Your Poem Didn't Speak to Me

Your poem didn't speak to me
which was rude
I thought—
the two of us
alone
in my parlor.

The silence
was awkward
(to say the least).

Goodnight, Blog

I'm closing the blog again. Two reasons.

First, I  created this blog to let people know that I was okay when I was writing something obsessively, but frankly, I haven't been writing obsessively, and besides there are better tools to do that now anyway. (So, yeah, I'm on FaceBook. I've had an account in heavy stealth-mode for a few months while I tested the defensive shields. I've decided I can live with it, so the account is out of dry-dock. If you know my gmail address, then go ahead and "friend" me.)

The other reason I'm closing the blog is because I don't like the type of writing I do here. It's just an extension of my type-A public persona, and I'm working on digging a bit deeper. That's really hard, and it's not something I can do online.

This isn't really goodbye, as I'm sure I'll see almost everyone on FaceBook, but I do appreciate the support over the years, especially during my NaNoWriMo fits.

The Girl Who Rides Bulls

1.

in the splintered bleachers

of the Kahoka rodeo

to watch her daughter—

the champion barrel-racer—

my grandmother hears

my mother’s name 

instead announced

as a bull rider.

2.

in a flooded ravine

a man not yet my father

kicks the passenger door

of his inverted car

and shouts Stop faking!

at my mother

and her shattered pelvis.

3.

in the bedroom

of the farmhouse

of her birth

my mother 

holds her belly

and her tongue

as her father declares

he don’t want no bastard

calling him Grampa.

A Book for Her

I once was asked, 

if I were offered

the last book in the world

or the last child, 

which would I save?

I said that I would choose the child.

And I would write a book for her.

“At the Gates of the Bureau of Culture and Refinement”: a fragment

Please ignore the sign over the gate. That is a joke. Every time we scrub it off, some wit spraypaints it up there again.

The last thing we want you to do is abandon hope. 

We have never needed to advertise, but if we were going to put up a sign, it would be in Dutch, not Latin, and it would say:

Wie mooi wil zijn moet pijn leiden.

Which is best translated as: "Those who wish to be beautiful must suffer."

You want to be pretty, don't you?

More poetry

I have never cared for the minimalist poetry of William Carlos Williams, and yet, when I am moved to write a poem, the fragile things are rarely more than one sentence long.

Life is, indeed, a mystery.

---

"Shell" (a less self-indulgent rework of this poem)

Pressing my ear
to his lips
I imagined oceans

in the void.

---

"My inheritance"

The sum of my inheritance
a pair of oil-stained overalls
a jeep reduced to carapace
with kittens nesting in the wells.

Poem: "Shell"

I am a shell... remnant of a dead thing.
You could lift me with just one hand.
You could press my pale lips to your ear,

and imagine an ocean
in the void.

**********
Today's writing totals:
Novel: 449 words
Journal: 393 words
Blog: 33 words
DAILY TOTAL: 875 words

NOVEMBER RUNNING TOTAL: 10,853/15,000 words