That's Entertainment

That’s Entertainment

an unreliable narrator

had an encounter w/ a

strange woman in a bar

& emerged unscathed

            hush

a fly-by-night relator

subtly tried to refract

onus after pestering a

gratified man to admit

            hush

an unscrupulous teller

attempts an alteration

to not revolve around

misfortunes of others

            hush

on the outside

looking in

every overture to the

language of

            small complex

stories

is mere

entertainment

a choose

your own

adventure

           

***

I thought about working on my ‘Sillyheart’ edit while I ate lunch today but I found myself pecking away at a poem.  Adam Baldwin added some new songs to a Spotify playlist and one of the gems was The Jam’s ‘That’s Entertainment’ – hence the title. I rolled a bunch of words around in my hands until I came up with the above.

I am also still working on a short story called ‘Corner Store’. It keeps bumping around in my brain so even with the edit on tap I have to follow through for Bertie and Mattie. I’ve got five pages written so far which is less than nothing but it is a beginning. It’s all in my head and yet I struggle to find the words. It’s terribly frustrating when you can see a story but it won’t land on the page.

Another heat wave has gripped the Maritime  and lack of sleep has me feeling a little queasy. I’m not one to complain too much about any weather anymore but I’m not enjoying the discomfort and the tossy turny nights. It makes me feel more stabby than poetic. Oh, the humidity. Stay cool.

In propinquity,

Nic

Keeping House

Keeping House

I often find my truest self

in invitations to over-haul

re-arrange the chesterfield

the ottoman the wingbacks

dust the bookshelves the

family photos the nooks

and crannies neglected

polish the floor wash the

dishes piled on the counter

the richness of tan pennies

chiming in my apron pocket

call me to private reveries

of Cattulla’s silk bedspread

keeping house reciting taut

penetrating poetry into the

urgency of the spin cycle

swirling gyrating orbiting

working into a frenzy then

interrupted abruptly by the

clunk & chime of the cuckoo

clock kids will be home soon

dinner isn’t going to cook

itself – better snap out of it

I often find my truest self

outside of my inauthentic

self recounting the words of

a Latin poet I hate & I love

what ever

would my husband say?

**

Catullus is a poet that is new to me. He was startling for his time, often explicit in his writings, and while nothing is shocking these days, it’s always a marvel to stumble upon one of the rebels, who refused to censor his work or his passions. To speak so overtly is the true rebellion, to not be afraid, as Chuck Palahniuk once told me, to look like an asshole. (To this day, that is the best advice I’ve ever been given.)

I look forward to … ahem … exploring more from this poet.

Too hot to really think today but I pecked and that’s good.

In propinquity,

Nic

Where The Possibilities of Humiliation & Failure are Ample

Where The Possibilities of Humiliation & Failure are Ample

it is a dangerous arena, love

an unruly action, to love

a reverie to submit to, to be loved

you sing for them, your lovers

we read to them, our paramours

they trounce us, the Muses

in love’s amphitheater

a procession to up-end all illusions

pageantry of strange beauties

to prepare you for the firing squad

to show you how to dodge the bullets

to set you up to face heart starvation

it is a dangerous arena, love

it is a precarious quandary, love

it is unwarranted mischief, love

love

the place where the promise of

humiliation and failure are ample

exposed hearts be wary, take heed

eager accomplices, become ensnared

in the madness, to endure forever

**

Something more inspired by the one and only Leonard Cohen.  The title of this poem is a direct quote from the interview he did with Jian Ghomeshi.  I stumbled onto it after learning Ghomeshi will be a headliner for this year’s Word On The Street book and magazine fair, reading from his critically acclaimed book, 1982 (which I STILL need a copy of but will wait until August 6^th for the trade paperback edition to come out).  Excited by the news and penciling the date in my calendar so I don’t miss it, I browsed Jian’s website and found the interview.  Mid-way through I started writing this little poem, another little writing exercise to help keep my head above water.  I’m slowly moving back into my prose.  I wrote a little more on ‘Large-Hearted’ yesterday.  I wasn’t feeling especially well in the afternoon and started to daydream about being home, curled up and resting when my lonely brain stumbled on a revelation for the story.  It came as a wee flash so I did the responsible thing; I opened up the document and started typing despite feeling light-headed and queasy.  I was still at my work desk so I was required to be lucid and awake, keeping busy was the best way to distract myself from the yuck.  I’m pretty sure that I have completed the framework of the story and found its ending but I now have the task of fleshing it out and editing before it can be shared.   Watch this space.  In the meantime, the poetry is free-flowing.  I’ve built up a bit of a reserve now.  Most of them still need a bit of work and will be blogged shortly.

I’m still not feeling one hundred percent myself today and it’s raining like a bitch outside, it’s been wet all week in fact and there’s no sign of sun until at least Sunday if we’re lucky.  This summer’s weather has been undesirable.  Between week long stretches of nothing but rain that morph into record-breaking heatwave-ish days, it’s been fairly uncomfortable.  When it rains, outdoor activities are limited and when it’s so hot and humid that you can’t breathe, outdoor activities are also limited.  I long for a nice stretch of warm, true summer weather, sunshine, a warm breeze and enjoying it, outdoors.  Is that too much to ask for?  If any of you have an in with Mother Nature, can you see what you can do about my request?  I’d be most grateful.

Perhaps I’ll peek more at ‘Large-Hearted’ after this blog is complete, since it’s fairly quiet on the work front.  You watch, I say that now but as soon as I turn to my pages, it’ll get bonkers busy.  Murphy’s Law.

Enjoy your day.  Pay a kindness forward.

In propinquity,

Nic

Dear Enemy

Dear Enemy

in my winter of discontent

I wrote you a bantam poem

so that you may dance

but

it was stolen from my desk

lifted from a thinking woman’s

pile of un-sated beliefs

I imagine the guileful culprit

will recite the pejorative nouns

with profound fatigue and regret

whatever the ceremony

my faithful mandate of polarized

ideologies always handled with aplomb

reactionary attempts to deconstruct

spoken in some pinched narrow voice

enacted with priggish mannerisms

your poem

on loving a man with a particular quality

tolerating his unrefined imperfections

and turning to him for unbridled advice

is really about how we compromise

and continually manipulate each other

a typewritten archive carefully measured

in a fatalistic rhythm aptly proportioned

reverence

the unfortunate verity of its disappearance

means your poem remains anonymous

in the sustaining circumstance of privacy

intimacy shared

intimacy denied

imbued with a sense of irrational longing

my trusted voice denied its target audience

stolen by the enemy

stolen for spite

by someone who does not think you

                warrant the attention

**

It's Open Heart Forgery open mic night!  It's hot as Hades around these parts so hanging out at the Spring Garden Library might be a little bit sweaty but I'm looking forward to mingling with writers and maybe read a  poem or two if I'm for it.  I'll have a bit of time to kill between the end of the work day and the event so I'll likely drown myself in ice water and try and scarf down a bit of dinner.  I am still feeling a bit of left over elation from Matt's show on Sunday.  I love it when the good feelings linger.

Not much else to report except I just ate a really sweet apple and it seemed to have quenched my thirst for the time being and I'm 3/4 done my crossword.  Not to bad for my Monday (your Tuesday) eh?

Stay cool, kids.

In propinquity,

Nic