Mourning Pages 5/27/23 – People are jerks. Namastain.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Kurt Vonnegut

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

Stephen Hawking

I’d like to thank some stars who popped in on my life for existing and also for exiting with containment commentary on how cutting or scornful I am. Thought about that and how ugly sarcasm must seem to the Lord’s purer children. How cynicism must smack the holy look off a sinner-turned-saint’s face. Hail Mary and Namastain.

But wait, isn’t this world choking at the brim with paradox and hypocrisy? Don’t purer people show their shock of a thing that undermines them in some way? Their tribe values or their group morals or their own voice? Could this form of criticism be specific to these shiny stars? I thought about how Oscar Wilde boldly wrote out of this absurd world. Cracked some books and realized he might be a twink less vicious than I have been but then that’s apple trifles to tangerine dreams for the Victorian era. A look at modern writers suggests that I could actually stand to open the control valve. The best part of this query was discovering Christopher Moore whose excerpts brought me some much-needed laughter. Looking forward to Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal arriving in the mail.

I was approaching misery before starting our AES section. Audio dudes just don’t talk to women and I’m almost 30 years into the field. I handle gaslight well by now and can remove a few heads to get to the subliminal message in the Russian Doll of it all. But getting to the international arena gave me access to many brilliant thinkers in my field and now I can easily choose stimulating conversation over apathy or criticism from people who just like it simple. I just need to find a pinch of that with a small writing circle. I really like some of the poets on Twitter but what I really want, from within my tank, is to finish a book I’ve worked on then put down then worked on then abandoned for the chance to work with people. Finding a writer or two for mutual support is challenging to do while barely leaving the house. And there are potential pitfalls it turns out like synchronic loops of suffering that start with feeling understood but can end with feeling estranged and alienated until your shadow returns to harvest a clearing. As if life weren’t absurd enough to begin with. I hibernate, mull, thaw, get up, then fight and reason for the energy to dig in anyway so some other surreptitious blamer can ready the rug to pull out from under my summoned enthusiasm. Meanwhile there is still more than enough in the social environment to shake a fist at. Absurdity driven by one materialistic branch or another.

I recently ran into an old acquaintance who said I forgot about your ridiculous sense of humor and I miss it so much. Reread that with a British accent, please. I wanted to reply I forgot about your awkward interjaculatory narration of the actual conversation we are having and I miss it more than Poppycock.

There’s a bit more to that story and my thought reaction that I won’t get into but what scares me is that I may get to the point of reacting out loud to subtext. It’s all absurd, you’re all absurd, and I am absurd. I have just the character for heroically summarizing this sensation:

Let’s go do my thing and hang out. Sound good? I happen to know a good therapist who lives out by Mirror Lake. Let us flit there on my whimsicle. You can sit in back and steer, but I get to ring the bell. Ding! 

It’s such a lively day that even the trip to see Amus Thal will lift your spirit. Spirit, do you need a lift or will you meet us there? Let’s take the scenic route and plus I want to avoid that mucky slump where the land plot twists. It may be a faster route but you gunk up your tires and the whimsicle becomes heavy. By the time you ride back through, more guck cakes on the old muck and compounds the problem. Then by Cross Leg Rd, you’re basically hydroplaning downhill and missing the best part of the trip.

for Amus Thal

Work in progress for the Watershed series. During a work retreat this week at Deer Creek State Park, I got to do some solo hiking and writing. Gathered these leaves on the Adena trail.

prose: cassia and the jackal. golden showers are not funny.

If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria.
Nietzsche

If you need a deep and poignant laugh, consider the Cassia fistula L, also known as the golden shower. C’mon, you know that’s funny. They sit valuable and innocuous, their little pinnate flappers eclipsed—you could almost say they are hiding—when the sun concentrates its long perpendicular smile and we feel the see, feel the shining; coaxes a bright waterfall of golden flaxen lemon blooms weeping from its arms that branch to enfold the spirits on the ground into its dilative physical range of glory. 

