The Not Love Verses

This Is Why You Should Turn Up The Heat

My toes throb. The chill seeps through bricks where the coffee house wall stretches past my elbow. Frost climbs the big windows in front, and the life has left my coffee mug. Should have chosen decaff, the tremor in my pinky finger insists. Hoping to write a poem, but feeling doubtful, I glance around the room. A girl sitting at the counter still wears her coat--navy with a ruff of fir around the hood. The establishment must be trying to save on the heat bill (drat, another "to be" verb!). This chill seems opposed to poetry, more suited to editing.

On A Stopped Train Somewhere Between Chicago and D.C.

We wait here, prisoners together,
bottled in some kind of ether,
caught in chaos' mechinations,
hoping for renumerations
for the hours of our lives
spent like bees in blocked up hives.
Speculation, terror, sorrow!
We will be here 'till tomorrow!
Says my seat mate, always sane:
"This is why we take the train."

Doggerel: or What is This?

Doggerel is the mongerel [sic] form
of blue blood poetry--
the plum blossom stink,
the tongue stuck in cheek
of honeyed gallantry--
the "Roses are red. Violets are blue.
Won't you come and kiss my shoe?"--
the stupid words to sublime tunes--
jingles that charm the money from you--
spit out the pebbles and run your mouth.
Oh, dear. Such scruffy fun . . .

Ask the Old Man

Dear Old Man Weather,

What happened to spring?
You know, that place between the hot and the cold.

Sincerely,
Sarcastic in Chicago

Jiggery Iddle

There lived a ladybug named Iddle. Upon this time he lived under a crunchy brown leaf beneath the tallest tree on the High Blue Hill. His first name, for those of you who are nosy, was Jiggery. Iddle was a very serious beetle--seriouser, even, than the great Thertoe himself. And Thertoe was so serious he ran off to the Big City to live deliberately in the highest corner of the tallest skyscraper the giants had managed to invent.

Not so, Iddle. Iddle composed himself under his crunchy leaf to ponder the passing of time by the shifting flecks of light that pierced his frail dwelling. When his friend ant stopped by to visit, Iddle stared him solemnly out of countenance. When grasshopper popped in to fiddle a bit, Iddle danced such an awful, serious jig that grasshopper stumbled away with his head full of spinning second hands. The grasshopper flung himself into the sky to try to recapture his merry way, but he felt so like the coo-coo in its clock that he gave up the effort and sat morosely chewing tobacco until he forgot to remember. Finally the spittle bug skittered across Jiggery Iddle's somber stoop. (If you are wondering why so many folk stopped by such fellow's place, then you need only think of staring contests. Or smiling contests. And how everyone who loses tries to make the others crack up.) Anyhow, the spittle bug blew a great mound of bubbles around his delicate green self and stared at Jiggery through them. "You are all over rainbows," said the spittle bug, in a delicate green voice. "Have the goodness," said Jiggery, "to remove your trite reflections from my flecks of sunlight. I am thinking." The spittle bug, being a sensitive creature, blubbered a bit on his way out.

And so, for a while, Iddle enjoyed the little dimness and little sun flecks under his low, wrinkled ceiling. And then the wind blew. It billowed down from the tree tops and slurped through dusty old roots and tangled brambles. It sucked up Jiggery Iddle and his leaf and flung them upwards--and as the air shivered over his bright shell, Jiggery announced, "This is exactly what I have been expecting all along." Only nobody was around to hear him. The leaf did many amazing gymnastics in the air, which I do not think Jiggery could have entirely expected, and finally ended up, somehow, in the very top of the tree. Jiggery clawed himself out, toe by toe, from his crinkled leaf, and announced again, "Just what I thought." Only it wasn't. It was big and blue and went on and on, up and up--and beneath it was green after green, down to the bare brown earth--and beyond it kept going far, far out, the blue and the green and the invisible wind. And the beetle began to think--slowly, in his little brain beneath his hard shell--that perhaps crunchy leaves and sun specks and even the passing of time were not the most serious things, after all.

If you ask me, I cannot tell you for sure where Iddle is now--perhaps trying to see through the spittle bug's bubbles, or encouraging grasshopper to make a wind song, or cheering on ant in his hurry work. Or maybe (but I hope not)crawling up my wall to find his own corner.

Failure of spontaneity after a long day

Hi, to any who may chance on this post! I feel like writing, but I'm not sure what to say. Or how to say it. And I want to post something new, so please forgive the slack craftsmanship. Sometimes a girl is just not quite sure what all is rattling around inside herself. At that point, she may decide to do some random mental shaking--like trying to dislodge coins from a piggy bank--and see what she ends up with . . .

. . . guilt--for taking up non-private space with undisciplined words. Oh, maybe I'll post again later :p Horrors! I'm resorting to emoticons! Okay, so, how 'bout I keep my prewriting to myself next time?

Of Spiders and Flies

The Spider's Defense

Do not malign the spider,
That famed terrestrial beast,
And by no means despise her;
Begrudge her not her feast.

Call not her ways barbaric;
Say not that she is bad.
Her marriage esoteric,
Is not, for her, so sad.

Since she has legs aplenty
And eyes of jet galore,
Your snarking smacks of envy,
Of feeling oneself poor.

You whine about mosquitoes;
You grouse about the flies.
She makes them her burritos;
She shrouds them in silk ties.

So celebrate the spider!
Her castle's in the air
And misty iron glides her
From corners of the stair.


The Flies' Replies

We hear you praise the spider
As if she were a saint,
Society's defender.
We tell you now, she ain't.

Quite selfishly she eats us
And leaves the earth bereft
And recklessly depletes us--
It's practically theft.

We are, you see, most helpful,
(You mustn't heed her lies)
Expunging things unhealthful,
We stuff on stuff in sties.

The junk of Smith and Stankus
Throughout the earth replete,
You really ought to thank us
For tasting with our feet.

So flaunt before the spider,
Your love for all the flies.
Against recluse and widder,
Let war and raze arise!