Betty Boop, Minnie the Moocher Michael Jackson Led Me Here

Share|

At Home...and a Broad

Share |

Not the Video, but the Voice

Turn around, you fool.

Share|

Rob Brezney...You are right again.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you narrow your focus now, the world will
really open up for you in the second half of October and November. To
the degree that you impose limitations on your desire to forever flow in all
directions, you will free up creative ideas that are currently buried. So
summon up some tough-minded discipline, please. Refuse to let your
moodiness play havoc with your productivity. Dip into your reserve supply
of high-octane ambition so you will always have a sixth sense about
exactly what's important and what's not.  


_____


What I want most of all: 
1.  A full time job teaching.  No high school, no adjunct/substitute work.  
2.  The book of elegies for Harvey to find a home, which should help me achieve #1.  


I am tired of always subsuming my wants and needs to those of others.  Is part of being a mother always giving in?   


I will be productive.  I will know what's important.  I will seize love, every chance I get. 

Dactylion

Dactylion:  Anatomy, a landmark at the tip of the third finger.

Dactyl:  Metrics, A rhythmic foot with three beats, stress rest rest.  (As in PAM uh luh).

The third finger, the long finger, the bird (pterodactyl?) finger.
______

Gentle Readers (all you strong women and what few gentlemen there are left in the world), this isn't for you.  This dactylion is for one particularly stubborn, one particularly determined pest.

Dear Jerk,

I am tired of being stalked via the internet, by mail, and by phone.  I am no Queen, Princess, Beauty, or  Fiancee (that last one the most outlandish of all).

I am a middle-aged English teacher and editor. Stop romanticizing me.  I might be smart, I might be attractive, I might be kind to animals both large and small, but I don't want a relationship with you.

How plainly can I say this?  Respect my decision.  NO means NO.

It doesn't mean maybe.  It doesn't mean yes but coy about it.

It means NO.  NO.  NO.  NEVER.  

If you don't leave me the heck alone, look up jettatura.  And get ready for it.

Pamela

Share |

Enantiodromia

The way up and the way down are one and the same, Heraticlus writes.

And we step and do not step into the same river, also Heraticlus.

A particle's a wave; a wave, a particle--quantum physics.  

Before we're XY, we're all XX, genetics.

Chiasmus (Pamela) wife to widow.  

The same river, over and over.  

Over and over.

Over.

O.

Enantiodromia:  The changing of one thing into its opposite.

Before I was one thing, wife and lover; and now, I am that other thing, widow, loner.

Daphne with her thighs in bark; Arachne scuttling over her web; Persephone with her six seeds. 

I understand rootedness, I understand weaving, and oh I understand desire.

Share 

Hamartia

Hamartia:  The fatal flaw.  The obsession that leads to oblivion.  

For me it used to be love.  Now it's writing or nothing.  I believe in the nada of Hemingway's "A Clean, Well Lighted Place."  I want to believe there's something, but so far, nada.  It is the shards of the mirror, the mote in the eye from The Snow Queen. 

It's this life with ice at the heart.

My life is in these eras: Before Harvey, During Harvey, and now Aftermath.

2 minus 1 equals nada.  

I want to write the most beautiful poems, but I am so tired of the elegiac mode.  (My newest poem draft rhymes elegy with felony). I wrote a poem, "Unslaked," that shows I'm looking for the right word, for the right timing, for someone, for something, for anything, but for a change I wish something would find me.  

I'm tired of chasing after words.  I want to lay this new pen, the one that fits my  hand so perfectly, but grows so heavy by hour's end, down.  And every day there are two hours out of the 17 I am awake, where I sit here.  And I think of something I want to say.  And I write, and I carve it down, and usually it's so much whittling, not sculpting.  

I want to pare.  I want to pair up words and music into that lyric, the one Tsvetaeva calls too much. 

Is too much too much to ask?  Hamartia.

I am asking for it.  I want it.  Desire.  

I am asking for you, too.  Hamartia.

Where are you, new book?  Where are you, new publisher?  Where are you, new reader?  

I'm right here, thinking I might be worth more than nada.  

Which is hamartia.   

Share |

Scripturient

Scripturient

The violent desire to write.

The desire to write.

Desire to write.

Desire to.

Desire.

Sappho, "Six Fragments for Atthis":  I prayed one word, Desire.


