Poem

Enough --
It is time for me to disclose
That I know your kind well.
I can say your name in Latin,
Spanish, French, and Expletive
Especially the Expletive.

When I was eleven, I
Dressed up in camouflage
And startled a bunch of strangers
By telling them an Invading Army
Had arrived.
"Don't just sit there - Do something!"
I intoned dramatically
To make sure they were all paying attention.
I took home the 4-H state entomology prize,
Two hundred dollars in federal treasury bonds
(I would cash it out in 1996 for a mere $174.)

But, I digress. The important
Point here is that I have had enough
Of your random periplaneta
Tag games with my person.
I do not fly into you, squirming poisonously.
Maybe I crinkle my nose, if I see you,
But no court in the land
Would see that as assault.

After a long day at work,
I would prefer to ignore your invading army
In my tropical city.
Let it rampage at will
Alive, as long as it leaves me alone.

But in the last week, as if drawn to
My forbearance, you've seen fit
To invade my bath time, my kitchen,
To crawl across my ceiling fan too high
For me to catch and release so
I lie in my bed awake because I am
Too afraid I will awake in the morning
With your taste in my mouth
Or a stray leg in my hair.

For $200 depreciating cash value
I once was the child expert
On how to kill you in
A myriad of painful ways.

I re-declare war.

-EEG

Poem

I spend my days
Saying nothing
Because breathing
Steals my words.

I move
Cutting corners,
Ghostlike, invisible
To the top of this
City's world.

A lake spreads out
Below me,
Shivering from the
The wind's breath,
The breath of winds
Coming to steal
All our words,
Leaving only the sound
Of meaningful force.

Poem

We had no doubt whose
Poems were better, so
We polled the two best
Poets that we know.

And I said yours
And you said mine.

-EEG

Poem

One pondered
How
We were all there
Same time
Same circumstance.

And despite Kevin Costner
At my side
How you could be there
With your baseball cap
Bedazzled with
The Seeing Eye

And yet not know
How
Your lesbian khaki shorts
Could invade our space
Even after we
Gave you the pink lighter
(Don't tell his mother)
To smoke a bad joint.

Perhaps we must
And did
Judge you
Although our shorts
Were just the same.

Poem

I told you this, brother
And it will always be true.
I will never know what you
Would have become.

If your hair would have
Continued to tangle
Into unmanageable curls
After your voice stopped breaking.

Or if you would have
Scored the touchdown
That would have made
Our father's heart soar.

Or if, on some imaginary day
At my wedding, you would have
Cracked a bawdy joke
And brought the house down
With your blue eyes.

In my dreams, you occasionally show up
With different faces
And you tell me some wisdom
From beyond, that I always lose
Upon waking.

I told you this, but I know
This part to be true.
I have nothing but this tiny flower
From a Pennsylvania summer,
For a Pennsylvania grave.

I miss you.

-EEG

Poem

I did not agree
With his choice of eulogy,
Even though he was a priest
And much more experienced
In that delivery.

I did not want to be reminded
That our cousin was a sinner
While his children ran
Unknowingly around the pews
Blissful, unwavering.

I did not want to be told
That people who were good
Were, in fact, not.
Nor that life is unfair
Because we sin.

I knew the difference,
I could see it gleaming off
The sheen of his wife's
Chestnut curls
As she bowed her head and took this.

I wanted to stand up and say
Life is unfair because
We are not immortal
And to have happiness
We must allow things to change
And with that change comes loss.
This is what was right.

I wanted to say it, but then,
One of the children laughed
And that laughter
Drowned out his words
Because we all joined in.

-EEG

Poem

It has been brought
To my attention
That perhaps I am
Writing too much
Poetry lately.

I will not say
Who made this cruel observation.
Or maybe I will.
It was me.
I cannot bear
The sunshine today.

-EEG

Poem

That night
We were standing
Under the streetlight
When he said

You know,
Maybe the edges of
This halo
Mark the end of the world
And if we leave it
We will step
Into an abyss.

