100% full

The Cat Eats Bird moon might explain why my head is on fire and I feel completely invisible.

My glamorous job

I just went upstairs to use the executive bathrooms because the bathrooms on our floor are flooded. I’m not sure I’m supposed to use the executive bathrooms, but no one has ever specifically told me not to. Once I got up to the fancy floor, an older woman was walking down the hall in front of me. She had grayish blond hair piled up in a big poof and a fist sized group of obviously fake and very blond tight curls pinned to the back of it. I wonder if she could feel me staring at her fake curls. I wonder if she knows they don’t match her hair. I don’t know about you, but I always look at the back of my head in a mirror before I leave the house, even if my jacket is on inside out. I hate it when people stare at the back of my head. It makes me even more paranoid than usual.

shoetard

Last night at about 9 PM in the sweltering and muggy 70º heat (ok, but it’s Seattle), I decided to try on all my fancy shoes. I was wearing black shorts and my legs were somewhat pink from the sun, so of course it was perfect timing. I put on each pair of heels and walked around my bedroom, or pranced one might say, just to enjoy them. I could have done something productive like the dishes or dusting, but the shoe parade seemed just the thing to bring the heat down in my bedroom and see how the shoes with ribbons felt on sunburned legs. I can’t really explain it. If you are a shoe person, you’ll understand.

I keep dreaming about acquiring things from my past. I think this is due to the constant purging of my house, my belongings. Last night I dreamed I went to my house of birth and took everything that was mine, including an ancient doorknob that was connected to a thick piece of rope, and my sister who was wrapped in a rug. I threw all these things in my car in a hurry, in order not to be stopped by Elvira Gulch, only to be met be yet another giant snowstorm. My car was zinging all over the road so I had to throw everything out. What is it with all the snow in my dreams? I don’t know. I do know that I’m back to zero.

Earwurm

All day I've been humming If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof and I can't tell you why, exactly, except for maybe it was having to get my brakes, which were actually no longer working when I left my glamorous job Friday, fixed, leaving me with zero jangly change. Also, this song, which is not a favorite of mine, has left me with a terrible craving for kalamata olives for my meager dinner of cheap-o spaghetti. I can taste them now, oily and pungent and thick skinned and succulent, rolling across my tongue. My hope for you, dear reader, is to pass the earwurm on to you by sharing it, which is the only known cure for the damn things. Hopefully my craving for olives will pass as well.

Pax.

di dee di dee di dee di dee di dee di dee di dee dum

I bought 2 ears of corn, 3 giant green onions and a bunch of asparagus at the farmers' market for under $3, which was all the change in my piggy bank which really is a pig, whose butt bottom hole is taped over with duct tape, because if you are broken in my house, that will be your cure whether you are a piggy bank whose bottom plug has gone missing, or a bleeding finger.

The book with the questionable title I was writing about below is Womb Rain. The cover is a stock photo (maybe) of a little girl standing next to a bucket into which water is gushing out of a garden hose. Is the gushing water meant to represent amniotic fluid? Really? Because when my water broke (something I have sworn NEVER TO WRITE ABOUT), it was distinctly not like someone poking a garden house down my pants and turning it on full force. The title of this book makes me not want to read it. In fact, the title of this book makes me want to kind of throw up, and I am not in the least queasy about bodily functions.

The other thing I've been thinking about are the covers of poetry books. As I wrote below, lots of leaves and flowers and trees and oceans and the occasional seagull dominate this area. Sometimes it works (see Suzanne Frischkorn's American Flamingo with its lush tropical orange and green tones), but mostly it doesn't work, doesn't tell you a thing about the book and usually these covers are gray. Many of them are stock photos and I don't blame the writer for these. I was lucky to have found publishers who let me have my own way with my covers, thank god. I am lucky to know a lot of artists. I am glad I have made the decision to never use my own paintings as covers for my books, as much as I have been tempted. This is just an all around bad idea.

I have a headache and there are a lot of gnats flying around right outside my window and my cat, the cat with the bowling ball in his stomach, has caught yet again another fake mouse and is singing his closed-mouthed kill song, demanding my praise and hoping I'll take a nap with him as a reward. I think I'll just open my windows instead, let the gnats in and give him something to play with.

99% full

It's cooler today and cloudly, but I have been in the garden all morning even though I was going to swear off the garden this year. I can't seem to stay away. Yesterday, after drinks and a salty lunch with some poets, I went to the beach and even though it was late, the beach was completely packed. This is because there has been no sun in Seattle for over a year and when even a sliver of sun is glimpsed, we all head toward the water like thirsty geese. Honk. Honk.

