My Children Are Slamming the Doors of My Skull

I wrote this in a sort of fevered state night before last. I suppose I write everything in a sort of fevered state, I hold my writing inside me at work, packing it, folding it and crushing it inside me until at long last I allow it it's freedoms and it flies forward like chariot horses on a packed ally-way, slamming and stomping over everything in it's way. So, here's my gift to you, my pent up bubble of thought, mulled over hours and hours of a very long day.

My Children Are Slamming the Doors of My Skull

       I have a word in my head. (Something you should know about me, I always have a word in my head, forever a one; a word or phrase that rotates around my head like a moon and sits out on the edge of my tongue, demurely watching the world spin past) The word I have now is Baba-Yaga. Well, I do suppose that is two. In my head they are all smushed-up together and always seem to come out with one quick flick of the tongue.
     I spend a lot of time with my words, petting them, grooming them and lining them up like baby ducks; then they fly out my jammering-yammering mouth in a wild way I never meant. I look up at them, floating above me in that heavy way and pluck them back like night stars. I am always bereaved with them as I pull them back into my wild-mild head, settling them back in their quiet compartments, wondering how they'd gotten out in that rough-hewn way and had made the faces around me turn such bewildered expressions that I'd become quite dizzy.
     Now this new word, Baba-Yaga sticking deep in my head like the resin my dad used to use on his surfboards to repair what the one-minded beast of the ocean had taken from them. I used to leave that old garage, the one we had when I was six, with the scent of it hiding in my nostrils, patient, until the moment where I had nearly forgotten it, it would spring wildly forward in the midst of whatever six-year-old game I was playing. And here I am, ten years later, smelling it; after my father has given up the trade, without even the end of an ocean to trigger it's upstart, smelling it in the foody smells of the dishes or in the rotting spines of my old books.  Here it is cropping up again on it's own accord. I will promise you now, this new word, Baba-Yaga, will burrow it's merry way into the marrows of my bones and settle itself in for a good long night, until the hole it made closes, until I forget the pains of it's burrow. It will become fat with it's brothers, there in the depths of me and when it's time comes, it will rise wildly up to give me a hard nip on the ear, then leap out my mouth, only to be plucked back with the rest of my word-stars, and cycled around and around until it is quite tired.
      I wonder if anyone can see me, wily as a greedy old hen, pulling those words back into me, pressing them into my sternum, gasping at their psychobabble. Praying to them again and again never to throw themselves out of me in that way again, praying to them to just trickle from my lips in  that way we practiced, that kind sort of way that kept the conversation slipping over itself like a group of upstream salmons, the sort of way that never stopped everyone on their axis in order to crain their necks around  at me in that stunned-and-slapped way. Somehow I never manage it, somehow I never line them up at the door right and they end up tumbling right off like baby ducks learning how to fly.
     I suppose you want to know what my word mean, don't you? Baba-Yaga is the most common name for an old hag in Slavic folklore, and here it is, tap-dancing it's way around my mind, after having seen it once in a news-paper article. Here I am, writing about my children, my words and phrases, the things I hold so dear, with a deep-seated love that somehow manages to crop up every few minutes when I see them standing up so tall in pageant lines there on my pages or others. Here my children are tonight, running up an down the highways and byways of my head, slamming doors and stomping all over me. Here I am, just basking in the rin-tin-BANG. 



(This is not an apology for who I am. Just an explanation. Sometimes I am happy with me, the way I can stun, really stun, people into silence with the way I can swing a sentence together. And, sometimes, I have a smooth rock of regret, riding in my quick moving rivers and this is how I rid myself of it. Iyam who Iyam. But we all have these moments, oui?)

In The Wild Grip of Those Moods.

Though, I believe a better term for it would be 'Moody'. I've quite become a Judy-moody. I suppose that is a step up from a Debbie-downer. What kind of fanged-monster resides in writers that makes them stereotypically mood-riddled? I am female AND a writer. I am completely nuts. Watch, I'll prove it.

