I'll give you a topic.

I just came across a site called the Random Poem Idea Generator.  Here are some of the suggestions it gave me:

Boldly advance wrong opinions about eagles saying everything twice but phrased differently

Throw a friendly arm around gophers in a cocktail dress (Are the gophers wearing the cocktail dress or are you?)

Indicate your preference for Michigan entirely in overheard dialogue (This just makes me think of Sufjan Stevens, so I would probably end up inadvertently plagiarizing him.)

Levy taxes on tigers in the form of an invoice (There's a Charlie Sheen joke in there somewhere.)

Plagiarize every line of a poem about the Midwest in the style of Dickinson (Look, I don't condone plagiarism, okay?)

Here is the result.  I sort of combined all the suggestions:

Animals in America

How many gophers to fill out a cocktail dress?
They wear it to sneak up on eagles.
Eagles are cowards.
They should be more like tigers
Attn: Eagles, you owe tiger tax.
What do you think of the Midwest?
Michigan wins America.
And yet he wandered through the heartland alone . . .

(That last line was borrowed from Edward Hirsch's "In the Midwest.")

Poetry meet art. Art, poetry.

My dear friend Angela is coming to visit me in a couple weeks!  I'm so excited to see her, it made me open a box of pictures that she had drawn for me one birthday.  More than a few years ago, she illustrated some of my poems as a gift, and I had them framed and hanging on my wall in my old apartment.  Since The Great Move of 2010, I haven't put them back up yet.  I was trying to figure out why and I wonder if it's because I don't want to commit that much to this new place.  I like the apartment okay, but it's just a place to live, not a home like the last one.  Possibly this is because I haven't put up any pictures.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to take photos of her artwork and post them here.  At least I'll feel at home on my blog.

This one accompanies a poem written about a trip to Venice I took with my family.  It's called "A Native's Dream":

 

This one is "Through the Keyhole," written at a particularly angsty time in college:

 

I realize it might be hard to read, which makes me thankful for my shoddy photographic skills.

And finally this one you might be familiar with already:

 

 

A Native's Dream

Rain ruined my first impression 

of Saint Mark's Square, flooded

enough to force people to balance, elevated

on wooden boards while we sought refuge

in the cathedral, guarded 

by bronze horses,

with my father, quite taken 

by the mosaic tile floors

slanting toward the altar.

"How long do you suppose," 

he asked, head bowed, 

"it took them to piece this place together?" 

I forgot to answer

in awe of those flashing cameras.

We struck out again into December

toward jade-colored waves that spilled over

concrete docks on the Grand Canal.  

Gondoliers stood in the wet drops like needles

and called to us, offering

special deals "for only today."

One young man in a black cap promised

in exchange for 80,000 lira

to wipe down the vinyl seats on his gondola himself.

My father agreed, making his familiar declaration

that this was "his city" because he came from

a full line of Venetians with trademark blue eyes, dark hair.

Our guide squinted his brown eyes and held out his hand.

We sat rocking in the boat under our huge umbrella,

the young man at the helm like a tired god

informing us that he was also a fireman.  Luca 

told my father how one could only be a gondolier

if he father was, and his father before him.  

As we passed under the Bridge of Sighs, 

the trail of my fingers swirled the canal like marble.

In the category of Seussical impressions regarding grammatics . . .

this email from September 2005 wins first prize.  I was once again doing a random search through my inbox archives (shut up, it's my thing) and was delighted to see how the following poem evolved. 

It came at a time when I had just started working for a publisher in Washington, DC.  As an editorial assistant, I was tasked with bathing copy in red ink before it went to press.  The rest of the time I spent emailing with my dear friend Angela in Chicago.  We were both feeling like lone reeds ("standing tall, waving boldly, in the corrupt sands of commerce") and so would cheer each other up with silly back-and-forths about nothing.

This was the observation she made to me that day:

"I think all those years of not capitalizing things is trying to make up for lost time. I keep inadvertently capitalizing random words in the middle of sentences. I feel German or something..."

To which I replied:

"I'm so proud of your turning of the proverbial capitalization new leaf.  Wow, if any of my old professors would have read that last sentence, I shudder to think of the amount of red ink that would have been spilled in the writing of 'awkward phrasing'."

 

That last bit put me in Dr. Seuss mode, which then resulted in the following limerick I sent back to her:

 

Upon penning the most jumbled of phrases,

I awoke from the most dazed of hazes.

I shuddered to think of the amount of red ink

to be lost in my grammatical mazes.

 

Coincidentally, this poem also wins first prize in the category of Nerdiest Limerick Ever.

Today's poem brought to you by wine

You thought I was going to be drunk when I wrote this, right?  Well, I'm not (yet).  Thanks to @pxie, I was alerted to a contest in which a Napa winery called Poem Cellars has issued a call for poetry submissions.  Apparently, they include a haiku or a limerick on every cork of their bottled wine that goes out.  Until February 5th they will be taking submissions for their 2009 Napa Valley Red Wine.  The two poets chosen will receive a case of wine!  Go here for more details and to submit.