I'm going to the farmers' market now, to window shop. I had my brakes replaced Friday and I am broke. Too broke to drive and too broke to buy anything at the farmers' market, so I will bask in the muggy heat and eat free cheese, if there is any. When I get back I might write about book covers, because I've been looking at them and mostly they all have flowers or leaves or beach scenes on them, and about book titles, one of which has had me both cringing and giggling all morning, this being morning since I woke up at noon.

ciao.

Leo Whoroscope

Explore the revolutionary concept of sacred fun.


Indeed, I did that, today.

95% full

This moon is named Cat eats Bird. If your cat is an outside cat, bell him.

It's 80° in Seattle and I've been out playing in it all morning, and you should be too, after you check out Jilly's rant/manifesto on POETRYWORLD here. Thanks to Jilly.

Now I get to lie around in the sun all day, except for a couple hours when I'm meeting some of my workshop writers for drinks and lunch to celebrate our torturous observation of WRITE A POEM A DAY IN APRIL AND TOTALLY DESTROY YOUR DESIRE FOR POETRY month.

Trouble and Honey by Jilly Dybka

Jilly Dybka's first collection of poetry, Trouble and Honey, is now available for purchase or pdf download. Go buy it, then watch Jilly kick the ass of POETRYWORLD here.


Trouble and Honey is an inventive and musical romp through Jilly Dybka's fascination with weird, weird America. She effortlessly takes us from The Great Omni to Graceland to Ted Williams' frozen head. Dybka is not afraid to confront the political, and dances on the edge of a clearly imagined history with references to Vietnam, forgotten diners, circuses, and a sweet lost history. Diane Arbus would feel right at home with this collection on her bookshelf.

Rebecca Loudon, author of Radish King and Cadaver Dogs

*

Jilly Dybka hears the movement of our lives like a sculptor feels the force of shapes, and there is no arguing what she sees. So textured in sound are these poems, one has to agree Trouble And Honey returns language back to its rightful place as the source of our joy.

Major Jackson, author of Leaving Saturn and Hoops

A great act of betrayal set in motion

Last night I dreamed I was riding Gail’s horse into the ocean while being shot at. I don’t know who was shooting at us. The horse and I made it safely to an island. I can’t remember the rest except that there were bees all around.

Diode

Jumbo Bear wakes from hibernation in the spring issue of Diode

The reason I haven’t written much here in the past few days is because I have a lot to say. A lot, all of it important. That’s the way it goes in Rebecca world.

My glamorous job

What really goes on.

From Martha Stewart’s website on the Barbie™ cake:

Candles should absolutely not be used, because Barbie's hair is flammable.

I would totally put 40 or 50 candles on this cake.





ps. My mother made this cake once, but she just shoved an old Barbie doll in the center of it and the Barbie wasn't wearing a top so when the 3 girls in attendance started eating the cake, the cake became a burlesque cake rather than a birthday cake.

an aside

Those who know me best know that when I have a lot to say I get extremely quiet. I don’t know if this a kind of dishonesty in me or if there are just too many words and I can’t find the right hole from which they can begin to flow. This has plagued me my entire life.




I put curry in my potato salad.

3.

I had a fleeting thought as almost all of my thoughts have been today. Maybe there is a lack of fierce original starling heartbreakingly beautiful poetry today because we all listen to the same music and watch the same films and go to the same schools and read the same books and go to the same parties and readings and wear the same clothing and have the same toys. Maybe we need to break away from the gentle pack to find our voices. Maybe artistic community isn’t such a great thing or maybe it’s too much of a great thing. Maybe going off the grid for bit is key to originality. I don’t know. I’m making a potato salad and so far I haven’t cut myself with a paring knife, dropped an anvil on my foot or suffered seizure. I even remembered pickles when I was at the store. Maybe I’m back to normal.

Dear Chief Sealth High School Students: I CAN SEE YOU READING HERE HAHAHAHAHA!

Through careful observation, I’ve come to the conclusion that you have to have two things to make it in today’s chilly poetic world. 1. You have to have money. 2. You have to look “right.” I have noticed that poets these days are beautiful. They have lovely skin. They floss regularly. The are neither too thin nor too fat. They are photogenic. They have good teeth. They dress well unless they are northwest poets, in which case, the more money they have, or the more famous they become as poets, the more they dress like they are homeless. I have yet to figure out this phenomenon. I couldn’t even figure out how to spell phenomenon. Thank goodness for spelling checkers which sometimes work.

Successful poets can be old or elderly as long as they have agreed to age gracefully, wear purple, fanciful hats, lots of shawls, and promise not to disrobe at poetry readings. Poets are expected to stop writing erotic poems after the age of 50. Poets who go crazy as they age or have other neurotic problems or who are past the age of attractive sluttiness but continue to practice it, are less likely to make it because they won’t be invited to social gatherings where the most important work of poetry goes on: NETWORKING.

