Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Ghost Stories #InsecureWritersSupportGroup

 


October 2 question - Ghost stories fit right in during this month. What's your favorite classic ghostly tale? Tell us about it and why it sends chills up your spine.

I shall combine this question with the following prompt and create a Haibun for your reading displeasure. Imma call this one Ghost Stories.


My early memories include my father reading A Christmas Carol. Scrooge's ghosts have stuck with me throughout my life.

I was a precocious child and a bit of a Wednesday Addams. By the time I was six years old, I was reading Edgar Allan Poe and my father’s collection of EC and Warren comics. I loved the horror hosts who, despite their fearsome appearances (and Vampirella’s scanty attire), were actually quite wholesome.

In my first grade classroom, there was a book about a haunted house with an evil spirit in a jar. I’ve never found another copy of this treasure.

being forgotten

never being recognized

forgetting oneself

And now, it's picture time! The prompt is universal fear.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay



What if Death shows up looking like Jeeves rather than a robe-wearing skeleton with a scythe? Would that make him less scary? 
"Good evening, Ma'am. Would you care to follow me to meet your maker for a spot of tea?"
According to this picture, Death is a jellyfish-headed mothafucker with lobster claws for hands because I can't draw people. Or much of anything else, really.

As an added bonus, here's a text I received Monday morning.
Surely, there's no reason to suspect that it's phishing. Doesn't USPS always wish their customers a day filled with positivity and joy?

In other news, I've decided not to continue my attempts at building a subscription option on Ream. I've learned that Michael Evans, a genuinely good guy, was forced off the platform he founded. Instead, I intend to focus my subscription-building efforts on my Substack.  

I wish the person playing the loud music with the repetitive rhythm that's giving me a headache would fall into a sinkhole along with their device of annoyance. I'm not the least bit sorry for wishing this. 

~Ornery Owl Has Spoken~

Image by Rashid Asgher from Pixabay
Ornery Owl is working on making peace with her inner owlet.






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Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Where It's At Wednesday: Little Bites with Sensible Bunny

 


Greetings to my -666 fans! Meet Sensible Bunny, the newest member of the Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp.

Sensible Bunny takes little bites of both food and her to-do list because she doesn't like to choke on her food and she doesn't like to become overwhelmed by work, even when it's working towards a creative goal.

Sensible Bunny and I created a new daily planner for me. Today's task from 52 Weeks of Writing was to break my goals down further. Since I have a lot of goals, I've broken them down over the course of the week. The new planner looks a little bit something like this:

Week At A Glance

My World Monday

Rhyme Time Tuesday (doesn’t have to rhyme) + Review It Tuesday

Wednesday Edits

Take a Chance Thursday/Make It Happen Thursday (pieces for submission, review the current week’s progress, and plan for next week. Visit Go Dog Go Café to participate in Make It Happen Thursday.)

Flash Fiction Friday, Fanfic Friday

Sexy Saturday (erotica series)

Change the World Sunday (poetry, pictures, and politics) + Sunday Dinner at the Grover Hotel

This doesn't mean that I can't work on other projects on specified days. What it means is that since I have a lot of goals, I now have a day where I bring each one into focus. For instance, on My World Monday, I focus on my serials from my Universe (including certain borrowed characters.) The Mighty Adventures of Nyarlathotep and Yadira. The Perils of Gerry and Pepper. The Madcap Adventures of the Dreamlands Brotherhood. And so on.  

I've got a lot of 'em. I wish I'd thought of them twenty-five years ago. I will never finish this interconnected set of serials. They will continue on and on until the day that something stops working in this old body. Perhaps if the soul reincarnates, I will continue working on them in another life. Or perhaps I will instead run screaming away across the fields upon seeing one of my books and decide to work on something--anything--other than writing.

I have thus revealed that I believe reincarnation is a possibility. Or I hope it's a possibility. Or I'm a fatalist and suppose that it's probably what happens because I can't imagine the grind not continuing. The wheels of the gods grind slow but they grind exceeding fine and all that sort of thing.

I'm not here to convince anyone else to believe as I do or even suppose as I do, so I would appreciate if you do not presume it's your place to browbeat me into believing as you do, whether you believe that I'm going to hell for not being a devout fundamentalist Christian or whether you believe I'm stupid for postulating that reincarnation is a possibility. I'm not here to argue about theology. I'm simply expressing my thoughts on the matter. 

That being said, I like this simplified and catchy system, and if it helps me to imagine a friendly cartoon rabbit reminding me to implement it, that too is my business.

I've never understood why some people get so snifty about adults liking cartoons. I'm not saying that you have to like cartoons. Don't tell me I can't like them. It doesn't make a person more or less mature to like or not like cartoons. I find a character like Sensible Bunny appealing and comforting. Sensible Bunny would never berate or scold me the way my inner critic does. 

