Overboard - Repost

Last week I submitted this poem to an online literary magazine for publication. I wanted to repost it here. I am sure I am one of thousands who submitted, but I will certainly let everyone know if I am lucky enough to get it published.

First toes, then knees, then chest, then head
The water closes over us
Here chained together, living dead
But now we will be free at last.

Three weeks we sat and starved and stank
Three weeks there shackled in the hold
But we have chosen death to this
And now are safely overboard.

My wife and child are dead as well
Murdered the day that I was chained
And I rejoiced his bloodstained knife
For now they are at home in heaven.

And if my soul can find that place
From this my placeless grave of sea
Yes, I will join them once again
And forever will be free.

Bumblefrog and Kittyroo

Bumblefrog and Kittyroo
do everything together.
They're never found at the zoo
cause fairytales are better.

Sevenling: Disappearance

She opened her world
She offered her heart
And gave him her hand.

But she forgot to hold back
The things that made her.
The edge, the intuition, the sprite.

They disappeared with the rest of her.

It's Not You, It's Me

What is it?

Downcast eyes raise, filled with salty tears.
A look that says, you know the answer to that question. Don't make me say it out loud.

Say it!
I don't love you anymore.

How long have you known?
Does it matter?
It does to me.
A while.

Are you cheating on me?
Yes. I'm sorry.
Don't say you're sorry.
But I am.

Tears overflow as eyes look again at the floor.

Are you leaving me?
Look, it's not you...
Don't you dare say it's not you, it's me. Just tell me, are you leaving me?
Yes.

The Hero's Journey

Last night was the first night of my new writing class at SMU. It was a great first class and I am so pleased because 11 of the 15 students were together in our last class with Suzanne Frank, Intro to Creative Writing. We are already familiar with each other and so there was no shyness to get over; we jumped right in.

Our professor, Daniel J. Hale, began the course by discussing the typical basic form of fiction, a form called the Hero's Journey, championed by Christopher Vogler. Below is an outline of the Hero's Journey. Compare it to your favorite fiction story/novel and see how it fits.

1) Hero/ine is introduced in the Ordinary World, where...
2) S/he receives the Call to Adventure.
3) S/he is reluctant at first or Refuses the Call, but...
4) S/he is encouraged by a Mentor to...
5) Cross the First Threshhold and enter the Special World, where...
6) S/he encounters Tests, Allies, and Enemies.
7) S/he then will approach the Inmost Cave, crossing a second threshold...
8) Where s/he endures the Supreme Ordeal.
9) S/he takes possession of the Reward and...
10) Is pursued on the Road Back to the Ordinary World.
11) S/he crosses the third threshold, experiences a Resurrection and is transformed by the experience.
12) S/he then returns with the Elixir, a boon, treasure or lesson to benefit the Ordinary World.

My Heroine's Journey (I hope...)

After a review of the Hero's Journey format we went around the table and were asked to divulge our book idea. I, of course, haven't got one quite so firm in my mind as most of my classmates. I have some trouble commiting to a single idea, a single character and a single plot. After I said as much to the class, Dan (the professor) responded, "You're going to hate me when I give you your homework." (Fabulous!)

He waited until the last 15 seconds of class to tell us the assignment and then ran out of the room before we could throw pens at him. We are charged by next Tuesday at noon to write the Resurrection Scene of our novel. Step 11 in the Hero's Journey. For some, this will be a piece of cake, they already have the idea developed. For me, not so much.

We are not to build our characters, we are not to explain back plot, we are not to focus on anything but the ressurection scene of our main character. We are to write it as if we had turned to the page 220 in a 300 page book and copied out the contents.

So...I've decided to share with you, if there is anyone out there, my own heroine's journey. Throughout this 6 week course, I am going to post my homework and hopefully, as the time and assignments pass, a book idea will form. Bear with me. I'm new at this.