I cannot say enough about NETWORKING and have recently created a Venn diagram that explains how the poetry NETWORK can push you from a notebook scribbling Mary Oliver dreaming slam slinging beginner, to a poet with an actual book, and you won’t have to read a word of poetry or suffer one single bit in the process. You no longer have to be drug addled or an alcoholic or have a horrible family to write about if you know how to properly NETWORK. It helps if you have a beautiful house that is larger than a cardboard box, with plumbing that works and no pet rodents. (See number 1.)






I would like to stop here to write about something totally stupid that I did today. I was filling my sink in order to wash the dishes and I wandered aimlessly away to watch a movie and after a bit, The Evil Orlando came to my side and looked at me really hard, like she wanted to speak. She jumped around on the chair, and it was then that I heard a noise that I thought maybe wasn’t coming from the television. I muted the TV and there the noise was. Like a river. Like a river running downhill in my tilted kitchen. Downhill to puddle under the stove and the refrigerator. I threw all the towels I owned on the floor and got as much as I could with the mop. Then I turned the heat on to one billion, and went to the store for heavy garbage bags so I can take the water soaked towels to the laundr-O-mat tomorrow. The moral of this story is, if you tell your psychiatrist that the new drug, Seroquel, makes you too stoned to function and he says Oh, just cut it in half and you’ll be fine, and you do so, and you wake up the next morning with the brain power of a AA battery, trust your instincts. If you insist on trying the Seroquel make sure it is not a school night. I bought The Evil Orlando a can of tuna fish as a reward, for playing Lassie and telling me our house was about to float away.

After that I went to teach a violin lesson and the student (also 10) didn’t play a single note and I lectured to her about the Baroque era for an entire hour and her head didn’t explode nor did she slip into a coma, cry out, gnash her teeth, spit, curse or complain that I was ruining her precious and decidedly unbalanced life. In fact, she gave me a cookie when I left and told me she had looked up my blog on her parents' computer. I told her that maybe her parents should know what she's looking at in the interwebs. She gave me another cookie and told me she ordered my book, Radish King from Amazon.com. I told her Amazon.com was the devil and we parted, as always, student and teacher.

bitch

I taught a student tonight and I got very frustrated with him because he’s smart and he’s a natural and he’s NOT PRACTICING CORRECTLY. I didn’t let up on him for one hot second, not one. He didn’t get to check the clock or change his socks or go to the bathroom or clean his glasses or get a drink of water or pull the curtains because the sun was in his eyes. He didn’t get to stretch out in the middle of the lesson or take a breath. He basically fell apart.

He knows this music. He is practicing incorrectly because neither of his parents is paying any attention. He’s only 10! Someone needs to be there to help. I don’t care if it takes him 15 years to learn the piece, which is a difficult piece, but I care if he’s practicing incorrectly.

This happens when you practice and you make a mistake and instead of going over that particular mistake repeatedly until you play it correctly, you gloss over it, you pretend it never happened and the wrongness gets into your tissue memory and you make the mistake over and over. I’ve asked him during lessons, You know you messed that up. What should you do now? Play it correctly or pray to Jesus I didn’t notice? His choice is always Jesus, who doesn’t lend a helping hand or send down a beam of light or a good Samaritan or Mary Magdalene to wash his feet or any damned thing. Jesus thinks he should play the measure until he plays it correctly too, and then play it 10 times, correctly, going back to 1 if he screws up.

I don’t even care if he never learns violin. VIOLIN IS NOT IMPORTANT. Practice, making practice your goal, is the only way to achieve mastery in any art. Period. Writers don’t like to hear this either, especially poets. I teach them, too. They think that Jesus speaks through their ears or navels or some such portal at night or in the morning when the light is just so and GIVES THEM POEMS. Jesus does not give you poems. Reading and writing is where poems come from. That’s the practice of a writer. Reading and writing.

I was not my nicest self at this violin lesson because I was frustrated and I get all diva-y when I think I’m wasting my time though I’m getting paid well to teach. I even complained to his mother after the lesson that someone needs to pay attention to what he’s doing when he’s practicing. She pretended to listen. She wants him to play soccer and be Bill Gates. Who says you can’t be fierce and on fire for art when you’re a kid? Our parents have become a nation of soccer moms who don’t give a shit about the arts. I was also hungry and I’m still hungry and my date has not yet showed up and I’m ready to tango.

Also the sun is out and it is calling my name.

But back to the thing about practice. You can’t be great unless you do it. It’s true. Jesus told me, whispered it into my favorite portal when I was 9 years old.