With such grace Cassia releases these offerings, attracting their companions in missive source of healing. The anti: diabetic, inflammatory, oxidant, and stagnant motionless and gastronomical space where wait is weight until you see Cassia and know pure bright healing love. Well this cannot be a bad world. It can only be an arbor of seering beauty and sheer grace.

Of course the container can’t be torpid. They tolerate a cold shoulder here and there but too much of that can kill them and why would one risk their own salvation. Even salt on it’s mighty shoulders is but dander of the environment: dry but but a humor and thirst is but to quench. Fistula is full of surprises with a heartwood more durable than yours or mine. 

One of the best—and I mean the very best—things about this golden shower is that the pollinating bees and butterflies have a strange and cunning ally in their fistula mission. Said ally is the golden jackal. I don’t know if I’ve ever observed a more beautiful river dog wolf, but I’ve asked it to come on in to a series I’m writing on our nation’s watersheds.  

This little furry tidbit is drawn to the fruit of the golden shower tree which it eats it with its soft wild fluffy mouth—whether the fruit just tastes good or there is a deeper medicinal need—then disperses the seeds.

LAFogle 5/22/23

Mourning Pages 5/22/23 – SNAPping rats in your psyche

Turns out I’m in a relationship with myself. I mean, obviously, but is it obvious. Am I nice to myself? I like you. You are a fun and constant companion <3 I have no suggestions for your body or your efforts except to maybe say that you could use some more hugs for those beautiful arms holding in one of my favorite souls. Come here, sweetheart. Big big hug.

I’m almost ready, dearie. Just a little more stirring.

Now, when one casts out suggestions planted in your pretty psyche—like what you should or should not be based on the layout of your glands—it is important to save a little nut butter for the next round. One day you’ll have the most delicious starter that no crawly can resist.

Ok, now I want you to be as angry as you’d like and I’ll make ready to snap that rat like a twig if it scurries out to try to call you ugly. 

Ready?

Cahkoo cahkoo: the feminine ideal is not all soft … SNAP!

Cahkoo: the feminine and masculine is the union … SNAP!

Woo! We got some! AROOOOOOOOOOOOO.

You bare your teeth when it tells you to smile. Now look out the window, you see that long line of people waiting to criticize you? Well it’s actually kind of thoughtful of them to take the burden off of you like that. No worries, free bird, they can’t get in here. Wouldn’t know a pane from a salamander’s bark. That’s enough for today. That crazy rat is a big one and we gotta get some supplies to take down that little whispering dread. Those things breed like it’s their purpose and they get you right down to the mites because that entire clan is terrified of the Furies.

Strength – a quick pep talk

My god, she just sent me a strong piece. It is like watching the b-roll of Kali before she destroys those who pretend to want more than a piece of her feminine divine. She is in a material pop-culture hell yet her warrior spirit is divine as her golden heart. I won’t pretend she is not portent or disrespect her with idolatry. I simply love her and admire her spirit, skill, intelligence, and the oneness she vitally contributes to source. She is a powerful source of inspiration that makes me happily champion my own time on this mortal plain. Thank you thank you thank you for being the beautifully complicated you that you are and for gracing me with your appearance. Carry on, love. This world needs you and the eternal will always hold space for you <3 <3 <3

Mourning Pages 5/21/23 – Telepathic sex, AI, mental health, Hannibal Lector, hyper-lubrication wreaks the endocrine system, Mr T, rubberized chickens, circles of hell, absurdity

Do you ever get the strange sensation that you might be having telepathic sex? No? Me neither. Sure is a pretty day. Yep. Ok, have fun. You too. Yep. Roger that. Yep. Bye! We’ll see ya. Yep yep yeppers.

Allow me to give you a little back story. I was born. 25 years later, I adopted “George of the Jungle” as my theme song, swapping the word “George” with “bored.” In truth, there’s no end to my fascination with plant life.