A person who does not have a history of being emotionally abused probably doesn't need a friendly cartoon support animal. This doesn't make the person who benefits from such a concept less worthy of respect or more deserving of ridicule. The people who think it does need to take a hard look at themselves and ask themselves why they see the need to be so mean-spirited to make themselves feel superior.

I have remembered that I always found writing poetry before I write anything else calming. I've done this over the past couple of days. I do not put any restrictions on my expression. It doesn't need to be the best poem in the world. I often confine myself to short forms because I have a tendency to run on otherwise. 

You know, ProWritingAid, some adjectives and adverbs are necessary. I don't ALWAYS confine myself to short poetry forms but I generally do. I changed the word to "often" instead, but fuck's sake. Sometimes these damn grammar checkers are irritating as fuck. 

Anyway...

Writing prompts are useful tools to prevent my mind from running amok. I haven't been able to share my recent creations with the writing prompt hosts because I am planning to submit the poems created over the next few days to Humana Obscura. Since I want to thank the prompt hosts for their help and want to let other writers know about the opportunity for publication, I leave a comment doing just that.

In fact, here you go. Don't say I never gave you anything.
It is freeze-your-tender-parts-off cold today. Our furnace runs on propane. Propane prices per gallon mirror gas (petrol) prices. We have a 1000-gallon tank. The propane company divides our fills into equal monthly payments rather than insisting on the entire payment up-front. Nonetheless, it's expensive. This month's bill was $225. 

The stove, water heater, washer, and dryer are all-electric. This month's bill was around $225, which is better than it was the first year we were here but still a big chunk of change for people living only on my $1240 per month disability check. It's actually $1380 per month but fucking United Healthcare takes away $140 of that for Medicare. Anything over $1308 means you're living too high on the hog, you disabled piece of shit. 

If you think I'm bitter about this Draconian system that comes nowhere close to covering the cost of living, I am. I speak not only for me but for those who have it worse than me. 

LEAP (Low-Income Energy Assistance Program) will give AmeriGas (the propane company) $500 sometime in the next couple of months. I don't know exactly when. They do it when they do it. It helps, but I'm pissed off because they gave us $1000 last time and only $500 this time. I suppose they don't have the funding to give as much. They rely on donations. 

Imagine that, a program that the government should run has to rely on donations so people don't freeze to death. Fucking hell. If anyone asks me why I'm a socialist regarding welfare programs, issues like this are why. 

I suppose I've gone on long enough. I'll probably pick this up again tomorrow, but as a wise man once said, tomorrow never knows.

I'm concerned about my only two friends. I've not heard much from either of them in quite a spell. I always worry that I've made people angry, but I suspect they aren't doing well. 

Spirit of the Universe, help me keep taking things one day at a time. Please help me remember that I don't need to measure up to anyone else's standards and please help me to be realistic in my standards for myself. I want to be challenged but not overwhelmed. Perhaps it will sound trite and unsophisticated, but let me know you are there and that you care. I often act like I'm an island, but I'm a lonelier island than I like to admit. Amen.

Ornery Owl is thanking Sensible Bunny for her assistance.


Free use image from Open Clipart Vectors

Resource Books:
52 Weeks of Writing

Self-Help Sucks

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-Picky Legalese If You Please (Or Don't Please)



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This work is the intellectual property of Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp and Naughty Netherworld Press.

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Thursday, April 29, 2021

Worditude: THE SURVIVOR

Worditude: THE SURVIVOR: Submitted to Poets & Storytellers United, and to dVerse   April 25, 2021 ****************** THE SURVIVOR She left in disarray, thoughts ...

I've been thinking a lot about my late maternal aunt and the abuse she endured at her first husband's hands. To describe him, he sounds like a work of fiction because he is that intensely awful. But he was very, very real.

I'm glad my aunt's second marriage was to someone much better. She made my Uncle Fred wait 13 years before she was finally able to trust him enough to say "yes." He took care of her up to the end of her life when she developed dementia and needed round-the-clock care that was more than he could provide because she would go wandering.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Graham Lester's Poetry Blog: We Shall Live On

Graham Lester's Poetry Blog: We Shall Live On: We shall live on In people far away Who don’t know our names, And don’t need to; In those who feel as we feel, Share our ideals, Rejoi...

In my most recent dream, Kanye West stood there observing me judgmentally as I ran around unable to accomplish anything, and my parents (my father is 10 years deceased) decided to use their gas stove as a storage area for their pots and pans, which I tried to talk them out of doing to no avail. 

It's been a while since I had a dream that wasn't a straight-up manifestation of stress.

