I don't usually care for religious lit, poetry or otherwise. But I really love the imagery and intimacy of this poem.


Andrew Hudgins

Praying Drunk


Our Father who art in heaven, I am drunk.
Again. Red wine. For which I offer thanks.
I ought to start with praise, but praise
comes hard to me. I stutter. Did I tell you
about the woman, whom I taught, in bed,
this prayer? It starts with praise; the simple form
keeps things in order. I hear from her sometimes.
Do you? And after love, when I was hungry,
I said, Make me something to eat. She yelled,
Poof! You're a casserole! - and laughed so hard
she fell out of bed. Take care of her.

Next, confession - the dreary part. At night
deer drift from the dark woods and eat my garden.
They're like enormous rats on stilts except,
of course, they're beautiful. But why? What makes
them beautiful? I haven't shot one yet.
I might. When I was twelve I'd ride my bike
out to the dump and shoot the rats. It's hard
to kill your rats, our Father. You have to use
a hollow point and hit them solidly.
A leg is not enough. The rat won't pause.
Yeep! Yeep! it screams, and scrabbles, three-legged, back
into the trash, and I would feel a little bad
to kill something that wants to live
more savagely than I do, even if
it's just a rat. My garden's vanishing.
Perhaps I'll plant more beans, though that
might mean more beautiful and hungry deer.
Who knows?
I'm sorry for the times I've driven
home past a black, enormous, twilight ridge.
Crested with mist it looked like a giant wave
about to break and sweep across the valley,
and in my loneliness and fear I've thought,
O let it come and wash the whole world clean.
Forgive me. This is my favorite sin: despair-
whose love I celebrate with wine and prayer.

Our Father, thank you for all the birds and trees,
that nature stuff. I'm grateful for good health,
food, air, some laughs, and all the other things I've never had to do
without. I have confused myself. I'm glad
there's not a rattrap large enough for deer.
While at the zoo last week, I sat and wept
when I saw one elephant insert his trunk
into another's ass, pull out a lump,
and whip it back and forth impatiently
to free the goodies hidden in the lump.
I could have let it mean most anything,
but I was stunned again at just how little
we ask for in our lives. Don't look! Don't look!
Two young nuns tried to herd their giggling
schoolkids away. Line up, they called, Let's go
and watch the monkeys in the monkey house.
I laughed and got a dirty look. Dear Lord,
we lurch from metaphor to metaphor,
which is -let it be so- a form of praying.

I'm usually asleep by now -the time
for supplication. Requests. As if I'd stayed
up late and called the radio and asked
they play a sentimental song. Embarrassed.
I want a lot of money and a woman.
And, also, I want vanishing cream. You know-
a character like Popeye rubs it on
and disappears. Although you see right through him,
he's there. He chuckles, stumbles into things,
and smoke that's clearly visible escapes
from his invisible pipe. It make me think,
sometimes, of you. What makes me think of me
is the poor jerk who wanders out on air
and then looks down. Below his feet, he sees
eternity, and suddenly his shoes
no longer work on nothingness, and down
he goes. As I fall past, remember me.

Duplicated from everyone on my flist: When you see this, post your favorite poem in your journal.

by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Résumé


Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.




Of all the famous American writers, I'd choose to have her silver tongue. I've already decided that if I ever write a book that's either A) a murder mystery, or B) a vampire novel, I will absolutely title it Among The Roaring Dead.

In the world of fanfiction...

My post- 3x12 fanfic is starting to look like an actual tangible thing. I've got notes for 15 short chapters, kind of a serial collection of Zuko's interactions with various characters, some repeated obviously.

I took the snippet titles from a second list of 64 prompts that I once made for akavertigo as a supplement/sequel to the 64damn_prompts list. I actually made three lists in total, the second being my favorite I think. Obviously what I have so far represents only a fraction of the prompts; I don't intend to write a 64-part fic.


And now, a poem!


William Blake

The Clod and the Pebble


Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care;
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

So sang a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook,
Warbled out these metres meet.

Love seeketh only self to please,
To bind another to its delight:
Joys in anothers loss of ease,
And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

Here's a riddle I made up:

Always given, never earned,
follows after an unfortunate turn.
Of highest value, can't be bought,
trails behind the battles fought.

Winning Riddlers!
quirkyinla
little_fool

(I will add more as the correct answer is given, and screen the correct answers so people can keep guessing. I'll leave the wrong answers unscreened, though.)

I've decide to do a series of poem posts, alternating between my own poems and poems I love by famous writers.

The poem below was one I wrote March of last year for a lit poetry class in my senior year. I didn't get a very good mark for it, which I understand because I didn't put a lot of work into it-- I think I actually wrote it the morning before class.  Anyway, even if its not that great a poem, it is an honest look into my psyche and my strange personal habits in university life. The scene described below happened a lot during finals weeks.

"The Morning After Sleeplessness"

Sometimes I don't sleep at night
just to be stubborn. I can control time
and time, day, doesn't really begin again
unless you've rested some point in between.
Although it never quite works like that:
I've created hours from nothingness
but I still feel like I've lost time somewhere,
and I just have to wait for it to catch up.

Objects and feelings aren't unreal they're much too real.
I shiver every time the air changes and think
What time is it now? Is it 8 o'clock yet,
the hour when my roommates wake up and catch me?
Can I fake it-- do I want to fake it?
Yes, I've been sleeping, not reading, not watching tv,
not fucking up my body cycles.
A raised eyebrow is my reward-- I am not
entirely certain I'd buy it either.

