inked

Thoroughly pleased to let you know that my poem, "deracinated", is featured on the front page of Indie Ink today.  Please go give it some page views if you feel so compelled, print it out and tack it to telephone poles.  Get a megaphone and shout it from clock-towers and high places.

You know, just generally make a nuisance of yourselves.

Your verifiably vivacious Captain,

Grace

bad habits

Forget greeting dusk.
I have exchanged sleep and time
to hide from this day.

ruby-throated

Crimson sparks flashing bright

dress up this hovering, otherwise-drab hummingbird.

Crimson sparks flashing bright, 

an unexpected treasure, a shocking secret overheard.

This day may not be ending as I would have preferred,

but I can look forward to stars glimmering in the night,

and crimson sparks, flashing bright.

This week's format is the rondelet, about which I've posted AT GREAT LENGTH on the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads for the Tuesday Format Challenge.  This is my first attempt, and while it isn't particularly awful?  I'll be adding the rondelet to the growing number of poetic formats that require more attention.  Sigh.

conch

A bitter breath exchanged in tides,
a pounding in my head.
The pulse of distant rushing scythes,
the hunger that must be fed.

Oh, do not promise to take sides!
I follow footsteps carved in red.
Something black on my back still rides
and rises in me like the dead.

On Tour

In or around the SF Bay Area?  Want to hear me read a story that hasn't been published on the blog?

The Revenge will be dropping anchor at Red Rock Coffee for their Monday night open mic.  I'll read something new and hang around for a while to pass out some of my awesome new business cards.  If I get a decent response I'll make this a regular occasion, even though I may or may not prefer Mountain View's other coffee shop.

You'll find me easily!  Because I'll be the terrified-looking redhead in bright red lipstick and pirate stripes.

Get directions here if you need to: http://g.co/maps/t297
Or let me know via Twitter or Facebook that I might see you there!

Your painted and panicking captain,
Grace

Saturday Night

"Dude! Here, quick! Enter the code!"

Eric grabbed the proffered controller, hands trembling slightly, and punched in the cheat code. He'd discovered it by accident, trying to enter the Konami code and getting the order wrong, and now he was the most famous guy in three counties.

The group of thirteen-year-olds erupted in cheers as the main character, an extremely well-endowed half-elf warrior princess, favored them with a striptease, complete with some seriously nasty bumps and grinds. Eric's friends gathered around the television as he began to run the last dungeon, his half-elf warrior still running around in the nude.

"Hell yeah, go! Run that bitch!"

"Shit, look at her titties bounce!"

"Look at that sweet ass!"

Eric frowned, trying to concentrate on avoiding the last orc, who was invariably armed with the Misericordia morningstar, a high-damage weapon with an attack radius wide enough to take out not only his elf princess but half the dungeon behind her. He held his breath as he mashed the buttons frantically, ignoring the hooting of his classmates and squeezing the elf through the tunnel to the boss fight. This was trickier than it looked, especially without her armor bonuses, but he'd done it a million times before. He leaned into the controller and tuned out the increasingly graphic comments. Here was the gate. Now all he had to do was jump to the ledge above the Eldritch Oak, get in its branches, drop a vine noose, and choke the everliving fuck out of the Moribund Skelpy, captain of the Vermilion Seven.

"Oh my GOD, dude, she's fucking the tree!"

"FUCK YEAH she is, take it, slutbag!"

Eric shook his head and ran the elf to the other side of the ledge, dropping her even lower and extending the noose. The skelpy ran straight into it, and he hit X triumphantly. The room got even louder as the elf princess spread her legs and dropped, wrapping her green thighs around the skelpy's neck.

"Holy shit, was that bush?"

"NO WAY! I missed it!"

"Aw, man, is there instant replay on this shit?"

Eric rotated the analog stick thirty degrees to the left and the elf arched her back, breaking the skelpy's neck with her thighs. The loot began to drop and he relaxed slightly, looking around at his audience. "Anyone else want a turn before I re-equip her armor?"

His friends began to fight over the controller and he leaned back against the couch. Up until last month, he'd thought he might want to be a writer when he grew up. After the Slut Code, though, and his corresponding uptick in popularity, things were changing. Writing was for nerds. Naked video games, though? That would be one kick-ass business card. And he just knew the Penny Arcade guys would have something to say when his game hit it big.

Oh yes, it's Indie Ink writing challenge time again.  This week's challenge came from Binaryfootprint, who instructed me to "write a fun, full of life story of how one dream path ends and another begins".  While I'm pretty sure my idea of fun is different, no one can say thirteen-year-old boys aren't full of...uh, life.  Oddly enough, she also ended up receiving my challenge--so hopefully I will get a response this week.

low tide

In the tidal flats you see strange things.  Some misplaced, some unhomed, some left--just for a moment!  to be reclaimed after this frozen lemonade.

In the inlet it smells of old salt and mud, and the things I find could be the products of some old and distant country, a people long unremembered, neither living nor dead nor missed.  There are no gasping anemones, no fish.  Sometimes a crab will venture over to grasp my stick, to look up at me with quizzical eyes, its misplaced hope reflected from discarded scales and fins.

Or maybe it is all in my memories, all in my head, painted in slow strokes of squid ink dragged, protesting, along those poorly-focused synapses where all the trouble begins.

rising tension

A sponge is too light
to be worked with careless hands,
to be pushed aside.
I am not delicate, I
fall--but don't bruise easily.

