Sunday, October 29, 2006

Faith and a Plan



Have been listening to an old natal reading tape from an astrologer friend and have relearned a few things. To make my life what I want it to be, I need faith and a plan. If I believe money will rain down on us and come up with a plan to make it happen then it will. It comes down to the ability to make things happen, which I am told I have as per my chart. I'm settling on Kuan Yin as my faith focal point, a place to focus my spiritul belief. She's sitting right here in front of my computer (her statue, not her personally, although maybe she's on top of my monitor swinging her feet and I just can't see her.) Gonna dust off those Kabbalah books too and use my largely untapped brain to make things better moneywise(cue the Beatles, "It's getting better all the time..."). Here is some info on Kuan Yin:

"There is still much scholarly debate regarding the origin of devotion to the female Bodhisattva Kuan Yin (also know as Quan Shi Yin and Kwan Yin). Quan means to inquire or look deeply into, Shi means the world of people, or generations, Yin means cries. The Boddhisatva of Compassion was inquiring into the suffering (cries) that has come down the generations. Kuan Yin is considered to be the feminine form of Avalokitesvara(Sanskrit), the bodhisattva of compassion of Indian Buddhism whose worship was introduced into China in the third century."

AND

"There is an implicit trust in Kuan Yin's saving grace and healing powers. Many believe that even the simple recitation of her name will bring her instantly to the scene. One of the most famous texts associated with the bodhisattva, the ancient Lotus Sutra whose twenty-fifth chapter, dedicated to Kuan Yin, is known as the "Kuan Yin sutra," describes thirteen cases of impending disaster--from shipwreck to fire, imprisonment, robbers, demons, fatal poisons and karmic woes--in which the devotee will be rescued if his thoughts dwell on the power of Kuan Yin. The text is recited many times daily by those who wish to receive the benefits it promises."

I have done the dishes and saged the house this morning. Cleaning inside and out.


The Cabbage
by Ruth Stone


You have rented an apartment.
You come to this enclosure with physical relief,
your heavy body climbing the stairs in the dark,
the hall bulb burned out, the landlord
of Greek extraction and possibly a fatalist.
In the apartment leaning against one wall,
your daughter's painting of a large frilled cabbage
against a dark sky with pinpoints of stars.
The eager vegetable, opening itself
as if to eat the air, or speak in cabbage
language of the meanings within meanings;
while the points of stars hide their massive
violence in the dark upper half of the painting.
You can live with this.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Gin and Monkeys

Have gathered together all my court documents and am now ready to collapse into bed with a book. Tomorrow morning promises to sucketh mightily unless by some miracle an enormous back child support check is handed to me. Yep, and then monkeys are gonna fly out of my butt. Good thing there is no chocolate left in the house because I am craving it big time, and gin. Kiddies spending the night with Satan. I can barely keep my eyes open, so I am ending this oh so incredibly fascinating post. Everybody say a prayer to the child support fairy!

I'm Only Sleeping
by The Beatles

When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream

Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find, there's no need

Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

Lying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling

Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream

Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping


Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Let's Do the Time Warp Again

It is 2:40 A.M. and I can't sleep. The pass out at 10:00, spring awake somewhere around 3:00 pattern is back again. Jr. wakes up frequently around three too; says it is some sort of evil psychic disturbance. Hold on while I google that...well, Jr. was right. 3:00 is called "The Witching Hour" and when demons come out to play, something to do with mocking the time Christ died. People all over the net report being awoken at this time. Stories about shaking beds and ghostly apparitions hovering over beds and nasty voices growling things like "You Will die!" Luckily, I just wake up sans demonic communication. And eat cookies. The Chips Ahoy are calling (what exactly does "ahoy" mean?) and then I am going back to sleep, damn it (Janet!) Night all.

Insomniac


The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole . . .
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue . . .
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

Sylvia Plath

Sunday, October 22, 2006

I Saw The Queen Yesterday

Saw The Queen yesterday and it was fantastic. Best movie I have seen in ages. Helen Mirren is amazing. Boy does Prince Charles come off as a spineless jerk. Footage of Lady Di made me cry, all I could think was "her poor boys." I think the royals are insane people living on a sumptuous planet orbiting very faraway from the rest of us. They seem like figures in a snow globe to me.



God Save The Queen
by The Sex Pistols

God save the queen her fascist regime
It made you a moron a potential h bomb!

God save the queen she ain't no human being
There is no future in england's dreaming

Don't be told what you want don't be told what you need
There's no future no future no future for you

God save the queen we mean it man (God save window leen)
We love our queen God saves (God save... human beings)

God save the queen cos tourists are money
And our figurehead is not what she seems
Oh God save history God save your mad parade
Oh lord God have mercy all crimes are paid

When theres no future how can there be sin
We're the flowers in the dustbin
We're the poison in your human machine
We're the future your future

God save the queen we mean it man
There is no future in england's dreaming

No future for you no future for me
No future no future for you

Thursday, October 19, 2006

Thursday

The Crazy Woman

by Gwendolyn Brooks


I shall not sing a May song.
A May song should be gay.
I'll wait until November
And sing a song of gray.

