the tar pit

[UnderYourSpell]

I've written long emails to lovers -- with complaints, with demands, with woe-is-me, with all sorts of drama. Fortunately, I did learn, at some point, to stopping sending them... most of the time. It works just as well. Once it's written down and you let off some steam, you feel better. So keeping some rants to yourself is a good thing. But what you posted makes for boring reading. I want the dirt!!!

It's not that exciting lol

 

[WickedEve]

Muckraker!

You know you want the dirt, too!

 

[Angeline]

hey, and this is kinda for Angeline, it's about dialect and the way we folks talk round these parts.

In NC, when a person is referring to the part of a car that is rubber and rolls, you will commonly here them say something like

"Hey man, your tar is flat..."

I think it has something to do with all the Irish that settled there years ago, and their dialects still hang around in some certain odd ways. I know I can do lots of accents, and one day, it occurred to me that an Irish accent can be manipulated into modern day mountain-folk- speak. You're gonna love Asheville.

I have some pics I will resize later and post for you so you can see the actual peaks, they are fucking gorgeous. There is one certain spot that looks like breasts of a woman lying on her side. We lived ina little valley right below, sort of near the navel, lol.


love you

Just saw this, sweets. Now where I come from, they'd say "What's wrong with the bus?" Lol. I took the bus alot before I had a car. Some of my best memories involve bus stops and the people I met there, who came to the same stop every day or the days a friend would drive by and stop for me. When I was in both junior high and high school, we lived just inside the "no bussing" limits, which meant in both cases I had to walk almost two miles each way to school (as Bill Cosby once said--"In the snow. Uphill. Both ways." ) By the time I got to high school I was sick of all the walking and I took the local bus back and forth every day. I took the train into NYC, DC and Philly, and the subway or taxis in the cities. I think I could be ready to live without a car again. And with gas 4 bucks a gallon, maybe I'll get used to riding a bike again. That and roller skating were my favorite modes of transportation as a kid.

Sorry lostar, no bad tar pitty stuff for me. I'm sick of writing (and talking) about pain.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

You know you want the dirt, too!

I slept on it and it ended up much toned down in the red light lounge !!

 

[loststar]

Its not his fault, but I am mad anyway
all dressed up with no place to go
one more night
one more night alone
I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS


one more small defeat

 

[champagne1982]

Its not his fault, but I am mad anyway
all dressed up with no place to go
one more night
one more night alone
I HATE THIS I HATE THIS I HATE THIS


one more small defeat

If it's not his fault, is it yours?

Maybe no one needs wear the blame?

Nights alone aren't as horrible as you may think. You've obviously done it before.

Just one more night.

Hate damages the hater most of all.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I quite like being alone I prefer my company over anyone elses even Rons perhaps I was a hermit in another life oh yes I believe in reincarnation and I know I have been here before

 

[UnderYourSpell]

I got too close
I realise that now
come over too needy
when it was really only a game,
but you enjoyed it too.
I didn't expect more even
if it was possible.
No that's not my beef
it's broken promises
pushing aside
like I didn't matter,
when you had bigger fish to fry
Well I ask you now,
as if your care either way,
how close is lust to hate?

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I have kept
what you gave me
what you made for me

I know this keeps
a door open
for your sad
fierce hate

but I can't resist
the toys
and you also
were too beautiful
too dark
to resist

though both are broken
beyond my skills

Perhaps
later, we can meet
in Hell and you will realize
how much I loved you.

Til then, these laced
these gripping objects
your various gifts
cruel as they are
stay with me.

 

[loststar]

our brief love affair with marriage

dirty underside of his boots
walk away from me
back to the life that grows stronger

hands shake on the wheel
grip grinding grime off
fast drive away

we have done this

parting takes less time now
our art refined
all things concise

 

[unpredictablebijou]

dirty underside of his boots
walk away from me
back to the life that grows stronger

hands shake on the wheel
grip grinding grime off
fast drive away

we have done this

parting takes less time now
our art refined
all things concise

That may be the best thing I've seen from you yet.

I know it's all being pretty rough, but hell, at least it's inspiring you to write, anyway.

keep the faith.

bj

 

[PandoraGlitters]

bj and lostar, you've written some powerful images in these last two poems. I just wanted to say thank you and also I think I saw a theme running between UYS's and bj's poems: how far apart are love and hate? cruelty and kindness? Something to that, probably.

Reminds me of Safe_Bet and how she initially hated her lover, before hate turned to love. My best friend, when I first met him, was incredibly snarky with me until I finally snapped, "Look, I don't know who pissed in your Wheaties, but it wasn't me, so you can stop that, now." hehe. Thank heavens I snapped, too, because if I hadn't, that would have been that, and I wouldn't have my best friend to tease and torment me!

 

[champagne1982]

I took a little break last week and I tried to write poetry every day. Well, it turns out that even though I didn't make a poem-a-day, I did some living and living can be poetry.
I managed to create three poems but I'm just a little tapped out, still, so, I'll share them here, for now.

I feel a little tar-clogged at the moment.

