Verbal Diarrhea Diaries: Song and Dance

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A friend posted the following image from Telly Leung’s Facebook page:

I think the world would be so much happier if everyone broke out in song and dance every once in a while

Click for full-size image.

Sorta sequitur: If you see the name Telly Leung in any play or musical, just buy the damn ticket and go. He is a phenomenal performer and once you see him in action, you do not forget him.

Now for those of you who may not recognize the photograph, is from the 1978 movie musical Grease. It is the film adaptation of the  Broadway musical of the same name.  Specifically it is a still from the last scene and musical number “We Go Together”.  Whether you’ve seen the movie or show, and love it as I do, I know you’re already singing it in your head, but I digress…

My initial comment to her post was “This should be a lawful requirement. At least once a quarter, mandatory. Don’t know how one would regulate it, but this should happen. lol”

A cutesy enough response, I thought nothing of it as I went back to to what I was doing. However, the idea of actually regulating such a thing must have continued to run in the back of my mind because about fifteen minutes later a scenario popped into my head and would not let go. Of course I had to share it with K, my friend who posted the pick. The scenario (with spelling and grammar corrected) went like this:

Note: “K” of course is my beautiful friend. Official Looking Gentlemen (OLG) in my crazy mind looks and sounds a lot like Agent Smith from the Matrix trilogy.

K answers a knock at her front door.
Official Looking Gentlemen: Ms. S., we are from the DOE-PHD, Department of Entertainment – Personal Health Division.

K: Yes?

OLG: According to our records you have not broken into spontaneous song and dance within the past six months thereby breaking Ordinance No. 68251.3 Section 2LEFTFEET.

K: Right now? But, but I’m just so busy!

OLG: Ma’am if you do not break into a rousing rendition of “Cabaret” we will have to immediately detain you with others who have failed to comply. You will not be allowed to return to your home until enough people are gathered to recreate either the “We Go Together” scene from “Grease” or “America” from “West Side Story”

K: Oh no!

OLG: Oh yes! Lyrics and dance moves will be provided if necessary. I should advise you that either number requires a minimum of ten attendees for your PHD fulfillment to be deemed complete. I currently only have three others, thus this may take a while.

K: What should I do?

OLG: I highly suggest that you drop everything and give me Liza in 5…4…3…

K (grabs convenient bowler hat and cane located right next to the front door): 🎵 What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret! 🎶

PS -1: I know this would NEVER happen to either one of us K. We break into unprompted song and dance now as it is.

PS-2: Man, I crack myself up sometimes!

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Yes, I have issues – as if you didn’t already know that.  Now excuse me, while  belt out a few-flat- bars of my current earworm “Diamonds Are Forever”, soon to be the chagrin of my co-workers.

300 Mothers

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People are all up in arms over the “alleged” words of Donald Sterling.  Here in New York City a mini race-riot nearly broke on a Brooklyn bus by a 60 something year old white man who single-handedly attempted to turn back the hands of time when he told a black woman she needed to move to the back of the bus and let him have her seat.  A man who, in the midst of the argument that ensued, out right says Sterling should run for president. When it comes to black and white relations, even now there are times when it all feels as though we are just one lit match from the racial powder keg. These are the things that occupy our news and social media cycles.

But what has garnered my attention the most these past three weeks are nearly three hundred mothers.  The nearly three hundred Nigerian mothers of the girls kidnapped from their school last month and the eleven more stolen from their own homes in the middle of the night in recent days.

Did you know there were more kidnappings?  Here we are three weeks after the initial kidnapping and the U.S., is only now stepping forth with “doing the best we can”. It feels all Okay, fine I’ll do it, as though our involvement now is akin to the petulant child forced to apologize to a sibling for some wrong.  It’s better than doing nothing. It is certainly better than the incompetence that has been the Nigerian Police; the same police who initially did not even want to acknowledge that more kidnappings occurred.

Is it the sense of helplessness, the “what can we do about it?” Is because it’s over there, on another continent and not in our backyards?  Is it because it is happening to Africans by Africans,  a black-on-black crime if you will?  What is at the root of this overall sense of apathetic whatever regarding it? Let’s be honest, if this were nearly 300 little white girls in South Africa, or in any other country been kidnapped as such, the immediate public outcry would be swift and deafening. Why is the world so relatively quiet for Nigeria’s little girls?  It has taken nearly three weeks of a slow building public international pressure for any course of assistance to be offered, action to be put into play. Are nearly 300  little black girls not worthy?