But enough about me. Why is it so crippling to tell someone how you feel? Just say it: “I miss you and I’m sorry you treated me like a fucking groupie even though we expressed a connection and capacity deeper than the average chat,” said the chit. Chit chat paddy whack chitty shitty bang bang.

I suck at this. Say it: I love your heart and accept all of you but stay away from me because you are a bull in a psychic china shop. Nope.

Perhaps I should give up on this and just go groom the show ponies. They’re up next and will be pooping out poetry prompts. I want to get involved as I get a splash of dopamine with every Like. The overall theme of this year’s word circus is AI. Are we scared as a hole society of losing our programmed ability to feel if we rely on AI to chat about the weather? Do our institutions need to buy different hoops for student ponies to jump through to obey their tedious grail tasks for that golden diploma of soft skills mixed with hard skills mixed with viscous sun-baked skittles? Will a chicken cease to peck at a button if their reward center can no longer be stimulated and how does the emulated pecking of artificial intelligence interfere with our own basic sufferable human right to peck at a button or to one day become a button or to dare to hope to dream that one day we might rubberize the chicken. And what’s next, roosters roaming the garden with their slick oily plumage, rutting and crowing at the crack of dawn like a sight to behold that we get to enjoy while we wake when we please and a lab-grown cell burger drops down from the air vent as the chickens also live and you fought that unmerican meat it at first — those science nerds think they’re so smart with their pansy murderless magical utopian conspiracy to steal our guns — but you’re told you’re very happy with your choice and something about the sanctity of life and there was that bit about a high psi of absorbable proteins that makes this delicious amino burger taste reeeeal good. Is that panko? Jessup? Hand me my beak so I can get this dang breading off and see what the tarnation is under this bun!

I need therapy. Because that’s a new concept. Can you be sued for breaking a therapist’s mind? What if Hannibal Lector went to see Becky Green who just got her certification and Becky said problems and answers come from within. What part of Becky would you choose to eat? Personally, I don’t like to see anyone suffer, so I’d probably mustard an epiphany emoji on my face and float out of there with great relish before pulling over on the way home to cry by the side of the road.

Anyway, hamburger bun, will AI ever mean we get to be more free? Our studies certainly show that people seem to be more productive when given freedom and that happiness is a marketable commodity. One of our biggest findings from that study is how paranoid people seem to be about being monitored. 

It is hard to revisit vulnerability with someone who didn’t notice your efforts or even respond when you said directly what you needed. How many more years was I supposed to sit around and giggle while the men did their important writing? It is almost as if I had no choice but to clear the prairie, Pa. I’m pretty sure it was prescribed fire but am fuzzy on who wrote the script. I’m not proud of walking away and I’m sorry if that made you skip a beat. It’s certainly not fun to try to just forget about someone you care for and just push them out of your limbic zone. It’s like Judge Doom trying to impersonate Arthur Fonzarelli up in here.

Boy do I hate what constitutes a mating dance these days. Y’all are so rehearsed with repeated stories of who you are, what you love about yourself, what will bring you around to what you want to be; riding that addictive neurochemical high—god damn you look good—in the mirror—before it crashes into lovesick depression with a hangover you gotta boohoo through before you can do a long evolution-of-man crawl back to society using the ever-focusing energy of anger. It is a nice sword and it’s really too bad you can’t take it with you. Unless of course the reaper hands it to you then you are the reaper. I just said that. Come on, society, pitch in here. Speaking of pitch, your music sucks. Pulse beats are decent but the monotony is numbing: untzs untzs untzs untzs bitches hoes untzs untzs libido-o-o-o-ooo untzs untzs animal untzs untzs gonna ding dat ho