My glamorous job

I am off my meds a little bit and I've been smelling cigar smoke pretty much constantly for the past 4 days. I was just thinking I should go down to the parking lot and get my sunglasses out of my car so no one can see me cry which I don't do a lot but a little bit (animal tears -- do you know this?) but that might make things worse since the sun isn't out and there is no real excuse for me to be wearing sunglasses here even though we have big giant windows all around us.



*

There is something important I need to say something about a cyclone or Sarajevo something hungry something I need to say standing under a dogwood tree in full bloom something about your body your hands and they way they have changed over the years. I am split today smack down the middle split in my knowledge my belief spilt and leaking or it’s rain and I am not going to find the insides of my head. It’s blue and rain insists. But this isn’t the thing I need you to know. Sometimes I love you sometimes I hate you it’s the same.

I love you once
I love you twice
I love you more
Than beans and rice

I used to write the most beautiful love letters. That is a lie. I used to write letters to my lover but they weren’t beautiful at all. They were teary and truthful and brutal and I made little drawings around the edges of the paper. Page after page. I can’t believe I let those things fly out into the world. Now I keep it to myself or I write it here and delete it immediately or I disguise it in poems or paintings. It’s better this way. It’s better to tamp it down to damper the fire. Nothing good can come of giving it all up like that. It’s a bad idea.

It's not
What you thought
When you first began it
You got
What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

You're sure
There's a cure
And you have finally found it
You think
One drink
Will shrink you 'til you're underground
And living down
But it's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

Prepare a list of what you need
Before you sign away the deed
'Cause it's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up
No, it's not going to stop
'Til you wise up
No, it's not going to stop
So just
Give up



Aimee Mann

How the weather affects my mood, dogs wearing clothes, soul mates, and more on why I hate poetry

On the way home tonight I saw a man walking two smallish dogs. One dog wore little red shoes. 4 of them. One on each paw. I think the dog was terribly humiliated. The man should have been. At the very least, the man could have given the dog a matching red hat.

Mini movie review revue

Southland Tales
Directed by Richard Kelly
Starring everybody seriously every single person in Hollywoodland even Richard There is only one! Highlander! Lambert

I watched it twice last night.
I will probably watch it again tonight. I can't really write a decent or even crappy review of this movie until I've seen it maybe eleventy times, but if you have nothing better to do, click on the link to watch two cars bumping bumpers. May or may not BSFW depending I guess on where you work. I thought it was hot, but then I think cars are hot, so there it is.

RK. Gearhead.

It strikes me as rather ominous that the directions on the bag of rice I bought at the Ghetto Albertons are not only written on the bag, but drawn out in gigantic cartoonish pictures. The rice in the cartoon drawing of 1 CUP OF RICE is bean sized and might confuse the illiterati. The woman in front of me at the self check-out line could not open the plastic bag in which to place her purchase. The electronic voice continued to intone PLACE YOUR ITEMS IN A BAG PLACE YOUR ITEMS IN A BAG so she got frustrated and spit on them. The bags I mean, all of them, giving them that good spitty grip that works so well.

I am making red beans and rice in honor of those who went to a city I love, New Orleans, without inviting me to go with them for free as their guest. I am not in New Orleans. I can tell by the threatening thunderheads and steady 45 degree weather. Had I written this post yesterday when I was bad, I might be whining about not having been invited to New Orleans as a guest with the two people I know who are currently there or were there recently. I might have engaged in jealous petty evilness for my own pleasure and delight. Now that I am living A GOOD LIFE I have decided to send you both kittens by mail.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!

I have made an executive decision to start creating precious art. Precious music precious paintings and precious poetry. Sweet. Nice. Well behaved. Adorable art. This is the stuff that sells. Evil loony freakish dangerous and weird does not. I have lived a perverse life. It’s time to turn my life around to become a better person a nicer artist. I can do it. I can. I know I can. Honest.




vs.




You see what I mean? Doesn’t the kitty art just make your heart bubble up with joy? Seriously. Enough of all this angsty dark stuff. I'm going to let Jesus and network TV and Rice Krispie Treats® define my nights instead of kinky sex and tequila and naked spontaneous dancing. I'm a grown woman. I need to pull myself up by my bootstraps and turn my frown upside down and let a smile be my umbrella and start embracing Disney™ and let a bluebird crap on my shoulder. That's right -- I’m going normal.

This morning I dreamed I sat up in bed and looked out the window to see five feet of snow, a glittery soft drift covering my entire neighborhood. I had a new job and as I was considering whether it would be safe to drive to work, a tall man wearing a leather cape ran through my yard. I woke up my son, I whispered there’s a man in our yard, and we both looked out the window and the man was standing in our front yard looking across the street, and he had his hands behind his back and on each hand stood a giant falcon.

I HATE POETRY.