  • Tell that to the mothers who do not know if their girls are already dead.
  • Tell that to the mothers who do not know if their girls are alive, but already parsed out to the human trafficking / sex trade markets as threatened by the leader of the group who masterminded the school kidnapping.
  • And as more time that passes without any of the girls being rescued, tell that to the mothers who do not know if perhaps death is the better option.

This Sunday for those of you who will celebrate Mother’s Day, unless a miracle happens between now and Saturday, take a moment to remember  the nearly 300 mothers across the ocean missing their daughters and acknowledge them. Let’s continue to put pressure on our governments until each and every girl is accounted for.

300

To Be Or Not To Be Guilty…

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In the past few weeks, there seems to have been a spike of discussion online and in real life of females who have Friends With Benefits (FWBs) versus “a real” relationship and whether or not it is settling. I find this uniquely interesting as it is mostly the females who felt a sense of “less-than” or guilt for their choices. Most males do not feel any lessening of their self-worth for having FWBs, let alone guilt. So why are so many females so hung up over it. For simplicity I am going to mostly stick with the cisgender heterosexual monogamous relationships as I write, honestly because it’s easier, but the  subject crosses genders, sexualities and poly/mono -gamies.

Just as I had to work out my own issues, everyone must decide their sexual comfort levels that for themselves. I am not providing a How To on getting around/past/over said guilt. This is simply my two cents on why so many women seem to have this guilt in the first place. Your mileage will definitely vary.

I think a lot of the “guilt” some women put on themselves about sex outside of a relationship and/or marriage is rooted in the things taught to us growing up. Whether covertly or overtly a lot of it comes down do modern society’s taint that sex should be about love. In short, women should only be having sex with the person in which she shares mutual love. And if the mutual love is there then they should be married. Blame the “happily ever after” Prince Charming fed to little girls through Disney princess animations and every romantic comedy where gal gets the guy tropes as adults. Unfortunately, these far from realistic ideals of love and romance become so ingrained in our psyches, that come adulthood if it’s not Fourth of July fireworks, swelling arias, heart beat skipping breathlessness 24/7 it’s then it is somehow “less than” and is therefore settling.

Every female that reaches adulthood has heard “If you’re good enough to have sex with you then you’re good enough to marry”. While more experienced females, married or not, tend to have less of a bias on the subject, it is still very hard for most young females to work through the duality of wanting to satisfy a basic need versus “what would Mama think?” It is a grace to the modern times that couples who live together have far less of a stigma now than as few as fifty years ago. That we are now in the 21st Century has very little bearing on these core beliefs handed down to us through the ages since Adam and Eve.  And speaking of the First Couple… Compound all of the above with the thought of many religions which equate, and condemn, sex outside of the marital bed as being a sin.

The magic of the marital bed, in and of itself is funny as it does not 100% absconds one from the guilt of sex. I know many women that have been married or in long term relationships for years, but still will not have sex in their parent’s home when going for an extended family visit. I can pretty much guarantee that 90% of the time it is the female who has the hang-up about it. And 90% of that 90% is due to the fear of what their dear moms would think. These are from women who clearly did not arrive upon this earth via immaculate conception, yet the very thought of their mothers even thinking that they themselves are doing the very thing that gave them life, though they have every legal and “moral” right to as a married person, still makes them uncomfortable.

And while according to the adage the numbers of “size” doesn’t matter, oh but the number of partners a female has seem to do. Even a woman who is a serial monogamist has this magic intangible number that suddenly transforms her from  someone continually looking, but failing to find love, to becoming something…else.  A woman with one FWB is merely is not even pretending that what she is doing is about finding love and at best is “settling”, at worst she too becomes the ambiguous “something…else”. However, females happily engaging in multiple FWBs may then have wonderful pseudonyms from trollop to whore attached to their deeds as the classic double standards of the Madonna/Whore syndrome rears its nasty little head. Because oddly enough, even after all this time, since Eve said “Yes” oh so long ago, the onus to say “No”, to resist temptation – especially sexual temptation, is almost always on the female. Thus, those of us who can’t or simply won’t resist are in the wrong.

After all, we all know boys will be boys, but  good girls don’t.

When society in general has managed to create this dichotomy that glorifies and vilifies sex, even for those who have “the rights” to do it, really, is it any wonder so many women have guilt?

