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Stimulus: Scribblings |
Pen and Ink, Britt, 2006. Link to Large Image.
The administrator will be ice-fishing on The Lake of the Woods from Monday, January 8, through Thursday morning, January 11, with no internet access. If you need assistance, or if you need a fishing report, you can reach him at 507-317-0180. |
| Posted on 01/07/2007 |
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| [Respond To This] | [View All Stimuli] |
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ALL RESPONSES |
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It was a good night.
Drinks were sipped;
thoughts were spoken.
Later, words found
their way to paper.
Many were illegible.
Some made sense.
Nothing could be changed,
inked as it was.
It is a clear choice;
love or destroy.
Or destroy what you love.
What’s left will be hard,
smooth and impenetrable.
Hold it up to the light;
there is no reflection.
There is nothing but you.
Everything you want
is locked inside,
along with the key.
You need to get in there,
more than you need air or water.
Explosives won’t work.
Time will only make you crazy.
That’s the key.
Blow up your clock,
and say hello to you. |
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it’s always my hands which push
my face back together each morning
they know the terrain, have always known
what to push and when to spread the skin—
each finger, each tip trying to locate
its proper place
two near the skull, my cathedral,
my body’s abused temple, arrive
first, kneading directly behind closed
eyes, trying to make me forget
whatever it is i need to forget
**
it’s my hands which first recognize
cold, instinctively praying, slipping
inside each other like identical twins
in their mother’s womb, rubbing
like two slender sticks
even as iron trains pass to different cities
the cold stays with my hands, religiously,
allowing them to pray
allowing me to keep them
**
it’s been a long time since warm
has allowed my hands their freedom—
as i walk along stiff grass into another
evening walk, a squirrel squirts along a fence,
wind chimes tinkle from dark wood—
cold pushes my blood aside, howls
through my veins to my heart, from my heart
my hands hide, fisted in my pockets, apart
from each other, waiting patiently
as if for a train, to meet at my temples,
to pray, to decipher
another night’s scribbled passing |
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For whom do we drink?
There are so many names to think of.
As many in the world as gimlets and cherries.
One tabletop alone cannot hold them all,
Beloved and Other. God’s stands out.
The likely three letter word for Creator.
The first to idea a martini glass,
chose a shadow for it that lifts
like a balloon before it’s poked.
Its mercurial tilt clouds a host
of names whose letters run vertically
and horizontally, in rows
like overtures and gardens,
their DNA, Do Not Abandon,
in indelible ink that smudges.
Ersatz joy taken lightly for an hour.
And the second hour for the return.
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Spires of Babylon! Cursed, fucked world!
Marble erudite
sweating out God
by holding focus to the paper
foreign to his desk.
He is made to fathom consequence
and continues to measure success with sorrow
while pondering what is darker than man.
His pen to be moved by the sickness of its ink.
And while no innocence is gained by fever,
in the span of that fever,
pages pile up like nervous cigarettes
until the tourniquet of drink tightens off the written word
leaving the versed porous and discontented to harmony.
In length - abject by art
In brief - will made more formidable.
For even in the still of sitting,
it is realized -
Life is Expansive
by fabled and fated drunkard
or
poet of empty spillings.
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My breath fogs the cold air
as if exhaling on a mirror.
With joy, I see you approaching,
looking intent, determined
as if you’ve never required an inner pep-talk.
All at once, I hate you
(your polished thighs, your heart-shaped rump)
strolling without exertion toward the door.
The Gym awaits the gift of your sweat,
it has stolen mine.
You stop to gab. My words chug out,
choo-choo like an overloaded freight train
with lungs rattling, faintly whistling
a hunger to survive.
I can’t talk. My face is red.
Instead, I act in a hurry, pretending
to have somewhere important to be.
With a breathy half-wave, I blow you off.
“Can’t stop,” I say, “Will call tomorrow.”
Full out jogging, I try to look spry, lithe
just in case you’re watching.
By the time I reach my car,
I’m in full cardiac mode,
my breath quickly scribbling
out your apology into the wind
as my heart explodes into tiny pieces
of sorry.
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She sat at the bar alone,
on the stool closest to the door.
Every time someone came in,
they brought the cold air with them.
Surrounding her, patrons drank their
beer and gossiped about everyone else
there, also drinking their beer and
gossiping about everyone there.
Her martini stood out like a
green olive in a jar of pimentos--
its mere presense threatened to
swallow those pints of brew whole.
Maybe it was just her imagination,
but it seemed the bartender sneered
just a bit when she'd placed her order.
She shrugged;
the conversations did not pause to notice.
A few hours later,
stirred by the stories she'd been allowed to overhear (because she was unknown, she guessed, and posed no immediate danger), she paid her tab and stood to leave.
The babbling continued,
humming in a low mumble to her
inebriated brain.
Donning her heavy coat,
tying her scarf around her throat,
and pulling her hat tightly down over her ears, she reached out and plucked the liquor-soaked olive from her glass, popped it in her mouth, and headed for the door.
Her hand paused, and she turned to the masses.
"By the way," she said loudly,
"T's relationship with C is no one's business, really, but the fact that T and M and P all know about C's interest in M doesn't mean that D isn't aware of how silly it all is, especially in relation to J and J and B over there.
You might want to keep all that to yourselves from now on, seeing as M and A and S all talk about it in the kitchen with G and P anyway.
It's been an enlightening evening, and I thank you."
When she opened the door,
it let in the cold air from outside,
and she walked out,
leaving them all a bit shaken.
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Your lines and marks
strewn across square-edged leaves
call forth
twin pictures in the mind
echoing songs in the heart
of any whose eyes pass over
Pure magic . . .
the irresistible will of traceries
left by another
casting spells
and curses,
teleporting captivated audiences
to places, sentiments
not their own
Bridging distant spirits
in unholy communion
An intoxicating antidote
to the daily rituals of survival:
Let’s raise our glasses now
to those naked souls unseen
touching
on a page.....
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Everywhere I go
I leave a trail:
notes scribbled on a napkin in a bar,
an arrangement of leaves in the road.
I want you to be looking.
I want to be found.
You never come.
I blame the birds.
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