Prompt # 100

I started this writing at five. I was almost done and somehow I pushed the wrong key combination and all the words vanished. I can't tell you how much I want a cigarette now. I wrote about a lot of things I'm going to spare you. Because it was about violence and death and being gay or gender queer or female or black or male and black or latin and trans. It wasn't an easy write. It was a hard write. I am empty of words now because I wrote them already. And yet this is the prompt writing. It's not your fault the words vanished. The words always get saved in draft. I can't figure out what makes them vanish that way. 

It was a dangerous write grown from a poem found in a google search for National Coming Out Day- which was yesterday.  So what do I have left. Exhaustion. Aching empty and over full at the same time. Too much remembering, too much forgetting. The realization that both are important. The remembering and the forgetting and the remembering again. If we remember in every moment we will lose our minds. We have to forget sometimes those things we should never forget. Maybe I should say I and not we. Or make it a personal we. 

I keep losing the boxes in my browser. I keep running into furniture when I walk. I keep garbling my words when I speak. It's just nicotine withdrawal. I can't re-write the write I did. It was hard enough the first time and maybe it was a gift that it vanished. 

So here is a poem I found before the poem I found that led to the writing I did before this writing: 

Silence 

by Billy Collins 

There is the sudden silence of the crowd

above a player not moving on the field,

and the silence of the orchid.

The silence of the falling vase

before it strikes the floor,

the silence of the belt when it is not striking the child.

The stillness of the cup and the water in it,

the silence of the moon

and the quiet of the day far from the roar of the sun.

The silence when I hold you to my chest,

the silence of the window above us,

and the silence when you rise and turn away.

And there is the silence of this morning

which I have broken with my pen,

a silence that had piled up all night

like snow falling in the darkness of the house—

the silence before I wrote a word

and the poorer silence now.

Source: Poetry (April 2005).

I like this poem. That silence of the falling vase before it hits the floor. I could sit with that one a long time. Each line is a prompt for me and I hope a prompt for you because I'm out of words. It' s not your fault that you don't get to see most of them. But I seem to have hit the wall.

Can  you write from the silence and the sound in this poem?

or

Here's a list of books I was looking through whose titles make prompts for me....

Remembrance of things I forgot...
****

Need (the word was Feed) but both work for me

****

The Raven Boys

****

Never fall down

****
A Thousand Mornings

****

Okay that's where we are at. You get cheated today- a short prompt on a Friday but it might be for the best .This is a much easier read.

May this day be good to you and your creative.

If you can write for ten minutes or twenty today- go. Use a timer if you like so you can let go and keep on going.
If your stuck make some lists- of anything at all. Fruit, places you want to go, things you crave, body parts, sexual positions, things you dust- it doesn't matter. Anything that gets the pen moving is good. 

Prompt # 99

I haven't slept well at night since I started cutting back on the smokes. Since I quit completely I am either knocked out cold or wide awake with little in between. Yesterday I was mean to A. To be fair, never say to someone whose just quit smoking I assume today is better than yesterday. Assume fucking nothing. Whisper. Duck and roll man. Duck and roll. And I didn't say anything mean. I just yelled. I can't smoke 

into the phone

I can't smoke. 

Like that is all the pertinent information I have. 

So yes I am still talking about it. I am feeling less like stealing the money to buy a pack of cigarettes and running to the 7-11 today. Yesterday was bad. This morning feels like a gnawing in my gut, a slow foggy feeling like what am I forgetting? Oh yeah- forgetting to smoke. Dummy. That's what's wrong. I think I've been up since three or so. I couldn't write. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't think. I watched dumb television and told the cat it's not morning yet, go to sleep. My son emailed me back yesterday when I wrote him apologizing for eating all of his extra thin fancy Trader Joe Ginger snap cookies which are delicious- not to worry about it and did I need anything and I joked Heroin. I settled for ice cold fizzy water. I don't know why cold water helps. It seems to. Also my daughter had a lime Popsicle in the freezer. That was as happy as I've been since I quit. It was ice cold and felt good/tasted good. 

