When I was a kid, mold was a bad thing.
Not a white rind on cheese
Not a blue vein, but a bad thing.
The slab of bacon leans against
the side of the fridge
white and blue flecked with gray
not a bad thing, just mold-covered.
Like cheese. I paid too much for it.
So I'll eat it, risking stomach cancer
rather than throw it out.
Mold is not a bad thing.
O Spiderman of sticky web
How did you end up in my bed?
I dreamed of this, you know, quite wet
Revealing that you're not quite het.
No Mary Jane could turn your head:
instead a fag in spandex skin,
A circumstance I revel in,
A situation, queer, indeed.
I can't believe your hairless chest
is getting my attention best.
I dreamed of this, a spider's nest
of comfy love togetherness.
A tighty white across my pecs,
You, Spiderman, made quite a mess!
Cold metastasizes on my skin then
moves to my core: I cannot keep warm.
I shiver, rubbing hands stroking arms bedeviled.
Winter rays, gray and low, numb my spirit.
Frost's glistening blanket engulfs me in a shade
through which light creeps diffuse, unfocused.
This is just the long beginning of the season,
a time between times, a time of quiet dread
and dead white color blinding me.
I don't believe the winter promise, the fallow
lie of spring's reward for having made it through
to warmer days.
If you've been reading my blog at all, you know that I've started writing poetry here, not particularly good poetry, but trying to work more on craft, trying to experiment with words on a screen. Tim suggested that I take one of my poems and cut out as many words as I could, just as an exercise. So I did. Below is the original poem, and it's followed by the edited version.
An accidental interloper, he
Filled in the empty spaces of one heart.
He moved between their two magnetic poles,
A force, himself, to move the two apart.
At first, he hardly noticed the affair.
His curiosity had seen the pair
Impregnable it seemed to the outside,
The unlatched heart, broke, hidden in its lair.
A spark, impassioned, flew from their cold hearth
and kindled flames of folly in his breast.
Swept up in the idea of hot romance,
Put life's relation to a bitter test.
The pair's polarity reversed, tears shed.
The barreness unspoke acknowledged now.
His heart quite broken in the aftermath
Of ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
Here's the revision:
Accidental, he
filled empty spaces
between two magnetic poles,
a force, himself.
He hardly noticed.
Curiosity
impregnable to the outside,
unlatched, broke, hidden.
A spark flew
kindled folly.
Swept up hot.
Put life to a bitter test.
Polarity reversed,
barreness unspoke
quite broken,
ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
An accidental interloper, he
Filled in the empty spaces of one heart.
He moved between their two magnetic poles,
A force, himself, to move the two apart.
At first, he hardly noticed the affair.
His curiosity had seen the pair
Impregnable it seemed to the outside,
The unlatched heart, broke, hidden in its lair.
A spark, impassioned, flew from their cold hearth
and kindled flames of folly in his breast.
Swept up in the idea of hot romance,
Put life's relation to a bitter test.
The pair's polarity reversed, tears shed.
The barreness unspoke acknowledged now.
His heart quite broken in the aftermath
Of ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
Who thought peanut butter could be so deadly?
The flattened, nearly headless mouse lay stiff
the trap sprung, but not a lick of Jif remained.
What peanut butter peril enticed the rodent there
to release the bale that bloodied hair, what pain.
Did it see stars before the end? Was it instant death?
Or were there seconds of nervous charge elapsed
a crashing synapse, broken neck, and matted pelt
a terror, a sharpened, sickened moment's motion
a squeal before no air could pass the esophagus?
The mousetrap sits on the drainboard drying.
Scrubbed clean of fear-soaked blood and urine,
ready to bring another mouse to ruin in the closet.
Reset with peanut butter and returned downstairs.
In the weeks after the funeral,
The widows came to the house
Corningware, Tupperware, Rubbermaid.
The doorbell rang; each dish accepted,
acknowledged, and refrigerated.
Jello eight ways. Three kinds of macaroni.
Spaghetti and meatballs in a metal bowl.
Four tossed salads with five different dressings.
Three molds, five glass baking dishes, four casseroles,
washed, dried, and returned.
December, January, and February.
O Mother with your burning heart,
Sursum Corda on your lips,
Betrayed, the blade wedged in your valve.
Your skirted smile scarce hides your sorrow.
A golden crown can't salve your loss.
The lily's fragrance masks the stench
of death, of lost tomorrows.
O Mother's son sprained on the cross
O Mother's heart broke from the loss
A world quickly walks on by
lost in talk, concerns, and bills.
Your lips are closed to words expressed
that might explain your open breast,
spread apart with bleeding flames,
a heart afire that fans your pain.
O Mother, I can hardly stand to watch.
Not a wrinkle or a blemish on your face,
and yet you tear a hole in my own chest
That connects your picture frame to mine.
O Mother with your burning heart
Betrayed, that blade wedged in your valve.
Each day I write a poem
Not always with much meter
Never published in a tome
Unsavored by most readers
Sometimes, my poems have punctuation.
Each line is filled with tidy thoughts.
Captitalized lines march in formation.
All ended neatly with tiny dots.
Or I can wander.
And not really put much thought
into heuristics.
I'm not Emily Dickinson.
I cannot use adjectives around naked men.
Hot? Or not-so-hot?
Speechless with small talk.
I don't want to offend hot naked men.
