Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Killing Lilith (excerpt)


Wrapped up the latest edit on Killing Lilith. Going well! Don't forget to check out the Killing Lilith Facebook Page and click "like" for news, updates & more excerpts! Here's a little excerpt for you Lilith fans out there:




4:14pm

Phone’s ringingbeen ringing now for twenty minutes, on & off: Emily calling from the stables wondering why I haven’t picked her up from Equestrian practice. She’ll use it as an excuse to petition for that new car she says we’re too cheap to buy heras if she can’t realize that she doesn’t deserve one. I’d be shocked if she didn’t drive any car we got her straight to South Central and trade it for a year’s supply of crack.
Jacob calling from his guitar lesson. He decided he wanted to learn guitar after he abandoned violin, saxophone, flute, & piano. He’s been talking about giving up music for acting. The older he gets, the more attention he craves. Perhaps it’s other things he craves. Women. Drugs. Fame. I have little doubt he’ll find anything he seeks. I also doubt he’ll be capable of handling any of it before it destroys him.
Jack’s called a few timesprobably pissed off, not because he’ll have to leave the office early to pick up the kids, but because he won’t get the chance to have a few drinks at the bar with his colleagues after work. He needs that to wind down before he comes home.
I get to try winding down between cleaning, errands, picking up the children, cooking, and lifting up my nightgown once in a while so Jack can release some sexual tension. None of them are worried about where I am.
Point Dume. Sitting on a beach staring as the sun burns a trail through the Malibu sky, listening to the vain attempts of my family to contact me. I stare directly into the sun so that it might dry the tears before they leave their ducts. They love me. No, they need me. Dependency misconstrued as love. Fuck them!
My love was unconditional for a time. What have I been able to depend on? I never expected anything in exchange for that love. Regardless, I am mourning them. I will die, but they are already dead.  So I sit here, burning my ass on the sand, beating my chest, setting my retinas on firesitting Shiva.
  I stand and begin to make my way back to the car through a haze of black and yellow. The phone rings again. Jack, Emily, Jacob. It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve made my peace. I turn around once last time, facing the waves and the waning sun, and throw the phone at the offending horizon.


 [FQ31] 4:14pm Chapter Three (Malibu)

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Within, Without

I wrote this poem on Saturday as part of a challenge from Laura Shovan. If I wrote & read a poem about posing nude for art classes, she'd read her "Great Wall of Vagina" poem. If you weren't there, you missed the fun. The Poem is still pretty raw...













Within, Without

Not such rough stuff,
making a living
in the buff,standing, free
for all to see—
so much of me,
all of me.

For twenty minutes
at a time, I’m free
to live inside my mind,
to explore within
while without
all eyes are wandering
about
me, as if I were pure
landscape.

Until I get that dreaded itch
I need to scratch,
but what a bitch
because moving
is the one option
I don’t have.

So I dive inside
myself, again,
deeper still,
super zen,
until all I feel
is the silence
that blankets me
from within.

Soon enough,
a bell will ring,
or buzz or chirp
some tinny tune;
to let me know
my body
is now mine, again.

For just a few
& then I must
hustle back
to my post
to either find
my old position
or strike out
on a new pose.

What shall I do?
Perhaps a simple
contrapposto
will suffice,
something seated
would be nice,
or better yet,
let me just lie
down. Let
me rest,
and you can practice
foreshortening
while my ass is
getting numb
from the cheap,
old carpeting
on this wobbly platform.

I’ll do whatever,
just don’t ask
me to perform
some acrobatic,
bendy asana
to please your
hungry hands
full of coal, or brush,
or ink.

I hope I don’t stink.

So here, I bare
myself to you,
alien to shame,
able to stay true,
even willing
to occasionally torture
myself for truth,
for art, for beauty,
for goodness sake
without me you’d all
be painting fruit!

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Happy New Year

One of the panels from the Great Wall of Vagina installation

I know. I'm late, as usual. But I've resolved to work on that in 2012, especially since we may not get a 2013 if you listen to the apocalypse believers out there. As a matter of fact, I'm just going to pretend like 2012 may very well be the last year for civilization, as we know it; and I'm going to push hard to get my work out there. By "out there" I mean outside of the Baltimore Metro Area. Not Outer Space.

Here's a guide to what going on with The Word Pimp, so far, in 2012:

My Baker Award nomination page is ready to go. Please show it some love. It has a lot of my best (& best known) work, so you're bound to find some great stuff to read. If you have a nomination on the Baker site let  me know, and I'll check it out.

I have a couple of appearances coming up:

Saturday, January 14, 6:30pm
Evil Grin Poetry Series @ Ahh, Coffee
Join me and Clarinda Harriss Poetry Prize winner Laura Shovan for  what promises be an entertaining start to the new year. Laura has promised to read her ekphrastic poem inspired by the art installation known as The Great Wall of Vagina if I promise to read a poem about modeling nude. Such a poem does not yet exist, but I WILL have one in time. I might even try to read it naked!

1015 Bay Ridge Ave 
Eastport, MD 21403
  
Monday, February 6, 7pm 
Get in the mood for Valentine's Day with a reading by Life in Me Like Grass on Fire poets. Readers include Laura Shovan, Shirley Brewer, Frank Joseph, Danuta E. Kosk-Kosicka, Margaret Mullins & me.

Friendship Heights Village Center
4433 South Park Avenue, 
Chevy Chase, MD

Well, that's all for now. A show with Artichoke Haircut is apparently in the works, so stay tuned. MUCH LOVE!

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Jasmine

The one poem of mine that I've memorized, always ready to recite on queue. Written circa 1992.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/Jasminum_sambac_%27Grand_Duke_of_Tuscany%27.jpg
Jasmine

I put my fingers to my nose

& smell the sweet scent of jasmine.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

I close my eyes, fists pressed tight

against them, & through the stars
I see her face.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

I lick at my tears as they roll

down my face, & through the salt
I taste the essence of our sin.
It seems amazing that once I touched her
the scent never went away.

& through the static of my speakers

I can hear her sweet,
sweet jasmine voice, speaking
to my soul, singing,
"I love you."
Is it so amazing that I needed only touch
her once, & now I know
the scent will never go away.