Friday, February 04, 2005

So I just tried the new MSN Search, supposedly created to challenge google. Well, it doesn't. Not that anyone cares.

More interesting...I've been playing golf! Sans plaid knickers.

Friday, February 04, 2005

Ron on The Elusive Eli Drabman's new chapbook The Ground Running from atticus/Finch.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

I still do not miss the Bay Area. I do, however, miss a few of those up there. I'll be back in 9 days but just for a short while.

The Revised Version

“THE LOVERS I LEAVE TO THE WINTER”
for Dana Ward

Of the icy light on the eyes, I will accept my blindness as it comes over me
and I will accept these white signals.
If I saw something good, I would remember it for yr gift-shop, a cup full
of coins for a small accordion.
In the dark room—I spoke to you as if you were here—a funeral prepared
for our imagined pageantry of loves left.
So I will accept no love at all on this coldest day of the year and adjust
the heavens to make a storm of excess paper, pencils and dust.
There is nothing so simple as a smile among a thousand sad faces but in my
blindness, I am made to feel out for laughter.
I believe in a place where the sun will restore my eyes and I accept that
they will remain an icy blue against so much offense.
There is god in them hills and they are green, they are off limits for hunting
because so few animals are free, the family on their land.
No pasture can release more than a wad of blackbirds into the glacial sky—
tonight, hollow but for the inky swarm and cutout clouds.
Whose traverse could be the will, the winter release its frigid obstacles upon
me, my sentiment and these metal rings.
I will accept the winter has claimed me a casualty and I will accept these tidings
of war as just recourse, sightless but tall.
So please set among your keepsake menagerie these blind eyes and the scenes
not afforded them in sight.

SAINT OF PERPETUAL SORROW*

Call me a spent orange in the dirt, a primer-gray birdhouse in the tree

or a new world thesaurus but not over the telephone.
Call me a nearly empty water glass, a ceramic kitten toppled on the sill
or call me a sad and broken man but do not call tonight.
Call me a celebration of new democracy, a vest of explosives beside you
or the state of the union address, marked return to sender.
Call me an unfinished word puzzle, a dull pencil or doldrums
but do not call to lure me from the tar.
Call me a despot having gone too fast, a sickly poinsettia in the sink
or a failed plan for two but no, not etc.
Call me a conduit for perpetual sorrow, an ill mannered house finch
or pruned rosebushes but not in the receiver again.
Call me an empirical fault, call me tomorrow or don’t bother using
words at all but do not from the other end just breathe.

*the title was taken from Gina Myers' poem "House"

Sunday, January 30, 2005

There is some severe sensory deprivation going on here. There are the weather, the landscape, the slow pace and then there is the complete lack of the sort of culture/civility I'm used to. I have never heard so may remarks about "gays" in my life--except when I was growing up in San Diego. Everyone seems repulsed when I mention moving to the Hillcrest neighborhood, because that's SanDiego's "gay" neighborhood. However, it's also where all the culture is. I've never seen so many drab, lifeless, landscape paintings in my life either. These are strange times indeed.

Over and out.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

I just returned from a charitable dinner and auction, where I was one of maybe 4 people under the age of 60. I'm not too big on prime rib so I stuck with the over-buttered asparagus, hyperbolically gravy'd turkey and rice pilaf. What the hell is rice pilaf anyway? Rice, Orzo, and parsley flakes, no? I'm changing my name to Edith Pilaf, forthwith.

xo,
Edith Pilaf.