Almost halfway through the month and I’ve managed to write zero poems (I don’t count the first one, as it was before the month started proper) …
Until last night, when a rambling rabbit hole lead down to a song I’d half-forgotten existed – forgotten just how much I love. I’ve been crying over it ever since, but I don’t need to think hard to understand it isn’t the song itself that’s making me cry.
At any rate, somewhere in the tears I found this:
~*~
She took all the love that a poor boy could give her And left me to die
Like a fox on the run, kit caught between clenched teeth. Paws aren’t fast enough some days but I keep running
Away from the picture of boxed bodies stacked like shoes on a shelf, like Legos, like the bottles of juice I’m trying not to horde because it’s all he’ll drink, this kit clenched between desperate teeth, and what happens when the shelves run dry, when the bodies stack high enough to reach the door I sit behind,
Blowing my nose and telling myself it’s just the pollen just the pollen just the pollen not a plain white box come to rest on the lawn while furious paws dig a hole in the dirt he left us in.
I won’t apologize for the lack of a quality photo – getting any snap of this guy is a miracle. He sees me coming with the camera and that’s it.
Starting NaPo a day early, with the prompt of: your favorite bird. It’s not a great poem, but it is a poem, as finished as I can get in a day’s time. That counts, just like the photo.
Cardinal Hearts
I used to think it was the color the brightest red given movement and flight, Or maybe the notes as bright as the feathers, everything birdsong should be.
But now I think maybe it’s more: If you see him his girl is nearby. Bright beauty isn’t for him, isn’t his badge of pride. Bright red like a heartbeat, he draws the attention simply to keep his love safe.
It’s amazing how much one month can swing between good and bad, isn’t it? My month started with this:
And ended with that little old woman in the hospital.
What’s worse than having to take your elderly mother to the emergency room? Having to take her in the middle of a pandemic, when the hospital is on complete lock down.
Things are shit, aren’t they? Swear to the Gods this month has lasted forever. But only 10.5 hours to go and then we’ll get a fresh new month.
Speaking of which:
So, 30 poems in 30 days. Might as well just dive right in to the deep end, yeah? I haven’t done a poetry challenge in several years, and I can count the poems I’ve written since then on one hand.
But fuck it, yeah? The Gods hate a coward, and so do I.
~*~
So back to the car – holy fucking shit. Better than I would have dared dreamed I could get. Way better. A 2018 with under 30k miles, bluetooth, usb ports, backup camera. I got a good deal on it because the owner was a stupidly heavy smoker. It reeks of cigarettes and I don’t even care. It just makes it more fitting for a car dedicated to Odin.
Of course the downside is now that I have a car and can go anywhere I want I don’t dare for fear of getting my mother sick. On the plus side, I can get to the store as often as I need, without having to beg rides from people tired of carting my ass around.
And, too, I won’t be able to go out and spend money I can’t afford now that I have a car payment.
~*~
The gratitudes:
The unemployed hermit life is actually paying off.
We have enough money to pay the bills.
I’ve managed to cross two things off my goal board for the year.
For every bad there’s been something equally good.
A deep emotional state; a yearning for a happiness that has passed, or perhaps never even existed …
Because the stupidest thing rake the hurt fresh again (the Daytona 500, of all fucking things) and I need something to distract myself – two pieces, or how I sometimes struggle with deciding which direction to go:
Sometimes the deciding factor is the challenge requirements. Sometimes it’s where I’m posting a piece. Other times it simply boils down to how I’m feeling.
The first piece meets the challenge requirements and didn’t take any extra brain power on a day when I didn’t have much. The second meets it as well … but sometimes I don’t want to post a devotional piece in the middle of suburbia. They wouldn’t get it, or appreciate it, so why go the extra mile of turning the first into the second?
Except the second really wanted to be finished and posted somewhere, and like I said, I need distraction from chronic pain and getting stuck in remembrances of a life past.
I’ll say I’m not crazy about the short poem – but honestly I am crazy about the fact that I managed to write one. Poems have been missing for quite some time now, and I’d really like to find my way back to them. Fiction is good, really good … but poetry will always be my first love.
~*~
First pic is a squirrel being completely uncooperative about getting their picture taken. Second is a mockingbird doing the same. I am really hoping new lenses make it easier. Guess I’ll find out in a few days.
I have two new lenses and two “master class” photography books on the way; fingers crossed I can finally get a bit more of a handle on this whole photography thing. Of course it would also help to have better things to snap than my not-so-great front yard, but that’s a line of thought that needs to go sit in the corner with the rest of the pity party. At any rate, here’s hoping I can improve on what I do have available to snap. Y’all are going to hate me when my gardenia starts blooming, I tell you what.
~*~
So I realized the last few posts didn’t have the gratitudes lists. Amazing how easy it is to forget something, isn’t it? And then forget you’ve forgotten. Honestly, I doubt I would have remembered if I hadn’t scrolled back a few entries.