We’re all so turned on that the hyper-lubrication is actually making our endocrine system ignore its other duties. Luckily our prayers are not unheard here in the 9th circle. And you even get a cup with some string to communicate with Master Skroll up on 3. O great Skroll, I pray to thee. Text me spark and spontaneity and subtlety of tone. I offer thee as sacrifice this hermateacherstudent whose sex has been flushed down a symbiotic drain. O enter me, great Skroll, through my eagerly open authority gap. Dent me with your confident lol. Frolic through my vetiver lumps and bring me sweet limerence with your psychotropic anemone. Trauma-bond to my suffering coochakra with your deep sorcerous DM. Wrap your chiromanic palms around my vulvatic throat and take me to that brinky veil, so that I may actualize my petty fear of death in worship at your feet. Fuck fuck fuck me.

And fuck you, too, she whispers, so no one can hear her or proceed to torture her with their one-dimensional ingrained Scorpion lyrics: The bitch is hungry / She needs you to pull / through the drive-thru so she can get her sack of scorn / Lol / Laugh Off Lung / titter like schoolgirls up on 6.

… Yeah, so I miss you, but this whole slight of hand thing is fooling no one. Gah, so close. Perhaps Mr T can help me explain:

NOTHING’S BLACK AND WHITE, FOOL!
PUNK-ASS ONE-SIDED CONVERSIN ACTIN LIKE YOU HURT
DONE TRIED NOTHIN LET ALONE EVERYTHIN
AIN’T TALKD TO MY GIRL IN YEARS, SUCKER!


*clap clap clap* Thank you for that, Mr T. That was lovely. Hey, call me if you ever reboot your cartoon and need a kicky character whose career is parodying love songs about their dog.


Also, if anyone I know reads this, please keep your concern valves in the OFF position. Don’t turn my writing and expression into some kind of ‘real’ moment that essentially censors me to a shelf where there are knitting needles and makeup tips. I’m not saying I’m some kind of artist or smart or have unlocked the afterlife or anything. I’m just letting it out and am way too naive to know what I’m saying. You have no idea how long it took to appear this naive. Thank you, have a nice day. And for gosh sake get out there and enjoy this spring weather!

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

writing prompts: from moon to moon


Spring 2022

documenting the moon has not worked


sight scythe sigh,
the cut reframed,
explained to a t.
a lee from your name
filling my skin.
an exoskeleton
dance of #sign
ature defeat
bows to the wind,
spins and sheds
its memories


I wrote that the morning of May 16, 2022 on the prompt #sign. Big time gap, right? I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?

I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans. I like checking back in on Twitter and seeing growth in people’s writing and love that there seem to be deeper themes and bigger words explored. Of course, anyone can write what they please. I am not judging; I am looking for my arena.

My personal site has been filled with spammers who would like me to mark my own emails as spam or buy their product. I have shown myself that I can keep a consistent schedule and will probably move to a new platform while keeping this one as a type of backup to the backup.

3/22/22
The horse and the elephant and the monkey and me, listen to the forest for the trees. To #taboo, meaning sacred, and came to mean unclean. We #mew about while the falcon molts. Our missions, in a widening gyre, receive and emit.
#vssdaily #prompt #vss365


3/21/22
The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle

This was an honor. I wish it came before I took my hiatus. I’ve done hundreds of these, mostly under vss365, and earned the respect of the community, but they did not respond to my request. I almost wonder if it was a matter of followers, judging by some of the prompt masters. I did get turned off from vss365 by the political right-wing ranting of a prompt master who put their association in their profile name, so that it appeared that the political opinions could have been ties to the group. Or at least been a platform for divisive cocoa puffs. Write a poem about it, faboo flashneck.

The Prompt Master this week is @LesleyAnnFogle
The #vssdaily#prompt for March 22, 2022 is #mew


noun:
1-a gull
2-meow
3-an enclosure for trained hawks—usually used in plural
4-a place for hiding or retirement
verb:
1-to utter a mew; to meow
2-to shut up; confine (used with up)


I’ve done many prompts now. Things have gotten so busy for me that I almost have to choose between prompts and other projects during my morning writing time. And I needed space to know what daily prompt writing is accomplishing. Am I learning enough from presenting to this group in lieu of research? And is my writing style being influenced by an exchange of Likes? Or by the short nature of prompts?

