love is a dangerous angel

so, i am in this adolescent lit class this summer and i have to write a paper and, even more so than usual, i don't know what i'm going to write about and i have to decide quickly because it is a summer class after all so the paper is due really soon and, to put it very mildly, i'm at a loss.
luckily my instructor for this class is not only a brilliant children's lit scholar but an equally superb teacher. she recommended that i read some of the books in a series called the weetzie bat books by francesca lia block. the first one that i read was the first one in the series entitled weetzie bat
it's a fairy tale, its wonderful, its profound and i wish that i had something like this to read when i was an adolescent. anyway here is weetzie's take on love:

Weetzie's heart felt so full with love, so full, as if it could hardly fit in her chest. She knew they were all afraid. But love and disease are both like electricity, Weetzie thought. They are always there--you can't see or smell or hear, touch, or taste them, but you know they are there like a current in the air. We can choose, Weetzie thought, we can choose to plug into the love current instead. And she looked around the table at Dirk and Duck and My Secret Agent Lover Man and Cherokee and Witch Baby--all of them lit up and golden like a wreath of lights.
I don't know about happily ever after....but i know about happily, Weetzie Bat thought.


i was so overwhelmed when i read this. this short book is like one long sigh.
for anyone who is reading this and knows this book all i have to say is that buddy was my duck, i let him go and some part of me is always sad about that, always mourning. that's probably why i haven't found another duck.

oh, and dev---in the above quote that says "love and disease are both like electricity" i thought of your paper and of the work you are doing with shelley's Frankenstein

a recapitulation of father's day...

so here's how father's day sounded like. i called my parent's house on sunday to actually talk to my mom and inquire about how my father's "special day" unfolded as well as to make sure that my card arrived on time. you may be wondering why i would talk to my mother rather than my father. well, my father has hardly any hearing whatsoever and so he doesn't like to answer the phone. however, he does have hearing aids that work just fine only one of them is broken so he's waiting on the va benefit to repair it (hopefully that will take place before 2015) or get him new ones...i can't remember. anywho, i call and my father answers the phone and it goes something like this:

"HELLO? HELLO?"
"HEY DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HELLO? HELLO"
"IT'S ME, DAD...DAD IT'S YOUR YOUNGEST CHILD"
"HELLO?" (indistinct mumbling away from the phone)"HELLO?" (mumbles away from the phone again saying something to the effect that he thinks someone's on the other end of the line but he can't find the volume control on his end)
"DAD, IT'S ME!!!!! DON'T HANG (click) up"

so i call back again (praying to whatever higher power there is to place my mother at the receiver)

"HELLO? HELLO?"
(damn, i say to myself) "DAD, IT'S ME!!"
"HEY, WHAT CHA DOING BOY?"
"I'M CALLING TO SEE HOW YOUR DAY IS GOING"
"RAINING...NO WE HAVEN'T GOT ANY RAIN YET"
"IS MOM AROUND?"
"YOUR MOTHER? YEAH, SHE'S RIGHT HERE...SHE'S BEEN SICK THOUGH...I'LL LET YOU TALK TO HER."

(thank you higher being)

"hey ma, you're sick?"
"yea, i don't know what i have but i feel terrible"
"can you tell me what's been going on?"
"well, my body hurts, i haven't been able to eat, and i just broke a fever"
"sounds like the flu to me"
"you think?, i haven't been around anybody with the flu"
"i don't think that you have to be around anybody mom, because you can pick up all sorts of stuff"
"well, i'm fixing myself some tea...i'm feeling a little bit better"
"good, you should probably try an eat some toast or something"
"well, i sent your father to walgreen's to get some pediasure to drink. i even wrote down the name for him but he came back with pepcid instead. i swear he's been bitchin about taking care of me" (i know my mother is sick because she doesn't really cuss)
"well tell him to suck it up"
"yeah, i think i will. listen honey, i better let you go, i am still really tired"
"ok ma, tell dad that i hope he had a nice father's day"
"oh, he did, he went over to your sister's house for lunch. he also got your card."

(thank you again higher power)

"great, well get some rest and i will check up on you tomorrow"
"ok honey, love you"
"love you too, talk to you later"


TADA!!!!!
welcome to my crazy family
i love them so much

poem of the week because it has been one of those days

really crappy day today and i don't know why, exactly. however, this poem by thom gunn made me giggle...sometimes a giggle is all you need....







Thom Gunn

Courage, A Tale
by Thom Gunn

There was a Child
who heard from another Child
that if you masturbate 100 times
it kills you.

This gave him pause;
he certainly slowed down quite a bit
and also
kept count.

But, till number 80,
was relatively loose about it.
There did seem plenty of time left.

The next 18
were reserved for celebrations,
like the banquet room in a hotel.

The 99th time
was simply unavoidable.

Weeks passed.

