Tuesday, April 16, 2013
demons...........
he feeds his demons well
alone in the dark
preparing for war
says he craves peace
but finds battles in
every encounter
warring the world
a world he created
black upon black
alone in the dark
he feeds his demons well
Monday, April 8, 2013
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Drenched........
summer walk
stolen from
a
travel day
bench under
a leafy
canopy
not quite
enough
umbrella to shelter
us from a
sudden
downpour
your
plaintive cry of
“I’m getting
wet…”
precipitating
a squelching dash inside
walking
yesterday
I passed the
spot,
remembering
how you
fussed about
your hair
your shoes
your clothes
patted the tree that
had offered
shelter
smiled and wondered
if etched in
its bark, its limbs,
its rings of
counting time
there would
be
a blip of
memory of the day
two people
took shelter
and he was
such a girl
Monday, March 18, 2013
unhooked.....
a flame burned
out, not
through
grooves of
entrenchment
dug, then
left behind
like lines
etched onto
glass
cool to the
touch
but still
rough
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
You should see what I can do with a couple of coconuts.....
There's something really satisfying about pulling a butter knife from the drawer and having it make the same sound you hear on tv when a sword gets pulled out of a scabbard .....
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Burial at sea......
I found a corpse in my bed last night. I went into my
bedroom, turned down the bed and went back into the bathroom for a glass of
water. When I returned there he was, dead as a doornail, lying on my pretty green
and white striped sheet. I stood and looked at his pitiful carcass for a
minute. Then I got nostalgic for Max. If Max was still alive he would have
taken care of the body for me.
Max and I had been together for five years, but then one day
I found him floating, bloated and dead, no obvious marks on his body; he’d apparently
just given up the ghost.
I heaved a sigh and picked up the deceased with two fingers.
It seemed such a waste to flush the freshly dead and still
juicy midge down the sink, but hey, with no Siamese fighting fish to feed it to,
unless I felt like a little extra protein in my own diet, it was the only
circle of life thing I could think of to do.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Help Wanted.....
If anybody sees an ad for a cheerful fairy -- send me an email.
[I've already got the wand and wings]
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
walking wounded ......
I dreamed I
lay
flat
Gasping
A crowd of
the
curious looking down
on me
My chest –a
gaping hole
a spear run
right through it
I woke with
a chill
sweated out hours
later dancing
to zydeco
in the festival heat
Mid
afternoon,
browsing
stalls
hot, sweaty
smiling - oblivious
to my peril
the crowds
part and
there you
are
Arms open,
saying come
here
Your chest
to mine
arms tight
around me
soft words
kisses exchanged
at parting
People turn to
look
as I walk
away
Drawn no doubt
by
the squelching
sound
of the
sucking chest wound
reopened by
a blunt embrace
--happy to be part of the anniversary celebration @dversepoets
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
harvest...... flash fiction
I always knew I was different, even as a child. People would
look at me and see what they wanted, then take it. I’ve been plucked so many
times that you’d think there would only be a hollow shell. Hair and freckles
holding the bones together.
Somehow I always refill.
But it’s gotten harder lately.
Probably because I’ve been doing it for so long. I’m old, so very old. Pyramid old, horse and
buggy old, before the internet old. And I’m tired. It takes a lot more energy,
a lot more food to replace what’s taken.
Not sure how the universe balances that on the ledgers. There must be a
give and take set of books. Bound in calfskin, the spines embossed with
precious metal.
When I was young the give volume was fat and juicy, audibly
humming with energy, but now in my mind’s eye it sits cracked and peeling, dry
and fragile cowering on a shelf next to the take volume, its pages oozing out
of the cover like overfed slugs, excess charge arcing out and grounding willy
nilly like lightning on any handy metal surface.
My spark is almost gone. And it’s no wonder. It’s been ages since I’ve felt the wind on my
face, or had the bone melting pleasure of lying on the ground in the sun; the
earth thrumming underneath my spine, refilling my well.
When he caught me, he hid me away.
He was a hungry man. Hungrier than most. Full of ambition. Full of need. I was blind
to his plan until it was too late. Millennia of studying human nature and still
I was trapped. Walled up. Sealed in.
I sit in my prison
and watch the people below. Cars busily buzzing by, taking their drivers and
passengers to who knows where. Purpose driven lives.
I know he’s coming today. I can already feel the pull. This
visit will be the end of me. One last harvest before my fields lay fallow, and dust
returns to dust.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Jane Scott....
I met Jane back in the seventies when she came to a teeny
library I frequented to discuss some of the biggest rock bands of all time and
how influential Cleveland was in the music scene. I think the library was expecting a full
house, but the audience turned out to be a teenage me, one of the librarians
and a bemused elderly gentleman who just wandered in for the cookies.
