The Bravest Thing I've Ever Done

Getting sober is the bravest thing I’ve ever done. To look the world straight in the eye, without self-medicating first, requires this alcoholic to dig deep for the courage that many people seem to come by naturally. And she has to keep digging too, to keep up with the adventures of being human.

The artwork I’m using today is an illustration by Gustave Doré in the 1866 version of John Milton's Paradise Lost. “Satan rises from the burning lake” illustrates what Milton calls Lucifer’s “courage never to submit or yield.” The piece also has been used in reference to one of my all-time favorite poems, “Ulysses” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, which ends with these wonderful lines:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I memorized “Ulysses” for a college speech class, drawn to its celebration of the enduring adventuresome spirit. I never have read Paradise Lost, and I find the Satan connection a little icky. But the prompt for this week’s Poetry Jam asked poets to write something inspired by Paradise Lost, John Milton, or Gustave Doré, and my research led me to my beloved “Ulysses” via the aforementioned Lucifer link.

Courage is the thing that gets me excited. I’ve had to find some. I’ve had to learn how to endure when life goes sideways. I’ve had to learn self-discipline, the courageous act of refusing to yield to my own wild impulses, which would have me flee from uncomfortable circumstances. I’ve had to plumb my inner resources when shit hit the fan, and when I came up empty, I’ve had to discover that God’s grace is sufficient on any given day.

All of which is a boatload of verbiage to introduce a very short poem ~ 160 characters, to be exact, counting the spaces. Visit other poets monkeying around with ultra-shorts at Monkey Man’s place here, or jamming with Milton here.

Here is my extremely short epic poem:

Without a shield, I face my fears

Weak, unarmed, I will not yield

As the smoke of battle clears

I’m still standing on the field

By your cheers my wounds are healed!

Found: One Set of Wings and a 160, Free

Now here’s a strange true story, mostly, proved by a photograph:

Angel Wings

I know it means something, this moment
of surprise
,
when I’ve hurled myself out of the car
late as always for an obligation
in that grim world of a parking garage
too far from where I have to be to be there on time
and at my feet
on the yellow paint between gray spaces
rests a pair of white feathered wings
child size
.
Immediately I see they’re too small for me
but I’m staggered
,
caught in the open door
between the woman who is late and another
who can stop, bend down, take the gift
slip them on, lift my arms and fly
.
In that moment, the clocks stop too
the whole world shrinks
as the white wings spread
and stroke
and stroke
against the sky

And for no extra charge,  

a Sunday 160 version in exactly 160 characters

a sort of angel rap piece for my favorite character, Monkey Man,
He Who Hosts the Microest of Micro Fiction:

Angel stop

Angel drop

Angel rock’n’roll

What da weather

Chicken feather

Angel do a poll

Weather fair

Angel hair

Angel wear a stole

Angel wing

Angel fling

Angel save a soul

Strange, the things you might stumble across while doing the humdrum stuff of daily living, if you keep your eyes open. May you be surprised today.

I’m a Microclimate for God

I found some treasures at an antique show this weekend and took great pleasure in bargaining for them. One of them, a small hand-forged pitcher, asked me to write a poem about it. So I made a little 160-character ditty for Monkey Man’s Sunday 160 challenge. You’ll find others on his blog here.

The Tin Pitcher

Call me old,
tarnished,
rusted and flawed,
but in the confines
of my battered state,
I am a microclimate
for God
where flowers grow:
apparently, my fate.

Astrophysics and Romance

It’s over. Thank the good Lord, the sun, the earth, and astrophysics. Good riddance to winter. Welcome to the vernal equinox.

I am finished mourning and protesting. You don’t want to know what happened last week to shut me up. But three women ~ young, middle-aged, and elder ~ snapped me out of it.

On this first day of spring, we have no sun in the sky here, in the woodlands and green hills of pastoral California, just lovely rain. We get our water from an aquifer beneath us. It takes good rains to replenish what people and vineyards use, but we have dry years. We’re gluttons for rain.