It's like when I was pregnant and everyone just sighed and handed over what they were eating. I never craved specific food, just whatever YOU had, that's what I wanted. It looked better, smelled better, tasted better than what was on my own plate. 

I do that with writing. I admire YOUR writing instead of resting in my own. I wonder how come I can't write like that? I start doubting myself and comparing myself to other writers and thinking nobody will ever want this crap. Because look at that writing there? Everybody else's writing seems the most delicious  I like the crunch of your words better than mine. I like the way her words sound in my ear when I read them aloud because she has the lyrical thing down. Or I read a book that blows my mind and I am high on that book and excited and telling everyone in the world to read it until one morning I wake up and go wait- I don't write like her. What is the fucking point? It's a temporary condition- is it writing avarice or lust? Jealousy doesn't seem quite right. Avarice plus insecurity maybe? I don't know and It's so dangerous to write without a safety net/seat buckle/ cigarette in my mouth. 

***

One of the last cigarettes or When it's good you aren't wearing your pants. 

Game day here in Berkeley is a horrible horrible day. Unless you want to Cal and worship the game of football and it makes you happy to decorate your car and your children and your husband or wife and then you and your family and friends make yourselves at home on all the sidewalks and people like me, who live here, mostly hate CAL and wear my pajama pants out because I feel like shit, can't move down the sidewalk. So I take a break. I sit down in a little quiet spot in my pajamas and t-shirt and smoke a cigarette. The sun is too bright. Everyone is too damn loud. 

Two girls maybe twenty approach me after they do a routine with each other for me showing me how cool they are? Or is it real?  I think good god, please let them be playing, let them not actually be this shallow/artificial/hairsprayed/no goof, no real, even their laughter sounds canned like the old sitcoms. And I am sad for them until they turn on me. I am already cutting back so I'm already cranky. I don't know what number cigarette this will be- but it's important that I smoke it. I'm broke I can't buy more. They are wearing clothes that cost more than my back pack or phone or possibly rent. Girl number one- says give me a cigarette- I say no I don't have extra. Girl number two says your smoking one. I say that's right. Girl number one says is it your last? I say some stuff about money and what I don't have to share right now and they both start riffing on how sorry they are to bring it up, sorry we asked/sorry to hear that/hope that doesn't make you feel bad. I feel the smoke making my lungs and brain happy while I watch them do some crazy whisper pantomime? Are they trying to be mean girls? They should have worked at Oakland Unified Schools. Man I worked with some mean girls. The kind that leave you bruised when you annoy them. That's before they are actually pissed.  All I could think was thank god I am not wearing my actual pants. That god I am not wearing my pants. Because they made me mad. And I wanted to engage. You know actively with them. The way we did at Oakland Unified. 

Speak closely and personally to them. Knock their heads together like in the movies. I was out of mind with angry and I still had my cigarettes. I am thinking I should only wear pajama bottoms till the withdrawal symptoms are gone. The world is safer when I'm not wearing my pants. I might be safer when I'm not wearing my pants. I could have totally taken them. Unless they had a cute little rhinestoned pistol somewhere. See what an asshole I am? 

It rained last night. Somehow in all the hours I was up I missed it. That makes me sad. It is also sad that my handful of cigarette butts in the downstairs planter are mostly wet. 

Smoking a butt or two on my way to quit is always helpful. Because they are disgusting. Because I drag too hard and it makes me sick. All part of the process. It's not as tidy as using one of the nicotine replacement systems. But I just get addicted to those. It's the nicotine that is my drug. The cigarettes are the best delivery system. But I chewed the gum for three or four years. I think that's how I got my latex allergy. Living on that gum. The patches make my heart race and I'm allergic to the adhesive. So it's just gross quitting cold turkey where once in a while I smoke a disgusting butt. And it's safer if I don't wear pants. 

That is all I have today and where does that leave us? 

Fighting? Anger? What tips you over or a character over into irrational? When was the last time you felt the urge to physically fight someone. Or maybe it's never? 