In the past 2 days I’ve written five posts here and left them up for an hour or so, then deleted them. Maybe I just need to do the writing part. I get the feeling sometimes that I don’t want anyone looking in my windows. Or maybe it’s that my brains are rolling around inside my head loose like marbles or ball bearings or stale peanuts. They don't sound as bright as you'd think. They sound the way dust would sound if it wore sneakers. The sun is out, I’ll tell you that much and leave it. I’ve been reading in my big floppy hat in the back yard all the live long day.

Sometimes I just need to sit by the sea and listen. Today the sea falls from the sky. I don’t mind. I like rain. Yesterday I read the “off the grid” issue of Tin House and found it brilliant except for the poetry and the war story that I couldn’t read because I just can’t read fiction about war right now. I am looking forward to poetry coming back into my head in its normal skewed plodding way. I am looking forward to a maid coming to the house to clean up the mess the Surfer made in the kitchen while baking chocolate chip cookies. I had a large amount of the dough, it’s true, and one half an actual cookie, but I have made an executive decision that it’s his mess. Especially considering he went to see Wanda Jackson last night and I did not. Especially considering that. My middle cat, the cat with a bowling ball in his stomach, is meowing his head off because he thinks I should go back to bed so he can use me as a giant space heater. Obviously I have nothing of interest to write. Except if anyone would like to pay me to take a year off from my glamorous job so I can stay home and write, I’d appreciate it. I don’t have to go to the mountains or the sea or the forest because I already live there. I don’t need a villa or a secluded cabin or my breakfast brought to me in a basket. I just need enough money to survive without worrying every single second and I’ll write my fool head off. That’s what I’m thinking.

Today I’m going to see Iron Man because RDJ is in it and that makes me want to write more about the movie Fur even though I’ve written about it here before. The thing about this movie is that I recently rented it and watched it eleven times before the Surfer hid it from me. There is a reason I’m compelled by this movie, probably several reasons, Diane Arbus of course and RDJ, yes, but there is a sexual component to it that compels me and it isn’t what you think.



ps. I have to go to the 10 AM showing of Iron Man because it's the cheapest movie because it's the earliest, but when the heck did they start showing movies at 10 AM? It seems entirely unreasonable. Unless you're six.

more on poetry

On April 30th, I wrote a poem that I was afraid to post on my secret April poetry blog because it was too honest. That poem was good, but it was so real and raw that I felt it would damage me if any of the 4 people to whom I gave the URL read it. So I wrote something entirely lame and posted that instead. I'm a fake. I'm a false poet. I have lost my eggs but that happens when I am considering an audience. I should have kept the blog completely private, but then I was afraid I'd lose my steam.

Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion

I stayed home today because I feel crappy and can’t seem to get air into my lungs. I went for a walk at Golden Gardens and walked up where they are fixing the parking lot after the whole road slid off the hill in the early December rain. The road there is freshly tarred and every day someone is writing a Tom Robbins’ quote in white chalk on the black tar. I will post pix of them here soon. I figure it’s probably Tom himself who is the culprit.

I’m listening to Donnie Darko and eating a bowl of rice and considering what to do next now that the horror of write a poem a day month is gone I’m thinking no more poetry for me! Because I really hate writing it. There’s no point to it and it’s mean and has big sharp diseased teeth and wears Crocs, you know, those bright yellow and pink garden shoes, and has swollen parts and cries too much. Except I have to teach a class at Chief Sealth next week and the week after that I have another reading. Mostly I want to crawl into bed with a good book.

When I was a street kid in Spokane, I lived for a little while in a huge house on Water Street right on the Spokane River and directly across the river from a coffin factory. There were other people living there. Kids like me who were runaways or had been thrown out of their homes, and actual families. One family was previously living in a bus which broke down in the yard of the Water Street house. They had 3 children, and they gave their children LSD. Once, once of their kids, a 7 or 8 year old, took some LSD and freaked out about the toilet and I rocked him in my arms for a long time until he came down. The back door of the house opened right up on the river just three stone steps down, which was where we got our water. We didn’t as much live in the house as squat there. If you don’t know what squatting is you can look it up. I suggest using an actual encyclopedia since the Wiki sort is mostly full of shit.

This morning Seattle is full of tight heartbreaking lilac buds. Every lilac tree in the city decided it was time. The only thing that ever makes me the least bit homesick for Spokane are lilacs which grew thick and wild all over that entire town.

Hurray, hurray, the first of May, outdoor screwing starts today.

My friend St. Catherine taught me that song.

