Poem for Thursday

I Live Where the Leaves Are Pointed
By Cate Marvin

at my head and my heart, knife-tips green
in a gasoline-doused garden. From the tire
store behind the house, leering mechanics
glaze my window with saliva. I sit at the end
of the couch and point my finger angrily,
wag it in the face of forever. I sit back on
my haunches and sniff the air. Please note:
the earth is no less sulfur than usual. It’s not
nothing I’m waiting for, not as if there’s no
reason I’ve done my hair at last. If I weren’t
waiting, why would I be so impatient?
I don’t drink whiskey to relax.
And there is someone I wouldn’t mind seeing
dead. But when I comb my hair and stay
up all night, it’s not as if I’m trying to meet
someone. The days can travel without me.
The landlord can mow the lawn in shifts,
his pink face an obscene balloon caught
by the noose of his collar—I’ll sleep through
the motor. And you can bet my dreams bloom
stranger than hallucination. I take my life
like this. Poems grow from my skull while
vines creep the tire store wall: slowly, certainly.
When they made soap, they had me in mind.

--------

Still feeling yucky, and my tongue has a black spot on it which cannot be a good thing! Googling indicates this could be anything from a fungal irritation to a virus to scurvy to a deadly cattle disease (am hoping it's probably not the latter but I tend to assume the worst). Bleh. Slept a lot, and watched Elizabethtown which has piles of actors I like -- Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, Jessica Biel, Gailard Sartain and -- people who feel it necessary to tell me that you think Orlando Bloom sucks every time I mention his name, would you please skip to the next paragraph? The screenplay is quite mediocre and self-indulgent but the acting is without exception better, and Orlando's all-American accent is no phonier than Kirsten's Southern one (and better than Paul Bettany's accent in Firewall which I forgot to mention I watched the other day...another movie with many actors I like, Bettany, Harrison Ford, Virginia Madsen, Alan Arkin, Nikolai Coster-Waldau, and a mediocre screenplay with unbelievable conclusion).

It was Daniel's fourteenth birthday, which didn't particularly thrill him as of last night as what he most wants is Super Smash Brothers Brawl for the Wii which doesn't come out till December, but we got him a math calendar, some Futurama on DVD, The Mad War on Bush and a WizKids Pirates at Ocean's Edge deluxe set like the one we got for 's son (Adam is now very envious), so he is happier now. Also, he went to the first meeting of the web design club at school at our urging over his protests and discovered that he knows more html than most of the other kids, so he feels good about that. We had dinner with my parents -- Chinese food and Nubian chocolate roll, both his requests -- came home and watched The Bionic Woman which was entertaining enough but reminded me more of La Femme Nikita (with gratuitous shaking camera effects and endless rain) than the original Bionic Woman and made me miss Lindsay Wagner training in the sunlight in the forest.


Pumpkins at Butler's Orchard last weekend.


The red apples are only beginning to come ripe, though there are plenty of Golden Delicious...


...like this cluster waiting to be picked...


...and this illicitly eaten apple discarded in the orchard, now the property of the bees.


The raspberries cover the range from not quite ready for picking to overripe and squishy.


This field of pumpkins will likely be picked over by a school group or weekend visitors on a hay ride.


Though these berries will probably be eaten before pumpkin season really starts.

I see that Bush announced this week that childrens do learn. Remind me again who voted for this...oh, never mind.