What is that like? 

Fight or flight. I have lived in this place for a long time and as I've gotten healthier I land in fight more often than flight. That's not healthy either but it feels good to me. Anger often feels good to me. It's impetus,movement, change. I don't want to get suck in it but anger is a good way to shift things. That's what she says drinking her green tea and not sucking on a cigarette. I feel like I'm weighed down in kryptonite. Coated in it. In the babble stage of this trying to write to you. 

Can I find a poem? Lets see. Not yet but I keep falling in love with these serious black in white head shots of women poets from back in the day. That would be an interesting story to write. 

Here is an audio clip of a short one- since there is no text I'll leave it a surprise. 

The Poem I found is longish but quite beautiful. I like it. It has fight in it and persimmons and precision and a girl and painting and the world. So that's a good enough poem for me today. 

No line prompts because they all have cigarettes. 

May this day be good to you and your creative. 

Persimmons

BY LI-YOUNG LEE

In sixth grade Mrs. Walker

slapped the back of my head

and made me stand in the corner   

for not knowing the difference   

between persimmon and precision.   

How to choose

persimmons. This is precision.

Ripe ones are soft and brown-spotted.   

Sniff the bottoms. The sweet one

will be fragrant. How to eat:

put the knife away, lay down newspaper.   

Peel the skin tenderly, not to tear the meat.   

Chew the skin, suck it,

and swallow. Now, eat

the meat of the fruit,

so sweet,

all of it, to the heart.

Donna undresses, her stomach is white.   

In the yard, dewy and shivering

with crickets, we lie naked,

face-up, face-down.

I teach her Chinese.

Crickets: chiu chiu. Dew: I’ve forgotten.   

Naked:   I’ve forgotten.

Ni, wo:   you and me.

I part her legs,

remember to tell her

she is beautiful as the moon.

Other words

that got me into trouble were

fight and fright, wren and yarn.

Fight was what I did when I was frightened,   

Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.   

Wrens are small, plain birds,   

yarn is what one knits with.

Wrens are soft as yarn.

My mother made birds out of yarn.   

I loved to watch her tie the stuff;   

a bird, a rabbit, a wee man.

Mrs. Walker brought a persimmon to class   

and cut it up

so everyone could taste

a Chinese apple. Knowing

it wasn’t ripe or sweet, I didn’t eat

but watched the other faces.

My mother said every persimmon has a sun   

inside, something golden, glowing,   

warm as my face.

Once, in the cellar, I found two wrapped in newspaper,   

forgotten and not yet ripe.

I took them and set both on my bedroom windowsill,   

where each morning a cardinal

sang, The sun, the sun.

Finally understanding   

he was going blind,

my father sat up all one night   

waiting for a song, a ghost.   

I gave him the persimmons,   

swelled, heavy as sadness,   

and sweet as love.

This year, in the muddy lighting

of my parents’ cellar, I rummage, looking   

for something I lost.

My father sits on the tired, wooden stairs,   

black cane between his knees,

hand over hand, gripping the handle.

He’s so happy that I’ve come home.

I ask how his eyes are, a stupid question.   

All gone, he answers.

Under some blankets, I find a box.

Inside the box I find three scrolls.

I sit beside him and untie

three paintings by my father:

Hibiscus leaf and a white flower.

Two cats preening.

Two persimmons, so full they want to drop from the cloth.

He raises both hands to touch the cloth,   

asks, Which is this?

This is persimmons, Father.

Oh, the feel of the wolftail on the silk,   

the strength, the tense

precision in the wrist.

I painted them hundreds of times   

eyes closed. These I painted blind.   

Some things never leave a person:

scent of the hair of one you love,   

the texture of persimmons,

in your palm, the ripe weight.

Li-Young Lee, “Persimmons” from Rose. Copyright © 1986 by Li-Young Lee.