Resurrection

The pain reached such a pitch that Evie felt her body contract in an effort to dim the throbbing. But her brain could not ignore the irate signals that her nerves were screaming across each synapse.

She knew that she had taken the bullet. She saw the eye behind the muzzle, the flash. She felt the musket ball pierce her skin with all the grace of a ragged boulder entering water. It blasted a hole through her rib cage and entered her chest lodging deep in her lung. She tasted blood immediately, then lost her breath. She fell to her knees. Not wanting to die on her face, she leaned to her left and landed on her side.

Then she died. She was sure of it. She felt the black close in on her. She felt the pain disappear and the peace come. But now, now the black behind her eyes was red with agony. She was either alive or in the infernal hell that fire and brimstone preachers rage against. Damn them for being right.

Very slowly the searing pain downgraded to a more bearable burn. She felt her other senses, previously overcome, returning. She smelled vanilla and cat food. She felt fabric and plush beneath her. She urged her eyelids to raise in several tries like coaxing obstinate mini blinds. In between failures, she caught glimpses of her surroundings. She was clearly back in her apartment and, though she couldn't feel his touch, she recognized Eren standing over her, shaking her, terror contorting his face.

Sevenling: Scrabble

She's mad because I'm beating her
She usually beats me,
But this time I'm the one who has the W, Y and Z.

Whey and Day and Zone
She can not get ahead
I've hit each triple word score tile...Hey!

She dumped them on my head.

Sevenling: January in Texas

Yesterday in Texas was warm, bright and clear
But sadly, still its January
and today the cold is here

Tomorrow we are to expect the rain,
the cloudy, chilly, drizzly rain.
But here we know it will not last.

The next day may again be spring.

Sevenling: Traffic

I used my blinker,
I pulled in slow and
Didn't brake at all.

She revved up, nearly touched my bumper
Then sped around me
Showing me the back of her hand.

Maybe her breakfast didn't agree with her.

What is a Sevenling?

I have found a new poetic form to try. It's called a sevenling and is described by Roddy Lumsden of the American Poetry Journal.

The sevenling is a poem of seven lines inspired by the form of this much translated short verse by Anna Akhmatova (1889 - 1966).

He loved three things alone:
White peacocks, evensong,
Old maps of America.

He hated children crying,
And raspberry jam with his tea,
And womanish hysteria.

... And he married me.

tr. D M Thomas From Selected Poems (Penguin)

The rules of the sevenling are thus:

The first three lines should contain an element of three - three connected or contrasting statements, or a list of three details, names or possibilities. This can take up all of the three lines or be contained anywhere within them. Then, lines four to six should similarly contain an element of three, connected directly or indirectly or not at all. The seventh line should act as a narrative summary or punchline or as an unusual juxtaposition.

There are no set metrical rules, but being such as short form, some rhythm, metre or rhyme is desirable. To give the form a recognisable shape, it should be set out in two stanzas of three lines, with a solitary seventh, last line. Titles are not required.

Ode to Donna's Sandy Feet

Written for my mother, who took this picture.
I am an infant in this place.
The sand between my toes -
Stone beaten into grain
By water relentlessly pounding -
Was born millions of years ago
Violently exuded through miles of deep ocean
To form this island.
My being, by comparison, is but an instant old.
My life, next to this ocean, is so small as to not exist.

What could trouble me here?
What human pain or folly could possibly alter
The ancient perfection of this landscape?


The wind that moves my hair
Flies across the waves unfettered.
The sun that warms my skin
Warms too each grain of sand, each palm frond.
I hear the movement, feel the light.
I am illuminated from without and within.
Alone, yet surrounded.
Small, yet part of the grand whole.

Hope and love are easy here,
Effortless as the lapping of the sea
Against my sandy feet.

What is a Haiku?

Haiku, according to Wikipedia, is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku. I think that they are alot of fun to write. Just open up your mind, let the words come and count on your fingers as you write them down.