Taxonomy

Scrawled on the sidewalk in an unsettling shade of electric blue, I read, "Laughter is the best medicine". I walk as fast as I can past it, looking neither left nor right to see who might be watching. At least it was spelled properly. Gotta concentrate on the big picture, because if you zoom in to look at all the details, you'll lose it. Reading the newspapers or mags or TMZ in the last few days of human civilization was detail. Making sure I had enough food for a while, weapons, all that stupid preparedness shit? Detail, no matter how necessary. A lot of people I met back near the start of all this said they concentrated on the details so they wouldn't have to focus on the big picture. Me, I can't work like that. I think it has something to do with my job. Had? Hard to say. I was, am, a veterinarian.

I don't really know which tense is appropriate now. I'm sure there are other doctors left, there are a lot more people left than you'd expect. I haven't met any lately, though. Headed out of Denver last week, I saw a little group being escorted back into the city center. One of them was wearing a white coat, but lately, that just means they're about to bite it in some particularly awful way. One white coat seems to stand in for every hairspray-testing motherfucker in the history of our species.

I'm confident, though, if anyone, any human, needed medical assistance, I could still provide it. Vets have done a lot more for human medical advances than anyone might feel comfortable knowing. Still, you'd think we would have noticed, before the dogs started barking commands, you'd think we would have noticed the growing communications network.

Squirrels, man. Squirrels are everywhere, and their teeth are huge. Pigeons, you know, every city's winged rats, not to mention the actual rats. Draft horses are bigger than fucking cars. Cats don't give a shit about anything. Fucking gulls, even urban opossums. The dogs, those were the worst. When even the dogs turned on us? There was no way we were getting out ahead of this.

I pass weird graffiti like this every day on the road. I don't know if it's our version, the human version, of the old hobo signs, or if they're learning, the new animals. That sounds unbelievable, I know. I've seen shit I don't want to believe either. Like the men who traveled from town to town, docking ears and tails, rusty knives in briefcases and hotel bathtubs full of blood, they're still around too. Most of them can still get around like those horror-movie guys, the limbless beggars on skateboards, but they don't live very long. I don't think they even care, or that they have any life left in them. They're only left to us as a warning, their lips cut so carefully back to show the teeth, ears just ragged holes. "Declawed" people or neutered ones, hands and balls both just cauterized stubs. You can tell because they aren't left any clothes, just the collar. If these sidewalk scrawlings are human graffiti, I can't understand it. I've been left out of the loop and I don't think I'll ever get in.

Vets have been freed, sort of. The good ones, the ones who really cared for our patients, with soothing voices and careful explanations. We aren't kept in the cities, in the kennels. We keep moving, place to place, treating the injured and guiding the lost to their flocks or packs or herds. I don't know if I'm a prisoner or a collaborator, I don't know where I'll have to be tomorrow. I don't know where I'll even be allowed to sleep tonight--a plush pillow by some gentle cow's fireplace, a dirty blanket in an abandoned sheepyard, an old farm dog's slat-sided shack, hunkered down in the dirt. I refuse to think too hard about the future. Today I have to assist at the birth of a new litter, and that is enough. I ignore the details and keep just an eye on the big picture, because the big picture is I'll have to work like this until I drop. They'll see to it, just like we used to, just like they saw to the quick elimination of any dissent. And it's for damn sure they are not going to accept a platitude like "laughter is the best medicine".

It's Indie Ink challenge time again.  This week, my prompt came from Sunshine, and as you may have gathered, it was a saying I particularly hate:  "Laughter is the best medicine."  The original title of this draft was "Must Love Animals", but I think I am saving that for something even worse.  

My challenge went out to Katri, who will be posting her response any time now...I hope.

ready

dim shades, clacking quick
against the hot day, speak in
bones, rattle and click.

the nuclear family

What is that pounding, wretched sound?
Like a heart, trapped under glass?
You can hear it from miles around!
What is that?

Neon mushrooming up from the blast,
the pulse was enough to pull us down.
Will it cease when we are safe at last?

I hate to say, I think it used to be a town,
before pools of light rose from the ash.
But underneath that pressured round,
what is that?

Good news, everyone--the Imaginary Garden with Real Toads has allowed the lovely runaway sentence. and me to present our format challenge over there every other week or so!  If you care to watch me wax pedantic about poetry forms, this week I re-did the roundel.  You can find the post here.  This will bring some changes in the lineup, I hope, and if you've wanted to participate but haven't had that particular kick in the pants yet?  Now is the perfect time.


Yes, this roundel is basically a joke.  But it only took me five minutes to write.  Perhaps this is the next challenge?  Five-minute formats?  What do you think?

pause

I don't have anything for you today.  There is good news coming tomorrow, and the 31st, but not today.

the house of despite

Bottles of Florida water on a green velvet vantage point
gurgle and mutter, chattering in the dim red light
reflected over deep polished prayer beads snaking
around a pair of black silk gloves, cuff and placket
pressed flat around the glittering jet that used to clasp
a tiny wrist close.  Over the cinnamon and orange,
dust and flowers, sorrow and time,

the swamp presses in hard, or is it just
the dark-green smell of a vase left unattended?
Prim petal edges singed brown,
papyrus-weight roses, pollen dropping at a breath,
a golden dust laid on you, heavier than any sin
on your hand.  Light the cigarette from the pillar candle

and pour out red dirt in a pretty pattern,
press it into swirling spirals as prayer goes up in shifting smoke,
laddered in the wet air, blue or grey, as indecisive
as any of the thoughts swimming behind your eyes,
flickering silverbacked eels I can catch, easy as anything.
Don't look at me directly.
Reach into the bottom drawer there and take it out,
what you don't know can still cut you.  Watch the edge.

Listen to the drumbeat of your heart,
and strike fast.  Sketch the truth in blood
and rum, sing out.  Ink and hot peppers,
corn liquor and woe.  Tear the laces off and run,
little girl, run.  Don't you look back,

'less you like salt.