Prompt # 98

In the eye of withdrawal. I decided to quit altogether yesterday. So it's been many hours since I've smoked and it's all I can think about this morning from my underwater place of slow, heavy and underneath that is the loud craving. Like the screaming flashing fire alarms that used to go off in the government building I used to work in. All red and prickly cactus thorns, the sound of fingernails down a chalkboard plus a little confusion. I can't remember anything. Original thought is a challenge. I feel like I need a cave somewhere to crawl into and rest until I'm done with withdrawal. It helps to drink a lot of cold water. I couldn't tell you why. It's what the successful quitters tell me. So I've been drinking enough water to float away on and chewing on my tooth picks and slow deep breathing. 

I've been staring at the paragraph above off and on for fifteen minutes. This is one of the hardest parts of getting off the cigarettes. Wondering where the hell my brain went. 

I can hear the wind blowing through but it's got to rub against sandpaper on all the walls and it makes a nerve wracking screeching sound. 

I went poem hunting and cigarette butt hunting. No success so far with either. I read an interview with a poet asking her what the role of the poet is in today's culture. I found her answer more poetic than pragmatic and it's an indicator of how cranky I am today that I am poking at a respected poet in my head instead of finding inspiration. Why wouldn't her answer be poetic? 

I'm thinking I'm an asshole when I quit smoking. 

My friend yesterday said she loved how she knew I had quit smoking by how direct I was. She was appreciating that directness. My daughter is being supportive and I'm not sure my son knows. Most people who know me are avoiding me till the worst of the withdrawal is over. I am eyeing what I've written here and I'm annoyed. This won't do at all. what do I really have to say that isn't bitching about how dumb I am without nicotine on board? What do I want to say...

I want to say how the world is safe behind a cigarette. I am safer. The world is safer from me. I want to write about how cigarettes keep me pleasant with a smile on my face even when I'm furious. That smoking helps me live in ways that don't disturb anyone or ruffle feathers or change the world. I don't scream out loud or make messes with my anger I don't litter the streets with my rage or paint on the walls with my questions. Everything about me is more acceptable with a cigarette even in a world where cigarettes aren't acceptable anymore. Disgruntled fat women who still wear high tops at 52 and are loud or fight back or yell or do not smile when you insult them aren't acceptable either. To be truthful I'm an asshole when you fuck with me whether I have a cigarette in hand or not.

But the world is dangerous for me and I am dangerous for it when I don't smoke. Today I am dangerous if I can stay awake enough and find my way into the world. There's a good chance I'll be too confused to get anywhere where I can cause any harm to anyone. But I am missing my sharp today, missing my ability to focus, missing that calm that comes with the drag of smoke into my lungs. 

The cat is unafraid. I think he's smart so I attribute that to loyalty. 

So where are we? 

What makes you or a character safe or dangerous?  This could be how you or a character feels or is.... What makes a character or you a threat? 

Here are fragments of my search for a good dangerous poem...

***

Cracking the shell of the world and the most dangerous man alive 

***

it is not only false it is dangerous and probably lethal...

***

behind the words it is dangerous 

***

I leave you with a poem for punctuation. I am going to end this misery of a prompt that has felt like slow peeling stinking shrimp. I used to have to do that only fast. Mountains of shrimp to peel and de-vein, squid to clean with their ink and slippery skins, crabs to crack and break apart to arrange on a bed of lettuce. I can't eat any of those things anymore. 

A Family History
by Julia Spicher Kasdorf
At dusk the girl who will become my mom must trudge through the snow, her legs cold under skirts, a bandanna tight on her braids. In the henhouse, a klook pecks her chapped hand as she pulls a warm egg from under its breast. This girl will always hate hens, and she already knows she won't marry a farmer. In a dim barn, my father, a boy, forks hay under the holsteins' steaming noses. They sway on their hooves and swat dangerous tails, but he is thinking of snow, how it blows across the gray pond scribbled with skate tracks, of the small blaze on its shore, and the boys in black coats who skate hand-in-hand round and round, building up speed until the leader cracks that whip of mittens and arms, and it jerks around fast, flinging off the last boy. He'd be that one--flung like a spark trailing only his scarf.