I prayed for DZ to be gone, and he is.  


I prayed for desire to come back, and it did. 


Thank you.  Help me.  


BE CAREFUL FOR WHAT YOU ASK.  YOU MIGHT RECEIVE.  



Share |

She is very sad, oh, she is very sad

I made it through the two-year anniversary of Harvey's death, the four-month anniversary of knowing Dez, and am now back in bed with myself.  The sheets have a high thread count, the quilt is perfectly threadbare, and no one minds that I grab the covers and twist up in them like they were phyllo dough.

In other news, work sucks.

Being the mother of a teenager is equal parts being stuck and unstuck.

Poetry doesn't suck, and neither does the oracle:

One, born with a caul, will move from luck to love. 



I was born with a caul, and even though I know it's coming, I forget to duck.

I am grateful for my hands.

I am grateful for my eyes.

I am grateful for the skin I'm in.

I am grateful for my children.

I am grateful for Walt Whitman.

I am pretty much sick of everything else but my pets and friends.

When will the aforesaid move occur?  Fat lot of good that caul's doing me now.

My dream job of all dream jobs is available, right now, at Vanderbilt University Hospital.  It's the dream I wanted before I started teaching.  Now I cannot take it, because I can't afford to move, but I'm still thinking about accepting their offer of an interview.

Share |

"You Were Always on My Mind"

I did take the time, on Saturday, on Sunday, and I am back to my regularly scheduled programming.  Thank y'all for bearing with me when I take my annual two days of misery.

At the top of the hour, I bought a new dress, new underwear, new perfume.  I have a reading to attend and want to look good, feel better, and smell best of all.

In other news, I have four new poems drafted:  "Unslaked," "Pamela Once Meant Comb of Sweetness," "An Attempt at Epistolary," and "Envoi or Go Little Book or My Body Becomes the Text."(That final last poem is an erotic exploration of crossword puzzles.  What was I thinking?  You'll have to wait for the sex issue to find out).  I worked on two of these for months, and the other two are gifts from the poetry muse.

In the breaking-bad, best news of all, the Pretty One is gone, gone, gone.  No harassment for two weeks, and that's cause for a Shrek-sized Hallelujah.

Thank you to our sponsors Holly and Brandon of Sewanee/Greensboro, MFA friends Chet, Will and Heather, and to Sally and Sheila, my girlfriends from 1985 and 1973, who talked some sense into me.

And in sports, Molina hits his 15th.

Back to you, Chet and David.

Los Straitjackets - You Send Me

Dear Harvey,

Honest, you do, honest you do, honest you do.  

I looked for an instrumental because I don't have words.  Two years today, and it's like it never happened, because I still love you so very much, and it's also like it's happening all over again, because I miss you so very much.

To paraphrase our favorite movie, I gave you my heart, and you gave me a pen.

I'm doing my best to write with it.

I don't have the words, so I'll borrow some from Sappho's "Six Fragments for Atthis."

Beyond all hope, I prayed those timeless
Days we spent might be made twice as long.
I prayed one word: I want.
Someone, I tell you, will remember us,
Even in another time. 

When I translate Sappho, one word becomes desire.

Love always,

Pamela

George Harrison - Got My Mind Set On You (HQ 16:9)

Is there a normal to slightly abnormal middle aged man anywhere in the universe who could possibly have a relationship with me-?

I was once a very good partner, and all I have attracted are cheaters, jealous psychopaths, a photo collector who was not interested in a three-dimensional Pamela, and now a 21-year-old lovelorn Lothario.

To quote Amy Winehouse, What kind of fuckery is this? 

I hate being single, and I am more and more convinced that this is the state of the rest of my life.

In My Life

I've been in Sewanee, Tennessee, AKA heaven for the last four days.  After the wise counsel of my friend Holly and her wonderful spouse Brandon, my mind is made up.

I have no life.  It's time to get one.

A poem, a rant, a novel outline:  Three hits.  It's time to write them.

A cheater, a stalker, and a weirdo:  Three out.  

I hope the universe sees fit to send me a grownup who likes smart, funny women with big IQs.  And I hope he's not a pervert (well, not much of one, anyway).

If anyone has instructions on how to start living after your heart has been broken and then smithereened, please list below.   

Thank you, help me,

Pamela

PS I have two children, and here they are:

Share |