One way of making poetry is to take a text–something intended for another purpose (advertising copy works amazingly well)–and trim, and trim, and trim

You can cut and paste, erase, whatever.

Some are only the whole text, with a little difference in punctuation, and some are almost nothing but a word from here and one from there

This one’s barely anything beyond the word

Nonpareil
from the French and meaning matchless,
torn down and disassembled
Nonpareil new workers called it
Nonpareil

Nonpareil was poor
Nonpareil
fell on deaf ears
Nonpareil
was working
living were
descendents
of Nonpariel

from
Wikipedia:  Nonpareil, Guyana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonpareil,_Guyana

Love?

you think
it’s love.
you’ve read all the books,
seen the movies;
this might be like that.
just a bit.
love they all say
is awful and
wonderful
and when this is right,
yes it is.
and nobody else
understands why
you care so much,
just like the movies and books.
but you’re not some heroine
some plastic figurine
barbie or belle
cinderella;
you’re not your friends
or the women in movies
and this may be
how it feels
you think
it’s love.

Spending the morning doing something that ought to have been done before I started writing.  Making background.  Who did what to whom and when and when the heck is all this taking place?

How is everything connected?  Should it be and do I care?  And if I don’t care, shold I bother?

Oh.  It’s no bother, really.  Not even out of the way.

I’m not sure what’s going on, but something is brewing.  Intrigue, sex, revenge and crazy families.  A dab of church and state.  It’s all been done and I don’t know a thing I haven’t got from fiction somewhere on the way.  Trite as a soap opera at the bones of it.  A third of the way through the month and just getting started.

The cats are calm and peaceful.  Now.  They are all cozy and comfortable and settling down for their little morning naps.  I, on the other hand, am most definitely awake.  My eyes are red and scratchy, and my hands don’t want to work, but I’m awake.  My brain is full of mush. But I’m awake.  I crawled out of bed and fed the…witches, cleared up the broken dishes, and the flower pot with basil that I brought inside to save from the frost.  They are getting too inventive in the ways they wake me up.  On insufficient sleep I get a little strange.  I tried to close my eyes again, but I found this in my brain:  nobody’s wearing hummingbirds this year

regretfully, not

no-body’s wearing mountain bikes this year
no, no one’s wearing mountain bikes this year
since my assistant was accused
of bike-napping
on the news
we won’t be using mountain bikes this year
no-body’s wearing polar ice this year
oh, of course we won’t have polar ice this year
it was rare
and almost pretty
but the air here turned it
shitty
no one’s going to pose polar ice this year
you won’t see feather beds again this fall
no, we won’t have feather beds around at all
those that had them in their attic
made the knock-offs too
dramatic
that they must be sent a message
leave your quilt squares on the wall
we’ll have none of grammie’s afghans
or those bath room mats from sears
we won’t be wearing things like that
for years

Robert at Poetic Asides gives us the prompt to write about a plant, and I find myself wanting to define the difference between justice and revenge, and a whole slew of bits on rights and wrongs, but all I’ve got so far is just a little poison ivy

Poison Ivy

even as with martyrs your death may be a lethal cause
your burning carcase so pollute the autumn air that
breathing your particulate poison passing
can inflame and shut the air
from bronchioles, alveoli
a killing hate and more I have for you
and would expunge you from existence
root you from the memory of all mankind

I couldn’t sleep.  Probably something to do with the quad Americano (why bother with the water) from Thursday afternoon.  I did try, and might have drifted off, but Jim’s snoring sent me to the couch, where the cats immediately decided that since I had gotten up it must be breakfast, no matter that it was  1 AM and I had only been in bed about half an hour.

Rather than give them the satisfaction, I plumped up my pillow and settled in with my notebook to work on my poor little deserted NaNoWrimo novel.  I’ve been good enough with the poetry, but what needs the most work I have left to wait.

I’d jotted down a note or two, and had the idea that a move to another point of view might work to get me moving.  I’d intended to move from the Scrivener to Wanda, and give myself the opportunity to broach the subject of her real identity.  Had her in the window of the Emporium, looking out onto the square where our fearless letter-writer is stationed.  She remarks to Horace…..yada, yada

Instead, I found myself writing into that scene with a real original open the door, enter the store, see this, that the other. up the stairs, this and that, another flight and here you are looking out on falala.  But all with a rather archaic voice, something like Horace, but not.  So I went along and went along and wrote several close pages.  Then opened the laptop and began transcribing.  And padding.

About halfway through, maybe less (padding), right at 750 words, something began niggling at me.  I had Horace Muffin in the attic of the shop, uncrating books.  And the words “Haunted Bookshop” passed across my mind.  Hoping I was wrong, I looked it up.  It’s been twenty years, maybe twenty-five since I read Christopher Morley’s books about the bookseller ROGER MIFFLIN, and his Parnassas on Wheels and haunted Bookshop, Parnassas at Home, and I could no more tell you what the stories are than I could fly.  But sure as shit I used the voice, I channeled Christopher Morley.  And all that I can say is thank goodness he’s in the public domain.