Prompt # 97

White-Eyes

BY MARY OLIVER

In winter

    all the singing is in

         the tops of the trees

             where the wind-bird

with its white eyes

    shoves and pushes

         among the branches.

             Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,

    but he's restless—

         he has an idea,

             and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings

    as long as he stays awake.

         But his big, round music, after all,

             is too breathy to last.

So, it's over.

    In the pine-crown

         he makes his nest,

             he's done all he can.

I don't know the name of this bird,

    I only imagine his glittering beak

         tucked in a white wing

             while the clouds—

which he has summoned

    from the north—

         which he has taught

             to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall

    into the world below

         like stars, or the feathers

               of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,

    that is asleep now, and silent—

         that has turned itself

             into snow.

Source: Poetry (October 2002).
Poetry Foundation 

I had to start with the poem today. I read through ten or so, unable to find one that wasn't thick with darkness and then I went to Mary Oliver. Felt my longing for winter. My cigarettes are tasting like the beginning and the end. I can feel the lack of nicotine firing in my brain. I am sluggish and wanting to burrow into a winter I haven't seen since I left the mountains. With the snow hanging heavy in the trees and the cold so cold you have to bundle up into safety. Wood in the wood stove, the smell of smoke and cold clean air.

 I quit smoking when I lived in the mountains. That's when I learned how to juggle. To get cigarettes would take miles and miles of walking so the quit decision when made was easy. It was just me and a three year old and all those mountains. That was 28 years ago. I don't know how many times I've quit smoking. Many. I usually last three years and then something snaps or someone dies or I lose my mind for a moment and I've got a pack in my hand again. 28 years ago was the first time I quit smoking. I haven't been in those mountains for 28 years and I can still see them so clearly. I only have one picture from that time in the form of a photograph but I'll never forget. It was my first time living in snow. It was so cold and our little house, that was once an ice house in the old days held cold like we were living ice cubes. I had to put us on air mattresses next to the faulty wood stove and get up every two hours and get the fire going again to keep us alive at night. The mountains in winter are not a good place to be poor. But god it was beautiful. It was never not beautiful. It made everything else smaller that big huge beauty. The snow that stayed clean and white, not like muddy city snow. It was always clean and pristine outside and no matter how hard it was that beauty trumped struggle every time. It made life simple. No television, no popular culture, no music except for thee cassette tapes and my guitar and my voice. Just the cows in the pasture, just our foot prints in the snow as we walked to the edge of where the forest lived watching over us below the big mountains that ruled everything. Just bird calls and the scream of the mountain lion that would come to eat the baby cows until they staked a goat and shot it down by the creek. The natural world with us in the middle of it. I didn't need anti depressants or alcohol or therapy, not then. The world cradled us there and somehow everything was always alright. Even if we were hungry or too cold. Something about all that beauty inhaled every single morning made everything okay. 

If someone gave me a way to get there and a place to live I think it would be impossible not to go. I love those mountains in a forever way.  Home to me has always been San Francisco, though I haven't lived there since I was 19. That is where I am always at home. When I get there and I'm walking on the street something in me settles and I know I'm home. San Francisco is like a good marriage for me and those mountains are the love affair I'll never forget. Today I am craving snow and simplicity. Keeping the fire going. Figuring out how we will eat that day and what. Listening to the quiet. Playing with a child. Burrowing in under the shadow of that benevolent big mountain and resting knowing there is nothing more important to do but survive the cold. 

The sun is up. No rain today. No snow. No winter. Another bay area day. Cutting my cigarettes down a little bit further. Working with a sluggish brain. Counting out the bill money. It scares me that I know that this is all the writing I will do today. I feel my writing brain shutting down and pulling away behind the wall of craving and dull that is my brain. I haven't even gone to quit yet. I've got my tooth picks ready. I've got my scared enough in my pocket. I have no idea if these words make sense today. There is a disconnect from this page to my brain.My typing hands feel clumsy, like they belong to someone else. Everything feels far away except my nerves which are screaming already and I haven't quit yet. So scared enough to quit and scared to quit. Scared to put out that last cigarette. 