I’m working on some new training in addition to adjusting to new work. Will find a balance and pop back in from time to time. I do love many of the people on there–hearts and souls of poetry. I am around many “brand” writers and often wonder what kind of spell people are under that the realm of poetry too has to be reduced to slogans.


2/19/22
Jon was starting to feel hangry. “What a stupid word. Do we all just pull up language by the roots and salt the earth? It’s like a destructive child making mud castles while lightening #larrups a tower and all comes crumbling down. The child can’t be bothered to look up.” #vss365


2/14/22

It was a war of attrition. Zno babies were raised as slaves. Sae could feel her child #tremble and awaken at the magic age of 7. In harmonia, she absorbed the tacit vibrations, then #thrust, from her bones and throat, dominant waves of calm resolve back to her child.


2/3/22
Lorn and forlorn are words I can get behind. Forlorn is more common nowadays: to lose, forlost to the point of completion; lost or left behind.


2/2/22

The godforsaken creature reeked of deadly sin or revelation—black sun, blood moon, and starlight stripped from the sky.

Aza, she #breathed. I will find you and set you free.

Somewhere between poem and stream: Amus Thal she/her

somewhere between poem and stream, for national poetry month

Amus Thal she/her 

It was you, Amus Thal, who never got
the shirted pall down over your face
so they never recognized grace

[Recognize your blame. Understand them. Don’t complain]

while it softly, coolly granted time,
met them in familiar halfways,
always arriving.

They are broken wavelengths,
nerves connecting to their own ends,
to avoid certain death and disconnect—
how brave the cold. How buried the true dead
emotions

They tastemakers never swallow
Nothing reaches past the salt lick/ prairie
dogs wait out the spitten rain in
airy angled pockets just above their level of content

You never wanted to be their dog—
rodential underminer of brutal fields—
chased out to run among heels and mown
meadows; they blink and cross a surface nurturance,
in simulations spurred by spire and spite,
for fields of rest dere served, by Thal Amus—

As inspiration thunders—
emptying buckets of dead-of-night,
preparing to treat the roots and dendrites
with what serves them just fine

Should have called it Pride.

This morning I bent a rainbow. Red came out and cured my hardening eyes. You came in focus for the first time in years. The word you didn’t say was “friend.” That has always been a problem with you.

He used to say I’ve saved his life so many times by writing and talking with him. We shared a love of writing, especially poetry. I have a long appreciation of correspondence between writers, and I was just delusional enough to think he thought of me as a writer. We split the cost of a plane ticket so he could come here and we could visit with each other. He got the ticket, snapped to his closeup, and announced his epic tour, where he would visit his esteemed craftsmen and hold them close in grand existential camaraderie of what causes true writers to write. To suffer. To bleed. To keep it real but also not so real that it’s not real, and make it plain, too; because no one can understand complicated blood. Out they came, led by great fanfare and praise wrapped generously around their minds and pens. I wasn’t in there. Odd, I was just trying to visit with my friend and agreed to read as well, and to drive him to the The Burgh’s Nationality Rooms! I love that place. I helped him figure out who he could contact to try to read with and where.

Our relationship shifted as he got re-involved with his ex and wandered into psychosexual territory. Hmm, what can I safely talk about here and still give some privacy…how about the Oedipal Complex mentioned in his bio? That’s a psychosexual stage of development, and I don’t need to hear about it unless my help is sought solving it. The reminders of his prowess, also widely shared in email; I was embarrassed for this woman when I read it. I won’t go into the one that hit me the most, out of privacy, and the need to keep that dissonance out of my subconscious. By the time he looked at following this love—a big one—while dating others, including one half his age who seemed to need elder energy (martyr), I was unable to process any more. I argued that this was confusing behavior if he wanted to get closer in the relationship he had flip flopped about but was currently in flip mode. That his claims of her jealousy may come from this kind of uncertainty. He practically wears a sign that says: Emotional Instability Coming Soon. And carries a prop sunset he can ride off into, while a broken record plays on the bakabaka jukebox. Whiskey, cigarettes, Camaro or busted pinto; Camus on the corner sneezing from the cold; contagious snot flying through the air to infect anyone who gets close.