Ninth hour hits and morning rituals are due. Most important
is the shower, the cave that wakes me up
but only after making me feel drunk.
I palm the tile wall as if I'd taken six shots
of something and hold myself
steady, straight, and stable,
because a cracked head is kind of scary
when you wrap your head around it.

Stepping out of the shower I'm awake, brighter and higher
than I've been in weeks. Still kind of drunk
from fatigue but not to worry,
the real fatigue won't hit me till early afternoon.
Right now I've got four or five hours
of total sensation to play with.

I wrote this poem in 2002, a sort of fanfiction thing, which I used to do quite a lot of in high school but hardly ever do anymore. This one is a strange, abstract thing that has very little in it that is strictly BTVS... it could be read as not having to do with the show at all. But in my mind, it's for Spike.


"moon and sun and something grey"


fancy me with something grey
or maybe just some black and red
with guns and nails and pointy eyes
yes grey’s the thing, i think
not too much black you see,
i’m not quite dark as that
maybe was, but isn’t now
though there’s a one or two who’ll swear
my hat is bloodied and brown,
not white at all
and they’re closer than i want you to know

but you, well look at you!
all cream and yellow and orange
like needles in my eyes
didn’t anyone tell you too much sun can be a bad thing?
must be the california in you
spoiled little ray-child,
all righteous with your glowy skin matching hair
and that damn white cover you can’t lose for a minute.
you must’ve been odd as a brat,

no think thinking caps for you, it’s
did you remember your justice cap today dear?
wear it golden proud
and strike down the unvaliant, the unright, the made ungood
you and your stupid sunlight are all the same
all big-eyed laughter but no sense of humor
irony goes over your head, in my un-asked opinion

me? i’m a moon person, not that it matters to you
you of the
light and bright and all that morning shininess,
of the
i’m so happy in the sun in love and warm and—

—as I was saying,
a moon person, really;
stars are pretty too
but they’re really only little suns, so they don’t count.
in moonlight i could be green or blue or violet
i could be just like one of yours
…and i guess i’d still be only darkly grey
but it’s a pleasant thought, n’est-ce pas?

if you’d come out at night and see,
a moonbeam makes everything grey
orange is grey
and brown is grey
and grey is grey still
and you’re much prettier where i can see you
for real

the moonlight on your hair like that
i say
is maybe worth more than days in the sun,
not that it matters to you.

My all time favorite Buffy fanfic is descant descending, by macha.

0.2.3 INCEPTION/ DIVINATION/ FATES

Before the World, the Word.

But even before the Word, the First Slayer began in silence, and her power rose with her out of Darkness to exist only in the moment of Death.

And it came to pass that as one died, the next was called, throughout recorded time.

But when the earth beneath wakes hungry, then one will come, and die, and two shall rise, one light, one dark, and the dark one shall covet light, and the light one shall fall into darkness.

The Slayer that was will drown, and the Slayer that is will jump, and the Slayer that shall be will storm the gates of the underworld.

And then in the final days either the Slayer will shatter or she will shatter the walls between dimensions, depending on whom she chooses to stand with her, and in any event this will be known in the demon worlds as the end of days.


Above all fics I might point people too, I encourage people the strongest to read this one. It's so creative and thoroughly presented, it makes me drool.


Close runner-ups:
Spiegel Im Spiegel by Fallowdoe
Daemons Luminati (a.k.a. Radiance), by lordshiva

The words "All the world--and time" were used in The Time Traveler's Wife, and I've been googling for like 10 minutes trying to find the origin of that quote. I think it was from a poem, somewhere. I know I've heard it.

So far, the most I could find was that it was the title of an old Star Trek episode. I know it's from something earlier than that.

EDIT: It helps if you get the quote right. :D What I should have been looking for was "world enough, and time", which is in the first line of Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress":

Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long Loves Day.

This afternoon I had my two concrete poems workshopped in class. With regards to the computer poem, someone suggested (when asked by the teacher to search for a deeper meaning) that maybe it was about computer addiction--- addiction to not just videos games but websites, chatting, everything online.

It is not a poem about computer addiction. (it's about how much my computer hates me.)

However, I think I was blushing like a tomato and probably sinking into my chair because, by weird coincidence, yes I am addicted to my computer...since you asked.

Freudian, that's what it was.


I turned in another poem today, written in a rush before class:


Student Is As Student Does


We walk desk to door, door to car.
We carry our tomes on our backs and sometimes our hips
Are weighted with our fortunes and our lessons
So that we can’t quite walk straight anymore.
We speak and slither out of speaking
When the situation calls
We beg for the make-up test and lord our coups over everyone
Who couldn’t manage the same.
It happens at times that we notice
That here is a teacher who preaches profit
And that the courtyard keeps a man who shouts the Bible.
We read Freud, did he?
But careful—don’t assume, assumptions are
A child’s trick, no good in the real world
Where we won’t be students, we’ll be Citizens.
We’ll be a little taller and a little harder.
As the pupil we forget, so busy with our learning,
That education of youth is a place, a time, and an artifice,
Where no matter how fast we run—
From desk to door, from door to stair,
From bell to bell and pen to tassel—
We’re sleepwalking.



---------------

I showed it to my roommate and she said it was her favorite of mine so far, and that everthing captures exactly how she feels...except the last line which she hates and doesn't connect to. I'll have to think about that.