I'll wait until November
That is the time for me.
I'll go out in the frosty dark
And sing most terribly.

And all the little people
Will stare at me and say,
"That is the Crazy Woman
Who would not sing in May.

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Barking Mad

Lord things have been insane here and I have been very remiss in posting. Ex-husband got fired (what a huge surprise) so bye bye child support; Jack has been lying about his homework and having other school problems so there is a big meeting with all his teachers tomorrow; I have been engaged in hand to hand combat with a strange kill resistant species of flea; and every morning I must try and fashion a terrible new haircut into something that doesn't make me look like a member of the band Poison. Moron ex has blown off Jack's promised Birthday party on Saturday and Jack was so depressed he went to bed at 7:00 pm. In desperation I went in and said "Let's go pick out a dog for your birthday on Saturday." Jack is now happy, and I want to shoot myself. Will post more later about Jack's early birthday party from me last week which involved a bunch of boys battling each other with plastic swords in a parking lot. Off for a coffee refill and the morning "let's get ready for school" marathon.

"Old Mother Hubbard..."
by Mother Goose

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor dog a bone;
But when she came there
The cupboard was bare,
And so the poor dog had none.

She went to the baker's
To buy him some bread;
But when she came back
The poor dog was dead.

She went to the joiner's
To buy him a coffin;
But when she came back
The poor dog was laughing.

She took a clean dish,
To get him some tripe;
But when she came back
He was smoking his pipe.

She went to the hatter's
To buy him a hat;
But when she came back
He was feeding the cat.

She went to the barber's
To buy him a wig;
But when she came back
He was dancing a jig.

She went to the fruiterer's
To buy him some fruit;
But when she came back
He was playing the flute.

She went to the tailor's
To buy him a coat;
But when she came back
He was riding a goat.

She went to the cobbler's
To buy him some shoes;
But when she came back
He was reading the news.

She went to the seamstress
To buy him some linen;
But when she came back
The dog was spinning.

She went to the hosier's
To buy him some hose;
But when she came back
He was dressed in his clothes.

The dame made a curtsey,
The dog made a bow;
The dame said, "Your servant,"
The dog said, "Bow-wow."

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Poet by Occupation



There is a Dictionary of Occupational Titles that we use at work to give numbers and explanations of exertion levels and education needed,blah blah blah to the jobs the people looking for disability benefits used to hold. Here is the sumary for poet:

CODE: 131.067-042
TITLE(s): POET (profess. & kin.)

Writes narrative, dramatic, or lyric poetry for magazines, books, and other publications: Chooses subject matter and suitable form to express personal feeling and individual experience, or to narrate story or event. May write doggerel or other type verse.
GOE: 01.01.02 STRENGTH: S GED: R6 M2 L6 SVP: 7 DLU: 77

So now I see I may be writing doggerel. I don't know what that is. I better look it up, I think. If I'm not writing it, I should start in order to match my job description. So I find:

doggerel: Light verse; humorous, comic and scatological by nature, base, vulgar, crude (dirty)

Aha! I am a poet according to DOT:

Genius
by M.J. Tenerelli

My husband is a drunken sot
Who fancies he's a genius.
He thinks he writes like Hemingway,
It helps to grow his penis.


This poem is obviously old, so I am a writer of doggerel from way back!

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Hello October

Happy October! It's the first day of the finest month of the year. It looks like a rainy day which is too bad because I was going to drag the kids to the Greenlawn Historical Society's Pickle Festival. Kid's strangely happy about weather.

Yesterday we went to a used bookstore and Jack got a Steven King novel, Kate a book about mermaids, and me a book of poetry by Sandra Cisneros. My book somehow didn't make it home. This is infuriating and I will have to go back and see if the creepy woman behind the bookstore counter forgot to put it in my bag. A few years ago, that woman refused to put my chapbook on a shelf with other local authors' work because if she "took a book like this, I'd have to take other books like this." She probably reads poetry by Jewel in her spare time.

So, in honor of my missing book, below is a poem by Sandra Cisneros:



His Story
by Sandra Cisneros

I was born under a crooked star.

So says my father.

And this perhaps explains his sorrow.

An only daughter

whom no one came for

and no one chased away.

It is an ancient fate.

A family trait we trace back

to a great aunt no one mentions.

Her sin was beauty.

She lived mistress.

Died solitary.

There is a well

the cousin with the famous

how shall I put it?

profession.

She ran off with the colonel.

And soon after,

the army payroll.

And, of course,

grandmother's mother

who died a death of voodoo.

There are others.

For instance,

my father explains,

in the Mexican papers

a girl with both my names

was arrested for audacious crimes

that began by disobeying fathers.

Also, and here he pauses,

the Cubano who sells him shoes

says he too knew a Sandra Cisneros

who was three times cursed a widow.

You see.

An unlucky fate is mine

to be born woman in a family of men.

Six sons, my father groans,

all home.

And one female,

gone.