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To Know That Kind

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I watch the moon so cold and pale
As to the dawn it starts to vale
Its glow reflecting in the dew
I can’t decide what plight is worst
In sun or moon should a heart burst?
As I recall the warmth of you

Your inner hue, not just your touch
‘Tis such and I miss it much
The deep rumbled “je t’adore”
When without fear your soul sprang free
And laid its care in none but me
And how it blessed me to my core

In these times sore I question so
To know that kind of love once more

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At dVerse we asked to do a sonnet.  I decided to give a go at one of the much lessen known Jeffreys Sonnet.

A Jeffreys Sonnet was created by Scott J. Alcorn. It is isosyllabic (only 8 syllable per line), 2 sestets with a cross rhymed couplet (the cross rhyme is in the 2nd to 4th syllable in each of the two lines of the couplet). Also there is a cross rhyme in the first line of the 2nd sestet (between the 2nd to 4th syllable), tying the 1st sestet to the 2nd. So the rhyme scheme would be: aabccb, (b)ddeffe, (e)g (g)e. The letters in ( ) are the cross rhymes.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar ~ Rhyme and Sonnets

Verbal Diarrhea Diaries: Hung Up

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Oh dear me!

As I am walking out the ladies room, a colleague is walking out of the adjacent men’s room. My earring chose that moment to drop  from my ear and we both bent to retrieve it. As we rose I observed that he needed to “XYZ” and whispered such to him.  He was so embarrassed as all get out that he full body slammed into the men’s room door when he spun around to run back in and adjust the issue. Unfortunately, that only made things worse as he bounced off the door causing more of an issue. Guess who now knows that said colleague a) clearly is commando today and b) is hung.

I somehow kept a straight face as I quickly turned to walk away and nearly walked into another co-worker a couple of steps away. By the expression on her face I knew she saw…

“Was that his…?”
“Yup!”
“Really?”
“Yuuuup!”
“Holy….!”
“Hamm as in Jon?”

The same male colleague exits the men’s room again, everything now in its proper place this time. He sees us standing there, clearly knowing what’s being discussed and all but runs down the corridor to get away.

My co-worker nods, still clearly impressed by the glimpse she saw earlier. Then looks at me rolling her eyes at the bad Jon Hamm joke reference. “That’s so cheesy, you can do better than that.”

“Perhaps” I nod grinning, “but now I think I want croque monsieur for lunch.”

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Because She Knows

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Because she knows the end is near
No, things weren’t quite as they appear
She’s forced to face her own worse fear
Proof that he holds another dear

Her world, now turned upon its ear
Because she knows the end is near
A love that had no other peer
Has turned to one that can’t adhere

The pain she feels is so severe
She may lose all held in revere
Because she knows the end is near
She starts to get herself in gear

Her actions now become quite clear
Protect what’s left, which she holds dear
She wipes away her final tear
Because she knows the end is near

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Having another turn with the Quartern.

National Poetry Month 2014 – 8

I Offer

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I offer unto you these hands

Their hold is strong, but never tight

I offer unto you these arms

To keep you close both day and night

I offer unto you this heart

The broken shards that you made whole

I offer unto you this grace

That you complete body and soul

And all I ask of you is this;

To answer ‘Yes’ with one sweet kiss

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National Poetry Month – 2014-4

Breaking the rules using a rhyming Sonnetina Uno while Meeting the Bar at dVerse.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | MeetingTheBar– Emotion in poetry

Perfect Stranger

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I do love her still, for she’s still mother
Though oft she calls me by names of others
Her soft eyes remain, shining warm with care
The curves of her body, her graying hair
But her mind now slides from what’s really there

Her concave lips form that familiar smile
Like when she showed off her latest hairstyle
Even with loose curls each strand was in place
Particular to the point of basket case
Never walked out the door without her face

Made a clean home look easy to attain
My haphazard ways were always her bane
It gave her license for years to nitpick
My style she joked was an urban beatnik
But she loves my roast chicken with garlic

Her home now’s not what I thought would occur
But she’d gone beyond my means to help her
After jumping with haste to a rescue
When she tried to melt wax for a fondue
Insists utensils could be eaten too

She’s no longer the mother that I knew
Some days it takes all just to muddle through
I look at her and it’s my face I see
So it’s twice as hard when she looks straight at me,
And then asks ‘And who are you sweetie?’

