Throwaway

Who'll show her where to go tonight
when all the warm stores shut their doors?
When all the walkways roll up tight,
Who'll show her where to go? Tonight
she's being baptized by streetlight.
Her heroes will become the whores
who'll show her where to go tonight
when all the warm stores shut their doors.

Excuse Me,

but right now I've got the remote -
and I say we're watching The Animal Channel.

Poets

Are Wusses














Chicks dig the rock star.

Michelle Mis-speaks

Don't get me wrong, I'm an Obama supporter all the way.

But for Michelle Obama to have said this was just plain stupid - regardless of what they're going to say she really meant.

It's fast becoming that first little nagging doubt in the back of my head.

I, like many other people, perhaps even like the majority of the people. tend to read "America" as "the American people" and regardless of how disgusted I sometimes get with American government, there are daily reminders of our capacity to show true American spirit and remind us of how proud we deserve to be of ourselves and one another.

Methinks Michelle ought to not let the campaign managers "explain what she really meant" and just bite the bullet and apologize.

Of Babies and Boas

I dunno, call me old-fashioned and over-protective, but isn't a mom supposed to protect her children from things like snake venom and boa bites rather than take public delight in "baby's first bite"?

"All Is Not Light" - or "Why I'm Not in the Mella-Camp"

Occasionally people who know me, or who know my poetry, will ask me why I don't submit anymore. I've usually only got vague answers for them because I'm not really sure myself.

Today, though, I remember the real reason behind my lack of enthusiasm for poetry magazines and for the editors of poetry magazines wihch has, God help me, filtered all the way down to the way I feel about poetry itself.

It all started 6 years ago with the infamous Poetry.com, of course.

And then along came the now defunct Foetry with it's unending and irritating tales of poetry-publishing shenanigans, not the least of which was The Tupelo Press/Jeffery Levine (Send-me-$35.00-please) debacle and the Lehman/Best American Poetry Series with it's rather incestuous sounding selection process.

More recently, there's this and there's this just in case all that other stuff wasn't enough to convince us (meaning me) that there is very little honor and very much nepotism in the publishing world.

Just in case I was in danger of changing my mind, however, one of "the good guys" (in my mind, anyhow, since I had never heard anything bad about him or his publication - if fact, on the contrary, I had always heard very good, very fair and complimentary things about him) has now fallen from the clay pedestal I'd once set him and a very few other editors upon.

It all came to Light over on Eratosphere on this thread started by a poet from North Dakota named Timothy Murphy.

For those of you who don't want to waste an hour reading the whole thread, I'll do a quick recap:

The well-known Murphy said, about Tom Mella, the editor of Light Magazine,

,John Mella's been awfully good to a lot of us. He doesn't accept email, so I'll email this in.

This is true, of course. They do not accept email submission. If you read their guidelines, there is no email address for submissions given and all submission information is paper based only.

Please be neat, submit letter-quality typescripts or clean photocopies, and a stamped self-addressed business (# 10) or manila-sized envelope (no post cards). Submissions that do not have sufficient postage for their return will be destroyed unread. There should be only one poem on each page, etc etc
Send contributions, queries, subscriptions, correspondence to:
LIGHT
The Editors
PO Box 7500
Chicago, Illinois 60680

No email address or instructions for it's usage was given on the submission page - no where, no how, no way.

Five hours later, the following announcement was posted on the thread:


This just in from Light Quarterly:
INSTANT DECISION: I LOVE IT! AND ACCEPT IT.. I'm sorry about your wheelchair. I'm glad you can still keep the sight steady. Write when you will or can. Glad you like the facelift of the mag. Still kicking, the old girl.
John

And so, this is a rather long and tedious way of saying, "In order to get an editor's attention, it's not how you write, it's not what you write, it's not how carefully you follow directions or how neatly you fold each submission or how much blood and sweat went into your poem or your preparation - it's about how well you already know them."

I'll take the high road here and go out on a limb - editors like that, editors who have rules for one set of people which do not apply to other sets of people, I don't think I really want to know them or to waste my time submitting poetry to them......at least Poetry.com is quickly up front about the way they do business - and as far as I know, they don't discriminate - they read all of the submissions the same way and they take everyone's money the same way - regardless of who they are - and they're not afraid or ashamed to say so.

