All By My Selllllf

I am among the first people to arrive at my job in the mornings. Usually, there are one or two others on my side of the floor when I enter and all the lights are turned on.

Not this morning…

Photo of an office hall, emergency lights on only.

I was the first person in on my side of the floor today. This morning only bright daylight, yay longer days at last(!), and the emergency lights greeted me. It was an eerie sort of quiet and I liked it.

Still, knucklehead that I am all I could think of was:

  • it looked like a first-person shooter game where all is quiet before the zombies pop out of nowhere at any moment,
  • the chorus to the old Eric Carmen song “All By Myself” and
  • clearly I was in serious need of coffee.

My loneliness, and potential active zombie bait imagination, lasted all of maybe seven minutes before the next person arrived, breaking the spell.

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It is Day 3 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020. Stop in and see how others are slicing it up today!

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1 Down 30 More to Go

It’s March and time for the Annual Slice of Life month long writing challenge. A slice of my life each day for today and the next 30 days. It’s the 13th annual challenge: I have participated in several before, but last year I let life get in the way did not even try. Truth be told I had already told a couple of people that I would not this year. Yet here I am.

I am in the process of finishing the final touches for a book of poems that is about fifteen years overdue. The finished product will not be in my hand come the first day of spring as I hoped. It is finally ready to go to an editor which is further than I’ve ever gotten with it before. My next big step after that is the copyright process. I am crossing my fingers to at least have the first galley in hand by the end of April at the latest. Wish me luck!

In the interim I have a couple of out of town trips scheduled in the next few weeks. I should be able to get a few blog posts out of that right? Yes, I am a glutton for punishment to take up this challenge on top of all of this, but it is called a challenge for a reason.

1 down 30 more to go!

It is Day 1 of the March Slice of Life Writing Challenge for 2020. Stop in and see how others are slicing it up!

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Quinta Essentia

Painting by Lynne Baur

Painting by Lynne Baur

From ashen body starts the tale
In life’s water
I, a virgin rabbit of yin
In mercurial Kanya – become
From cradle to cane I breathe
In summer breeze, winter gale
Until I am naught to El Sol
But dusty memory of soil itself
When all is said and done

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For dVerse Poets Pub – Gospel Isosceles asks us to be “In My Element” and do a little homework and discover what some of these cosmologies say about me.

I pull from:

  • The Elements Earth (ash-soil), Water (amniotic fluid), Air (breeze/gale, Fire (El Sol- the sun),
  • Astrology (Virgo – Western, a Yin Water born in the year of the Rabbit – Chinese, and Kanya ruled  by Mercury – Vedic), and
  • The Bible (ashes to dust)

I break me down to a quinta essentia* of self.

*According to Merriam-Webster: The word “quintessence,” is the offspring of “quinta essentia,” a word for the purest essence of a thing.

Of Wolves and Men

The more I think about it the more pissed off I am at Jonaegon Starkaryen.

That single head nod and keep on walking bullshush was just wrong.

Single Head Nod:

That’s what you do when a colleague you don’t particularly care about one way or another and you pass each other in the office corridors. That’s what you do when you and a complete stranger first see each other because you both wound up the same party in the same oh, it’s one of a kind outfit. You silently respect their exquisite taste, because you know you look better anyway, but you’re still kinda pissed. That’s what Grandma does just before she reach for that belt/chancla/switch YAPMTBAU!MV – your abuela’s preferred method to tear that bangela asset up(!) may vary.

I mean JSAT didn’t give a one-armed “Yo, my dawg, go keep chill with Giant Milk T and them wild bois for a bit a’ight?” hug, not even a little scritch-scratch behind the ear? It’s like JSAT didn’t give a fist pump – er – bump. I know he’s from The North, but that’s cold. That’s not how you treat your I Ride My Steed as You Run Along Beside Me or Die Fur-bro, Bro.

I mean what’s an imaginary tv direwolf that’s a one-third of the size of the book direwolf gotta do to gets some R-E-S-P-E-C-T up in this joint?

I kind of hope that when He Who Knows He Should Have Kept His Trap Shut From The Fam Just A Little While Longer finally comes back, Ghost pulls a Nymeria on him the way she did Baby Gurl Shank doo doo doo doo doo doo .  So Ghost pads up to We Are Family But I Gotta Say Nay Auntie Nay-Nay-Nay and be all like “What up my man? You and me – we always gonna be chill, ya know. I mean ’cause you peeped me way back when when your fam and mine was about leave my cute fluff butt behind and I could’ve DIED and shush out for real though, but I get to live my best life up here now. The North Wolf Remembers too. Still, I ain’t be ’bout that South of the Two-thirds Wall life no more. So… um… yeah – Deuces!”. Ghost then pulls down his Horatio Caine Shades of JusticeTM  (the YEEEAAAH! ’09 Summer Collection was fiyah IJS), while Dionne Warwick’s ‘Walk On Bye Felicia’ (the original title), mysteriously plays out of nowhere in the background as he Crip walks away as he sips a cold brew (Starbucks or Stella Atois – you choose). But I haven’t put that much thought into it yet.