Craving the snow and the mountains as badly as I want as much nicotine as my body and mind say I need to function. 

Craving snow. 

So where are we today? 

Does the poem spark anything for you today? Do you or a character hunger for a season? Sunshine or driving rain or snow? What does winter mean when it gets here -wherever here is on the page? What about craving? 

****

The beginning and the ending. 

***

This is where she ....

***

He never saw the snow or she only saw the snow or he loved or he hated the snow 

***

This is where the eclipse happens

***

She craved the.....they craved the....

***

May this day be so good to you and your creative. 

Prompt # 96

10:00 pm

Tonight I start the prompt a day the night before. Cutting the nicotine in half has me jaggedy, raggedy, nerves at the surface. I'm one of those serious addicts. Nicotine calms me down, picks me up, mutes all the ugly things, the sorrowing things, the angry things down to a manageable level. Nicotine and cigarettes have always been good to me. Never failed me except for the part where they are  hurting me. I've got early symptoms of diabetic neuropathy which if I act now I can reverse. If I don't act now, I can count on being unable to use my legs the way I can use my legs now. So I'm scared enough. 

Scared enough. Today was Dive-Deep. I got good  feedback on my scary pages. The ones I thought I couldn't write. I had to notice, since I wasn't smoking the way I usually would, what I was feeling. The uncomfortable anxiety, the fear of imminent danger that comes from the truth on paper, even if it's fiction. I had to deal with my sorrow at the pages I sent out into the world that held my real story, in snippets, in a movie reel a fictional character was watching. Not having the cigarette meant I just had to feel it. Feel the tears roiling under the surface, the lump I couldn't swallow around, the old fight or flight coming up. I wanted to run. I wanted to take all the words back and chew them up and swallow them down where they have lived for a life time. 

Is part of this feeling of having lost my mooring that  these pieces of me, long buried and smoothed into the very skin and bone of me are now missing and I walk differently now? The words are out now. Out loud. They become smaller and less frightening in black and white. So maybe I can learn to live without them worrying at my flesh and slow poisoning my blood stream. I can let them out, let them loose, fashion fiction around and through them and let them go. Let it go. I did it but I'm still scared.  Scared enough to keep going. It's like a dare. 

All of this is easier with a cigarette in my mouth.  

1:30 am- 2:30 am

I woke up from the most horrible dream. It was another serial killer family dream. It's a recurring theme and it's no surprise given the content I let loose yesterday that I dreamed about a family of killers who were threatening me that I could not escape. In the dream there was no doubt that I would die it was just a question of which horrible method it would be and not knowing which person would do the job. I wish it had been movie horror kind of fear. I can't even write about chilling it was. The threat was so close it breathed inside me. I hate these stupid dreams. I went back to sleep and woke up in the dream story line again. It's early in the night. I need to sleep but I'm wide awake. I want to sleep dream free for awhile. I want to sleep safe from the constant threat of death. I miss those days in high school when I had taught myself to control my dreams. Then it was hollywood every night. The bad dreams didn't stop but I could change the outcome, materialize a gun in my hand or a hidden pit behind me where the chasers were trapped, while I made my escape.  

7:30 am 

It occurs to me that this inability to touch the book was good self protection. I'm glad I broke through the fear so that I could write in it again but I see now why it was so hard. There was a price tag on that writing. I'm still dealing with it now. I'll go back in and write some more and who knows what will live in the final draft. I can choose later to change or revise what I've written and make it less real for me. For now I can only write what comes to me regardless of how scary it feels. I finally fell asleep again at sunrise. I got an hour of sleep that was dreamless or that I don't remember which works fine for me. I'm still scared enough to quit smoking to keep writing to see what comes next. Fear, like revenge can be a great motivator. 

When I was outside after Dive-Deep smoking a whole cigarette, my  hands shaking and full of all of this sorrow fear regret and feeling stripped to naked skin I wondered how much writing material I have muted in my life with this addiction. 

So where are we now? 

Scared enough. 