I mean, fer God's sake, if you're going to make a practice of favoritism, at least have the decency to be quiet about it.

It's a Cop's Life

With thanks to Kenny

Caution: Perhaps not for the faint-of-heart


Check out this video: Police why there are



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2007 NEMEROV AWARDED TO......

Michael Juster
for the third time!! Way to go, Michael.

Interestingly enough, I met Mike for the first time last Sunday. We had dinner together, along with Leesburg poet Claudia Gary Annis and her son.

Michael is a delightful man as well as a wonderful poet and the thrice-earned honor is well-deserved.

After dinner, the four of us went next door to Iota, in Arlington, Va., where Wordworks holds monthly poetry readings on the second Sunday of each month which are followed by an open mic period.

The readings are run by Miles David Moore and I highly recommmend the time and place to anyone in the area who's at all interested in poetry. There was a fair-sized crowd present, all of them friendly and polite, and the poetry was well-performed and equally well-received. Most of it was free verse, but a few people did get up and read some strictly formal verse and those poems were welcomed every bit as warmly as their unmetered and less constrained cousins were.

I even read!! Egged on by Michael and Claudia I somehow agreed to let Claudia list me for the open mic. It's an experience I plan to never repeat, but I am glad I did it the once. It gives new meaning to the words "grace" and "courage" - and it was a fairly safe way for me to discover that I am sadly lacking in both qualities.

In other words, I was scared to death and it showed. My legs shook, my arms shook, my hands shook, and worse of all, my voice shook. Badly. Very Badly.

I'll leave the "spoken word" to others from now on and be content to simply write the stuff without attempting to inflict it on others while confined to an enclosed space.

Without a doubt, though, I'll go back to listen.

Next month, February 10th, at 6PM. Be there!!

There's Only This

revision
There’s Only This

There is no graceful end in sight,
no peaceful dimming of the light;
no hand to hold; no gentle kiss
upon your brow. There's only this -
your own reflection in the night.

When fragile flesh and fear collide
and faith alone fails to ignite
a vision of eternal bliss,
there is no grace

your God can grant - no blessing bright
or beautiful. No spirit, sprite
or saviour shall appear. One hiss
of breath is all that still exists.
The end is ice. Cold. Bitter. White.
There is no grace.

Remember....

The girl of your dreams



















is almost always some other guy's nightmare.























Damn - and I thought the stripper next door and I knew how to apply makeup!!

Poor Ex-Miss Arizona contestant. Poor ex-Miss Arizona' Contestant's ex-boyfiend.

Remember....

Jesus Camp

I've been home sick for the last week which means my days and nights have been turned around. I sleep half the day and watch television half the night.

Somewhere around 2AM I was watching A&E and ran across Jesus Camp which I proceed to watch in it's entirety:

In spite of the fact that the camp itself has since been shut down, I'm feeling even sicker now. My reason is simple - why would anyone, Christian or otherwise, willfully cause a small child to cry?

Jesus Camp Trailer

God Bless the Child

That's Got His Own.

Huckabee Reinterprets The Bible - What'll He Do To The Constitution?

Presidential wanna-be (and former minister,) Mike Huckabee, really needs to get his facts straight. If a Chrisitan candidate feels free to reinterpret and rearrange his church's bible, then God only knows what he'd be willing to do to his county's constitution.

According to CNN Huckabee recently gave a 30-minute sermon to the nearly full 5,500-seat auditorium at Cornerstone Church which focused on the Christmas story, which he said was the "remarkable story of an unwed teenage mother."

Excuse me, Mike, but check out the defination of "unwed mother" and then check out
Matthew 1:20-25

20 But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.
21 And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.
22 Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.
24 Then Joseph being raised from sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his wife
25 And knew her not till she had brought forth her a firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

Where I come from, a girl is not quite an "unwed" mother if she's someone's wife.

I just love the way people rearrange stories sometimes.

Must be a Republican thing, yes?

One Old Christmas Story, One New Christmas Poem

Behold the season's
greatest joy.
A small green tree
and a red-cheeked boy.





