Month: October 2019

Thought I’d share my poem with you for Halloween! Don’t get too scared. 😉

Razors And Apples For My Love

Razors and apples, Dear, treats so unique

they carve they some happiness into your cheek.

Kisses of chocolate injected with strychnine

a dearest depart for my sweet valentine.

Another delicious thing cause you to swoon 

to be disemboweled by the light of the moon.

So silly, when you said, “You’re not in my heart.”

when you know, my darling, we never will part.

I love you so truly so deep so sincere

I’ll make for you presents of all of your fears.

On Halloween night, so strong and so brave

our true love will take us both right to the grave.

Razors and apples, Dear, dead flowers too-

there’s no one alive who I love more than you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I was a kid, everyone was worried about finding razor blades in their apples. The upside to this is that we stopped getting stupid fruit when we went trick or treating. For this, I remain eternally grateful to the psychopaths of the world.

I know what my mother would have said, “I don’t need to go camping.”

Well, in all honesty, I don’t need to wrestle with sleep and two sore hips on the hard ground all night, but, c’mon, it’s family time.

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So, we camped, this weekend, our first time doing so without anyone else but the three of us, and Oilver’s first time to camp ever. Oliver has decided that he really really wants to get a squirrel, and he really doesn’t like other dogs, and he really does like snuggling with Mom, and he doesn’t mind sleeping in a tent on the ground. Lucky dog! I slept on top of two sleeping bags and still my darn hips hurt. I think that aging should be reserved for the very young. During the day, when we weren’t walking through the park, Oliver would dig himself a little pit under the picnic table, and lay in the dirt. Still a wild animal in his heart~

We went to Cape Henlopen State Park, which is beautiful.

The weekend before Halloween they always have a trick or treat trail for the kids, so Sophie wore her costume. She is going to be a deer this year (and I didn’t get a photo of that! damn!). I did want to buy Sophie this adorable baseball cap, but she refused to wear it.

It was super damp all week and this weekend, so it was tough to get fires going, but the cheeseburgers were yummy, and the hanging out, just the three (& dog) of us, was a lot of fun.

We successfully erected the tent, took the dog, read the map, and used the compass! We’re ready for anything…. as long as we have coffee… and each other.

 

Fall Love Affairs

Red crunch underfoot

never know how it will go

some quick- some for keeps.

At their best, it’s hard to believe there is any other kind of music besides this simple, graceful, chiming chug — the Guardian

Dean Wareham has an unlikely quiver of a voice that, for whatever ungodly reason, sounds as if he’s survived something his music alludes to but never gives away — Jerry Stahl

One of indie rocks’ most beloved live acts — Rob Sheffield, Rolling Stone

One of Dianne Pearce’s most beloved acts – Dianne Pearce

I remember, in my late 20s, hearing Tiger Lily Girl played on the radio. From that moment on I have loved Dean and his band.

My favorite song is probably “Dear Diary.”

So try a little Luna, won’t you? And see what makes them just so charming 🙂

 

Um, yeah, I better get that wet food out… and fast!

I’d rather be singing.

How about you?

I said to Dave when I got home from school today, “You’re never bored, are you?”

He said, “No. I’m never bored.”

I said, “Why not? I’m always bored.”

“I don’t have a restless mind like you do.”

*sigh*

Right on the money. I do have a very restless mind. I wish-

And isn’t that the most useless phrase in the English language? “I wish….”

I wish I could visit somewhere or

meet new people

or

start a new project

or

find a new hidden coffee shop

or

set up a pottery studio or a darkroom

or

find someone to speak French with and wander off to a hidden coffee shop with him/her

or

be a back-up singer in a band

or

go take a ride on the Cape May Ferry

or

live by myself for a month

or

get into a Monopoly marathon with someone

or

stand in the wind on the boardwalk eating pizza from Mack Manco’s

or

drive north into Canada or south into Mexico

or

not be so bored.

Hi Folks~
Figured I’d share my poem from the newest DPP anthology What Sort of Fuckery Is This?

The book is, at it’s heart, a book about the fuckery of aging and the persistence of the human spirit.