Of course I couldn't back down from the challenge due to the free wine and all.  Here are a few entries I submitted.  I dare say a glass of wine might have made an improvement.

Let us open a bottle of wine
and toast to the birth and decline
of relationships past,
present, future, and last
'til we no longer walk a straight line.

Here's to the vineyard
and the grapes she produced;
here's to the winery
for improving the juice.

And this one I just plain ripped off of Neil Diamond:

Sweet glass of wine,
good times never seemed
this good.

Hmm . . .  maybe I am drunk.

Behind the scenes: The making of a poem

I was given a commission to write a little rhyme for an invitation to an office secretary's retirement party.  I thought it might be fun to post the info I was given and show a line-by-line process of constructing the poem.  This is what I was told:

The woman's name is Peggy Abruzzi.
She's had 34 years of federal service.
She hates the winter commute to the office.
She doesn't want to make a big deal about her retirement, just wants her friends and colleagues around her.

So where to begin?  Well, I thought the best place to start would be her name.  What rhymes with Abruzzi?  All I could think of was "cutesy."  That gives an idea for the first line.  Let's try this out:

For fear of writing something too cutesy,
you're invited to celebrate Peggy Abruzzi.

But that doesn't really make sense and it sounds a little Hallmark-y.  How about this:

At the risk of writing something too cutesy,
let's take a moment to salute Peggy Abruzzi.

All right.  Suddenly I stop and think I'm really kind of crap at this sort of thing.  I think it's going to be a long road to the finish.  I don't know the first thing about federal service- not even what rhymes with it.  I can't very well say she's been nervous all these years.  Hmm.  A flash of inspiration.  What if I flip the words around?  Like this:

She's spent 34 years federally serving

That works.  And then I can rhyme "serving" with "deserving."  That sounds like appropriate retirement party talk.

She's spent 34 years federally serving,
and we can't think of anyone more deserving

Great!  Now I'm encouraged.  I have a direction to follow.  What is she deserving of?

to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her _____ service ends.

I know that I want a word to describe what kind excellent work she's put in and also that she's appreciated.  Something like "valued service," but that sounds like a sale at a supermarket.  I go to the thesaurus and look at words that can substitute for "valued."  How about "esteemed"?  That conveys respect and high regard.

to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her esteemed service ends.

Now I just need to get some info in there about when this shindig will be held.  That's basic party invitation phrasing (I don't know the exact date, so I'll leave that for the person who requested the poem to fill in):

So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.

This is a useful line for two reasons.  First, it moves things along and gets the point across.  Second, it ends with the word "well," which should be easy to rhyme.  Some possibilities:  swell, gel, tell.  I don't want to lapse into '50s slang, and I'm not familiar with Peggy's hair gel rituals, so I latch onto "tell."  This might require some fancy maneuvering of phrases.  I know I have one last piece of information I want to deliver, which is that Peggy hates the winter commute.  What I want to say in these last couple lines is that there's a silver lining to her retirement.  She'll avoid the winter commute from now on.  But how to put that in a sentence that rhymes with "well"?

So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.
We'll miss her, but there's one bright side to tell

Eh, it's a little clunky but let's see how it plays out.  Two more lines and I just need a word that rhymes with "commute."  Aha:

as we give her a final salute,
here's to her last winter commute!

Not ideal, since we've already used "salute" in the second line, but let's put the whole thing together and check the flow, yo.

At the risk of writing something too cutesy,
let's take a moment to salute Peggy Abruzzi.
She's spent 34 years federally serving,
and we can't think of anyone more deserving
to be surrounded by colleagues and friends
on the day her esteemed service ends.
So on December ____, stop by, wish her well.
We'll miss her, but there's one bright side to tell
as we give her a final salute,
here's to her last winter commute!

Hey, it's not terrible.  All in all it took less than half an hour, and with a little polish it will serve its purpose of making Peggy Abruzzi feel special.

Only 9 1/2 hours to fly across the country

Well, since I have just come off a mechanically beleaguered plane, the temperature outside is 24 degrees, and a warm bed is calling my name, I'm just going to leave this final chapter right here for all you nice people and go to bed.  Voila:

The world he knew disappeared and with it everyone else. The Brute hung in the air like the dust on a shelf. He tried calling out. He tried a whisper, a scream. He breathed out really hard, but it was like a bad dream. For the Brute was unable to utter a sound. There were no more words; not a soul was around.  He just hung there in sadness, alone in the dark. Time ambled by, but then an idea sparked.

The Brute realized he didn’t like being alone. He missed all the people, his school and his home. He felt very sorry for the things he had done, and he wished extra hard to take back every one. He squeezed his eyes shut, conjuring all the bad words. He shut them in a box and marked them “unheard.”

Suddenly he imagined he felt the sun on his face. He pictured patterns of leaves in the sunshine like lace. He heard his named called, but he kept his eyes shut. He thought, if this is a dream, I choose not to wake up. And then someone shook him. He blinked and he looked. Miss Wilson! She gave him another great shook.

“No sleeping in time out.”

The teacher’s face was stern.

“I wasn’t asleep!” The Brute uncurled like a worm. Then he remembered, “It was so awful, my dream.”