May means the awful April poems are DONE. I disabled the blog. I wrote a poem every single day even when I felt like crap and most of the poems were crap and I didn’t cheat and start a poem the night before and I didn’t miss a single day and I didn’t like any of it. The entire month, the poems, knowing I had to write them, felt like a medicine ball in my stomach. Now I feel light and now, finally, I want to write, but to write in my own fashion which is late at night with the lights low, six months or so to spend on each poem. Now I can read poetry again. I believe with all my heart that we carry around essential crap that is good to get out on the page, but it was daunting to be confronted with so much essential crap all in one place. I don’t know if there are poems there that are fixer uppers. I won’t be able to look at them for months. And I won’t do it again. In fact, I do write every day. I’m a huge believer in writing as practice, in practice as the way to master art, of making practice my highest goal. I’m also a huge believer in writing a few words at night, then getting up to dance ecstatically to the likes of Wanda Jackson or the Pixies or the Sex Pistols or Mozart.

I need time to dig in the dirt. I like to bake and think about poems, not worry about getting that days’ worth in. I thought, at one point, the 18th, that I had achieved some kind of breakthrough, but really I just got lucky. I felt weird writing about things that weren’t important to me just to find something to write about. Those poems felt like lies. I felt weird but good about writing completely sentimental sappy poems about people I love because I rarely allow myself that.

Next April I plan on being on the beach at Key West with a half coconut and a straw and a giant hat and a notebook. I’ll be working on a poem or reading a book or just lying in the sun, and later, I’ll ride my bicycle around the island a few times and think about Hemingway and Bishop and Wallace Stevens and all the writers who lived on that island and wrote into its wild spirit, and I won’t have a computer nearby and my blog will just have to stay quiet for a while.

some news

Oh boy, ohboyohboy, the cover of Cadaver Dogs is going to be insanely beautiful. I can’t show you, not yet. But good god. I will name the artist – The Dishwasher. Oh my god, it’s amazing. Holy crap.

I am not like you

Wanda Jackson, a singer I love, is gonna be in town Friday night, at the Tractor Tavern, cheap tix, $18 at the door. I am not going because I don't have $18. WANDA JACKSON! I can’t believe it. None of that emo candy raver crap for me.

My glamorous job

Laptop security

Swimsuits!

Polygamous sect-wear is really hot right now.

Thanks to The Astonishing K for sending this to me.

Audience review, Burning Word

I finally went to the store at one because I was hungry and there was no food in the house. I bought hot house tomatoes and fresh basil and eggs, but I forgot to buy a baguette. I can’t eat store processed bread any more it makes me sick it smells bad and tastes bad. I was hoping for a tomato, basil, fried egg sandwich for lunch/breakfast and now I’m stuck with tubuleh. I did enjoy a piece of wedding cake since it's Celebrate Cake Day at the duck blood store.

I feel entirely spaced out and exhausted from the readings Thursday night and yesterday. I heard a lot of poetry yesterday. Some of it was ok most of it was not very good. Two poets decided to perform their poems from memory and forgot the words. Then they had to go back stage, fumble around in their notes and resume haphazardly.

When I read, I couldn’t get the mic situated correctly and the stagehand guy just disappeared. Also the music stand I put my book on was stuck, so I had to take off my glasses to see my poems. Four of my workshop students showed up. One of them said you sounded nervous, another said I always think you’re the best and a third wrote me this morning to offer her suggestions for getting over stage fright and nerves. This was a slap to the face considering I’ve seen her read twice and her voice rang up into a terrified bird twitter and she got her pages all out of order and lost her place.

I personally felt ok about my reading even though I couldn’t see the audience because I had to take my glasses off. And reading in a barn, an actual barn, is a real challenge because there is no way the sound is ever going to be right. After the reading, a girl stopped me and told me she loved my work. She may have been the person who bought my book. I didn’t know her, but her compliment meant a lot considering the people who are my friends had nothing good to say. And now I feel like shit about it, because I am indeed as neurotic as the next poet and sometimes it’s nice to get strokes no matter how many times your friends have heard you read. Besides, I was nervous. That barn was full. There were a lot of people there. But I had the best hair. So there.

Which brings me to my usual what the fuck is up with Seattle poets and their complete lack of fashion sense rant. I saw long froopy skirts, lots of them, flimsy with no shape and weird colors like puce and ocher, then there were the scarves. Scarves over one shoulder hanging to the knee. Scarves around the neck. Scarves worn as shawls. Scarves with tassels and without tassels. And all the scarves had sparkles or silver or copper or gold threads in them or rhinestones or baubles or beads or those little spangly deals, or all of the above plus other irritating glittery things. It’s like all these poets got together the day before the festival and had a giant potluck/Bedazzler™ party. I was not invited thank god. There was also the case of the strange shapeless clothing. Clown pants. Baggy sweaters. Gigantic baggy sweaters. Gigantic baggy pants. Hair that hadn’t been combed in days. Horse blankets masquerading as skirts. Ponchos. And, of course, the hallmark of the Northwest Poet, BAD SHOES.

