Today is the first day of the annual Haiku Challenge, hosted by Someone is Special at the blog Few Miles. It lasts for the month of February. If you like haiku (I know you secretly love it, FB!), please join in!
I'm so excited! I feel like a celebrity! Check out my interview at Imaginary Garden With Real Toads. Susie Clevenger aka The Laundry Goddess, was kind enough to consider me interview worthy. Who am I to question her judgment?
The South rose in her blood like a fever
and northern winters were no anodyne
She needed the heat despite herself
She knew this as she knew her name
as she knew the wisteria blooms
kudzu vines
and long, grey fingers of Spanish moss
She dreamed Southern dreams
followed restless ghosts
sat under bottle trees of cobalt glass
and drank sun tea
She stared at her paleness in the mirror
and knew
that once the warm Gulf waters
run through your veins
you can never really leave.
An attempt at non-word art! I've been watching some videos on painting "doodles," and this is my first attempt. If nothing else, I had a blast making it!
Am I pleasing to the eyes, love?
Is my skin glistening with
the luster of pearl?
Is my flesh fresh and firm?
And my scent
Is it clean and new?
I wish to be flawless, whole
when I offer myself to you, love
Then you will see
what competent and thorough work you do
when you tear me apart.
Nana's dresser
cracked white paint with
gilding rubbed thin
glass bottles of Opi stand
like multicolored soldiers
Inside
the smell of old lady lavender
utilitarian beige bra
and underneath, her stash
hundreds of little pink packets
Sweet n Low
License plate on the car ahead reads
"It's a child, not a choice"
And I wonder
Has it really been 38 years since
I was granted the right to
my own body?
And I wonder
why I have to look
over my shoulder
in my rear view mirror
to see who's trailing me
to the clinic
And I wonder
why I have to dodge pamphlets
pushed on me like politician's handshakes
and curses thrown like middle school spitballs
We all make our choices
You say you choose life
so why do you paste a scarlet A
on the doctor's chest like a target
for the snipers to gun him down?
We all make our choices
is what you say
So what do you say
to the man who chooses to rape his daughter?
to the mother who chooses to pretend not to see?
what do you say
to the girl
a child herself
with shame and confusion growing inside her
like a cancer?
Do you choose to call her murderer?
Damn her to hell?
We all make our choices
And what of the child
whose mama chooses
not to feed him today?
Who wears last week's clothes
reeking of urine and
steals money at school?
Does he choose this life?
You cry over the lost tadpoles but
look the other way when the frogs die
in their formaldehyde ponds
another one pinned on the dissection tray
just another day
Go ahead
Slap a bumper sticker on your car
We all make our choices.
Although I have no idea what it is supposed to represent, I humbly accepted this Zombie Rabbit Award from Brent Wescott at Building Castles on the Beach. Do check out Brent's blog. You will find a lively mix of "stuff about fatherhood, teacherhood, musichood, writerhood, and other kinds of hood." You never know what the day's post may happen to be about, but you can be assured that it will be thought provoking, insightful, intelligent, and well-written. Thank you, Brent.
In the spirit of Rabbit Zombiehood, I'd like to pass this award on to a few of my favorite blogs:
darev2005 at Attitude and Pepper Spray who can somehow make working in a prison extremely entertaining
Bryan M. White at Fabulous Atypical Ramblings of Nuclear Cheese, a group blog filled with utter nonsense, serious philosophical ponderings, crude jokes, silly photos, and just about anything else you can think of
Fireblossom at Shay's Word Garden who writes the most breathtakingly awesome poetry you'll ever read. She should be famous.
How can you be so close
yet seem so far away?
When did you stop listening to
the things I try to say?
You say that you still love me and
I want to think it's true
But do you know me any more
and do I know you?
The longer silence lingers
harder to utter the words
But why say anything
when you're not heard?
And so another night
with words unspoken, thoughts unsaid
Starting to get numb now
to the hurt
How is it two people
who'd complete each other's thoughts
Now can't look each other in the eyes?
And why is it that even though
you say that I was right
I end up being the one who
always cries?
Where did we veer off the road?
Why didn't we see the curve?
Stupid thinking that we had arrived
Now we're stumbing
in the dark
Trying to find our way
Are we just too broken now
to drive?