“I should think so,” said Miss Wilson. “You’ve been very mean.

The Brute took in the playground and saw the girl he’d made cry. When the bell rang, he ran toward her. He poked her and said . . . hi.

Wait, the same guy who wrote James Bond wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

So today I was reading an article about the life of Ian Fleming, who wrote the Bond books.  I never knew this, but the books are loosely based on his real life as a spy for British Naval Intelligence during WWII.  One of their plans to foil the Nazis was to dress as German soldiers and pretend to be injured so that they could kill their rescuers.  Pretty badass.  But word daggers?  Badasser: 

The Brute drew himself up to his full height and yet, both he and they knew he was really no threat. Until he shouted out words that just popped in his head. The words sounded strange and filled the children with dread.

“I AM BIG. I AM TALL. I WILL SQUASH YOU LIKE ANTS.”

There was a stunned silence.  Brute continued his chant.

“I AM BIG.” Was he bigger?

“I AM TALL.” It was true!

His growth spurts were quick. Ten feet taller he grew. He grabbed the word daggers in one meaty fist. He chucked them at trees. Not a single one missed. They stuck to the trunks. They skinned leaves off of twigs. They turned into graffiti, cruel and glaringly big.

The Brute smirked at the kids, though they could barely see. He lifted one foot up the size of a tree. His classmates ran screaming. Their screams clawed at the air.

“Come back and make fun of me now!” he dared.

The Brute stomped the ground. Like an earthquake it shook. He plodded around. He scoured each nook. But the children were quick. They knew how to hide. The Brute paused and let their whispers act as his guide.

The whispers were vapors as fragile as ghosts. They curled into crook’d fingers that beckoned him close. Closer and closer The Brute followed them out.

He deserted the school for a dark, wooded route. The whispered words emitted a faint, glowing light. They made monstrous shadows that played tricks on Brute’s sight. They flashed different images based on what was said. Then the words stopped and pointed. Into a cave they led.

The Brute stomped his way in. There was an intake of breath.

“I know you’re in here,” he snarled. “Or did I scare you to death?”

There was a shuffle, a scurry, a silencing shush. Every sound echoed, bounding off walls with a push. Finally one brave soul piped up loudly and spoke:

“Go away! You’re a freak!”

And with that, chaos broke.

The Brute lunged at the words, but they clamped on his nose. “Freak” balled up and blinked red with a clownish-type glow.

“Now you’ll be sorry,” The Brute howled with rage.

“You sound like a sick cow!” a familiar voice waged.

It was a harsh blow. It nearly knocked him out. He shook his head, disbelieving. He gaped like a trout. The words bounced off the walls. They zoomed and they flew. The Brute filled up with venom.

He spat out, “I hate you!”

A huge echo swung forward, pounding him to a pulp. Then “hate” rose up and gaped, swallowing Brute in one gulp.

Transplant gangs are sooo 2004.

I was going to introduce this next installment a la Masterpiece Theater, but then I got sidetracked reading an article about former M.T. host Alistair Cooke.  The poor guy died back in 2004, and before he was cremated his body parts were chopped up and sold for profit by "rogue morticians."  Geez.  Sounds like the plot to a CSI episode.  So I guess this is more in the vein of Halloween than Christmas, but The Brute continues nonetheless:

The Brute bolted up, blinking. The sun had gone black. No one knew the reason. There was no great crack, no explosions, no fizzle, no fireworks shot. Simply what once was there happened now to be not. The world grew quite cold. People huddled together. The Brute stood alone while they debated the weather. As the children’s teeth chattered, their breaths froze in the air. But what The Brute saw was strange. All the words remained there.

Good words and bad words and gossip and jokes. The words tumbled out of their mouths as they spoke. They floated up to the trees, took a perch, looked around. Their movements were graceful. They made not a sound. Rude words cracked open, flashed their innards and leered. Some jokes came out moldy. One or two had on beards. A “thank you” dropped lightly. It curtsied and bowed.  Gossip tended to slither and leap bough to bough.

The Brute wondered if this was something he should mention, for none of his classmates was paying attention. They were all playing tag with the flashlights they’d found. A boy in his haste knocked The Brute to the ground.

“Idiot,” The Brute snarled, “I’m standing right here.”

The sentence took off like a shot at his peer. The words chugged along like a train on a track from The Brute’s mouth to boy’s head in two seconds flat.

There was howling. It seemed like the boy had been stung. The Brute watched it all happen. He knew what he’d done. He had not raised a hand, but the fact remained true: his words were what bruised the poor boy black and blue.

Questions popped up, hopping this way and that. Through the crowd they scurried. They darted like rats. One circled The Brute, sniffed his ear hole and hair. He swatted it off with a series of swears. The swears formed in a cyclone of prickles tiny as peas. They swirled and they roiled. They exploded like bees.

Only one target was set in their sights. The Brute’s eyes grew wide. He prepared to take flight. But from every direction the prickles advanced. They flew up his nostrils. They prickled his pants.