One of the highlights of the festival was an art installation of one of my ex-students, Mimi Allin. After we drove around the pond (with the requisite heron statue firmly embedded in the muck), we came to a grassy knoll upon which stood two white pedestals. One held a silver platter full of apples with the word REJECTION printed in front on the top of the pedestal. The other held a silver platter full of hand made giant fortune cookies with the word ACCEPTANCE printed in front on the top of the pedestal. I immediately took an apple from the REJECTION pedestal and chucked it as far as I could into the field cursing not only my most recent literary rejection but also a person who denied my request for a blurb for my next book. Then Mimi, looking chic in a black sweater and very pleased with herself, said now go get your fortune cookie! I walked to the ACCEPTANCE pedestal, opened the giant fortune cookie and read my fortune: “Thank you for submitting your work We regret that we are unable to use it at this time. We appreciate your interest in our magazine.”

Well done, Mimi, well done.

Burning Word

I'm reading tomorrow at Greenbank Farm on Whidbey Island for Seattle's Burning Word poetry festival and small press fair. I'll be on the main stage at 11 or so. If you live here and don't have anything to do, come on by. It's a beautiful farm and you can always steal some books or throw strawberries at Sam Hamill if you can find him.

ps. No one who runs Burning Word thinks it's funny to call the festival Burning Book so don't do it in hearing range of any VIPs or they will give you harsh looks and force you to listen to poems about herons and rain soaked skies for hours.

Cheap Wine & Poetry

I'm reading tonight at Richard Hugo House in Seattle for the Cheap Wine & Poetry series. Come dressed as your favorite poet. Me. Starts at 7.

Verse Daily

I have a poem here today. It's from my forthcoming collection Cadaver Dogs.
Woof!

Mini movie review revue

I watched Blood Simple for 15 minutes and figured out the entire movie and turned it off.

I watched Good Will Hunting because the main character, Will, gets an hour and a half of therapy, has a sudden breakthrough, and is immediately healed of his entire previous life of suffering and abuse. I was in therapy 9 months this last time and barely scratched the surface, but, to be fair, Robin Williams was not my therapist.

I watched Lars and the Real Girl and I liked it because I feel much like Bianca in my present relationship.
”You mean she has a, um, you know?”
“Yes, and she’s flexible.”

I watched Juno in the theater and haven’t written about it here because I felt the movie was entirely false, completely unrealistic and irritating. Everyone I know and their dogs loved this movie. Maybe they weren’t pregnant when they were 16. Maybe that makes all the difference.

Intelligence is often the enemy of poetry, because it limits too much, and it elevates the poet to a sharp-edged throne where he forgets that ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall suddenly on his head."
                   Federico Garcia Lorca

I think the above quote is key to writing 30 poems in 30 days. I have had to let go my intelligence and write from the belly. I can’t read/parse the poems yet because that takes time, much more than a month. Even if they’re all bad it doesn’t matter. I have kept going forward digging through layers of seeming emptiness. I’ll post the link at the end of the experiment.

100% full

Dilettante moon.
BEWARE!

This morning at 12:30 something fell kaplow inside my house, hitting the attic door in my closet and then scrabbled across my bedroom ceiling and down the outside of the house somewhere. Whatever it was had a tail. Or I imagined a tail, a long one, dragging behind it. In my imagination the tail was probably eleven or twelve feet long. I don’t think it was a tail-zombie, but the thought certainly crossed my mind. The cats went nuts screaming across the hardwood floor and jumping around on my bed as though powerful but small high performance engines had been attached to their butts that would allow them to fly. To ascend.

I stayed awake until the wee tiny small hours, when the Surfer came home from wherever he was and informed me that More people are waiting for zombies than the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. It was an odd statement, fueled perhaps by 2 cups of chai tea, a Coca~Cola™ and a beer, but it gave me pause. Paws. Frankly, the 2nd coming of JC is just as scary as zombies, and, when you get right down to it, the exact same thing. On the other hand none of this explains THE THING IN THE ATTIC.

It is 33 degrees here this morning in north Seattle, with a couple maybe 3 inches of snow left on the ground. The snow on the trees is falling off in big clumps and I predict flooding in the next few days due to rain and ground saturation. We may get more snow today, at least the sky says so. I made a pot of coffee and built a fire as soon as I woke up.

If anyone knows a really great recipe for white cake, one that isn’t dry, one that actually tastes good, one that is so good you eat most of the batter before you bake it not that I’d ever do such a thing, please let me know in the comments box and I’ll send you my e-mail. All those zombies and critters and saviors floating around have given me the desire to spend time in the kitchen doing something difficult and complicated.