E as a variable constant

It throws my theory
of travelling to a simple
moment when the light
sparked that instant
I knew your soul
was mine, my constant love,

into outer space, where speed
is measured in astronomical
doppler shifts of light
and noise as our first mating
slips further ago, accelerating
beyond the realization

that maybe even God
changes his batting hand
now and then; constantly
varied in the tastes
He gives us as life.

Morning Comes Early

The grizzled man said so first
as his head snapped up
from where it had nodded
into his chest, heavy
from a life of labour and dope,
then took himself to bed.

It's amazing how tough
the 'sixties were on a guy
without education, running
from a nation that measured
courage in how fast
you took your draft card

to the post office and registered
as willing to give your youth
away to a government
who couldn't fully appreciate
that freedom, for some,
was a chance to sit and smoke
and chat and fuck all day
and night and realize

that the truth
lay in how soon dawn
woke the sun up from
the night it had nodded to,
heavy from carrying
the world on its broad,
working class shoulders.

Trust Me

Love is a condition of faith
after all, you only have my word
that this makes my pituitary
deep inside my lizard brain
release endorphines and a bit
of nervous adrenaline
pumps up my heart and shakes
my hands. Look.

Watch my trapped rabbit beat
frantically behind the cage
in tune with the swallow
below the skin at my throat
fluttering, bobbing,

until exhausted, they fall
back onto the floor and all
that remains of frenzy
are the rapid expansion
and deflation of breaths
gasped for more ...

 

[normal jean]

.................

 

[UnderYourSpell]

Some people have souls that are poetry

 

[normal jean]

Some people have souls that are poetry

like You

 

[champagne1982]

For a sad friend

Why grieve?

memories are why we grieve
regret or rejoice
they hover there inside
the past as a sorrow
of what will be no more

hold them close
they exist to ease
the grief that comes
too soon for we
who stand too new

to have completed
the journey and explored
the world with those souls
still in it; those souls
who have left us in all
but memory.

 

[UnderYourSpell]

like You

Takes one to know one and thankyou

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Trust Me

Love is a condition of faith
after all, you only have my word
that this makes my pituitary
deep inside my lizard brain
release endorphines and a bit
of nervous adrenaline
pumps up my heart and shakes
my hands. Look.

Watch my trapped rabbit beat
frantically behind the cage
in tune with the swallow
below the skin at my throat
fluttering, bobbing,

until exhausted, they fall
back onto the floor and all
that remains of frenzy
are the rapid expansion
and deflation of breaths
gasped for more ...

All three were wonderful to read but I love the concept of this: that faith is required for us to believe in someone else's internal experience. It is a big thing.

 

[loststar]

some days i want a divorce
I want to forget that you existed
to forget what you did to me
no you did not do this to me
i did this to me
for you
and how I hate my self some days
these days

 

[Safe_Bet]

Sonnet to My Neverborn Babes.

Sadness is a cold, cruel mistress;
welding whips of shame filled fear.
Bringing with her the old distress,
lashing woe for those not here.

‘Stead of happy thoughts of those to come,
with cherub cheeks, new life aglow;
my mind dwells on babes no cry came from;
those darling children none will know.

It sometimes seems an awful hoax,
how life can start, then disappear.
A mother’s kiss they could never coax;
no loving arms e’r held them dear.

They tell you that these things just happen;
that the baby was never meant to be.
Perhaps their genes were too mishapen
and their life would have been misery.

To those that say this: you have earned my deep, abiding scorn.
This mother’s love will always be, for those sweet babes neverborn.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

I see all around me
coupling. How cruel
and evil I must be
to be hurt by his loving
someone else.

He has found his puzzle
snug and set
and I
not yet

I fear not ever. I know
it is self-pitying and vile.
But when I was 27 I read
my cards 50 times asking
where is my soul mate and
50 times I heard you
will die alone.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Time spent waiting for the dead
must not be measured on a regular clock

I will build a new timepiece
for that room in which we labored
to greet the corpse. It will measure
twelve hours
in its grind, over years, twelve hours.

Let the one be drawn with screams
and the dark yellow sign
of Something Wrong.
Let two and three be built
from the guts of black telephones,
frayed wires and sharp gears.

Let four be crisp and white
in distant sympathy; let it be
a standard response, a number
that happens every day.

Let five and six be made of plastic tubing
running red, or dripping
clear pain and its insulation.

Let the seven be monstrous in size
and the eight be scrawled
in spotted red, still gleaming wetly.
Make the nine
from a nightmare, and cover it
in mottled blue skin.

Let ten be drawn with invocations
the virgin mary, to the shiela-na-gigh
its zero yawning open
drugged doorway to the forever dark.

Let eleven be mercifully small
and at a distance; let it be cramped
into a squat, groaning, broken.
And let twelve
be the beginning of evil Time
the hour of departure
written in a child's pure hand.

.

 

[champagne1982]

Me, at another place ... A challenge response poem at editred

 

[Safe_Bet]

That poem is KILLER Champ. Brava chick!