Jane didn’t care. She entertained us full throttle and when
she was done, she sat down with me, pulled a bunch of grainy candid shots of
the Beatles traveling on a plane out of her purse and proceeded to tell me
about being with Jimi Hendrix when he bought a car. I think that was the first time I ever wished
I could crawl into somebody’s pocket and live there.
John Soeder [The Plain Dealer’s Pop Music Critic] posted
an article online today announcing that The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame dedicated a statue
to Jane this afternoon. Describing the statue
by Cleveland sculptor David Deming John Soeder says:
The statue is slightly larger than life, with neat details.
Scott's beaming likeness has a concert ticket pinned to her jacket, as was her
wont. Her bulging purse includes a jar of peanut butter, because she made a
point of carrying peanut-butter sandwiches while on assignment. And in her
notebook are written two questions that she often asked the musicians she
interviewed: "What's your favorite color?" and "Where did you go
to high school?"
Jane was a really interesting woman and not a bit afraid of
being who she was 100% of the time. If I
thought they’d let me, I’d go into the Rock Hall and stick a post it in her
notebook – I’d thank her again for the candid Beatles photos I took home with
me that day, but I think the more important thing I took home was the idea that
you can choose how you want to be regardless of the situation.
Jane never felt like a fish out of water, even though she was sometimes twenty to thirty years [or more] older than
the rockers she was interviewing. She loved her job and did it with style and
heart for fifty years. There’s a really lovely piece she wrote when she decided
to retire called in part “Jane Scott, witness to rock history….” , but another
piece written about her called “Forever Young” really resonates with me. She
was a grown up, but she wasn’t afraid to feed the child inside. Gotta
love a woman like that.
 |
| Jane Scott statue by David Deming unveiled at Cleveland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame July 5, 2012 [image from cleveland.com] |
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Thursday, January 26, 2012
The Armpit of a Monster..... Flash Fiction
Jason wasn’t opposed to humans as a race, but he found that some of them had peculiar ideas.
Just because he was nine feet tall, covered with blue hair, had a large spiral horn placed squarely above his third eye and occasionally rampaged through the countryside gnawing on things when he was teething, they called him a monster.
When left to himself he enjoyed nothing more than extruding playdoh hair from his playdoh factory and assembling elaborate hairdos onto hollowed out gourd bird houses. To date he had four titmice couples and a wren family living in his little avian condo coiffure community.
But narrative causality being what it is, he was sometimes interrupted in his peaceful pursuits by the directional whimsy of social human intercourse in the form of conversation. Being a monster, even a reluctant one, came with certain responsibilities. The human mind had constructed Jason to fit into a particular fictional niche, and he was bound by Monster Law [paragraph 4, subsection 1a] to fulfill the monster fueled fancies of any human imagination within a twenty mile radius. Gremlyre the Ghoulish had the next twenty miles and he was welcome to it. There were two twenty four hour coffee shops and an experimental theatre group in Gremlyre’s territory --and between the writers, the actors and the insomniacs he hardly had a moment’s peace.
Jason had constructed his own home near a university of science, after carefully testing his little patch of earth with a whimsy dowsing rod. Even with such forethought he was still occasionally the victim of the capricious nature of the human psyche as students wrestled with their baser instincts during the nocturnal hours of free wheeling dream filled slumber. Jason was periodically pressed into service in the wee hours of the night to dangle a scantily clad screaming co-ed over his gaping jagged toothed maw, only to be kicked in the kneecap by some pimply faced lothario coming to her rescue just in the nick of time.
But those random incidents, though irritating, somewhat paled in comparison to the raucous party that had been taking place in Jason’s left armpit for the last two days and nights. He had braced himself for the transformation from his normal nine feet to a gigantic sixty feet as his keen and directionally adjustable ears overheard the pot induced conversation that had caused the outbreak of human teenagers now partying in the exceedingly enlarged smelly hollow of his normally peacefully quiet, yet incredibly furry appendage. As Jason listened open mouthed, the first voice had said that he wished that there was someplace that the over eighteen, but under twenty one crowd could go to legally drink instead of sneaking off into weird places to party. The second voice, after a long drawn out inhale had asked if he meant someplace like a monster’s armpit. Then there had been a lot of giggling.
