rain
and the mist of your breath
fills my ear.
Your skin, bare on mine,
feels like starlight
glittering brighter than the sun.
I consign myself
to your pyre
and fuel it with my own
passion, desire.
We have become the sun
of our world, radiant,
filling the infinite
with our kisses.
We can linger forever,
fingers searching,
tongues caressing,
bodies
flaring with each
wave of pleasure.
We outshine the moon
and we will never see the dawn
blinded, as we are,
by the synergy of love and lust.
Into the archives: The Smell of Honey
Because of this week’s Poetry Thursday prompt (post forthcoming) I decided to post this poem. I wrote it in February 2004 and should probably give a nod to Pablo Neruda (one of the most influential poets on my writing) and Norah Jones.
The smell of honey and rose clings to you.
I search the annals of memory
to ask if this was always so:
that your scent was intoxicating.
I remember how your touches would leave me weak,
bending as a reed in your hands.
I remember how your kisses would inhale me
and I would live in your veins.
I remember your passion rolling me like waves over sand.
I remember how the sound of your voice
would ring me like crystal.
Now, I am drunk on the nearness of you-
the silky white of your breasts,
the insistence of your touch.
Work + television = not much blogging.
- It’s Thursday and I don’t have a poetry post up yet. I haven’t even written anything since Sunday. I’ll just have to write something while at work to make it in time for the second to last Poetry Thursday.
- I miswrote both Thursdays in the previous bullet as “Thrusday.” I kan spel!
- PZ Myers (of Pharyngula) has no comment,
- but urges the Ungodly to Vote. I personally support everyone voting, regardless of your status as deity, worshiper, or other.
- I’ve been watching Smallville this week. I wonder what it means that the only character I find particularly interesting is Lex.
- … I got nothin’. Will try to post some poetry later.