And I said
That is
The most ridiculous
Thing I ever heard

Even though
I knew that
It was not.

-EEG

Poem

I did not regret that July,
Although there was a grief here then
That held its spell in the form
Of a shaggy haired prince
And the disasters he left
In his wake.

That summer
It would not rain.
The clouds were distant
And stingy.

Perhaps the ground
Was calling for tears.
Perhaps that explained it.

I did not regret that July
Even after I was alone.
Because I know that the ground
Needed what was mine.
And I freely gave.
Knowing then,
Later,
The ground would give back.

-EEG

Poem

When the trees grow so
You can no longer fight them
And they push their way
Into your window frame
Making new shadows
Where familiar patterns had
Once reserved their spots.

Remember
To welcome them.
Study the new lessons
In their shade.

-EEG

Poem

My jolly piece,
You may not go
When I hold your heavy
On days distant from silence
And words.

Even if no laughter
Waves its daft paths
Through you,
I will give you all of mine
To remain.

-EEG

Book Report

The Satanic Verses
Salman Rushdie

I have a very dirty secret involving why it took me so long to read this book. Is it because I have a hard time with Rushdie's prose? Oh my no - it goes down like a rainbow flavored snow cone dolloped with an odd dash of spices guaranteed to keep you hooked all the way to the last drop. Is it because I had issues understanding the various parables and the confoundry of a guy thinking he is the Angel Gibreel, while maybe actually being the angel Gibreel. Nah-uh, fantasy intersects with reality more than most people are comfortable believing. Did I find his female characters unappealing? Nope, Rushdie comes up with some of the strongest, most complex and real female characters out there (Alleluia Cone immediately comes to mind, with her fallen arches, and conflicting obsessions).

My dirty secret is that I have been using this book as a polling point for Thursday nights at a local neighborhood eatery. Because I have never had a night there when I was reading it, and someone did not have something to say about it.

The hilarious thing is that everyone who had something to say about it, had not actually read the book. They just know about the fatwah.

"Oh, is that the book where he had to go into hiding after it was published?"

"Yeah, do you know why that is?"

And therein lies my guilt, as I began examining the various ideas of just why that is from my friendly neighborhood barflies. This is what they came up with:

Rushdie likes men.

Nope, way too many hot chick notches under his belt.

Rushdie was calling for the assassination of the ayatollah of Iran.

Nope, it ended up being the other way around.

Rushdie discovered a new section of the Koran where women had equal rights.

Kind of ... but not really.

I held a vast sense of superiority over these people, being as I was actually reading the book. But when I turned the last page and closed it, I realized I really had no idea either.

So, I had to wikipedia it. And the answer was so obvious, I completely missed it. Apparently some Muslims take their religion super seriously. So much for my literary acumen. Ah well.

It was not an effort wasted. Although not as fluid and nonstop as Midnight's Children, The Satanic Verses still offered up a vareity of gems, anecdotes, fables, legends and occasionally Shakespearean-styled comedies of errors (with Shakespeare nicely credited for that effort). I must read that I'm glad I must did read.

Now, onto something new to poll the Thursday night crew with.

Song

"And if you think I've gone too long
Listen, the sky will sing this song
As it burns up all the memories
That flow, like water, out of me"

Song

"Je ne veux pas travailler
Je ne veux pas dejeuner
Je veux seulement oublier,
Et puis, je fume."

[I don't want to work / I don't want to lunch / I want only to forget/ and then I smoke].

Book Report

Look Homeward, Angel
Thomas Wolfe

Very rarely do I hit a wall with a book that makes me think I will never finish it. I inherited this book from my parents, who inherited it from my Nana. It has been sitting on my nightstand for over half a year, where it rests while I turn to other reads for a break. It is currently in seven different pieces. Last Sunday, as I was reading it in my favorite breakfast spot, a page actually tore loose and landed smack in the middle of my oatmeal. Pieces of the binding, resembling dead moth parts seem to magically litter my floor. "I thought," groaned my dad as he handed it over, "I would never finish this stupid book."