I really want to talk myself out of it today, because honestly? Gratitude is in short supply right this moment. I’m miserable through and through, inside and out, and I don’t wanna, thinking it will only make me more lonely and miserable.
And it very well might, but it needs to be done anyway. I need to do it, need something to hold to help fight off this utter wanking bullshit.
So today I am grateful for:
Talking to my favorite cousin, that I haven’t spoken to in more years than I can count.
Small poems
Dragon Age, and Steve Valentine’s voice
The chance to enrich my life with all these awesome digital bits
January got crazy. Then it got flared. Now I’m just trying to dig out.
Which, I guess that answers my question – it *wasn’t* just stress and depression causing the flares and the fatigue. What a fucking bummer. But now I know, or some such Zen bullshit. On the plus side, it seems maybe the problems I was having with fruits and salads may have been dairy related. I’m on my third bag of salad in a week, and there haven’t been any ill effects. I never thought I’d be this fucking happy about lettuce.
I have been doing the art – I won’t post them all but here’s a few of my faves:
Playing around outside with closeup. Honestly, that I was able to snap the birb is a nine days’ wonder.
And inside, with lighting, closeup, and depth of field. None of which turned out as well as I wanted but they did turn out, so I’ll call it a win.
Proof of Life. And A cat. And a Liesmith looking over my shoulder.
Next time I’ll have some pics of aprons, and maybe even a few other handmade items. Or more art. Or news of stories finished and posted/published. It’s going to be another crazy month. If I can just get on top of this eight ball coming at me …
Oh it has been shamefully long this time. My first post of the year and we’re over two weeks in. In my defense I’ve been stupidly busy.
I don’t even know where to start. Every January I participate in a month of challenges for The Lilypad – my plan was to update the blog every day with my piece for the day. That tanked when I got behind pretty much straight out of the gate. It took forever to get caught up and it didn’t even last. I’m behind again, worse this time.
It’s not quite my own doing; this is the first year I’m having to work the challenges in around trying to make money and being the sole caretaker for the house and occupants. It never fails, when I finally do get around to opening Gimp, someone or something needs my attention.
But aside from all that, I am hamstringing myself to one degree or another. Instead of just getting each challenge done I’m stressing myself over making it *art*. I want each one to be a masterpiece and when it isn’t, I double down on the next one – and I do this knowing that the harder I try the further away I get.
Anyway, I’m here, I’m queer and I’ll post most of what I have so far (I’ll forgo the really crappy ones)
All photos mine except for the pic of Cumberland Falls – that came from Pixabay. Credits for everything else can be found here.
I was going to add more, talk a bit about the ones I really like, but it’s 3 am and I’m yawning my head off. I can’t yet go to bed but I can go work on the next one – see if I can get a bot more caught up. Probably not, but this next one is not too difficult so maybe.
I was going to make a plain diary entry, try to find something witty or wise to say now that it’s officially the last day of the month/year/decade. I gave up about half a paragraph in, when I realized it was going to be some kind of angst driven bullshit, some poor me the decade is gone and I can’t remember half of what happened during it.
Fuck that. Instead I listened to whomever was poking me and put on a brand new pair of Bose wireless OTE headphones, poured a small shot of orange liqueur into a cup of fresh coffee, and picked up the DSLR camera that still manages to make me feel like a monkey let loose in a camera shop. I turned off the lights and sat down with my Holiday tree – my very first not-Christmas-tree, that is already stripped down to the lights in preparation for being taken down some time in the next 18 hours or so – and started monkeying around with dials and settings.
300 pictures later I quit, not because I was tired, only because the battery was running low and I wanted to get the pics downloaded before it winked out completely.
(While I’m waiting for the pics to finish transferring, I’ll take a moment to say everything I expected from Bose was spot on. Hfs do these fuckers sound *good*)
Okay, let’s see what I got, and if I can remember what setting goes with each pic …
Well, pretty much what I expected, monkey with a camera.
Most of the pics I’ve taken have come out like this, but can I just say as amateur as they are, I really dig the orange wall bits.M setting, I think, probably with a high ISO? I just like the way the lights pop out of the dark. Has to be auto cos I always turn flash off. Ugh, somehow worst of the lot. Maybe just because it shows how badly my walls need painted.Better. Somewhat.
So there’s a resolution, of sorts: by next year I want to be able to take better pictures of something that means so much to me. That gives me 11 months – even a monkey should be able to learn a thing or two by then, yes?
~*~
The gratitudes, cos even though there will be a more bloggy post at some point after I wake up, I still don’t want to get in the habit of leaving a post without them.
So today I am grateful for:
Hard work
Motherfucking Bose, and Idec that they aren’t technically mine. I’m happy to share them with the boy (cos he won’t hardly use them anyway, it seems).
Scallops and rice
The bills are paid
Two more days until all this shit is out of my house.