Five Haikus

I.
Will you come to me
Here on the Texas high plain
Your own yellow rose

II.
How am I to hope
When no bottom to this fall
Do I see below

III.
Sad hours seem long
Once was said by a suitor
His true love aloft

IV.
Company seeking
Loneliness abated by
Insincere action

V.
Leaving tomorrow
How long to be far from home
I can not yet know

Choose Your Own Adventure - Just for Kids?

I have just completed a piece in a new format called "Delia Burch", posted below. I based the format on the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books that I loved as a child. I wanted to take the fun of that kind of interactive reading and apply it to a higher reading level.

This blog is proving not to be the best medium for this kind of story because it won't allow me to link the readers' choice directly to Delia's next step. So, instead, I have had to ask the reader to scroll through their chosen path guided by bolded fonts and numbers. This isn't ideal, but gets the idea across.

Please take a look and let me know if, under better reading circumstances, this is a kind of format that you would enjoy. I would very much like to know your first impressions. This may not be a kind of reading that adults appreciate, it may be too cumbersome, too much work, or too fragmented to hold interest. Or it could be refreshing, different and fun. Whatever your opinion, please feel free to comment. Your comments can help me become a better writer and direct my work toward you as my audience. THANK YOU!

Delia Burch

Delia stepped quickly from the train onto the crowded platform in the hope of loosing her pursuer in the throng. She didn’t know why he hadn’t just arrested her outright, but he seemed bent upon remaining undercover, watching her every move from beneath the brim if his hat but not taking any action – yet.

Carrying her red bonnet in her hand, she received berating looks for her uncovered hair and her unladylike roughness as she pushed through the crowd. She willingly tossed decorum to the wind so that the old man who pursued her would not be able to follow her progress by watching her bobbing red bonnet in its slow retreat.

Delia no longer knew who her allies were nor where to find aid. In London she had only two choices. She could either seek a reconciliation with her late father’s estranged elder sister, Lady Nora Burch, or seek instead a reintroduction to the man whose proposal of marriage she had refused two years before, Mr. Charles Maddock. Neither option appealed to her but she was desperate. Who should she approach?

Choose the next step on Delia's path:
Approach Lady Nora Burch - go to Step 1A
Approach Mr. Charles Maddock - go to Step 1B

To follow the path you have chosen for Delia click "continue reading" below.

Wiser Words Were Never Spoken

These are collections of words that I didn't string together myself but wish that I had. I will continue to update this page as I continue to find writing that fits into this category.

Toy-like people make me boy-like.
--- Massive Attack, Mezzanine
This is such a true statement about the way that interaction can affect the way that people relate. Immature actions breed immature responses.

This life is a thump-ripe melon--so sweet and such a mess.
--- Greg Brown, Rexroth's Daughter, Covenant
I love this line because it is so visceral, it takes its meaning and hits all the senses at once.

What then do we live for, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn.
--- Mr. Bennett, Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
I love this line because it has been fundamentally true since humans noticed their neighbor as more than a means to the collective survival of the species. We are forever ready to laugh at and in turned be laughed at by those around us. People who take themselves too seriously are doomed to suffer because this will never change.

If the sun refused to shine,
I would still be loving you;
Mountains crumble to the sea,
There will still be you and me.
--- Robert Plant, Thank You, Led Zeppelin II
I love this refrain. The words are simple but so expressively placed and the sound of the word "you" is so powerful in this context. The last line rolls off the tongue, "there will still be you and me," in a way that oaths rarely do.

Poem Series: 1999

Three poems written in 1999 for dear friends at a time when no amount of deep and heady conversation could persuade them from a path they had to experience for themselves.


Slow Suffocation of the Heart

How thick a constitution and
How sharp a resolution

But your childish thoughts mislead you
And your selfless vows concede you

To the thorns of discontent
And dark alleys of regret that

Pierce as deep as marrow
And meander through your veins.

Your mind will not bend to face the vine
Or the towers built on either side

Rather you carry there upon your back
The seedlings of your sorrow

To plant the vines and
Build the hopeless towers of tomorrow.