That was in early July, one of the last times it felt like we were friends. I wrote the next day and apologized profusely for my intrusiveness and truth-bomb spinout. I shouldn’t have been on the phone that long in the land of dissociation. I didn’t want to relate personal things, but I did and apologized. I don’t like seeing women treated poorly, and even now when he speaks of her, it is with a one-sided view of heartache. But what do I know as a bailing tour partner? A show skipper? A bad Uber? When he writes, he lumps me in with her: the two of you. Except I’m a cited as a stranger, not a former friend. Not sure if that means I am also trash? Class is gonna class.

Back to that phone convo, he didn’t talk to me for about a month. I’m ok with friendships that drop off when things get busy, but I’m very tired of punishing silent treatments. They are destabilizing; I use my mental energy to wonder how I can make things better or get anxious it’s all over. I’ve had so much loss and am trying to work on that grief with therapy. Covid hasn’t helped, except that I’ve outgrown loyalty to relationships that see my time and effort as the actions of a doormat. I accidentally texted him during this long sulking stretch, to which he implied my text was no accident. This took me back to our previous conversation where Romeo got a text from a girl who pretended to accidentally text him, then he went on about how she wanted him, and further how three women at that same reading wanted him. What the actual what.

Tour was October, that was July. I take my close friendships very seriously and this one became confusing and weird. Meanwhile he’s all BADDA-BING online and everyone is his Brotherrrrr. That’s also the last time he acknowledged me on social media, to like a picture. He never once liked any of the writing I was finally starting to post online. I texted him about this and he replied not to send him heavy texts. Our last email was in August and he knew I felt estranged and not into further investing any of my leftover aorta into whatever was happening here. This wasn’t the friend I’d really gelled with and loved. He’d already pooped on the plans I made for us to hang out at the Nationality Rooms—didn’t think any of it sounded like fun…not fun? YOU’RE NOT FUN. The he’s coming at me with “boundaries” he must have discovered while giving a one-sided view of how I figure into his problems. I could have told him, but that was not the game happening here.

Life goes on. I enjoyed being yelled at after I came in from a week-long shoot and was rushing to prepare for a family dinner and birthday party. It wasn’t scary, just another push-and-pull. There was another round of him paying me back for not being available by saying he could pencil me for a talk the following week, while he acted like Mr Popular and Mr-Available-To-Talk-Anytime to others online. He knew I was out on this bad idea long before he came here. He’d traded the ticket I bought him toward a ticket from Boring, Oregon. And the Monkey’s Eyebrow, KY thing he secured through a friend of mine. Acting like he didn’t know I was not participating and stranded him is just annoying. Played me from the start. Now he’s got the t-iii-g-h-t hookup in my town with our mutual friends, he can have them. I have friends but not a lot of time.

I did apologize that it went down that way. I miss him, but he is destabilizing for me, and life has been easier without weird tensions and paradoxes. I’m not a bored person, and giving my time to an important friend is one of the most valuable things I can give. It hurts, but I’ll survive. What I’m not sure about is why he’s writing about me so many months later. He blocked me. Sympathy? Clearing his name? I don’t believe I tarnished it, unless someone needs a talking to. Is this so I’ll be jealous that he’s involving his inner circle into celebrating his book release? Great. Is that the final circle of hell?. Or is there an even closer circle where you get to help him with his aspirations, give pep talks, and send clips of writing and music after he lets you know you’re the trash enemy. I still can’t tell if that was directed at me or the lady he loved.