And, without further ado, here is my poem. If you like it, maybe you can read the whole book!

Never Sink, Dammit

Her clean blond hair is neatly pinned up and shows it-
the tattoo on the back of her neck that says Never Sink-
an infinity 8 entwined into an anchor.
Though the tat is old, it still looks like it is new and barbed into her skin.

Her hands are dirty, grease smudged over and under her trimmed nails, on the skin,
from repairing her radiator this morning after she delivered the News Journal,
after she fell asleep for one, only one second while delivering the News Journal
and hit the decorative boulder of the development
into which she was driving to deliver the News Journal.

And if she was going to fall asleep for only one second
couldn’t the one second have been a second where her car went straight?
Maybe the stacks of News Journals had shifted in the back, pulled her into the rock.
Maybe it was inevitable.

Her arms are scratched and cut up, red
from reaching into the hot car to fix the radiator and put in the new hose,
which was a tight squeeze,
which was something she had to do so she could drive to college this morning
after cracking up on the paper route.
Paper route- Ha! What a name we give it.
I’m not talking smiling-1950s-ten-year-old-boy-with-a-perfect-bike-and-a-clean-and-neat-satchel paper route.
C’mon.
I am talking beat-up Chevy Malibu paper route
named Betsy just like my mother’s broke-down Malibu was,
and this student squeezed her pink, white, strong, tight-fleshed capable forearms in there
and fixed the dang thing herself
with skills she learned over time watching YouTube videos
because she got tired-a-paying for fixing.

My student’s fingers are covered with little dark spots that look like scabs,
which she rubs and tells me are probably chiggers,
and are probably on her back too,
and are probably from laying under the car in the sandy dirt next to the house in the early dawn,
after she got home from delivering the News Journal
because she had to fix that radiator quick,
quick as that one small dammed second she fell asleep driving.

Everything has to be quick quick
because she had to get the kids up and dressed and fed and washed and ready and off to school
so that she could go to school herself,
so that she could come to my class,
35 minutes late,
because she is so happy to be going back to school,
though she is embarrassed about her hands,
but I tell her the hands are okay.
I give her some oatmeal hand cream and a bag for her books,
stay 45 minutes late so she can finish an assignment from the next unit forward
because she craves the quiet before she goes to work at Walmart,
and she wants to be ahead in class assignments just in case. Just in case. She knows how it goes.
When she finishes next week’s work and hits submit, I tell her the truth,
which is that she is doing great in class.

And when she packs up my old book bag and rushes out the door to Walmart
her smile is a big as a smile can be
on a sinewy single mom who has spent the last 8 hours delivering the News Journal in the dark,
crashing her car,
fixing her radiator in the pre-dawn light on her back in a bed of sandy chiggers,
then getting her kids off to school with them looking like somebody cares and with hot food in them.
To rush to come and see me with a light in her eyes the tired can not yet extinguish.
To rush to come and spend two hours and 45 earnest minutes
pecking away on a one-paragraph summary of an essay
that analyzes zombie movies.
It was written by a privileged Hollywood son, that essay.
The school picked it for the classes to summarize
because it is “culturally significant”
because “the students can relate.”

My student leaves me that day, a week ahead on her assignments, smiling, stepping lightly.

I never see her again.

I guess this is the moment where people who believe pray,
but I have had too many of her sisters to believe in magic, though I look for her every day.
And every day morning slips away from me into afternoon, and I leave the classroom to head to my own second job,
second of three,
so, I know, when it comes down to it,
there is nothing to do but put the rubber on the road and burn it up as long as there is rubber to burn.

Fill up the bags with books and computer and work and supplies.

Sling ’em over the droopy shoulder.

Raise the empty travel coffee mug to all those seen and never seen again

Suck out that last little drop of wet air.

Vow to never sink, dammit.

 

And a cup a Joe “on me” to anyone who can guess where I am….. in the photo I mean, not literally right now, because that would be much more difficult; I mean, I could be anywhere; well, not anywhere because if you know me you know I don’t have flight-ticket money, and I’m far too responsible to just ditch on my classes; though wouldn’t that be fun; why, yes, it would, but then, of course who would pick up the… .