Jason sighed. He hoped the inebriated partiers passed out soon, since Rule 6, provision 12 stated that he was then allowed to evict them from their purloined perch. He thought he’d be able to skim them out with a rake. Once they hit the ground they would evaporate back into the ether from which they’d been created. Too bad the smell wouldn’t go as easily. Judging from the retching sounds, it looked like Jason was going to have to go over to visit Gremlyre in the morning to borrow his neighbor’s power washer. Then he would probably come home and treat himself to a long soothing soak in a hot bath. Going from nine feet to sixty in under a minute hurt, no matter how well you braced for it. At least he’d been outside this time.
Jason sighed and shook his head again as he wedged a couple of shrubs into his ear canals in an attempt to get some shut eye. If this was how the human under twenty one set behaved while consuming alcohol, Jason didn’t know how the university put up with all the noise. Birds were ever so much easier to house, and when they regurgitated their meals they had the decency to do it into the mouth of their babies. As far as Jason could tell adding alcohol to human teenagers was just a damn noisy waste of underchewed pizza.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
WHO has some holiday spirit ...... ?
Gotta say this holiday season has been a rough one for me. It takes a lot to put a damper on my joy but the last couple of months have been filled with too much death, near death and just basic not enoughness. So this morning I got up with a headache and decided that I’d have a wallow in my misery day. *laughing* It wasn’t going so hot, what with me being inexperienced in the milieu, but I was giving it the old college try. Then I got my mail.
Oh. My. Gosh.
I got the sweetest card from my friend Jerry wishing me a lovely holiday and hoping that Santa brought me everything that my heart could desire. I smiled and thought to myself that Santa might have his work cut out for him this year. Next I opened a card from Lauren. She had prepared me for it by calling and saying that she had made me something that made her giggle with delight and she couldn’t wait for me to get it. So, I should have been ready….but I wasn’t. I actually hopped up and down with glee when I saw the front of the card.
This little owl is so adorable that I can’t decide what part of him I love the best. If it comes right down to it I’d probably go with the boots, but the tail, the hat, his FINGERS and his smile are all up there in the top ten.
After I laughed and laughed, I called her and left her a voicemail telling her how much I loved her little wintery gift of owlish love.
I hung up the phone and reread Jerry’s card. I’ll have to ask him if he put in an express order or something cuz it seems like Santa might have come a couple of days early for me this year.
 |
| Copyright Lauren Carpenter |
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Money well spent.....
Gina reveled in the rented trumpeters announcing her every dramatic entrance, but about half way through the day she decided it would be even more fun if she left the house.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Do unto others....
If you stay on your best behavior long enough, after a while it just becomes behavior.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Ghostly leftovers....
Every time I climb
into my bed
you’re there
A will o’ the wisp
haunting my nights
fleeting , ethereal
Ever again solid in that
pink mist just
before full waking
Your arms
wrapped snugly
spooning me
into a new day
Friday, October 21, 2011
The Optimist’s Club –or –Spread love like you’ve got a shovel ….. Flash Fiction
I went to an antique car show with my camera and spent a wonderful couple of hours taking pictures and talking to anyone I happened to see. During the course of the morning I was asked to lunch by a twenty three year old and a seventy two year old. I declined the twenty three year old because, well, I have socks older than him, but I took a shine to the seventy two year old and after he sweetened the invite by telling me he'd buy me a slice of pie [and I wasn't even wearing my I heart pie button] I agreed to the date and followed him to a diner about a mile down the road.
We went in for lunch and stayed for dinner.
We talked and laughed for nine hours straight. I had to get up twice to go out and run around the diner because my legs were stiff.
When we walked out to our cars, I reached up and gave Rich a hug. He returned it with a squeeze that pulled me off my feet and popped my back. He said I was the first woman tall enough to hug him properly since his wife died.
Now here's the thing that gets me. Three days later my phone rang and Rich's name came up on the display. He told me he'd call when he got home and settled, so I figured he was home and settled.
I answered it with a smile and a: "Well hello there, darlin', did you make it home ok?"
There was a pause on the other end. It went on long enough that I looked at my phone to make sure the call hadn't been dropped. Just when I was going to hang up and call him back, a man cleared his throat and said, "I'm calling for my dad….."
Turns out Rich made it home, but died in his bed the night he got back. Also turns out he knew he was dying when we were having lunch. As a matter of fact he'd known for a couple of weeks. His son said his dad had always looked on the bright side of things, and thought life was what you made of it. He was calling to ask me for my zip code. Said his dad had left an envelope for me on the nightstand.
People looked at me strange at the post office, but I didn't care. It was either stand there and laugh, or stand there and cry. The envelope had a thank you note in it. Rich said I'd been a balm to his soul. He said a lot of other beautiful things, but the thing that I'll always remember was the ps.
PS: Life is like a good cup of coffee, and I got to enjoy both until the very last drop.
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