midnight in paris

"No subject is terrible if the story is true. If the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure." 

I just watched the most lovely movie. . . all by myself.  I wanted to try and watch all of the Oscar-nominated films before the big event on Sunday, but a couple of them are neither in the theater or out to rent yet.  Anyway, for a former English teacher this one was very fun with its allusions to writers and artists.  As I finished the film, two things keep ringing in my mind--renaissance begins now--we always want for another time, either living in the future or the past, but the real time is right in front of us.

"The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence."

Shrove Tuesday

Shrove Tuesday (or Pancake Tuesday) is a day of confession.

I must confess that I have been away from writing.  It was nice to rest in the needed hiatus following my dissertation, but I have decided that it's time.  Time to write again.  This year for my lenten devotion I have decided that I am going to write every day.  Something.  Every. Day.  While a large majority of this stuff will be crap (that is for certain), just the idea of writing every day means that perhaps something will come out in the writing.  After all, I like to tell my students that an important tool in writing is their butts.  A butt in a writing chair got a lot more writing done than most other tools.

So each day I will write.  Starting tomorrow.  I am not going to narrowly define my topics or wrangle myself into writing things that I hate.  Instead, I am going to simply follow the intent of this blog in the first place--to focus on how today is a REAL day--a day to live life to the fullest.  Within this lenten season will come the birth of our first child and the time that comes following that.  I see it as a good time to document.

I have debated about giving up FaceBook for lent.  I toss and turn the idea.  Just this morning I learned of a friend leaving youth ministry.  I wouldn't have without the good 'ole FB; however, I have come to see that each morning as I lazily scroll through posts--most of which are simply a waste of time--that I am missing the magic hour at the start of the day.  I am missing it.

Perhaps that is my Lenten devotion this year more simply--to stop missing it.

Want for movement

Fingers still I want for movement
and words
that haven't moved
in this hiatus
needed
but awkward
in its waiting and wanting
not feeling right or left
just off.

3 Preggo Poems

Body

You've always done things I don't understand.

as a scab fades to nothing

a banana turns to energy

and a 13-year-old skinny blonde stands two inches taller

Imperceptible change only measured in hindsight.

That doesn't bowl me over like it should.

Or force me to ask how . . . or why?

Instead I walk by you like wallpaper that's the ugliest

red

floral

catastrophe,

but I don't notice, after all

it's always been that way.  Hasn't it?

My hand fingered the mattress

Wrinkled the over-washed white sheet

Just like I told it to.

As I sat with Grandma--

Hospital sea-green sterile, enveloping chords and paper skin--

Trying to look at anything else but how she feels,

To soften fuzzy edges.

But you feinted . . .

. . . after I specifically told you not to.

But as I continue to round out with a new body inside

perpetually in the future

with the present invisible

except for this huge pairs of knockers

that don't seem to fit on this B-Cup diva

I wonder what you're up to.

And I've never understood less.

I never thought you were all that

shifty

shady

dark-alley walkin'

You've been a good employee

On time and pretty reasonable

Listening to me, your boss,

Index finger taps the letter "j" on keyboard

almost

before I can think it.

You're good.

You're quick.

Dependable you.

Turkey Bacon

I like to think about you.

As I turn over and run my right toe across the quilt edge.

Hair tither wiped away

As I squint out the window at bare branches

Hoping for Spring

And you-you and me-different.

Lucie wags her tail and shakes her collar

so loud

saying "get up or I'll piss all over"

I call her bluff.

Linger and scroll my finger across my phone

delaying vertical.

She puts a paw by my one open eye and

harumphs

as her head flops down curling over you

and over the thin line of me that separates

As I open the other eye

Half the world is dark and the other light.

I don't think she knows, but it's fun to wonder wish

that she's somehow sensing the magic

of new life waiting inside.

The doctors say you know our voices.

I don't even recognize mine on a recording, but you--

you know it.

I like to point out to the daddy voice that you're going to be both me and him

Somehow 50/50.

He just smiles and says the part like him

is Filet Mignon

and the part like me. . .  

. . . is Turkey Bacon.

And he laughs.

I hope you laugh like him.

And someone hears it the way I hear his.

I hope you're just okay with you . . . whatever that might be.

You'll just have to explain to your dad.

If you end up liking Turkey Bacon.

Motherhood

The sign by the highway reads

Windmill Farm

in faded black

paint on white

The "m" is hard to read, and no windmills turn for miles.

            But they did.

The parents sit wraggled

eyes tight after errands

the giving--oh the giving

that they could never prepare for

The sexy in them wrung out, and she doesn't drop F bombs anymore

            But she did.

Teenage heart throbbing

She escapes parents

blunders through identities

making new ones

and wears faces

She's independent now, and she knows she doesn't need them after all

            But she did.

Old mother

reminisces on poems

she wrote before wrinkles

wrote her.

Her first pregnancy totters on rusty memory, a vapor

The writer seems a stranger, and she knows it would have all been different if she didn't.

            But she did.