The Brute sneezed and swatted at what no one could see. The children all stared, some were grinning with glee. Their bully was making a fool of himself. The children all whispered, “Look at the elf!”

Their giggles erupted while The Brute tore at his clothes. They mocked as he picked prickles out of his nose. The words soared above them. They pointed and dived. They crystalled like ice and sharpened like knives.

The Brute raised his head up, eyes tearing in pain.   But then his eyes narrowed:

“So you want to play games.”

The Brute

Last year for Christmas I was flat broke and couldn't even begin to imagine how to afford presents for everyone.  I racked my brain and finally decided that since I had been working on a children's story, it might be fun to turn it into a book.  I asked a friend of mine to do the illustrations so that I could put it together and give it as a gift to my family.

The story is about a pint-sized bully who watches the mean words he says come to life and physically hurt people.  When I wrote it, it first came out as a poem.  Later I restructured it into more of a manuscript format, but I kept the rhyme.  I think it makes it less scary for little kids.

Sometimes it's good to change things up a bit, so this week in honor of the holiday season I decided to post an excerpt of The Brute here each day.  Illustrations by the fabulous Angela Springer.

The Brute

The Brute was a bully who stood up to his name. He stood only three feet but there was something untamed in the way that he spoke and how he made people feel. He chewed them up, spit them out, everyone was a meal.

He tormented his classmates with bellows and booms. He snuck up behind them, crouching in rooms. And the boys and girls trembled for they knew what came next. Each word The Brute spoke took the shape of a hex.

Susan ran crying when he said her thighs thundered. He called Walter four-eyes and laughed at his blunders.

Poor Josie’s arm hairs were thick like a sweater. The Brute even told Evan that Clare liked Jake better. The Brute had no friends so the words lifted his spirits. The meaner he was the less he had to hear it from anyone who had the gumption to tease or turn up their noses or tickle his knees. So he went alone to recess each day, scanning the yard for the weak and the strays.

Now one afternoon played out a fine scene. The Brute’s lunch had settled. He was full of baked beans. The sun was half-hidden, clouds lined up for miles. A chill thinned the air, his lips curled to a smile.

“Play time,” called The Brute. “Who wants to play?”

But nobody answered. They all ran away, except for one girl who sat alone on a swing. She had headphones on. She had started to sing. In no time at all The Brute closed on his prey. He crept up behind her. Too late she yelped, “Hey!”

He took her music. She took it right back. They squared off with each other. He prepared his attack:

“You sound like a sick cow. You’re hurting my ears.”

Bull’s-eye for The Brute. The words brought her to tears. But the girl was not finished. She knew what to do.

“Miss Wilson!” she cried, and between each boo hoo she told the teacher The Brute’s terrible words.

“That’s it!” said Miss Wilson. “I can’t believe what I’ve heard. You won’t have any friends if you keep up this way,”

The teacher warned The Brute, “You’ll regret this one day.”

Instead The Brute sneered and made public a vow:  “I’d rather be alone. I don’t care anyhow.”

She marched The Brute to a bench. On the sidelines he sat. He curled his hands into fists. On the bench he lay flat. He glared up at the sky and swore things dark as night until it suddenly seemed someone turned out the light.

But the sauce brings the dish together!

My sister was in town over the weekend.  We didn't do much except eat food and hang out with old ladies we're related to.  Now every time someone comes over to my grandmother's house, she hands them this book about how to never be sick again.  She presented it separately to me and my mother.  Now it was my sister's turn.  At one point, my grandmother was watching football and I got up to take a phone call, so my sister was left with the book.  When I came back, she had sped-read half of it and glanced up only to inform me that eating protein and starches together will kill you and fruit should not be eaten with anything else or it will turn it into a toxin.  

 

My sister was totally into it.  She said in Italy this is why they have the pasta course separate from the meat course.  I was like, but how far apart do you have to eat them?  Is it 20 minutes like swimming?  Do I eat the gnocchi first or the chicken marsala?  Does that mean no tomato sauce?  She said she didn't know, but the tacos I ate at lunch were currently rotting in my intestines.  

Here is what else she told me:  Drinking non-organic coffee means I'm consuming 200 pesticides*, over-the-counter pain relievers like Advil are poisoning our bodies, and I'm not getting enough Vitamin D.  I refuted that last point.  I am nothing if not diligent about taking gummy multi-vitamins for adults every morning with my pesticide-ridden coffee.

 

I guess I am pretty resigned to the fact that everything good in life causes cancer, so the next time she visits me, I told her I'm making a four food group pilaf.

 

And because it's been a while since we had a limerick, here is one for my sister:

In restaurants, there's nary a clue
of the mine field on the menu.
But quarantining your meats
away from your wheats,
leaves your insides like new and not goo.

*This may be an exaggeration.  The pesticides are making my brain foggy.

The perfect murder

I have always been fascinated by murder mysteries, detective stories, law and order.  There's a sense of excitement and anticipation in knowing that I'm about to be in for a roller coaster ride of twists and turns but that hopefully the storytelling hands are capable and will lead to a satisfying ending.

