Blog? Oh, right. Regrettable looks set in stone. Fixation. Ahnold Conan. Unusual flowers. A limbic poem.

Not sure why I wanted to try to maintain another site. It is nice to come back and see some work posted here.

I can’t stop thinking about three themes, but am trying not to blow my wad. By writing about them before they become lyrics or poems. And it’s nice to do something with these cycling thoughts beyond stacking a piece of paper or filling another 13kb of text on my laptop. Do I try another writing group? Stand in line to read on zoom? Get influenced by the words of others and spot patterns or even trends. Ooh, trends. Give a firm smile on feedback like someone likes one piece more than another. Might I then use said feedback to cherry pick before patting myself on the head? Feel downright precious about the loverly evening before nodding off into a snug and smug dreamland.

Between zooms with dozens of students and meets with committees every week, there’s really only one person I want to see on zoom. Maybe two. It’s pretty much one. The other is a hungry ghost. Unus Mundus. My game face hurts and I’m tired. I feel like a fool. And never know who is talking to me in the way that I really speak. Few can really hear me. Cassandra parts her hair down the middle and rises as Persephone. I am a limbic writer. It does not matter what that means to anyone. Humans who go through extreme childhood trauma are chemically marked. And also statistically resilient. Even if you live in the self-help section, there will never be a return to normal or contentment with exclusively normal companionship. It’s chemical. And we are unusual flowers.

Amongst said flowers, I can feel a ruminative longing pulling at me and have to be careful with that tug. It is recommended to allow two minutes to think about a fixation, but there was no other parameter to that formula. Is that two minutes a day or per four minute time increment? Is this metric out of 0.0666667? That last neighbor of the beast is minding its own business but would love to help. I could really use some guide rails with beauty and terror taking up so much lung capacity. Mostly, I need a heads up if there’s a monster who might turn me to stone. So I can wipe any kind of regrettable look off my face: ugly scream or hiss, backslashes for eyebrows over bulging sclera eclipsed by o-gape lips. Or worse, some kind of unsuspecting slack-jawed mouth-breathing look of wha? I don’t really want to be immortalized as a punch line. As perfect as that sounds.

Unusual flowers can bring you joy like no one else, but they can also take the joy away and leave you rattled. I know, that’s my bullshit unmet needs, and I tried hard to set up some dumb rules as if I could just avoid any kind of sloppy handling of my super-glued psyche. One thing after another without knowing anymore where I begin or end and, blammo, I did get knocked out. Creatively wilted. I used to have many methods of healing, but it’s been quite an adjustment going from living alone most of my life, before I felt I could be a worthy companion, to having a 24/7 watch party while trying to keep my mind toons from showing. Somehow I haven’t ruin my marriage but did wave goodbye to many familiar ways of coping and being. After great loss: nil and pain and outrageous acts, challenging death, foot up on the hill, casting scream songs over battlefields; it is not hard to notice my kind there, swathed in rusty sawteeth and phantom arms. Can I drag you or devise a pulley. Can I save you without being killed?

Flower doesn’t get it. If I were a teen, I’d have had Conan The Barbarian open its skull and make me a useless soup bowl. …Conan from the paperbacks and even the comic books, not Arnold. No offense, Mr Schwartz; you looked like someone’s Conan but those overacted blathering sounds were cheesy. Did a couple of bees fly into Ray’s Romano’s mouth moments before he tumbled down a hill? WUHWUHWUHWUH WHOOP WHOOP BULGIKOOOOW. His propellor arms whirling but never quite regaining balance before a final thump. The end. Wait, no, he lives: YAAAAARGLLLOOOEY. [End Scene]

Those sounds ruined the movie. I don’t mean to be mean, but the name “Destroyer” means something to me. You are Conan The Destroyer, now fucking act like it. An archetypal warrior quenched by murderous rage and vindication should not sound like a vaudeville routine. This is serious business, despite your outfits. 

Um, I’ve been working hard on a plan for getting some coping methods back and that plan is coming together now. I figured out how to subsidize a space where I can be alone and hear my inner voice come through it all with me. Reunite. It has been work to prepare, but I am there for longer and longer moments of stories I’d all but abandoned. I can let off some steam by releasing the vocalizing maniac that formed my voiceover and singing skills. It is freeing to have a bit of privacy again to bask in the type of silence I can’t get from a day of audio work. And speak in tongues a bit.

this is a limbic poem
it rattles around kicking up dust
moves the furniture, cleans
up, throws out old rat traps
and all such mistrust
summons magnetic
iron and oxide
leftover rust
blows it to
the wind

scents evaporate faster
in humidity and rain
its memory is etched in there
somewhere
sighs for sensory
association. Makes my fingers
draw receptors through your skin
long and knowing vestiges
draggingly lettered, lovingly intended

please stay longer through this cold day
and fading heartbreak

Leave a Reply