My own insecurity safely in hand
I hope, I think I'm a hot naked man,
maybe I'm a hot naked man,
maybe I was a hot naked man,
maybe I could be a hot naked man.
No, I can't use adjectives around naked men.
The stomachs, the gravitas,
the wrinkled notions of
boy grown much older:
Hot I don't think so,
in this reflection of missed connections
for not being hot and
not seeing hot, too.
I cannot use adjectives around naked men.
One of the difficulties of having the luxury of a blog is that the blog, like a pet, demands to be fed. Unlike a pet, it doesn't need to be taken for a walk, and the blog doesn't lick your face or anything like that, but it can be just as demanding as a cat at the refrigerator door.
One of the compelling reasons to have a blog is for the vanity factor, so of course, the blog link is prominently placed within my browser options, and I cannot but help see evidence of my blog every time I'm using my computer (or handheld for that matter). I suppose I could be less vain, but if I were, I wouldn't have a blog. So I get on a collision course with myself (and perhaps the four readers of my blog).
These are some of the feeding problems I run into:
To my precious readers, I promised you in my new year's resolutions that I'd be writing here more regularly, and I still intend to do that. I will continue to feed the beast. I have this theory that if I write in here enough, it will become easier, and maybe not so hungry, but I doubt it.
Not every pirate has a beard,
an eyepatch, or a wooden leg.
Pirates come in all disguises
big and small, thin, fat - all sizes.
Country boy though I was reared
I've cultivated pirate beard.
But beard does not a pirate make
Unless you're in the Caribbean
Staring at the salty ocean
entertaining pirate notions.
Then, a beard is quite in fashion
to flame an inner pirate passion.
No lusty wench with which to wake
I'll gladly bed the Captain's mate.
My beard in search of pirate treasure
found a friendship and love's pleasure.
A paradox of time unfolded.
A messy catapult exploded
lovers' reveries of distant stars,
querulous quantum leaps so tiny
a billion billion billion fit inside my heinie
squatting on a beach quite cold
inside my trunks some sparkles bold, and
instantly my buttocks warmed quite brightly;
a vibration, cosmic, shuddered from the planet Mars,
a broken thought bent in a jaundiced eye
of pain-ed hearts, of tears, and lines unsightly.
Looking back from future time I picked a scab
I felt a stab. I knew the emptiness, the scars
from family, friends, and lovers, now acquaintances
dismembered by a messy, passing comet,
their faces silent, contorted by the time compression.
My heinie now a hillock and each memory
a flower growing growing growing and exploding
in ten thousand thousand silicon dioxide
integrated circuits, parsing passing reveries
of Mars of bars of stars of lovers and their lips
of my organic, vegan boyfriend and his hips
writhing on a beach and pulling down my trunks
playing with my heinie and a messy catapult
exploded sparkles bold and buttocks warmed.
Here's a preliminary list.
None of these are earth shattering, but are some little things I really want to do, which should improve the quality of my interior planet considerably. As I lay in bed this morning, reveling in this New Year, I felt so grateful and happy, so alive to this arbitrary moment of made up possibilities. It was a perfect morning for a new year.
This blog is suffering from neglect, mainly because of Facebook and ManHunt. I'm not proud to admit that. Neither of those sites requires the intellectual curiosity nor the skillful storytelling that this blog demands. In a weird economic way, the base drives out the precious and this blog turns to dross. Oh well. I should get used to that.
The biggest new thing for me is cycling. I sit in a more gingerly fashion than I did in the past. I've been assured that my butt will eventually toughen up. In the meanwhile, I've been exploring the bike trails about town. Jerry and I went on another bike ride, this time to Mt. Vernon, then back through Rosslyn. I'm slowly increasing my mileage. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it. The bike riding weather has been beautiful, and I'm enjoying the bike immensely. Thanks, Jerry, for your inspiration.
I'm back in the groove with Big Bang Theory. Season 2 has arrived from Netflix. Those boys should all earn a Nobel Prize in Physics. And don't miss Modern Family. Wow, what a Costco moment. I'm embarrassed and empowered in the same instant. If this is what it means to be gay. I'm all for it.
Today, Ron took all of our closet "treasures" to a flea market held at the Wheaton Ice Rink. Imagine a vast sea of crap, but floating on top of that sea, a table filled with startling treasures, tastefully arranged, and priced to sell. And that's exactly what Ron did. He toiled from early morning to mid afternoon, and very little was left on the table, as he closed down at the end of the market. I'm very grateful that Ron took on organizing our forgotten crap, and turning it into shining treasures that a lot of people decided they couldn't live without. Well done!
In September, Ron and I attended a studio show of Joe Jacobs, a local artist in Gaithersburg. I found a painting I couldn't live without, and proceeded to purchase it. Yesterday, Frames by Rebecca called and told me to come pick up the painting. So I did today after visiting the farmers market in Silver Spring. The painting is beautiful, and now hanging quietly on the wall, like a poem ready to be read.
I just got around to it, but I've merged all of my commentary blogs (my recipe blog remains separate). I did this so that all my fans could find out all the dish about me in one convenient location, Doodle Today. I haven't completely revamped the navigation on this blog, but that will be done soon. In the meantime, I'll try to keep you informed of all the interesting crap that happens to me, like I'm having another cystoscopy in a week or so. Undoubtedly, you'll find all of the details here.