And then he thought
Fuck it
it's worth dying for,

and half an hour later
the score rose from 99 to 105.

a pattern of this blog...very floral

a cool site you should check it out

http://www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

poem for the week: the difference between poetry and rhetoric

Audre Lorde


Power
by Audre Lorde

The difference between poetry and rhetoric
is being
ready to kill
yourself
instead of your children.

I am trapped on a desert of raw gunshot wounds
and a dead child dragging his shattered black
face off the edge of my sleep
blood from his punctured cheeks and shoulders
is the only liquid for miles and my stomach
churns at the imagined taste while my mouth splits into dry lips
without loyalty or reason
thirsting for the wetness of his blood
as it sinks into the whiteness
of the desert where I am lost
without imagery of magic
trying to make power out of hatred and destruction
trying to heal my dying son with kisses
only the sun will bleach his bones quicker.

The policeman who shot down a 10-year-old in Queens
stood over the boy with his cop shoes in childish blood
and a voice said “Die you little motherfucker” and
there are tapes to prove that. At his trial
this policeman said in his own defense
“I didn't notice the size or nothing else
only the color.” and
there are tapes to prove that, too.

Today that 37-year-old white man with 13 years of police forcing
has been set free
by 11 white men who said they were satisfied
justice had been done
and one black woman who said
“They convinced me” meaning
they dragged her 4'10” black woman's frame
over the hot coals of four centuries of white male approval
until she let go the first real power she ever had
and line her own womb with cement
to make a graveyard for our children.

I have not been able to touch the destruction within me.
But unless I learn to use
the difference between poetry and rhetoric
my power too will run corrupt as poisonous mold
or lie limps and useless as an unconnected wire
and one day I will take my teenaged plug
and connect it to the nearest socket
raping an 85-year-old white woman
who is somebody's mother
and as I beat her senseless and set a torch to her bed
a greek chorus will be singing in ¾ time
“Poor thing. She never hurt a soul. What beasts they are.”

doors

"Always in the long corridors of the psyche
doors are opening and doors are slamming shut"

Marge Piercy from "Song of the Fucked Duck"



friday evening i was hungry and restless with worry. i was caught between my desire to leave because of hunger and my longing to stay where i was...because of this same hunger. i went out...the desire fueled by my hunger won...trumped, as it were, the excuses to stay put...to eat the words of the book that i was reading at that moment. actually, both desires drew a compromise that involved take-out.
waiting, waiting for my food i noticed a woman sitting in a dark corner of the restaurant. i know this woman, not by name but by recognition. she walks. she walks around town most of the time. i have only ever seen her walking so it took me a while to place her in the restaurant because she was sitting.
i heard her get up. i heard her ask the server about time: she wanted to know what time darkness settles in. i tried to answer the question in my mind...to myself and i didn't even know the answer. the server told her something...i think she said 8 but i'm not sure, i was still calculating. what time does it get dark?
my food came up...handed to me in styrofoam and plastic. i paid. i turned to leave and the unfamiliar-now-familiar woman was standing next to me. she knew me. she has seen me around with other people that she's noticed before. i was familiar to her. she wanted to know something so she asked me a question...a question that i could not answer for her...a question that required walking...perhaps even walking in circles. she thanked me for my time. she said goodbye. i went to my car, with very heavy feet and my plastic bag of food, cell phone, and cigs absurdly hanging off of my body--useless ornaments, swinging. she kept walking, the other way. i felt like saying goodbye and i also wanted to tell her that i understood. goodbye is easier but the other understanding is beyond words...it only recognizes.
some say that this woman is a poet...a remarkable poet, a tragic poet. i say that she is a walking poet. others say that she has a psychiatric condition...i say that that assumption is relative...it depends on who is doing the diagnosing and it's usually a doctor who is sitting down in their own dark corner of some dingy restaurant, and who has no idea...no idea at all.
i heard the other day that dreams about houses are pictures of the psyche...i believe that because i believe in basements. i also believe in basements under basements as well. you are in your house you walk downstairs and you realize that the stairs stop. the room under the house is dark, a little cool and there are no windows. most don't see the elevator that leads to a deeper room, cooler and darker. some do...i did (or, rather, still do) but even if they do get further than most and ride the elevator down...still most don't see the door in this basement's basement. it beckons anyway. in a certain kind of silence, you can hear it...like the gentle static sound of snow falling. not only have i seen it, i have had my hand on the doorknob a couple of times, i have even turned it. something tells me, however, that once it is opened and i walk through there is no coming back. the inside of that door has no knob.
so i know the temptation. i know what the walking means. i know this woman and she is brave, to walk between two worlds and yet be unable to distinguish between the two. to only be recognized by the vision of others who have either been at the door or have themselves trampled through. walking makes it better. it eases the pain of the door with no knob slamming shut.