Sometimes I like my mysteries to have a supernatural twist because it opens up limitless possibilities in the world of my imagination.  In fact, the first story I ever wrote was a supernatural murder mystery called "Queen Elizabeth's Revenge."  I must have been in 4th or 5th grade when I wrote it, and all I can remember now is that it involved Queen Elizabeth I and an emerald ring that had special powers and made the finger that was wearing it fall off her dead corpse.  I also remember scaring my sister quite heartily with it. 

Anyway, I haven't ever been able to get past my fascination with the macabre, and this still plays into my creative process.  As I've mentioned here in the last few weeks, I've been trying to piece together a perfect murder that would stump everyone involved.  This is for a script I'm working on.  At first I thought it would be a piece of cake because of my vast research into the subject (i.e. years of watching Colombo and Hitchcock films and reading Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen mysteries).  However, I quickly got myself into trouble by trying to be far too clever for my own good.  The catch-22 of good writing is that you want to write yourself into a corner because that way your audience will be on the edge of their seats wondering how you're going to get your characters out of this mess.  The problem with that is you also have to figure out a plausible way to escape the corner yourself.  While I think I've finally got a handle on the situation as far as my script goes, I thought it might be fun to put some things I've learned into poetical form.

The perfect murder

In cop shows, it's always
the person you least expect,
someone you meet
in the first 10 minutes,
quickly so
that you can forget.

The grieving widow,
the childhood best friend,
the special guest star,
all guilty,
all fueled
by love, greed or revenge.
It's clear they were
too full of passion 
they could never get
away with it.
You can't hide
a thing like that.

The prerequisite
of a perfect murder
is
a void of emotion,
a cold calculation.
The perfect murderer craves
no credit for his crime.
He does it to feed a monster.
He doesn't care
for the world outside.

He needs only
the barest of tools:
a bit of rope,
a locked room,
the perfect alibi.
And when he's finished,
it hardly seems like
murder at all.
This model criminal
casts just enough doubt
as to make it seem possible
that something
supernatural,
some higher power,
came to collect
this "victim,"
this person
whose time was up.

And the dectectives
will scratch their beards
or mustaches
and bumble and
wonder if maybe
they shouldn't
be meddling
with such things.

Of food and dreams

There is a cupcake in the refrigerator.
I am trying to ignore it.
A single cupcake,
a leftover party favor.
It doesn't belong to me,
but I am the only one here.
Devilish little cake,
it whispers promises and compliments.
It has denounced its owner
and pledged eternal love to me.
I didn't earn you, cupcake.
I have not accomplished anything today.
I sit here, cold, watching the rain,
the sky the color of uncaring.
Two pairs of socks dress my feet,
I am cocooned in a fleece blanket,
I know all the news of the world.
This has been my day,
decidedly not dessert-worthy.
I put you out of my mind.

Back to work, 
testing the wall.
I push one brick, I knock against another.
I keep prodding like a toddler
to find one that isn't fully committed.
One brick that wobbles,
I'll kick and claw.
I'll bleed on it
until, like a decayed tooth,
it just falls out.
Then I find myself on the other side.
A sunshine world.
The people see me and wonder,
where have you been?
I don't tell them of the time I wasted
chasing other people's cupcakes.

Is there a twelve-step program for this?

At one point in my life I felt confident enough to make a sweeping generalization about short stories.  Basically, I hated them.  My argument was, by the time I get invested in one, it's over.  There were only ever a few short stories I really liked.  A lot of them were Poe's.  And ironically for me (because I dislike James Joyce so intensely), certain ones from Dubliners.  Maybe if I'm on an airplane for five hours and have only the New Yorker to read, then I might give another short story a chance.

But . . . I'm about to share a secret with you.  I think some of my short story loathing was born out of jealousy of short story writers.  See, it takes a real talent to be able to create characters the reader cares about, a mood, a theme and a message all in under 10,000 words.  I don't think I have that capability.  It's why I like TV shows- they go on and on and on and you have seasons to develop your stories and characters (unless you get canceled).

Once I was able to pinpoint my major issues with short stories, I was able to work through them.  I mean, I like children's stories.  They're easy to swallow.  They often don't have many layers.  And consider a poem.  Is a poem that much different from a short story?  Poets are trying to convey something in an even shorter amount of space.  My thing with poetry, though, is that much of the time you're really only investing in a page or two.  Whatever effort you put into understanding it, it's rare that you feel ripped from the world when you finish reading a poem. 

All that aside, I decided to make an effort to put some short story elements into a poem.  Maybe if I could marry the two, I could be more accepting.  This is my attempt at a poem in three parts, connected by a common theme:

 Knowledge Is Power

I.
Mom used to say
she had eyes in the back of her head.
I wonder when I will grow mine.

II.
Would I recognize myself on the street
if I was walking five steps behind,
my back half,
my other half
and I
never properly introduced?

III.
When did we give up our fascination
with the backs of cereal boxes?
Or did cereal boxes
become too unwieldy
because we buy them Costco-size?