"Is it worth reading?"

"Yep."

In short, the book had become - to echo a brilliant review on goodreads that made me keep going like a marathoner on the 23rd mile - the goddamn bane of my existence. It was also one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. As I finally set it down for good I actually found myself sighing poignantly, then looking around pretty embarrassed.

Plot? Thomas Wolfe doesn't need a plot. He just needs a good dysfunctional drunk North Carolina family, a misunderstood genius, southern whores, slightly crazed boarders, tobacco and lots of racial epithets. He needs his hero to wander around a graveyard spilling out gushes of morbid soliloquy strewn with masses of descript mountain evenings and overtones of escapism. He needs the harsh realities of loving your family so passionately you slowly kill them, in a way that manages to be so macabre it's funny. Plot, pshaw. Thomas Wolfe is a poet, pure and simple.

For example:

"And left alone to sleep within a shuttered room, with the thick sunlight printed in bars upon the floor, unfathomable loneliness and sadness crept through him: he saw his life down the solemn vista of a forest aisle, and he knew he would always be the sad one: caged in that little round of skull, imprisoned in that beating and most secret heart, his life must always walk down lonely passages. Lost. He understood that men were forever strangers to one another, that no one ever comes really to know any one, that imprisoned in the dark womb of our mother, we come to life without having seen her face, that we are given to her arms a stranger, and that, caught in that insoluble prison of being, we escape it never, no matter what arms may clasp us, what mouth may kiss us, what heart may warm us. Never, never, never, never, never."

Yep, existentialism just had an orgasm. A self-indulgent one, but still.

I really have no desire to find out what happens to Eugene Gant after this novel. I mean, I could, since there is a sequel, but he's not a particularly likeable fella. I like the thought of him exiting stage left, looking back longingly at mistakes he would never have been able to correct. If he turns around - well, then the whole title stops making sense.

Keep it around. It grows on you. You'll never look at October leaves shaking on the trees the same.

Five stars, disbelievingly.

Book Report

The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides

Reading Eugenides is like being trapped in someone's nightmare. Someone's nightmare that is so aesthetically pleasing you don't want to leave. And he definitely knows the formula to keep you locked in.

Centering around the tragic mystery of the suicides of five sisters, one would expect that Euginedes gives us resolutions and answers, but none fit, making it all the more tragic. Expecting the usual macabre plot devices, you continue turning the pages, rushing through the onslaught of hormonal luminescence that engulfs the entire narrative. Were teenage girls ever so obsessively idolized while their physical flaws so excessively studied? Do men really lack the capacity to understand the harsh realities of "trapped beaver" (my favorite phrase in the book)? Is self-destruction always contagious? At what point is escape impossible? Eugenides makes the Lisbon story resemble an nostalgic ghost tale, stringing us along with its horrible beauty and scaring us silly while we want to listen to more.

Haunting. And, like its characters, finishing too soon.

Song

I have a terrible habit of telling people my heart is full when I've had a few, when I should really just say "this has been great." I blame this song.

"Loafing oafs in all-night chemists
Underact - express depression
Ah, but Bunnie I loved you
I was tired again
I've tried again, and

Now my heart is full
Now my heart is full
And I just can't explain
So I won't even try to"

Poem

Wives say to me
With their jeweled hands
On top of mine
That there will be space
If I just wait

And I study my naked hands
Beneath theirs
On the countertop between us
And say:

Here, there is already space
Like a wave
That borrows your balance
So you can see what lies
On the shore beneath

Suspending organs,
like flotsam floating
Spreading them out
onto other things that sparkle
Expensively

EEG

Stats

Every once in awhile, this blog sends me a report telling me what people googled that landed them here.

Today: "female desperation" and "getting messy wearing satin nightgown."

God.

Song

"Is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friends,
Then let's keep dancing ..."