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 ringing—been 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 her—as 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 times—probably 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 fire—sitting 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)

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!

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!

Ahh, Coffee

1015 Bay Ridge Ave 

Eastport, MD 21403

  

Monday, February 6, 7pm 

Café Muse Literary Series

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!

Jasmine

The one poem of mine that I've memorized, always ready to recite on queue. Written circa 1992.

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.

Haters Hate: The Ron Paul Phenomenon

2012 is almost here, and with it, the real start of the Presidential Election campaign. In less than a week a few voters in Iowa will brave freezing temperatures and pick their favorite Republican to go up against Obama in November. As I write this, most polls indicate that one Dr. Ronald Ernest Paul is poised to capture the hearts and minds of die-hard Iowans.

I can see his appeal. Ron Paul is no dyed-in-the-wool Republican. Although he served in Congress as a Republican during the mid to late 70s and early 80s, Ronnie rose to political prominence as a Libertarian when he ran for President in 1988 and got over 400,000 votes, third most that election. After that loss, Ronnie took some time off from politics and went back to medicine, his first love. Throughout this time, though, Ronnie continued to push his political agenda, most notably through Ron Paul & Associates, a company that he established in 1984 that produce various newsletters, including The Ron Paul Investment Letter, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and Ron Paul Political Report. He gained tens of thousands of subscribers and earned millions of dollars with these newsletters promoting his Libertarian ideas.

Flash forward twenty years...

Read the rest of the story on my latest  
From the Bottom Up on The Urban Twist.

The Daisy Field

The Daisy Field
I walked past the daisy field today,
a rock garden
casting shadows on my head;
my heart searched for you,
lost in haze.

But this heart, you see,
this heart still has problems
with the way things ended,
left me so fast,
so unprepared.

And who was I to deny
your request that you find rest
traveling the many rivers
of our homeland
and not stay trapped with worms
and things that crawl & squirm?

But damn, mami! 
It might have been nice
to have a place to visit you 
on lonelier days,
to think about those too few years
we were granted together.

Now, unless I fly a thousand miles
to find your beachfront home,
I'm left to the sterile corners of my room,
left to strain for memories—
sometimes I strain so hard
the tears burn me.

An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell

Originally written in April, 2006, I'm reposting this ( with a few updates) from my old MySpace blog in memory of renowned writer & atheist extraordinaire, Christopher Hitchens. I know Falwell & his hate have been dead for a few years, but I like to think Hitchens would have appreciated my candor.


Fuck You:

Every time you open your mouth about Family Values, you insult me. Your claims that nontraditional families are leading to the decline of our country are equal to spitting in my face. What the fuck do you know about families, particularly nontraditional ones? You were raised in a world of lily-white palaces, where it was alright to treat a black man like a nigger. I read about your "conversion" from your segregationist ideals. I suppose segregation is a hard habit to break.

You want a nontraditional family, look at mine. My mother was a heroin addict for most of her life. There were hard times. There were even tragic times. But my mother, without the aid of my father— without the aid of any man for a lot of her life— taught us about the important things in life. She taught us to love everyone, regardless of who they are. She taught us not to judge others; that rather than judge, we should offer our help if they truly need it and we are capable. She taught us to strive for anything we wanted out of life.

Granted, not everything turned out roses. My mother died of AIDS in 1991. She never even told me she had it because of a stigma that you helped to foment in those days. The irony is that she had, seemingly, finally beaten her addictions, and was just starting to go after her dreams when death took her. My uncle succumbed to AIDS, and my little brother, who was 16 when my mother died, battled his own addictions and only a little less shame. He died of the same disease.

My sister, however, is the Queen of Retail, happily married and buying her first house. As for me, I've recently finished a novel and am working on a second. Hopefully, I can get them published. You probably wouldn't like them though. I model for art classes for a living. For now.  I have two wonderful sons who cause as much trouble as teenagers are prone to cause.

I have a sister-in-law whose gay who has a wonderful young son who is intelligent, talented, tolerant and plays a mean game of basketball. Most important is that he is happy. I will love him whether he's gay or straight. Jesus would, too.

So you see, your ideas of morality have no effect on the way families succeed or fail. Success and failure happen with nearly equal proportions in black families, white families, religious families, Atheist families and yes, gay families.

Please Jerry, stop insulting me and my intelligence almost every tine you show your face on television. Let God, if there is just one or any, be the judge of our lives here on the planet. Divert your energy to the issues that need them, like poverty, hunger and literacy. They are still here, Jerry.

What would Jesus do? Otherwise, I hope that everyone wakes up to your hateful lack of tolerance, and stops giving money to a bigot, a bigot who doesn't know Jesus from an asshole, not even to realize he is one, an asshole that is. You could change today, Jerry: be a Jesus instead of an asshole. I certainly pray you do. If not, please just go fuck yourself, and leave me and my families alone.

Irreverently Yours,
The Word Pimp
Fernando Quijano III