We’re having a whiteout snow storm up here in the north end of Seattle and a few seconds ago a jaggy blade of lightning struck right out the back window then the BOOM! BOOM! I’ve never seen lightning in a snow storm. Not in Seattle. Not at the ass end of April. Lightning just struck again. Time to log off. They're predicting funnel clouds for tomorrow. Are those like funnel cakes? The Surfer just came in and said You know what’s next don’t you? ZOMBIES!

I’m afraid that this writing a poem a day debacle is stealing all my words. I’m afraid that when the month is over, that will be it, I will be finished, kaput, done, forever, completely out of words. I can't even bear to read real poetry right now because I am afraid I am wasting a month not writing my own real poetry. Will I be permanently damaged?

Other than that, I had a cold last week and I have been left with Ernest Borgnine’s voice, and have been pretending to be the Moviefone™ guy all morning just to entertain myself and my office mates who are only pretending to be entertained and will probably file an official complaint against me very soon. This may be why I never get invited to adult social gatherings. I am having a vindaloo rendezvous tonight with Alice, but she’s not an adult.

All the magnolia blossoms in Seattle sprang up on Wednesday and sprang wide open on Thursday and will probably plop to the ground in a soggy disgusting, sticky mess when it SNOWS tomorrow.

I was pummeled with weird dreams all night. In one, I was in college living in a dorm room that was in fact a huge Victorian house full of odd doors, weird rooms, extremely high windows that wouldn’t open and one ancient woman. I managed to pry one door open only to be greeted by a swamp with a drowned black puppy floating in it. This is not good. This is a foul moon playing tricks on me. I woke up thinking it was already next week and that tomorrow I would have to drive through snow to get to my reading on Whidbey Island.

I need to be someplace really, really hot. Brazil maybe. Key West. The fireplace.




*



Dear Universehead,
Yes, I know I still have a lot to learn but NO MORE DEAD DOG DISNEY DREAMS PLEASE.

Love,
Your friend Rebecca

blue

What awful thing crawled into my head overnight to give me such an ache? The giant Tylenol aren’t working. And I just noticed I have blue ink all over my left hand and not just a blob of it but it’s on my first, second and third fingers and my thumb and my palm. I haven’t used a blue pen today, only black. I fear it came from the bottom of my purse or else it’s been there since this morning and I’ve been in too big of a hurry to notice which means the pen is in my bed leaking all over my sheets. When I change my sheets usually at least three pens fly out. And the ink doesn’t match my skirt. Maybe the ink leaked from my hand into my head and is causing my eyeballs to twitch and twirl.

I saw the Johnny Cash psychiatrist Tuesday and Wednesday I quit my therapist. Mostly because I can’t afford her but there were other reasons, for instance the feeling that she was judging me which was not a paranoid feeling but an ongoing feeling, but mostly because I can’t afford her. Also she said she was going to charge me for a session that I cancelled 52 hours in advance because she didn’t like my reason for cancelling, which was that I couldn’t afford to come because I had seen the Johnny Cash psychiatrist and couldn’t afford them both in one week. Some people do not get the concept of budget and even though my budget is small scale since I don’t have much money, it is necessary for me to live and have food and a soy latte once a week and quarters for laundry and rent and stuff like that.

I am rapid cycling which is not fun and actually took the JCP’s advice to take a little more Tegretol until I even out a bit. I’m trying not to cry at work. I hate that because I love my glamorous job and don’t want to endanger it in any way.




Maybe I can take this post and break it up into short lines and call it my poem for April 17 even though I know that would be cheating. Or maybe I’ll just wait until a poem rolls into my head which they have been doing in spite of my whining. Snow in Seattle this weekend. I will build a fire and maybe build a fort in front of the fire. Then I’ll hide in the fort like a giant 4 year old.

Apologia

Radish King THE BLOG has been mighty sluggish lately. This poem a day business has sucked out my will to live. I have three readings next week, then things will be up and running as usual, with suspicious recipes, stories of living in the ghetto and boring crazy rants. In the mean time I encourage you to use this time to attend to your animals, atone for your sins, and steal a car.

Yrs,










*

This has been a Radish King public service announcement

I love you.

Pain is the biggest power of love.

The Evil Orlando complained about my never posting photos of her, and of me writing about her evilness all the time here, so I thought I'd post a photo of her as a kitten and even then you could tell that she was DEMON SEED. I took the photo so it's crappy. On the back of the photo scrawled in a claw dipped in ketchup (so it looks like blood I'm pretty sure) are the words GIB ME $489.00 ANDD CALAMARI.




Does she not just emmanate evil? I told you so!