The horror of health

The vegetables in my refrigerator are causing me anxiety.  It's not that I don't want to eat them.  I do.  It's just that there's so damn many of them, they can't last.  I'm afraid to open the fridge for fear of witnessing the last throes of a tomato.  When it's dinner time I hesitate between the eggplant and the zucchini.  Which one faces a greater danger of expiring?  I pick up the zucchini.  "I'll come back for you, eggplant!  Tomorrow!  Just hold on!" Then later, guilt: "More.  I could have cooked more.  Why didn't I make ratatouille?  I could have used two for it.  And I didn't!"  It's a regular Schindler's list up in my kitchen.

Here's how it all started:  a couple months ago I joined a CSA.  It's great.  Everything is fresh and vibrant.  The colors are rich and coursing with nutrients.  It's all so plentiful:

It's also a lot of veg.  I didn't realize it at the time, but even between the three people in our household, it takes some considerable menu planning to use each and every one of those little life-givers.  First I took the approach of showing respect to nature by trying to feature each vegetable, but I soon came to grips with the fact that I am not creative enough to feature that many scallions.  Then it became a how-many-vegetables-can-I-cram-into-this-stir-fry type of deal.  I mean, we're only getting these boxes of veggies every other week so you'd think it wouldn't be so difficult, but the other thing to take into account is the time and effort that goes into cooking each meal.  My name is not Ina Garten.  I wish it was, I really do.  Where's Jeffrey? 

So now I'm left with the race to save the escarole from the garbage.  I've practically given up meat I'm eating so many fruits and vegetables.  This is what I get for pursuing a healthy lifestyle.  And yet, every night, triage:  The lemons are shriveling! I run for the juicer.  The grapes are two degrees left of raisins.  Pick out the good ones, refresh in cold water, leave the weak behind.  The plums are growing mushrooms!  There's nothing more we can do.  Body bag (trash).

I'm not ready to give up on the CSA yet or my veggies.  The situation is serious.  It calls for constant vigilance.  And a limerick:

The stress that healthy eating gives
cannot be the right way to live.
The veggies are crying,
the fruit's quickly dying.
How I long for some preservatives!

Why I shouldn't have fish as pets.

I have been having some weird dreams lately.  Maybe weird isn't even the right word . . . just really real dreams.  To the point where I remember reading emails that I can very clearly see in my head but I never received in real life.  It's kind of like that scene in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion where Michele takes a nap in the limo and dreams that she knows the formula for Post-its glue.  It's disturbing to wake up and realize you don't really know the formula.

I also have two recurring dreams.  One is about a tornado and the other is about pet fish.  The tornado dream I've come to believe signifies change, but the fish dream is messed up.  In the fish dream, I'm usually out with some friends and we go into a pet store.  I look at all the animals and then I decide to buy some awesome tropical fish.  At that moment I suddenly realize that I have had an aquarium of fish at home all this time and I haven't fed them for THREE YEARS.  I rush home, terrified of what I'm going to find-- the horrible gaping carcasses of fish staring at me with betrayal.  I get to the room with the aquarium and I'm afraid to turn on the light.  I dump a bunch of food into the tank as if that will make up for everything and then this enormous Piranha-type mutated fish leaps out of the murky water and snaps at me.  I barely get my arm away in time.  Now what does that mean?

In honor of dreams, I wrote about another familiar phenomenon:

Falling in Sleep

It disturbs us.
A nightmare we can't quite recall,
where a hint of evil lingers:
an apple that's too polished,
a clown whose grin is too wide,
an argument too easily won.

It happens when we think it won't.
in the No Man's Land of our minds,
and just as we're settling into our canoes
it's over the ledge,
hearts expanding, filling
each limb with rushing air,
until the bungee cord around our waists
takes back some slack and we bounce,
midair,
blood bubbling in our ears,
legs twitching as we wonder,
why didn't my heart burst?

Bad poetry, or What I will do for money

I saw an ad on Craigslist for a card company that was looking for fresh poems for greeting and holiday cards.  There was a whole submission process involved.  It did seem to pay pretty well, so I went to their website to check out what kinds of poems made it onto their cards.  You can probably imagine the sappy verses about love feeling like the sun on your face, cream-colored ponies and crisp apple strudel.  But they said they wanted something new and different from what they had.  I wasn't sure how to proceed. 

Do I give them my best work?  Really put forth an effort?  I know you're supposed to try your best at everything you do, but I wasn't sure I wanted to give up ownership of something I was proud of.  As a friend of mine who did some ghost writing put it, "I wrote the scene and then I thought, wow, that's pretty good.  That may be the best scene I've ever written.  I don't want this guy to put his name on my best scene.  So I scaled it down a bit.  And then I scaled it down again."  Or something like that.  I didn't write it down when he was talking to me.

So that's what I decided to do.  I took some ideas that could turn into pretty decent poems, and I turned the volume waaaaaaay down.

Example (on love):
If you were a season,
you'd be the first day of summer.
If you were a city,
you'd be Paris in the spring.
If you were a holiday,
you'd be Christmas morning.
If you were a dream,
You'd be the one that came true.