I mean I know CGI is expensive, but our boy was done dirty ya’ll! 💔

 

Spoiler Alert

Begun with ease
This weekend sailed
In flow and streams
Of marathon drifts
Plots news to us

A sibling with fringe
In boredom spoke free
Thus spoiled our binge
With a cuss

My punch’s sting
With cheers
Still rings
I don’t regret
The fuss

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A little silly fiction that may become reality in many homes in the U.S. come this holiday weekend. 

Written for:

The Sunday Whirl – Wordle 378
sunday whirl logoRegret, News, Binge, Stream, Ease, Sail, Flow, Drift, Sting, Free, Cheer, Fringe
Use at least ten of the words in a poem or short story.

 

 

 dVerse ~Poets Pub | Quadrille Monday – Spoiler Alert
dVerse Poets Pub graphic
Lillian invites us to write a Quadrille –is a poem with exactly 44 words, not counting the title– using the word spoil, or a form thereof, in the poem itself, not the title.

Working for the Weekend

This lady takes the early train

Wiping sleep from my eyes

To come back home again

Wash, rinse and reprise

Decades now spent

Chasing the enterprise

Of the adage

Early to bed, early rise

Not mentally healthy

Certainly not wealthy

And questioning the wise

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dVerse Poets Pub - OpenLinkNight Mic

Tonight at dVerse Poets Pub Kim asks us to write a Quadrille (a 44 word poem, not including the title), using the word “Early.”

 

The End of Summer

Summer died that night.

The audacity of the calendar saying otherwise meant nothing.

It had amused Felipe, greatly to hear the Marisela joyfully speak to their daughter.

Marisela loved the idea of being able to show her daughter the rooftop. Her grandfather, Mateo, had maintained the coop for the live pigeons. Her grandmother, Soledad, made the colorful clay ones which decorated first their roof, then eventually the neighboring ones as well. She said each original piece were reflections of her mood at the time. Some were lovely and sublime – she’d happily tell you what joys caused those occurrences if asked. Others were terrible deformed monstrosities – granted, no one ever wanted to probe into the mood that persuaded the creation of those and she never told.

Each year she received a special one for her birthday. Those were always beautiful. One was rose colored, it was her favorite. She named it Summer.

A child of fast times and the nightlife, her mother, Alejandrina, did not have the temperament for the pigeons live or clay. She never understood the big deal people made over them. Marisol remembered how her mother had scoffed when her grandmother claimed she had no control over her art. Marisela herself did not understand until the first time Soledad sat her in her lap at the pottery table, turned it on and placed her hands in clay, then whispered “Solo crear desde el corazón/Only create from the heart.” Marisela’s art is in containers and figures, not pigeons. Still, even after Soledad passed away, each year Marisela made one just for her grandmother on the woman’s birthday.

Marisela had spoken of this all to their daughter from the moment they knew they were expecting. Before they even knew they were having a daughter she was addressed as such, Marisela was so sure.

Rubbing her gravid belly, Marisela was holding Summer in her hands, talking to their daughter as always when the first pain hit.

Her psyche raw, Marisela now sits on the rooftop no longer aware of the pigeons, clay or real.

Any span of time passed was vitiated by of a soul that never came to term.

Felipe would give anything to hear Marisela’s joyful voice again.

Summer and their daughter died that night.

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The Sunday Whirl : Wordle 366
idea, span, audacity, aware, probe, granted, spoken, deal, control, turn, terrible, term
Use at least 10of the words in a story or poem.

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie: Wordle #208
rub, psyche,  vitiate, rose,  receive, occurrence, persuade, rooftop, nightlife, monstrosity, clay, pigeon
Use at least 10 of the words in a story or poem.

Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie: First Line Friday: August 31st, 2018
Summer died that night.
Use the given line as the opening to a story or poem.

X-philia

My penchant for Verbal Diarrhea has reached a new high. Or is that an all-time low? You decide.

The Scene: Where a lot of my early morning pre-caffeinated colorful commentary is created – my morning commute on the subway:

The cast: Two women conversing a little louder than they realized. One nosy Raivenne.

