adoration

I am not sure that we decide on 'objects' of adoration. Sure, there are always ways of being attracted to someone or forging close bonds and friendships that give you a sense of profound warmth, belonging and kinship. But adoration is a word that washes over me like a torrent of graceful summer rains; drenching and soothing and cleansing all at the same time. Adoration. How can you not love a word like that? :)

If you are not much of a wordlover as I am wont to be possessed by such a hobby as wordloving, then reflect on this at least: you will adore something or someone at least once in your life. You will love, yes. You will desire and yearn for and dream of and remember. But especially, you will adore, if only once in your life.

And that adoration will form the basis for almost all forms of reference. It will tell you about the object of your adoration. But it will thrill you to know that you have filled your being with the sweetness of having adored, and been engulfed for a time in adoring another. The great likelihood is that you will have been adored.

How lovely!

And you will carry with you that label of adoration; an unequivocal card of identity that will add to your resume of life a small sense of accomplishment, and even a reasonable explanation as to why the perfect heart that you were born with, might actually look a little tattered (and somewhat torn?). Just like an old book that has been read a few too many times; but is loved more now, in it's almost pitiable state, than it was when it first gleamed proudly atop a bookseller's shelf.

Aah, to adore and be adored is precisely what being alive is all about! And then to refer to it in fairytale form everytime the mind insists that such things are tricks of the fantasy writer's realm. The soul remembers. And the heart knows. Adoration is.

Drifting, Dripping Words

Words drift across a page
In search of inner light.
But the glow of a lamp
standing
ominously
over my shoulder
forces the muse
into
a
corner,
making it shrivel up
in fright.

Words drip down the sides
of these pages,
and are splayed across
the little table.

Words rain over the table's edge,
making their escape
towards the floor;
seeped in carpeted carelessness,
they wait
to be
trampled on.

a thousand helpless pieces

boredom is...

that moment between

contemplating and creating

when nothing gels

for long nail-biting hours

and the hole wears thin

along that carpet path

in the artist's hiding place;

the midnight lamp sucks the last of its oil,

and then suddenly

a lightbulb flickers

its almost daylight,

the moon shatters bits of glass,

my window lies at my feet in

a thousand helpless pieces

windiness howls into the gaping space between

random articles of furniture, paper, skin and cartilage.

all is silent now,

-my heart skips a beat-

a pen finds its way between bedraggled fingers of my writer's hand,

and then it bleeds for me,

once again.

Olivia

"Then one day Olivia's newspapers and magazines lay on her doorstep, untouched. The Corvette sat sullen under a tan canvas cover dotted with fallen jacaranda flowers like mementos of loss. Just the sight of the landlocked Corvette made me wish I had some Percodan left. I settled for some leftover codeine cough syrup Marvel had in her medicine chest. The sticky cloying taste lingered as I sat on my ripcord bedspread and combed my hair with Olivia's comb. I was in awe of her perfection. A woman who would throw out a handmade tortoiseshell comb just because it was missing a tooth. I wondered if she really made love to men for money, what that was like. Prostitute. Whore. What did they really mean anyway? Only words. My mother would hate that, but it was true. Words trailing their streamers of judgment. A wife got money from her husband and nobody said anything. And if Olivia's boyfriends gave her money? So what?

I combed my hair and made a French twist, imagining myself as Olivia. I stalked the small room, walking the way she walked, hips first, like a runway model. What difference did it make if she was a whore. It sounded like ventriloquism to even say it. I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots - prostitute, housewife, saint - like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water. I ran her stocking up my leg, smelled the Ma Griffe.

I imagined she'd gone to Paris, that she was sitting at a cafe, having a cloudy Pernod and water, scarf tied to her purse like the women in her French Vogue. I imagined she was with the BMW man, the quiet one with gold cuff links who liked jazz. I'd imagined them often, dancing in the old-fashioned way in her living room, hardly moving their feet, his cheek resting on the top of her close-waved hair. That's how I saw her in Paris. Staying up till late in a jazz club only black Parisians knew, in a cellar on the Rive Gauche, dancing. I could see the champagne and the way their eyes closed, and they weren't thinking of anything but more of the same."

Extract from 'White Oleander' by Janet Fitch. (pp 122-3; Virago Publ. 1999.)

And in other news...

In other news....

I am writing some fabulous fiction :P

check it out...

okay, rather...

i should pass around the address when I have more to share...

okay whatever...

Sigh.

Shafs...

Ode to the Odor

this odor of distrust
is like the stench of tyres burning
in an abandoned warehouse;

this odor of regret
is like the taste of cardboard
on my salivating tongue;

this odor of irritation
is like the feel of sandpaper
on my bare shoulders,
making me squirm,
scratch,
and then
shudder
in disgust!

its this thing...
this odor of something tasteless
now gone bad,
making it an unworthy guardian
of too many odor's...

distrust, regret, irritation,
all clambering for the attention
of my senses, at once
heightened by the mark of
the archer.

faking it

it would seem that he turned out to be some kind of wannabe super hero...

calls himself 'anon'...

spews out darkness and glib poison at unsuspecting folks
and then slinkers back into the abyss where he belongs.
no call to duty.
no accountability.
just pathetic and drivelsome.

a fake superhero.
unimaginative.
and plainly nothing.
yep. a fake.

Drinking from the Same Cup...

This is as much your story as it is mines,
We drink from the same cup, you and I..
Sometimes intoxicated by the offering and other times
Rendered to a state of nausea by the over stimulation of sugar rushes and aftertastes of the gone off variety.
When left too long in the sun, unattended, life’s condition deteriorates.
And we drink on, regardless, like thirsty puppies, unaware of the crass energy of a thing gone bad.

And then we feel it all. The rising bile, the fear, the pain, the disillusionment that makes us point shaky fingers at who-knows-what.

And we cry from deep within. Warm tears stream down forlorn faces, drenching chins; the salty derisiveness staining the false arrogance of starched collars. Of what use is this self-ridicule? Carving a path to bleakness, it sets a burning torch to light the way, but burns its bearer into the ground / to ashes.

The dust to dust parody reminds us of our fallibility, mortality, but taken to extreme derides us to nothingness. Life tends to nothingness? Unless…

no soap, please

its kind of difficult
and somewhat messy,
trying to nurse
and suture
a festering wound
with fingers bleeding
from holding onto
just threads...

i think
they need
a rest.

pearls of life

pearls, floating in my mouth,
are like speedtraps on an open road..
like when i gargle and
they pop about aimlessly,
of no use to the everyday workings
of my body;

but to my heart and mind from whence they
came as clots of the blood
and thoughts,
Oi, what a Sight?!

they cause havoc!

i think its time they
were rolled out
into the
streets

some will trip
slip
fall

as i have

and some will
catch their
brilliance before
they disappear into
the gutters of bitterness..

and some
will be fashioned in glory
to be worn around loves neck.

aah, these pearls!

pearls of yesterday
making me choke on them today,
waiting for a rather
embellished tomorrow.

waiting.