Every spring when I was growing up, my father, who was raised by these people:

would tell me, “Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonder where the flowers is.” I looked up the verse this week and learned my dad had created his own version of a poem by the poet Anonymous that was popular in the 1950s.

Out of respect for our blog friend Monkey Man, who invented the Sunday 160 (a profound message in 160 characters), I present here a version that fits his pentameters.

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris.
I wonder where the birdies is.
The poets say in Spring
The bird is on the wing,
But ain’t that absurd?
The wing is on the bird.

I’ll kill a bird with two stones today and include a poem ticket for the Totalfeckineejit’s Poetry Bus. Our guest driver, Uiscebot (how do you pronounce that?), instructs us to abide by his pentameters: write in some new place, no rhyming, and less than 40 lines. The strange travelogue is here: http://theblogsthejob.blogspot.com/

Thanks to an early-morning weather report in the newspaper, I went all the way up to the jet stream for a visit. It was either that or tell you about my new experience with guided meditation. Be glad I chose the weather.

The Weather Man

He said the jet stream is a tubular ribbon
of wind blowing 100 miles per hour
maybe five or six miles over my head,
and I wondered, is that why I hear
that buzzing in my ear when I think
of the black mustache under your nose?

He said a cold front is a wave of energy
sweeping away from the core of the storm,
and I felt a white-hot wave of energy
sweep away from my core as your
black mustache smiled there,
and this I remembered as he said cold
and core and sweep and storm.

He said the jet stream flows like a giant
wave undulating from west to east
for thousands of miles, and I marveled
that my head could contain it all,
the knowledge of your mustache
and your nose like an eagle’s beak,
his speech a buzzing in my ear
and the jet stream of life circling
over my head and under my toes.

Painting by my friend Denise Schryver

A Post-Christmas Giggle

Twas the day after Christmas, and all through the house
Not a laptop was stirring, nor a computer mouse.
The hubby was working, but the little wife was not;
she was stretched out immobile on the marital cot.
The kitties lay with her and occasionally a dog.
The creatures were sleeping, unconscious as logs.
Dear hubby washed cars, and dishes, and clothes
While wifey my dear was not troubled by those.
For curious reasons, her spine was a tingle
As were her hands - such gifts from Kris Kringle!
Electrical pain shot jolts through her neck
Making her cry , "Hey, what the heck??!!"
She wrote a quick poem, then quickly she fled
To the warmth and relief of the marital bed.
.........
And that's enough of that crap.

Here, late in the evening, is a tribute to Monkey Man and his Sunday 160, a tale told in precisely 160 characters and spaces:

Hours wasted Christmas Eve
Hiding gifts in paper
On Xmas morn two seconds later
got mounds of trash you can’t reuse
It’s the “Xmas Wrapping Ain’t Recyclable” blues

A Meeting with the Devil

My to-do list is disgustingly large. The undone chores range from the imminent like bill-paying (the gas and electric people probably think I have died) to the esoteric, such as getting my mitts on a novel by this year’s Nobel Prize winner in literature, Mario Vargas Llosa, of whom I have shockingly never heard despite his being regarded for decades as “one of the world’s greatest and most adventurous writers,” according to my newspaper. I’m a Philistine.

So anyway, the to-do list is long. If I don’t dust pretty soon, all my little tchotchkes will turn into fossils. I still haven’t put away the Christmas stocking holders I bought on sale last December (I may as well leave them up now since it’s nearly Christmas anyway). And I think I’m growing enough penicillin in the far reaches of the refrigerator to inoculate most of the Third World.

That makes me think of Monkey Man’s Sunday 160 challenge, which requires you to write something of great literary value using only 160 characters and spaces. Here’s my effort, an acrostic poem:

Dust adorns your set of tchotchkes
United by its ridiculous paucity of value
Someday your grandchildren will not be
Thrilled to inherit its archaeological zilch.