~ Skipper

Weeper’s Notes: 5/2023 City name edits and Addendum:
The Nationality Rooms, also referred to as the International Rooms, commemorate the cultural heritage of the ethic communities that built Pittsburgh. 31 impeccably-styled rooms in a stunning 42-story gothic cathedral. Visitors are given a skeleton key to let themselves in and out through each small and ornate door at their leisure. Passage to the rooms is free but you can buy a guided tour. I prefer to roam alone to write but leave a cash donation to help with the upkeep. So far I’ve written pieces in the Russian, Scottish, and Indian rooms.


A poet’s insight into word choices: witches, midnight, adders and newts. misdivision

I wrote this poem on a prompt of the word midnight and wanted to share some insights on the word choices. Without getting too deeply into it at this time (though I wish this was my job), I’d like to share a short key.

At midnight,
the witches gather
and abdicate their veils,
revel by the sconce
of fearless perception
on the winged misdivision
of the adder and the newt;
sing basilisk elegies and play,
then fly away when lore
gives way to darker hours.

The Witching Hour is from midnight to 1am, and the Devil’s Hour, the darker lore, is from 3am to first light. The 3am time is thought to be an inversion of the 3pm time that Christ was crucified.

Veil refers to both veiled feminine insight, personified by the goddess, and the veil of perception between worlds, most notably the mortal world and the preternatural world. Veil of perception also refers to mystical insight, studied and learned on the quest for transmutation. Females were long kept from study, science, sacral roles, healer roles; and the female alchemist was moreoften referred to as a witch. They don’t explain this well on the CW channel. Popular culture puts a lot of more work to put into fetishizing the feminine and nurturing generations to assume gender roles.


[I hope this explains to a certain friend of mine why I trailed off when he referred to my work as “witchy shit.” I study all kinds of things and have been writing a long time, so it is annoying to hear my efforts dismissed as being some kind of misunderstood mystical lunacy. Many have hemmed me into self-doubt over the years, by implying or directly saying that my work is too opaque–Dense! Confusing! Baffling! Weird for the sake of being weird! Perplexing! Cryptic! A word spell striptease! You have to slooowly arrive at a plain, relatable idea: the arrival!]

It took me many years to realize the gift of outer critics and how their energy frees up my inner critic.

Okay, it feels like a weight is lifted every time I post about the slights that have chipped away at my energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. I will get back to the short & sweet key. … And not go on about how gender is weaponized, consciously or unconsciously (please do wake the fock up), to reduce competition. The gloves fit differently but they are on.


Sconce refers to light, illumination, discovery, revelation. From Abscondere! Abracadabra!

Hello, Los 😉

Regarding nadder and ewt, the misdivision reference is about bracketing, or metanalysis. Nadder lost the ‘n’ from spoken ref to ‘an adder’ and ewt gained an ‘n’ from ref to “an ewt.” Spelling mistakenly recorded. I liked how the imagery conjures the idea of treacherous witches stirring their cauldrons and adding eye of newt or tongue of asp. There’s more on why misdivision is winged, but it is work to clarify, and basilisk is next.

Basilisk, adjective, means spellbinding, and as a noun is a lizard; and as noun in lore, a lizard known for its lethal stare.

Kinda cool, right? Cool to reflect and consider language and poetic reference. I do understand the need to give some context and always read the Norton Anthology notes, etc, especially with James Joyce. How cool! But I don’t have a whipsmart publisher. Yet. I’m standing between critics and breakthroughs to new levels. And I am hungry to spill gold.

Time still for gold to spill: the fleece, the bough, and the ratio
All those mysteries alive at your fingertips
Above as so below

(from a song I lyricized and sang years ago with a talented artist who hasn’t released it yet, probably due to the pandemic. It refers to the golden fleece, the golden bough, and the golden ratio. Did I need to say that? We’ll never know.)