Color Palette

How many colors
To make your palette true
They are but the beginning
The tool and not the rule
Primary from birth
The colors of your twinkle in the eye
Years have added to the first
The colors of your life

The painting now is brown and gray
Bright hues that mix and play too much
Are obscured
And can not stay that way
but signal by their disarray
the time to change the canvas.


Lost Girl

How can I reach deep into your brain
To draw out your reason, remind you?
How can I dig down into your chest
And quiet the lust that misguides you?
How can I show you the truth you once knew?
How can I stear you from love's pain, his lure?
How can I watch you return to him when
In the arms of the others he denied you?

How can you trust and believe in him now?
How can you give him the easy way out?
You say you'll teach him a lesson, oh yes and it is,
A rose on your car, a few tears and a kiss
Make up for humiliation, betrayal and loss,
The lies that he told; the respect that it cost.

Don't you know your own worth.
Can't you see what he is?
My sweet girl, guard your heart
And stop kneeling to his.

Alabama Just Desserts

Agnes brushed the red dirt off her dress, put her hat back on and stepped back onto the road. She knew it was Bobby Beechum who had run her off the road with his dad's enormous white Chevy. He’d been a bully since birth and she was sure he would die young and go straight to hell, just like Gran always said.

Now she’d have to sneak into the house before her father could see her and charge her with “rolling around in the hay,” his favorite accusation anytime Agnes looked disheveled. Agnes had never rolled around in anything with anyone, ever, but her father was sure that it was only a matter of time. Based on the behavior of her schoolmates, Bobby among them, she couldn’t really blame him.

“Merciful Lord, girl! What happened to you?!” Thankfully, it was Gran’s voice that greeted her in a holler as she tried to sneak through the back door. Gran was sitting in her usual chair shucking corn.

“Bobby Beechum almost ran me over with his car. I had to jump off the road into the ditch.”

“Lord, that boy is gonna die young and go straight to hell.”

“I know, Gran.” Agnes walked through the kitchen sweet with baking smells. “I’m gonna go change before Daddy sees me.”

“Good girl. Come down after you’re done. I just pulled a pound cake out the oven.”

Agnes opened her bedroom door and found her best friend sitting on her yellow comforter, arms folded and eyes watery. The window she’d climbed through since they became blood sisters at six years old was wide open letting in the Appalachian breeze.

“Sal! What’s wrong?” Agnes knew Sally Hicky well enough to know that watery eyes meant something was terribly wrong. Sally was one of the toughest girls Agnes had ever known and if they hadn’t been best friends, she would have been terrified of her. Sally had three older brothers and no time for cry-babys. She was always telling Agnes to, “Buck Up, Buttercup!”

“We’re moving.” Sally’s voice was unusually high-pitched and wavering.

Seven Days in Prison

Day One:
Yesterday was the last day of the rest of my life because it was my first day in this cell. No more appeals. No more denial. This is my new home and I am as good as dead for all the living I’ll be doing in it.

I used to have a stainless steel subzero, now I have a stainless steel toilet. I used to sleep under goose down on Egyptian cotton. This bed I sit on might as well be sheeted with sand paper. No one will be visiting me, after what I’ve done. And I’ll be best not to talk to the other guys in here. My crime was heinous, I know, but somehow I think these men are more the “heinous” sort than I am.

I didn’t really mean to kill them. I just didn’t want them to live, together, happy, in my house. Taking that life away somehow turned into taking all life away – I got a little over zealous, but I guess I don’t have to feel guilty about it anymore, I’ll pay for it in here to be sure.

Day Two: The food in here sucks but it’s the only thing that breaks up the time. No one makes macaroni and cheese like Molly did. I never appreciated that. Guy next to me at supper commented on the piss poor state of the mac. I agreed with him. Maybe we’re friends now. I don’t know.