I was pretty embarrassed by that, so I tempered it with this one (for encouragement):

Hero's Low

This is the part of the movie
when the hero can't see a way out.
His back is against the wall,
surrounded on all sides.
This is the point where he thinks
maybe I won't win the fight.
What if I give up, surrender?
Will it really be so bad?
But maybe the hero doesn't realize
all the people back home still believe in him.
They know he has a purpose.
All he has to do is steel himself,
and come out, guns blazing.
The cavalry is just over the ridge.

I didn't mind that one so much.  Then I tried a Christmas poem:


I imagine coming home this Christmas,
turning down the block
and passing houses, brightly lit.
It is night.  The street is silent,
the shopping over, the presents nestled
beneath the pine.
A wind stirs, prompting my excitement.
It swirls between the chimneys,
knocking snow to the white, pillowed ground.
I hum a carol as I walk up the pathway.
The smell of Christmas dinner in the air.
I move to ring the bell--
a delighted cry rings out.
Peering through the window,
there you all are,
gathered round the table,
piled high with the day's festivities.
I see your expressions of joy
and I long to hug you.
Though I cannot be there this year,
you are here with me,
in my mind and in my heart.

Yeah.  Can we just pretend that we never talked about this?

No animals were harmed in the making of this poem.

There is a car outside my window that needs to be dealt with.  Whenever it gets turned on, it makes a horrible ear-piercing screech.  The sound doesn't end.  It goes on for ten minutes.  What is the driver doing?  Is he checking to see if the sound will go away?  It's not going away, sir!  I keep sitting here at my desk/dining room table waiting for the car to drive off and leave me and everyone in a five-block radius in peace.

It has been three weeks since I first heard the sound.  At first I thought maybe it was someone visiting our across-the-street neighbors, the ever popular alleged drug dealers.  Those lovable thugs, they get so many visitors.  I'm sure every neighborhood has its own variety.  Ours take themselves literally in every sense of the word.  They are content to blast music but not just any music.  If it's Sunday morning, they will blast Easy Like Sunday Morning.  On repeat.

Anyway, it wasn't them.  I know this because last week I ran to the window after a particularly long session of acoustic bombardment.  I was intent on discovering which car it was and . . . after that I'm not sure what my next step would have been.  My downstairs neighbor once confronted a woman a few houses down who was laying on her horn for a good 15 minutes.  This was because she was too lazy to get out of the car and ring the doorbell for her friend/boyfriend/kid/whatever.  They got into a pretty good fight that nearly came to blows but luckily didn't since my friend is a dude.  The moral of the story is, think twice before you pick a fight in da hood.  So I ran to the window just in time to see the offending vehicle pull away from the curb.  Aha! I thought.  I've got your number.

The next time that car started up, I was ready.  I feel it's necessary to give you some sense of what it sounded like:

Imagine a bird, perhaps a canary.
Singing its sweet little song,
it gets to the trilling of a particularly
complex arpeggio when
an evil child plucks the bird
right out of the cage, mid-note.
The child holds the bird
in such a way that it can only tweet
the same note
in terror
over and over and over again until
the sadistic youth
swaps the birdcage for an electric fan.
The bird is dropped in its new prison,
the fan turned on so that now
the bird is shrieking
two variations of the same note
back and forth, back and forth
while the fan blades batter
its poor little organ.
The evil child then extracts
a cricket
from the depths of his pocket.
The poor thing clearly
has been through the ringer,
but it's not over yet
because now
the devil child
feverishly rubs together the cricket's wings,
chirping faster, faster
as if making fire.*
The bird and the cricket,
trilling and chirping,
shrieking and burning.
That is what this car sounds like.

My roommate happened to be around when the car screamed to life.  "Why doesn't he get that flippin' car fixed?"  "I know," I said.  "Let's see if he drives away."  Five minutes . . . six minutes . . . seven minutes . . . "ARGGGGGGHHHHHH I WILL CALL TRIPLE A MYSELF IF IT WILL TOW YOUR ASS OUT OF HERE!"

We ran to the window.  There it was, rattling, heaving.  The hood was up.  The driver stood before it, trying to solve the puzzle.  He tinkered.  He got back into the car.  He shut it off.

"Huh," I said to my roommate.  "I guess he's aware of the problem."


*I do not condone the torture of animals.  Do NOT try this at home.

Assonation in our nation's capital.

I received an email from my dad this morning that read, "Can I be assonated?"  My first thought was, "assassinated?"  Is there a threat?  Is it real? Don't you have to be a public figure?  Maybe I should scroll down further. 

Then I gathered that my dad was sending me a tip for a blog entry based on the crazy incident he witnessed (though it did NOT involve assassination).  He works in D.C., and apparently a taxi cab crashed into the U.S. tax court right in front of him.  It just dove straight into the side of the building-- an enormous federal building, which is encased in granite.  Luckily no one was hurt, not even the driver.  Of course, this being near Capitol Hill, every fire engine, police car, and ambulance in the mid-Atlantic region clogged the street. 

Now, you might assume as I did that this would be news.  I searched high and low, hoping to find at the very least a picture.  No such luck.  Instead I wrote a news headline in the form of a haiku to pay tribute to the cab's flight of freedom (or protest against taxation):

Taxi cab no match
for granite face of justice:
tax court collects win.