But back to what I was doing with my time yesterday. Was I marking off anything on my to-do list? Nooo. I was outside on the patio grooming the cooperative Cecile Brunner rose that I’d been so beastly with earlier this week. That put me in such a Zen state that I moved on to the 20-foot-long Banks rose hedge that lines the rest of the patio fencing. I decided to untangle all three interwoven bushes, thin out the dead stuff, and then re-weave the canes into a nice lacy network of Banks roses. (*** See note below.)

Dear hubby came outside and asked, “Do you realize you’re pruning shrubbery at 10 o’clock at night?” No, I said, I had no idea it was that late. So I put down the pruning shears and went to our bedroom to scrub my hands. There, I realized that cleaning the double-sink vanity was on my to-do list, so I started scrubbing the sinks. Dear hubby, who was by then climbing into bed, said, “Why are you cleaning house at 10 o’clock at night?”

I thought, “He’s really hung up on that 10 o’clock at night business.” What I said was “I’m not cleaning house. I’m just doing a quick wipe-down here. I’ll be done in a flash” and I went on scrubbing. No time like the present, and all that. When I got out the water bottle and the rag to clean the mirrors, dear hubby made a groaning sound and stated the obvious: “Now you’re cleaning the mirrors!” I wiped much faster and said, “Look. See? I’m just about done.”

Dear hubby’s good-night ritual was a little grumpy last night. But I felt wonderful anyway. I got to scratch an item off my to-do list, and also scratch off another big chore once I added “Prune the Banks rose” to the list. That’s how to-do lists work: If you inadvertently do something that was not on the list to begin with, you add it to the list just so you can cross it off.

Also on my list was a poem for this week’s Poetry Bus, the Totalfeckineejit’s adventure in global poetry. He got Argent to drive this week because he’s busy basking in the glory of his debut volume of the Poetry Bus literary journal. It’s full of magnificent poetry by poets all over the world, and it’s practically free compared to what the Big Guns cost. Follow the link above to buy a copy of the premier issue for a paltry 6 pounds, a real steal since it's sure to become a collector’s item worth millions. At the same time you get to do your small bit to support the world’s grass-roots poetry culture.

Argent, meanwhile, instructs poets to tackle the topic of meetings if they want to hop aboard for this week’s world tour. Check out the bus riders at Argent’s Delusions of Adequacy blog. I met the challenge with a poem about meeting the dark side of the force.

Dancing with the Devil

The devil comes to me as I walk down a rocky trail
beside a small stream the color of sweet brown tea
in a broad avenue of sycamores towering high overhead
with their gray skin peeling away from their white flesh
and their russet leaves fluttering down like butterflies,
where the air smells of wood and stone and decay.

He appears to me with a sound like birdsong
and immediately my feet stop in wonder against my will
for I know the devil to be the devil, not a sweet sound,
yet I halt and listen. He takes shape, the form of a man
out for a country walk, a fellow seeker of the quiet
earth, and he hails me with a gentle call, naming me.

I know the devil knows my name but his voice is soft
as fleece against my ears, and against my will I turn
and wait for him to catch me on the trail, this prince
of darkness whose countenance is friendly, so damn glad
to see me in this solitary place: Why here? I wonder
that he should accost me in broad daylight, in serenity.

I know him and know he bodes me ill but momentarily
my arm rises with a will of its own to greet him
like an old friend happily found on the trail I walk.
My hand reaches out to him against my will to clasp
his hand reaching out to me, and it is powerfully strong,
his grasp, warm and muscular, with great endearment.

He draws me in against my will with one arm out
to encircle me as if we are equally welcoming,
equally glad to meet one another on this path,
which has turned suddenly cold, bitterly cold and
forbiddingly silent, and the only warmth is in his arms
one dropping to my waist and one grasping my hand.

