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David Bowie and January’s Promise

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I am not going to pretend that David Bowie changed my life, but I will say that his advice in the song “Changes” to “turn and face the strange” seems like just as good advice for the new year and the changes it is bringing us, both the expected and the unexpectable, as for anyone facing the biggest change of all, as he just did a few days ago. In the end, even small changes can feel like small deaths; we don’t know what we are stepping out into and whether the ground will hold us. We think we are going out there into the future alone, but that may not be true. Anyway, for the sake of 2016 for everybody, here’s hoping!

I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
And every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Don’t want to be a richer man
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
(Turn and face the strange)
Ch-ch-changes
Just gonna have to be a different man
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time

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Elevating Experience avec Tous Les Mots Justes

I just had half a discussion about why we read poetry and I am thinking at the same time about why I write poetry. I think during the Teenage Angst Years, I wrote for the same reasons a lot of kids write: to Express My Inner Turmoil. This is not a bad reason for writing, and if you can also make money off it (which some novelists and pop singers do manage to do), that’s even better.

Sometimes I write to experiment with sound, as I did when I wrote a dozen poems about Jack of the Beanstalk with tons of internal rhyme to get a bit more of a constant rhythm going, or when I wrote twice that many about flamenco, using staccato short lines to try to convey the percussion’s feeling.

Sometimes I write to tell stories, as I do when I unpack what I think is going on in a Japanese woodblock. Sometimes I write to take a story that already is out there—Jack of the B, Xena Warrior Princess, the Wright brothers—and go deeper into it, looking at it from a few sides.

But sometimes it seems just a matter of elevating experience, giving dignity to our joys and sorrows as Marge Piercy might say, through finding all the exactly right words to make Truth happen.

In Which My Dreams Are Far More Interesting Than My Actual Life

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Or, that thing in which I keep waking up with fragments of love poems in my head even though I am not in love or even, for that matter, actually dating anybody.

 

If I could only hold you for an hour

Or three, and feel the contours of your face

Against my hands, I would learn not to fear

The terror of my heart beating its drum

For the world to hear, or feel your heart

Beating against mine, chest to chest

In the tangle of the night.

One of My Favorite Poems That I Didn’t Write

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“A Hardware Store as Proof of the Existence of God”

 

I praise the brightness of hammers pointing east

like the steel woodpeckers of the future,

and dozens of hinges opening brass wings,

and six new rakes shyly fanning their toes,

and bins of hooks glittering into bees,

 

and a rack of wrenches like the long bones of horses,

and mailboxes sowing rows of silver chapels,

and a company of plungers waiting for God

to claim their thin legs in their big shoes

and put them on and walk away laughing.

 

In a world not perfect but not bad either

let there be glue, glaze, gum, and grabs,

caulk also, and hooks, shackles, cables, and slips,

and signs so spare a child may read them,

Men, Women, In, Out, No Parking, Beware the Dog.

 

In the right hands, they can work wonders.

 

—Nancy Willard

Santa’s Reindeer: Ranked From Best to Worst

From our friends at Sass & Balderdash, a timely explanation of those guys who dance on your roof!

 

We all know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, but have you ever theorized about their personalities, like which reindeer is guilty of murder and which one is under-compensated? It takes a special reindeer to pull Santa’s sleigh, but being special and being a reinderp aren’t mutually exclusive. I’ve put together the definitive reindeer ranking from best to worst. And no, Rudolph isn’t number one. 1. Blitzen “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” the origin poem for Santa’s reindeer, saves Blitzen for last, and that’s because he’s the best. Mighty, true, and resilient, Blitzen is a king among reindeer, the one true leader. Blitzen is the one Santa truly depends upon, and he doesn’t need to guide anyone’s sleigh to prove he’s the boss. His name is derived from “lightning,” so he’s basically the Thor of reindeer. Without question, Blitzen is far and away the MVR: Most Valuable Reindeer. 2. Vixen It’s hard being the only female reindeer on the team, earning 30% less reindeer feed than everyone else. Vixen is so much more than just “the girl reindeer,” but she struggles to get credit for her efforts in a buck-dominated field. Despite […]

Source: Santa’s Reindeer: Ranked From Best to Worst

Something For an Actor at Winter Solstice

Even in December, your eyes are prodigal

Green like the low and leafy mountains

Of my youth, or variegated green like an autumn

Field that the breeze fingers and the sun flickers

Over, the bright greens of still summer and the faded

Sepia greens of summer drifting away.

 

Lie back as you would adrift on the ocean,

That constantly floating green that wraps the globe

In an embrace of waves constantly, constantly

Ebbing green, flowing green, the flash of sunlight

On the mighty roaring green, the hiss of foam

Like a promise or a kiss. Such greens dazzle

 

This heart, which far away contemplates that one

Distinct gift of the rainbow that light presents us, this time

Through you as you look in this direction, unseeing

But seen, showing all the lively greens—friendship,

Envy, desire and wrath—we come to know through your eyes,

So prodigal green, even in cold December.

Psycho Sunday: Badass Women in Combat Gear #5

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It shouldn’t surprise anyone that roughly half of my BWCGs come from shows helmed by Joss Whedon, since he practically invented the trope. The women of Firefly and Serenity represent a wide variety of badassery from the smart kind—Kaylee (Jewel Staite) is a mechanical genius and Inara (Morena Baccarin) is a woman who knows her way around blasters, swordplay and archery, not to mention the tea ceremony and light massage—to the more usual fighter kind. And once again the fighter kind include both the broken and the unbreakable.

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River Tam (Summer Glau) is a bit like what Natasha Romanov would have been like if, in her teen years, the Black Widow Program had removed her amygdala, the part of the brain that allows you to ignore painful or worrying feelings. This is an operation that apparently makes for a good sleeper assassin, but man, can it just ruin the rest of your life.

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In contrast is Captain Reynold’s second in command, Zoe Washburn. In boots and a duster, the tall Gina Torres radiates confidence and capability and a, hah yes, serenity that is in short supply on the spaceship on the outer rim of the galaxy. She shoots what I originally thought was a shotgun, but apparently is a “Mare’s Leg,” a customized shortened rifle. And she wears a string necklace that Torres speculated might have come from the combat boots that Zoe wore during the war against the Alliance. Which is pretty darn badass, if you ask me.

During a ComicCon panel a while back, Torres said that she has often been told by fans that Firefly saved their lives, that people with cancer or dealing with domestic abuse returned to the show and to her character in particular to gain strength. Which is also pretty darn badass.

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“Mare’s Leg.” Wikipedia. 16 Sept. 2015. Web 20 Sept. 2015