Then I started to wonder if a lot of news headlines are secretly haiku and I just never noticed before.  (I was also a bit slow to admit defeat to spell check regarding the plural of haiku being haiku.)  This launched me on a search across the web to see if I could find any haiku headlines.  Sadly, I saw only one that fit the bill.  From the LA Times:

Obama rejects
criticism that he's been
too hard on Wall Street.

So then I got carried away (this is becoming a theme), this time to turn today's headlines into a form of Japanese poetry: 

Yom Kippur party
leads to random drug test fail:
Lohan back to jail?

Prop 19 splits state,
prompts law officer debate
for November vote.

Photo puts firemen
into hot water over
nude chili party.

Okay, I think I now understand why no reputable news sources incorporate haiku into their headlines. 

The Waste Land

I mentioned the other day that my neighborhood sometimes resembles the Gaza Strip.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

 

But then if I stand on my roof and turn slightly to the left, I see this:

 

And if I turn even further and tilt my head up I see this 

I was thinking about perspectives.  When I'm up on the roof, you can usually tell how I'm feeling about things/life at that moment by which direction I'm facing.

The urban palm tree view makes me feel inconsequential when I look out there and think about how many people are in this city.  Then I realize that I can't see any of them from where I stand so I imagine it's a post-apocalyptic neighborhood.  No matter how bad a problem I might be facing at the moment, there could always be zombies or flesh eating viruses that wipe us out.  Things are looking up! 

If I have writer's block, I like to sit on the top of the steps that lead to the roof and face the Hollywood sign.  I try to get past the horrible conventionalism of it and focus on the idea behind the sign.  Then I immediately flash to Pretty Woman where the guy in the street is yelling, "Everybody who comes to Hollywood's got a dream.  What's your dream?" Then I wish that I could write Pretty Woman.

If it's just a really gorgeous day out like most days in LA, I might take a beach chair up and face the sun.  I will open the latest issue of Bon Appetit magazine and I will plot ways to cook an enormous green tomato. 

Today, well, you're getting a limerick so guess which direction I'm facing.

Ode to the Spider I Killed Last Night

You're the second one I've seen so far.
As big as the freakin' Death Star.
Though your game was well-played,
you were foiled with Raid.
Yet I still wonder where all your friends are.

You're apologizing to me?

Back in college I wrote a poem that included a line I thought was pretty great: "a stitch that itches the womb."  The poem itself wasn't anything special.  It was about humanity, which is basically the broadest topic you could pick to write about, and I only decided to do it because I saw a magazine in the supermarket that had a photo essay on fetuses.  I had to have an assignment to turn in the next day.  Boom.  Fetus poem.  I secretly loved that one line, though.

I was a little nervous when I had to read the poem out in class because I knew my theme was flimsy to say the least.  There's always that moment after you read something out loud where the whole room is silent, taking it in, and you wonder which way the audience is going to tip.  But it was that line, only that line, that saved me.  I got a lot of praise for it, with my professor specifically picking it out.  "A really nice use of internal rhyme," she said, "I love the way it plays on the tongue."

The trouble is, after I turned the poem in, I suddenly wondered, did I write that?  Was that my original line?  Could I really come up with something so neat?  Did I subconsciously plagiarize it? I was reading a lot of Plath and Sexton at the time.  It did sound distinctly Plath to me . . .

I didn't want to know.  If I wasn't capable of that level of grown-up writing, and if even my own brain was overcompensating, then I'd rather just leave well enough alone.  I avoided the Google search box.  I ignored the book Ariel sitting on my shelf.  There was one poem I suspected I borrowed from in that collection, and I didn't want to go near it.  So it went on for nine years until the day I recently lost my job.

Feeling sucker-punched and directionless, I was questioning my purpose once again.  It was a familiar place to be.  I decided that I'd had enough.  I had to know: did I write that damn line?  To the Google search box!  I typed in the quote.  Something came up.

What's this?  An apology?  Google actually apologized for not being able to come up with an exact match.  I could scarcely dare to believe it.  There was only one other way to be sure.  To the bookshelf!

I went into my bedroom and dusted old Ariel off the shelf.  Even so many years later I still knew exactly which page to go to.  From a poem called Lady Lazarus:  "And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls."

That's it?  That's it???  Granted, that's a beautiful line, but I didn't plagiarize!  The stitch that itches was mine.  My line.  I wrote it.  Now, I feel safe to say, here is the poem:

Anyone Could Join the Circus

The first month we look like worms,
eyes in a sac, a stitch that itches the womb.
We are bulbs of flesh, photographed
for Time magazine's latest fetus spread.
This is how millions
discovered just how close we'd come
to being left in a shape nowhere near human,
had the covers been suddenly yanked
off our cozy amniotic waterbeds.

At three months we have the snouts of pigs.
At eight we could be the progeny of a pachyderm.
What is to keep us from popping out
with a small, wrinkled trunk in those last
two months?  Maybe those who are allergic
to peanuts have been the humans all along . . .

Would my mother have loved a child
more elephant than not?