Morley:

If you are ever in Brooklyn, that borough of superb sunsets and magnificent vistas of husband-propelled baby-carriages, it is to be hoped you may chance upon a quiet by-street where there is a very remarkable bookshop.

This bookshop, which does business under the unusual name “Parnassus at Home,” is housed in one of the comfortable old brown-stone dwellings which have been the joy of several generations of plumbers and cockroaches. The owner of the business has been at pains to remodel the house to make it a more suitable shrine for his trade, which deals entirely in second-hand volumes. There is no second-hand bookshop in the world more worthy of respect.

Me:

Horace himself now lived in some degree of splendor on a hill above the town, between the South Law and the more exclusive North, trending somewhat toward the eastern slope with its more modest garden homes and neatly cultivated plots of this or that special favorite green or dainty fruit.  He enjoyed his twice daily walk, even when the weather drove most people to remain in doors or resort to some sort of dry conveyance.  Nothing less than a typhoon would prevent him from coming in to work, though on occasion he would remain at the Emporium where his rooms were always neatly kept in order and no less clean than when his still-mourned wife had kept their home there.
Windows front and rear wide to catch the breezes, and deep to keep the shade, combined with pocket doors wide and open to allow air’s free movement made the attic rooms as comfortable as any place in town to pass the day.  And they were cooled, not as some might have you think by magic, but by good insulation and superb design.

YES, OF COURSE HE IS BETTER AT IT!!!

I’m really not sure whether to laugh or cry.

after noon and still in my pajamas.  Sat down to check my eMail and look at rwp and the poetic asides prompt and haven’t even had a cup of coffee, just the dregs of last nights tea.  But got one poem written and a little clarity of focus on the novel.  Funny how just moving point of view will give you something.

I still don’t know the name of the empire’s capital or anybody’s name when they’re back home, but Wanda almost gave up something to me, and she has known Horace Muffin from before.  She calls him “Pinky” which seems to hint at family or close friends knowing him from childhood.

I do fear that Wanda is a marysue, but hell, an amateur can be allowed a little leeway

today’s installment on the 5-part poem (the title is a line from a poem that didn’t work)

as damp  then peach-scented us

Odds
are in your favor
missie if you buy this car you won’t be sorry true she’s got some miles on her but
she ’s got plenty more you had your own mechanic look her over? I would hope my daughter’d do the same thing or my mother, bless her, she’s a stubborn woman
Well you never know about a timing chain that’s the truth just like he said this model has been known to have a problem there and there’s no warning signs to tip you off and it does cost a bit you have to haul the engine out to take a look and if you’re looking might as well just go ahead and put a new one in          pro-actively although she might not give you one minute’s trouble but that’s why we let you take her for a test drive, isn’t it
She’s a honey and you sure looked good
together but I tell you what
you’ll pay a little more up front
buthow about this little baby
just got her on the lot
she’s still a little damp
inside from detailing
as pretty as a peach
and just as sweet
Take her out
Imagine

top down wind and Mose Allison exhaling cool irony nowhere I got to be no just flat blue highway and night smelling baking bread and coffee soft leather seats and smooth responsive powerful and ripe as peaches headlights picking out the lines stars blurring mine we us

Took Jims poor sick mustang to the shop this morning almost knocked my block off getting in

oh woe but I am spoiled by Scion toaster; my head has room my butt has room and there’s no climbing in and out

Toyota may quote me I love my xB

Not getting much done on the NaNov, but I’m mostly up to date on poems, even though I’m having to do some fighting here and there.  Made a choice and now living with it and its ramifications.  Just what the hell is truth?  And why does it vary so much with your point of view?

May Be

.

May be truth
should wear a label
hang a sign around its neck
and give us leave
to waste our time on more important puzzles
(Hamlet was a fool to care)
May be the night has fooled your eyes, you see gray recollections shades
(see fire curl in spectrum
as an autumn leaf
from stem through crackling veins
to erose edges purple)
You may be but mad as foxes and to one wind only
(lean on the wind and fall
it holds no more than smoke
and molecules of memory)
May be you’re trapped in solving amber questions where the only answer’s mad
(you have no boy’s excuse
to murder daisies making sport of madness)
You may be ragged in your reason
six of one to half a dozen
(or sharp as fractured glass
a liar eight to maybe)

My cousin Marie, the sweetheart, sent me an eMail forwarding a raft of Maxine comics along with a little piece on the cartoonist who draws her.  When I saw this one, it rang a few chimes.

November is for Madness just like March.

I gave the old girl a few of my own buttons, though I suppose I ought to add a turkey and a pumpkin pie.  Or maybe a quart of old Wild Turkey would do her better.  Keep those writing muscles lubricated.

Thanks for the laugh, cuz.

Now, back to the novel.

Today’s PAD prompt involves putting someone in an unaccustomed place.  Well, I have been intending to use the prompts to work on my Scofflaw story, but my brain was every-which-away this morning, and I’m still working out the novel’s whos and whats.  I do have a little bit of scene bubbling around inside my head, but for the time being, I have gone and put me in a poem.  Subject object and verb   ___delete____

I’ll have the bit of story later.