Day Three: That guy’s name was Burk. Saw him again today when we got to walk “outside” in a fenced-in cage open to the air. He’s been here 3 years. I didn’t say much, didn’t want to scare him off. Just lent against the cage with him. It felt a little less lonely. Still, I think I’m gonna lose my mind in here. Every night I go to bed thinking I’d rather have been sentenced to death. This is a purgatory worse than Dante could have imagined, to breath for no reason. It’s like being kept alive by machines. I wish they’d have just pulled the plug.

Day Four: Learned to make holes in license plates today. Riveting…get it? Burk made that joke. He worked next to me. He said if I was good I’d get library privileges soon. I’ve never been much of a reader, but I guess I could take it up. What else is there to do? I asked him if anyone ever killed themselves in here and he said all the time. He said - Most everyone here is here for life. The only choice we have is how long that’s gonna be.

Day Five: I wonder if I’ll see Molly when I die. We said that we’d love each other forever. But then she changed her mind, took my money and my house and got with our financial advisor. So I guess she won’t be waiting there when I follow the light. Probably especially not since I killed her and that weasel with her.

Day Six: The guard who shuts my door at night is stupid. He goes door by door with his gun sticking out his holster like an invitation to a desperate man. It’d only take a quick hand. Reminds me of the last time I held a gun. Why didn’t I turn it around then?

You Know What It Is

It sneaks up
Like a child in the night
To the bed of his mother

It waits to pounce
Like a kitten for a string
Focused and fearless

It invades
Like a sickness
All energy going to feed it

It envelopes
Like a hot bath
Warm and weightless

It awakens
Like a sip of strong coffee
When it touches the tongue

It settles
Like a favorite tune
Well-known and comfortable

And ends
Over and over
Until the one time that it doesn't

Siren Song

She remembered the sirens when the war began, bursting the silence of the night two or three times a week. Her mother yelled from the kitchen for all her children to hurry to her and they gathered, tightly packed, in the broom closet that was the most interior room of the house. Belma often fell back to sleep standing up on these nights, supported by the bodies of her female family members, numb to their terror, which long ago had switched in her brain from dreadful and wrong, to normal and consistent.

She could no longer go to school because of the bombings and because she was Bosnian. She was not allowed to go outside under any circumstances. Her mother had heard what happened to woman and female children the Serbian soldiers rounded up. Her father and older brother were fighting with the resistance. They were alone, 5 women in the house. They kept the lights off and all the curtains drawn so that it would look as though the house were deserted.

It had been months since the sirens had stopped. Now there was no warning when the bombs began to fall. After the first few shells exploded, they would rush to the closet together, in a choreographed dance that had become second nature.

Belma rarely slept at night anymore. Inactivity during the day did not tire her young body and her mind would no longer wind down and turn off. Instead she lay on her back and stared into the blackness listening for the whir of missiles, trying not to hear the sobs of her mother and the barking of the wild dogs in the street.

It was happening again. She heard the sound of falling from a great height. She felt the house shake with earthquake force, heard splitting, fracturing, crumbling. She moved robotically to rise from her sunken mattress but she could not see the walls caving in around her. She raised her body but her arms were pinned and crushed beneath the house’s collapsed weight. Pain screamed in her brain with such unfamiliar intensity of feeling that she was overcome and lost consciousness. Blood soaked the bed and pooled on the floor around her.

Petra

Canyon wall fashioned into reason.
Edifice, etched out of sandstone – Petra.
Ancient as the surrounding sands.
Pure now in ruin, as never before in occupation.
The energy of humanity –
Creators, destroyers, virtuous and devilish all –
Imbues soulless works with the spirit of good and evil,
Inextricable.

Mystical now in its emptiness.
A once busy dwelling, noisy market, echoing shrine,
Now camel-top tourist attraction.
All things in time must change.
The earth ever trying to reclaim its raw materials.
What it covers it is the office of the archaeologist to expose.
The act of discovery reintroducing humanity
To the primal, dispirited, vacant lost.