What scares you or a character? Is there a point of scared enough that is useful or an impetus for a change? Sometimes simply naming the fear takes some of it's sting away. If you get a mason jar over the scorpion it can't sting you. You can examine it, safe on the other side of the glass. I remember how shocked I was to find a scorpion on my kitchen floor when I lived in the mountains. In my mind they only lived in the desert. Yet here one was on my kitchen floor. Underneath the mason jar it couldn't sting me. 

Writing can put glass over whatever it is. We can handle the difficult material of our lives or our imaginings when it's glassed by the words. 

Here is a poem I found in a post whose title I liked in itself as a prompt from The Poetry Foundation- 

Do I Dare Disturb the Reader?  Plus two brief readings of poems I like-  BY JASON GURIEL

It's a good question that we've talked about some at Dive-Deep. I think of it when dealing with difficult material. How much do we tell or show? Do I have to worry about the safety of my readers with my words? As if they were ticking bombs that could explode at any moment and not just words. But words have power. This can be especially sticky if we are writing memoir. Do we fiction it, change all the names, leave the worst parts out or just color them a prettier color than they really were? 

The poem is by Christian Wiman 

Sweet Dreams 

Voices fade as he walks
into them. He hears his name
in the air above him, passed
from parents to guests
and back to him like a ball.
The plates have faces. In his
father’s he sees his own.
The candle’s shadow is talking
and laughing with the wall.
There are kind questions
for him, shared silences he hears
himself speak into: he blinks,
whispers to the floor,
a small fist blooms with years
he’s stored in fingers. Somewhere
in their watches are the hours
he can’t enter. In awkward
pauses some stare into his sleep.
A red-nailed finger slowly circles
the rim of a glass, but the red
bell of wine won’t sing.
They look at him and smile.
His mother stands, her hand enclosing
his. His father’s cheek cuts
into his kiss. The hardwood floor
shines eyes of light. The dark
doorway is the wall’s yawn.
He walks into their wishes.

***

No line prompts today. I have to go get the rent money for my landlord and meet with a friend who is scared this morning. Fear is everywhere. I will take my sluggish brain to meet her and try and  help. Sometimes just being there with someone who is scared can help. I could have used company with my fear last night but I wasn't articulate enough to dial the phone. 

I hope this day is a good one to you and your creative. 

Also thank you in advance for your patience with these prompts which will show themselves nicotine deprived this month till I come out the other side. 

One more poem for the punctuation. 

The Man-Moth

BY ELIZABETH BISHOP

Man-Moth: Newspaper misprint for “mammoth.”

Here, above,

cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight.

The whole shadow of Man is only as big as his hat.

It lies at his feet like a circle for a doll to stand on,

and he makes an inverted pin, the point magnetized to the moon.

He does not see the moon; he observes only her vast properties,

feeling the queer light on his hands, neither warm nor cold,

of a temperature impossible to record in thermometers.

                     But when the Man-Moth

pays his rare, although occasional, visits to the surface,

the moon looks rather different to him. He emerges

from an opening under the edge of one of the sidewalks

and nervously begins to scale the faces of the buildings.

He thinks the moon is a small hole at the top of the sky,

proving the sky quite useless for protection.

He trembles, but must investigate as high as he can climb.

                     Up the façades,

his shadow dragging like a photographer’s cloth behind him

he climbs fearfully, thinking that this time he will manage

to push his small head through that round clean opening

and be forced through, as from a tube, in black scrolls on the light.

(Man, standing below him, has no such illusions.)

But what the Man-Moth fears most he must do, although

he fails, of course, and falls back scared but quite unhurt.

                     Then he returns

to the pale subways of cement he calls his home. He flits,

he flutters, and cannot get aboard the silent trains

fast enough to suit him. The doors close swiftly.

The Man-Moth always seats himself facing the wrong way

and the train starts at once at its full, terrible speed,

without a shift in gears or a gradation of any sort.

He cannot tell the rate at which he travels backwards.

                     Each night he must

be carried through artificial tunnels and dream recurrent dreams.