Portrait of The Artist

      She is practicing for her future, this wildly plain young girl, scooping bite after bite of salted and boiled salmon into her perfect pink mouth. Of course she is alone, what else would she be? Her Book-of-the-Night lying prone in front of her with it's pages spread gracefully in front of her, baring it's seductive smile. The poor thing, shes been reading it for ages, or, moreover, not reading it because every time she dives in, she begins to day-dream of the greatness she hopes with a reverence will eventually tap on her shoulder. She wants to be a writer. Of course she will never find the greatness she is seeking, her prose is like swallowing a spoonful of molasses after you've already swallowed twenty.
       But the real point is that she is, in fact, very alone and eating her dinner at an empty table. There are people in the other room, you can hear them if you shut your eyes and make a focused sort of face.  She chooses to be alone in the still quiet of the vastly empty wooden table. In her head, this is pure and logical, a loneliness about oneself is exactly what every writer needs to straighten oneself out into a sharp clinical line; even if she is the one who wraps it around herself in all it's woolly glory. Her belief is that the initiation of ones lone-wolf howls is what brings about the greatness that always seems to taint her cravings.
      As she reads, she tilts her head this way and that, flashing her muddy greenies out from under butterfly-bone eyelashes; she practises clever nothings whispered into the quiet space around her, she extends her thin wrist, curling two fingers gracelessly around a nonexistent cigarette. She smiles at her own genius, believing her 'portrait d'un artiste' more brilliant than anything devised before her; she believes it hold a subtle cleverness distinct to her only. She cannot help puffing her chest out a bit, of course, it is perfectly natural for a person of such groundbreaking ideas and unfounded genius to have a slim moment of pride. But she quickly flattens this airy bit of self-absorbance between the palms of her clean, white hands. Hard work, she thinks, will get me where I need to go. And, thinking still of the brevity of her situation, she slaps the cow-skin covers of her book together and leaps up to find what she has christened her 'writing notebook'. 
       This untalented little waif does have the pose and poise of a writer, we must give her that. Her uncombed head of hair gripped in her free hand, she hunches over the paper in a concentrated, uncomfortable sort of way, a very serious expression on her face. The kind of expression that says 'do not interrupt me or I will shout at you in a uncalled-for and loud fashion.'
       She bites her thin lower lip and writes with diligent slow motions; punctuating and making her letter full and rounded like a child's. This graceless doll writes methodically, as if she already has the words waiting patiently in her plastic hands, pausing to blot a thick period at the ends of her lofty sentences. She stops and smiles lovingly at the paper with a peacock-like pride ruffling her feathers. The three sentence-graced paper is then folded and tucked neatly under the white curve of her plate.
       She carries a mild half-smile as she eats the rest of her salted and boiled salmon and, when a lanky gent wanders through her smooth, quiet space, she tilts her head in that coy way and tells him of her triumph. The clean curve of his skill dips in a condescending sort of way and he rolls his clear blue eyes under the shelter of his window-blind eyelids.  She mentally laughs at him, knowing what she does not know, that the utter stunner of her brilliance is far beyond his comprehension. She really is practicing for her future, this wildly untalented little waif. Come, let us watch her, bring the popcorn...

Tides and Things

So. I was thinking. (Big surprise there. "There are thinkers and there are do-ers". Anybody got a wild guess as to what I am?)  It is high time I posted a short story here as a break from my usual short ramble follow by a poetic amble. It is coming. I promise. Imagine this a thrilling advert involving beautiful gents and graceful ladies that stalk across the screen with a bourgeoisie sort of grace. Imagine this a TEASER. In the meantimes, enjoy a bit of penning from yours truelys hand in the normal fashion; poeticly.

Riches

The silence of a silver spoon
chocking it's occupants
in a clandestine sort of way
crystalline works
of natures cruel mistress
bathed bodies, spinal and clinical
with ski jump noses held above your dirt
Spooning well-washed foodstuffs
off icy plates that match even the toilets
perfecting reclination on chaise lounges
that follow you around with arms
open only by the force of their maker
You who bleeds blackberry blood
onto the hell-white towels
(a perfect incident you must rectify)
stay up there, quiet
You who, rules me
fools me, shoots at me,
eats for me.