That I remind her of her little girl
Who fidgets wearing pinafore and curls
She’s the woman that once knew me so well
But if she knows me at all now I can’t tell
Yet I know her deeply, and that’s my hell

Roles reversed, she’s the one whose hair I comb
When I visit her at the nursing home
“See this pin my girl gave me yesterday?”
I was a child, it’s so old in years even I cannot say
But for her, the years time has washed away

Seeing the pin makes me break down in tears
She coos “Oh miss, it can’t be that bad dear”
I fall in the familiar arms of hers
As everything becomes just one big blur
And I cry upon a perfect stranger

Pictures Taken

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Such silly smiles that split the planes of our faces
Vacations have a way of doing that
Pictures taken visiting places
So happy anywhere we’re at
Dressed in our Formal Night styles
Now looking over these
Staring at our smiles
I’m on my knees
Tell me why
I cry

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I recently came across some images of my late-husband and I on our very first cruise together. It was a bittersweet discovery to say the least.

I haven’t done a form in a while and what better way to kick off National Poetry Writing Month? This form is called Emotive Ten.

Emotive Ten (nonce form)

 An Emotive Ten describes some form of emotion and has ten lines, the only restrictions is that it is syllable based.  It starts with twelve syllables and throughout the poem working its way down to two; it should describe usually an emotion in paradox, i.e. life to death, loneliness to love, light to dark etc.

If rhyme is used it must go with the syllable count in numbers and rhyme in letters:

12A, 10B, 9A, 8B, 7C, 6D, 5C, 4D, 3E, 2E

An alternate rhyming suggestion is a/a/b/b/c/c etc. The form can also be done in reverse, still ten lines, but starting out with two syllables and ending with twelve.

No Arguments Here

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This morning I’m standing in line at one of my usual breakfast places. That there is a long line, long by my standards as a regular, tells me someone came in with a large order that is slowing down the usually quick and efficient process of the line cooks. It happens sometimes, you deal with it or you walk away. I was contemplating between the two options when one of the line cooks spies me at the back of the line and smiles. He holds up one finger, then two fingers, his head cocked to the side in an unspoken query. I smile back, wave and then nod, holding up one finger. In this particular restaurant they have two things I like to order for breakfast. Isidori, the second line cook, is silently asking if I want my breakfast sandwich (#1) or my omelette platter (#2). Thus, I just as silently respond yes, I would like the sandwich. He smiles and indicates with his head to go ahead to the cashier.

Ah, the sweet perks of being an engaging regular! I am spoiled sometimes.

I blow a kiss to him in gratitude and go to pay for my meal. I stand adjacent to a woman who is ticking off the various items ordered to Cristina, the cashier, making sure they have everything. Now I know who had the big order. Cristina asks about the size of a coffee ordered and the woman calls out to someone on different line.

“Margie! What size you want your hazelnut coffee again?”

Now, saying she was loud, really does not do it justice. Seriously, I felt my ears pop as though I were in a rapidly moving elevator. At least six different people in my line of vision reacted to the decibel level of her voice by turning their collective heads either towards or away from her and vocalizing some form of exclamation and/or expletive, including my leaning away from her with “Well damn!”

As the nearest person to her, I received the venom of her stare.

“Please! I weren’t that loud.”

I mentally bit my lip resisting the urge to inform her folks on the other side of the International Date Line, where it is the middle of the night, are likely waking up wondering why they are thinking about hazelnut coffee. Luckily, she was spared my snark when her friend came over and settled it.

“Yeah, you were. What the hell wrong with you screaming like that?”

She glances around at various raised eyebrow/“you crazy”/WTF reactions to her. You can all, but hear the “Whatever!” going through her mind.

“Raivenne, here’s your breakfast honey.” Isidori and Cristina in their usual efficiency already have my food cooked, coffee poured and items bagged.

“Thanks Cristina, here you go.” In my usual efficiency have my credit and restaurant discount card at the ready as I walk around the two women and pay for my breakfast.

“Have a nice day,” Cristina hands me my cards and my bagged order. “See you tomorrow?”

“Thanks, maybe. Enjoy your day.” I take my items and start turning to leave.

“Wait, I was in front of her, how she go first?” Ms. Decibel wants to know. At least her voice has returned to a volume more acceptable for human conversation.

Cristina looks at her in confusion, clearly not understanding her question.

“Because she’s Raivenne…” she states as though it should be obvious.

I smirk and walk away, who am I to argue with such infallible logic?

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