Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Poem for Wednesday and A Sunset

I'd Like a Little Flashlight
By Rachel Zucker

and I'd like to get naked and into bed and be hot radiating heat from the inside these sweaters and fleeceys do nothing to keep out the out or keep my vitals in—some drafty body I've got leaking in and out in all directions I'd like to get naked into bed but hot on this early winter afternoon already dusky grim and not think of all the ways I've gone about the world and shown myself a fool, shame poking holes in my thinned carapace practically lacy and woefully feminine I'd like to get naked into bed and feel if not hot then weightless as I once was in the sensory deprivation tank in Madison, Wisconsin circa 1992 I paid money for that perfectly body-temperatured silent pitch dark tank to do what? play dead and not die? that was before email before children before I knew anything more than the deaths of a few loved ones which were poisoned nuts of swallowed grief but nothing of life of life giving which cuts open the self bursting busted unsolvable I'd like to get naked! into the bed of my life but hot hot my little flicker-self trumped up somehow blind and deaf to all the dampening misery of my friends' woe-oh-ohs and I'd like a little flashlight to write poems with this lousy day not this poem I'm writing under the mostly flat blaze of bulb but a poem written with the light itself a tiny fleeting love poem to life hot hot hot a poem that would say "oh look here a bright spot of life, oh look another!"

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The first day post-holidays was pretty quiet around here and I have a splitting headache -- combination of weather front, too much sodium over the past couple of days, and both kids having stayed up past 2 a.m. (one to finish homework, the other just because he could and then sleep till noon) and turning lights on and off in the hallway. So this will not be an inspired entry. I did some writing, worked on the silly Tarot project that I started the other day, and ran out to the mall to get to Bath & Body Works' sale ($1.50 mini candles in glass holders). Those were my big accomplishments.

We watched a bit of the Sugar Bowl but mostly we watched two episodes of Egypt's Golden Empire on PBS (in which the rulers treated their people even worse than college football players treat their opponents, but they did build impressive cities and even more impressive tombs -- plus Hatshepsut and Nefertiti had a lot more power than any two women I can name associated with college football. I have loads of zoo, botanic garden, Longwood, Winterthur, and Brookside photos to crop but my brain is not working right tonight so here is a sunset seen while crossing the Potomac last week:

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