We begin slowly with unconscious melody to dance
delicately there on the trail surrounded by sycamores
reaching to heaven and boulders buried in earth’s depths.
We dance, the devil and I, against my will, in a lazy
little box step, nothing fancy but intriguingly warm
as icicles grow crystalline on sycamore twigs.

We dance although I know he bodes me ill
and against my will I like it. I melt into his arms
with one hand on his shoulder and one hand clasped
in his, and his soft endearing voice whispers Why not?
as we dance. The leaves crackle in the cold
and the sound of ice swallows my scream.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
(***Sunday morning: I checked out my handiwork with the Banks rose hedge after last night's pruning interruptus. The "nice lacy network" of interwoven rose canes that I envisioned in the dark looks in fact like a bomb exploded in the hedge, spewing chaotic branches everywhere. My to-do list just got a little longer.)

Peace Is Boring?

In my writing room
beneath the shady sycamores
on a hot July day
my writhing head rests.
I summon the muse
but she sleeps like the dead.
Not even espresso
wakes her.

The famous blogger Monkey Man dreamed up the idea of the “Sunday 160” wherein one makes a statement in 160 characters counting periods and spaces between words.
(That explanation was in exactly 160 characters too.)
What people are able to say within the context of a text message is interesting. You can find them on the Monkey Man’s blog.

I haven’t had a real job for four years. My days consist of reading, writing, various projects, Alcoholics Anonymous activities, household chores, gardening, and managing the needs of my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. Every so often my lifelong dance with depression spins out of control and I have to get involved with psychiatric stuff.

Recovery from addiction has lent a structure to my life for 20 years. It influences my outer life, because I go to a lot of meetings, and it influences my inner life, because I’m mindful of how I interact with the world.

I’m saying these things because today I’m a little bored. There’s nothing on my agenda except dinner and fireworks tonight with my daughter and her significant other. The projects that have consumed my life lately either have been completed (like preparing my poetry manuscript and getting a novel ready for a workshop next month), or are in suspension because it’s Sunday (like the pursuit of justice for my mother).

I’d like to write a poem, but nothing is jostling around inside of me, looking for a way out. Nothing is jostling around in me at all.

And the outer world isn’t exactly clamoring for my attention. The things that give my daily life structure are all quiet today. Both inside and out, it’s…. boring.

I once called my AA sponsor and complained that life was boring. I didn’t like confessing that because I had told my daughter a thousand times that “boredom is the product of an unimaginative mind.”

My sponsor told me that perhaps I was experiencing the lack of drama, chaos, resentment, and fear. In fact, maybe I was feeling PEACE for the first time in my life.

I guess I’m at peace today. I hope you are too. I think I'll go practice gratitude for feeling at peace by doing a little work in the garden.

Invincible Insects

Here's a Sunday 160 in honor of the Monkey Man's first anniversary hosting this exercise in brevity:


Ants dash across my desk, taking turns
like rioters do, hurling bombs into shop windows.
Their minuscule legs race faster
than my colossal finger can crush them.


For other tales in exactly 160 characters, including spaces, go here.

My Art Tour

(The metalsmith in the gallery)

(Painting by Peg Grady)

I've used up my week's supply words.
I have suffered and stood up again.
On my day of rest, I will take you
on a tour of my local art gallery.
Enjoy the scenes.

(This is a Sunday 160, hosted by the Monkey Man. You get only 160 words and spaces to spit out something meaningful. Good luck. Photos don’t count.

(Window at Bistro Laurant across the street)

(Transcendental Pug by Sarah Winkler)

(Some of our metalsmith's work)

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

May you all have a blessed day.

Sunday 160 Challenge

A Night Sight



The moon is a white eye
cloud-lidded
in a broad blue face
and it peers over the hill,
over the giant supine silhouette
of some black, some dozing beast.

********

The Sunday 160 challenge is to write something in exactly 160 characters, including spaces. You'll note if you count that I added a couple of spaces to this poem to make it reach the mark.

The place to check out for the rules is Monkey Man at

http://petzoldspracticalprose.blogspot.com/