The Gift of the Magi O. Henry Coming Home Jim Hayes

Pinsky Goes Public

Interesting "question and answer" discussion with former Poet Laureate, Robert Pinsky.

I especially like the part where he mentions C. Dale Young and Alicia Stallings. I don't know why, but I do. Maybe it's because I know Alicia through Eratosphere, West Chester and Formalista, and because I read C. Dale's blog often enough to feel downright chummy with him in a strictly-internet-sort-of-way.

Anyhow, it's a good read and you'd do well to check it out.

The Terrible Truth About Monday Night Football

Let the truth be told but gently, darling, gently.

Dan and the Annual Swift Contest

Arghhh....Dan made the semi-finals for this year's Swift contest, but not the short-list. What's with those people??? It was really really good!!

Anyhow, you can read it here if you're interested. There's no names posted because it's a blind contest but now that he's out of the running, I think it's ok to acknowledge it. I don't know how it didn't make the final cut - I think it's brilliant.

Sean Taylor and the Quest for Appropriate Punishment

Four Arrested in Death of Sean Taylor

I'm glad they caught these guys. I'm glad one of them has already confessed. I hope they're punished appropriately. (I realize "appropriately" means different things to different people but I don't want to re-start the always ugly disagreement that Dan and I have over the death penalty.)

I do have a few small questions, however, and I hope some really smart prosecuting attorney questions the same things.

1) Why, if the 4 would-be burglars planned this home invasion around the premise that Sean Taylor was going to be away at the time they entered his home, did they carry a gun?

2) Did they think they had pre-knowledge that Jackie, his girlfriend, and Jackie, his daughter, were also going to be out of town playing in a football game? Because if not, then they already knew there was a better than average chance that someone, although maybe not Sean, was going to be home sleeping. That makes it even more sinister, in my humble opinion. Who breaks into a home knowing that only a young woman and a small child are going to be there?

3) Why, if their only intention was burglary, did they not leave the house immediately when they heard the bedroom door being locked? Obviously if a person is locking himself in he has no intention of coming back out. They'd have had more than enough time to make an escape before the police department was notified and on the way if they'd left as soon as they heard a noise and realized someone was home instead of continuing on their merry thieving way. Not only did they not try to beat feet and leave, they went to the opposite extreme, kicking in the bedroom door and firing two shots directly at Mr. Taylor. I don't know about you, but this does not sound like a bunch of kids out to do nothing more than steal a few valuables.

And finally:

4) If this story is to be believed, at least two of the suspects had personal ties to Sean Taylor. Apparently Sean's sister dates (or has dated) a cousin of one of the suspects and he's been to at least one party at Sean's home and another of the suspects cuts Taylor's lawn and does other odd chores around the house for him. Having that sort of working-relationship with the owner of a house means that, at the very least, the would-be burglar could have, without attracting much suspicion, called the house with some bullshit story about wanting to come 'round and cut lawn, pick up sticks, dig up dirt or whatever it is handy-men are hired to do. Why wasn't that easily accomplished and not-hard-to-figure-out phone call made before the "nobody home, let's rob the place" plans were implemented and carried out? How many brain cells would making that one small, confirming phone call have taken?

And lastly, why - why would you bite the very hand that feeds you unless, of course, it really was personal?

As a recently married, middle-aged mother of grown children with a nice safe cushy job who's living in an upscale suburb of Washington D.C., I'm turning pretty mellow nowadays. I'm also a fairly recent convert to the idea of strict gun control, and like all fairly recent coverts to anything, I'm pretty gung-ho over the idea. However, I gotta be honest, the South-Side Chicago Ghetto-Child who still resides inside of me understands that the outcome of this whole thing most likely would have been entirely different had Sean Taylor kept a loaded shotgun instead of a shiny machete hidden under his bed.

But that's blood-lust and spectulation. Justice after-the-fact and appropriate punishment is all that's really left.

I have a son exactly the same age as Sean and a grandson just a wee bit older than Sean's baby, Jackie. I'm not talking street justice here, I'm talking mother justice, and I know exactly what sort of justice this particular mother finds sufficient.