Just as the ties recur beneath his train, these underlie

his rushing brain. He does not dare look out the window,

for the third rail, the unbroken draught of poison,

runs there beside him. He regards it as a disease

he has inherited the susceptibility to. He has to keep

his hands in his pockets, as others must wear mufflers.

                     If you catch him,

hold up a flashlight to his eye. It’s all dark pupil,

an entire night itself, whose haired horizon tightens

as he stares back, and closes up the eye. Then from the lids

one tear, his only possession, like the bee’s sting, slips.

Slyly he palms it, and if you’re not paying attention

he’ll swallow it. However, if you watch, he’ll hand it over,

cool as from underground springs and pure enough to drink.

Elizabeth Bishop, “The Man-Moth” from The Complete Poems 1926-1979.

Prompt # 95 Sunday

The Way In

BY LINDA HOGAN

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.

Sometimes the way in is a song.

But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,

and beauty.

To enter stone, be water.

To rise through hard earth, be plant

desiring sunlight, believing in water.

To enter fire, be dry.

To enter life, be food.

Source: Poetry Foundation 

Sunday. I start with the poem today. I've been reading Linda Hogan and I struck by each poem. Each of these lines is a prompt for me today. Today I am brittle and sleepy all at once, restless and twitchy as I cut my nicotine levels.  It's Sunday and I could go to Church this morning. Or I could sit here and write to the line 

There are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty. 

Either way I get closer to peaceful, to a place of rest. to a good place to be. 

I hope this Sunday brings you to a good place to be. 

Prompt # 94

Today I am running low on nicotine.

 A woman stopped me yesterday outside the doctor type person's office and said- "You know you have no business smoking don't you" She said it with great kindness. She told me she is 71 years old, lost both kidney's five years ago and is on dialysis every day and that she's had many heart surgeries. She said life is short but good and that you have to enjoy every minutes. She was a shiny woman, absolutely full of joy and truly delightful. That was the first thing. The second thing was this: I lit an American Spirit out of a new pack and it smelled very strange, tasted very strange and even R could smell that it wasn't right. Some chemical, perfume or something was in that cigarette. I had an allergic reaction and woke up in the middle of the night with no air, choking even though I had only taken three drags. This morning I'm looking at the suspect pack of cigarettes and thinking of that woman and wondering if like the crow Sonya brought to me, I've been given some good  support. a message in the form of an amazing woman, a suspect cigarette and my own lungs rebelling. 

Get back to your book was the first message this week and quit smoking right now was the second. Sometimes everything around us will point to one thing. I'm learning to pay attention. 

So I'm quitting this week. I will be on a very short cut back then will quit cold turkey again- the only way I've successfully quit before. So this is the Saturdayprompt with a heads up. When I quit smoking all the animation runs right out of me and I become a large,short tempered blob with very little brain activity for about a month. This is your early warning system kicking in. There may have to be some older writing in these prompts if my brain stops working. I will do my best to keep my bitter complaints about withdrawal down. Wish me luck! 

Today's prompt is just this good poem. I hope this Saturday has room for you to write or read or play or dream.  

Inside

BY LINDA HOGAN

How something is made flesh

no one can say. The buffalo soup

becomes a woman

who sings every day to her horses

or summons another to her private body

saying come, touch, this is how

it begins, the path of a newly born

who, salvaged from other lives and worlds,

will grow to become a woman, a man,

with a heart that never rests,

and the gathered berries,

the wild grapes

enter the body,

human wine

which can love,

where nothing created is wasted;

the swallowed grain

takes you through the dreams

of another night,

the deer meat becomes hands

strong enough to work.

 

But I love most

the white-haired creature

eating green leaves;

the sun shines there

swallowed, showing in her face

taking in all the light,

 

and in the end

when the shadow from the ground

enters the body and remains,

in the end, you might say,

This is myself

still unknown, still a mystery.

Linda Hogan, “Inside” from Rounding the Human Corners. Copyright © 2008 by Linda Hogan.