A Weed on The Curb

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #191 . The old rain in the ditch; cold claws on uneven brick Come sing glass to flickering Come pull a blanket to your shivering Broken feather set adrift; round eye searchlight swift Come where the light casts opening Come find the new path wavering ----------------------------------------- TL:DR:  Hope you have a warm & cozy holiday and much happiness in the new year.  Could I have resisted the last Muse of the year? Apparently not. :) Trying to balance out the unease that seems to be lurking at the end of the year with hibernating with the dogs and enjoying a holiday spent with more of the family than last year has been, especially lately, leaning toward just hibernating. Once it gets cooler, I'm going to make another book fort by the shelves and dedicate a few days to catching up on my reading. Looking forward to baking carrot & peanut butter dog cookies next week and to finding out whether James' experiment with mincemeat pies (...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #190 ,  hosted this week by Carrie. Keaton was great in that show—the one with wings— Where he was constantly a [man]child on a ledge  dreaming an angel who became a superhero.   She was a sarcastic (fake?) angel—it was the 80s— But always good, on time, her lessons easy, Easy as it would have been for him to fall.   The metaphor so obvious...but I didn't get it. Nor the easy and obvious good. (/s)   I watch the TV movie every other December Remembering believing in easy And crushing on this character, that city...   Angels should be sweet, sarcastic figures, knowing (like nurses and social workers) we prefer Sleeping on the ledge, reckless to call for "heroes." To clear up any confusion:  there is no Michael Keaton movie we watch every holiday season. Although, if there were...I'd probably watch it.  -- Chrissa

  Sharing today for Shay's Word Garden Word List #3.  Can the Christmas wreckage of empty shelves lean through shadows rooting in rainy weekday puddles in deep places where the road bends toward the root- tatted sewers? Can a splash stricken from this fresh print of daylight tremble the neon stillness of sports drinks in a cold closet whose dim light hums automatic, endless prayers? I didn't quite get this right--I used too many of the words and the whole thing doesn't quite get at the sense that as the world spins back up after lockdowns and vaccines and the special kind of madness that comes with losing the everyday felting of one experience into another, we're not going to catch back up. We went out to look at Christmas lights and found the Christmas sections of most places empty of stock, rows Grinch-stocked with hooks but no ornaments. And that could be a good thing--we're apparently collectively the worst about plastic production, consumption, and waste--but ...

  Sharing today with T he Sunday Muse #189 , where Shay is hosting. Come and read and share a piece! On a web-white, wool-quiet morning I found the girl our stories gave us The one who survived She wore the meadow, carded and sewn Long since burned for field Still, she knew me Her stories named me fierce, feral She might have feared  The one who devours Neither of us spoke, patient at morning Breath, warmth, silence Innocent of power We know the stories kill us both We know that we become Fearsome by survival Hello and welcome. It's 67 degrees outside this morning and a warm December weekend might seem like the kind of thing that would prevent me from following through on a plan to hibernate with a good book for the rest of the weekend...but it's the doomscrolling that's run down the charge on my phone that's preventing me from doing that. Also, I may have developed an intolerance to long stretches of quiet during the past year and a half.  Anyway. Looking forward to r...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #188 . It's always dark in the mall that died; the seats feel gritty, the windows are blank and all the stores empty. There's one door open back behind the large department store I slip in and walk over the torn, glassy floor. Someone has filmed the life as it left, most people prefer it gone; consumption is always deadly, some moan. But I continue to walk through these laminate halls to remember the books, my friends, the lit windows... It's always dark in the last hallways; the hard seats left empty; I'll rest between starvation and plenty. The benches remain, the walls rot, and ceilings spread stains I close my eyes and wait. This is the first last stop at this station, open since devastation. Theoretically, with Thanksgiving past and a chill weekend to remind us it's no longer a lingering summer/fall combo, we're supposed to have moved on to decorating for Christmas. In the spirit of fiction, let's say that happened. Let...

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #187 .  They come to us in cardboard; we stand them up together. Paper skin and silver bones and hair of green and brown and gold A dancer's reach One key at the throat, one knife in the door, one claw on the sill A glass princess spilled We lay them all in cardboard; we lay them all together. There is no packing or cleaning up stories before the last click A door shuts We've laid them all in cardboard; we've laid them all together.  ----- It's been a week. Our neighbors built a patio that is currently illuminated like a convenience store and which helpfully allowed me to watch a rat running along the fence, yelling at me the entire time. Trust me, rodent...I'm not coming anywhere near you. My dad is home from the hospital (yea!!!) & doing well and I feel...well, really, like this should be a stupendously garrulous note. Instead...I'm just going to say that I'm in the mood for comfort food reading. For stories in which peopl...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #186 . Sorry. Probably best to skip this one. On bad days I argue with the void: it is empty; I call it full of nothing made pathological; therefore it obsesses to possess mass, to be something arguing with the universe but shouting in the mirror black as starlit backdrop, as stars that fall deeper and deeper into time until they  drag everything into the void and are empty, wrung out of needing to have an argument and then we look at each other, deep in the black fallen forever of our gaze.  I wasn't going to post this week. But that probably doesn't matter...because here is a post. This has been a weird week and, in the midst of much more important things, my NaNo project just [temporarily] self-destructed. There will be a return to that project and I'm already sharpening the knives for it. Just need to let a little off-topic anger abate so that everyone doesn't get flamethrowers and a crazy 80's soundtrack. AAAAAAAAEEEEEIIIIIIIIIII!...