ACTION!

Even through I am heavy metal head bopping to Anthrax on my iPod, my smut monitor suddenly pings loudly –  to quickly eavesdrops when the word phallophilia is heard.

Wait… Whaaaat?

I mean it is 6:45 in the blessed morning – who says that? – I must have heard wrong, right? I reach in my pocket, press pause on my music and listen.

Oh hush! Most of you would have listened also for a moment also – don’t judge me!

Sure enough, the two women were indeed speaking on the attributes of a specific person they both knew. I was about to turn my music back up when one asked “Is there a technical word for getting your rocks off looking at dick imprints in grey sweatpants?”.

And I’ll be damned if my not-so-inner Luci-fer and her minions (Sarcasm Siren, Dirty-minded Diva, Verbal Virago et al), did not simultaneously enter my throat and vocalize.

Medectophalia.” Spews out before I can think to stop myself. Worse, I say it loud enough, that even though I am not looking at them, the two women know it’s addressed to them.

“Sorry didn’t mean to listen in.” I quickly say as they both turn and look at me. Damn my mouth!

“What’s the word?” the one sitting closest to me asks.

Naturally, once those chicks open my mouth and drop the bomb, they immediately depart en masse leaving me holding the detonator. Bitches!

Oh, well – in for a pence, in for a pound. –  is one of my many mottos for a reason as I go into pseudo professor mode.

“Medectophalia is a fetish: It is the excessive and uncontrollable sexual desire for viewing the underlying shape of the penis/labium in the crotch region of another person’s clothing. Otherwise known as getting one’s rocks off on moose knuckle and/or camel toe in Urban Dictionary lingo. Whereas the opposite, medectophobia, is the fear of such.”

Now, when I tell you I have NO idea where that bullshit came from, I mean it. While I know for fact medectoPHOBIA is a word, I had no idea whether medectoPHALIA existed.

Naturally, I hear those conniving inner bitches reappear as internal Greek Chorus applauding my aplomb. As always, I am both awed and appalled with how my mind works.

The two women and I then have a lively discussion of technical versus street slang terms we know until they disembark.  I immediately Google Medectophalia only to discover the term does not exist.

* My not-so-inner demons and their minions chuckle darkly. *

It does now.

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Today is Day 29 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up this Saturday.
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Queen Me with the Right Note

An online discussion came up regarding vinyl recommendation services. The complaint being what one asks for versus what one is presented with .

I say yes to Fall Out Boy, Panic! At the Disco, and Ed Sheran, and get John Legend as my first recommendation.

WHAT DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON.

Not a damn thing.

I understood – don’t agree with, but understood – music profiling in brick and mortar stores. The two associates (African-Americans) who asked if I needed help had no idea of whom I spoke. I finally had to be blunt and ask for a white associate. The music I actually wanted was in my hands in less than five minutes after. It happens to me a lot given my music inclinations go against my presumed demographic. But that was face-to-face, vinyl recommendation services are online. How jacked up are the algorithms, that considering the exposure people have to so many genres of music these days thanks to the internet – it is disappointing they still can’t get it right, but sadly not surprising,

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Today is Day 25 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up this Saturday.
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Be Grateful

The path on the bus from my home to the train station leads past several tenement buildings and projects.  A part of City life is the occasional appearance of memorials for the recently departed. I’m ashamed to say, they are so much so a part of the scenery that while I look at them, I really don’t see them anymore.  At least, until this morning.

This morning as I pass, I actually noticed the memorial, this was somehow different and as I looked closer, I understood why. The large portrait was that of a baby. This life could not have been more than a couple of months if I am gauging this infant correctly.  Someone lost a baby. Do we  even want to go into all the reasons why the younger a life is when it departs from us, the more tragic it seems? No.  It just is.

I was conversing with a woman on the train about the frivolity of some of the rich when she jokingly queried “What happens when you’ve been there, done that?”  I got the joke of it, I did and I smiled at it, still…

I think of my sons, my friends, others and myself. We spend so much time a’bitchin’ and a’moanin’ about the things we can’t do, the things we want to do, the things we have yet to do. We wrap ourselves in the dreams of the next big adventure we often barely appreciate the act of the things we have done once they become memory.  All the things we’ve already done even the truly regrettable ones, we at least got to do them.

So right now, right now, I keep thinking about this newest angel looking down upon us who didn’t get to do anything but brighten someone’s life for the briefest moment in time and think…

“What happens when you’ve been there, done that?” …

…Be grateful.

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Today is Day 23 of the March Slice Of Life Story Challenge.
Come see how others are slicing it up this Friday.
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