Wednesday, November 4, 2020

Kestril's Rhythms and Groove: November 2020

Kestril's Rhythms and Groove: November 2020: Morning walks in the fall always feed my soul, but today I am especially greedy for the gulps of air I get from the spirited winds flowing o...

Brief, impressive, real. It's rather horrible waiting for the final result, much like waiting for surgery.

Saturday, October 24, 2020

Esther Jones: I Just Live Here: OctPoWriMo 24 - Ready to Soar

Esther Jones: I Just Live Here: OctPoWriMo 24 - Ready to Soar: One day I’ll spread my wings and fly away, But not today for I am not yet free. I will be me and leave behind the grey, Over the rainbow and...

Best to be true to oneself, but sometimes it's so hard.

Saturday, August 1, 2020

Ornery Poetry Sunday: Bully Is As Bully Does

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

I don't know who needs to hear this today
But if you are bullying a bully
The way the bully bullies his victims
Using the same cruel words as he uses
You have just become a bully yourself

~Cie the Ornery Old Lady~


Ornery Owl
Free Use Image from Open Clipart Vectors on Pixabay

I am feeling quite heartbroken today, close to suicidal. I feel that my work is worthless as am I. But I will try to believe and will keep going just in case things can improve somehow.

I wish you all the best.

The Icky, Sticky, Nit-picky Legalese If You Please (or Don't Please)

Copyright 2020 by The Ornery Old Lady

Reblogging is acceptable on platforms that allow it. LBRY’s reblog function is called repost, which makes things confusing since reposting is considered a no-no on most platforms. It’s fine to share the post using the repost function on LBRY. It is not okay to copy-paste the material into a new post.

Sharing a link to the post is acceptable.

Quoting portions of the post for educational or review purposes is acceptable if proper credit is given.

This work was published on 1 August 2020 on these platforms:


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Friday, January 17, 2020

Sly Speaks + Fat Friday + Friday Flashback: Diet Culture Rhetoric Is Not Poetry



This poignant gem was originally published on 17 January 2010 on my now-retired poetry blog.

life It would be far easier to diet if I didn't like food.

This, apparently, was the entire-ass poem.

A year later, I would finally take the long-needed step of ditching diet culture for good.

That is a terrible statement, let alone being a terrible poem. 

It isn't even a poem, it's a blurb. A very stupid and brainwashed blurb. It's a tweet that shouldn't have been tweeted. It is a lot of things, none of them good. A poem it is not. 

The Chili Bean Tanka is a better poem, and it is not a good poem. In fact, it is close to Vogon poetry in its poetic injustice.

It goes a little bit something like this.

I ate the chili
between the beans and the spice
digestive horror
beneath the cover of night
noxious eruptions take place

As I mentioned previously, I struggled over the holidays. My abusive partner ED (Eating Disorder) reared his ugly head and I relapsed into my old restrictive eating and self-loathing patterns. Which, by the way, never made me thin, they just fucked my metabolism over and made me hate myself even more. 

However, reading this micro-poem that should not be, I could see where I'd been myopic in my criticism of a poet whose book I reviewed recently. I gave the book overall high praise, but I stated that her "poem" which read as follows, and I quote:

love ends but calories are forever

was not so much a poem as unfortunate diet culture rhetoric, and I wouldn't want to read it as a tweet, let alone in a book of poetry.

Given the unseemly evidence above, that critique was hypocritical of me.

However, there is a lesson to be learned.

Next time you think publishing a pithy pearl of poignant perspicacity such as this...

Go to the kitchen and grab yourself a snack. Or at least have something to drink. Your blood sugar may be low because if you think that's worth publishing, you obviously haven't been thinking clearly. Step out for a breath of air and clear your head of the Diet Culture nonsense. You've obviously bitten off more of it than you can chew.

That being said, Words Written in the Dark is, overall, a thoughtful and thought-provoking volume of modern poetry, and I recommend it highly.


Fat and Ornery
Image copyright Open Clipart Vectors

Sly and Snarky
Image copyright juliahenze @123rf.com


Sunday, December 1, 2019

We're back!

What Lunch Looked Like

How y'all am are? I was not expecting to be back so soon, but, as fate would have it, I'm here and so are you! So, let's do this!

After spending a freezing night without power in the old Grover Hotel, the Ornery Old Lady (that's me) and Sonny Boy headed to Greeley to gather up some supplies in case we were looking at another night to a week or more of this. We stopped at Taco John's, a place I haven't been to in some 35 years. In fact, that's where I made my last post from!

I was glad to find that Taco John's still tastes the same, but the price about knocked me out of the ballpark. Twenty bucks for a chicken quesadilla, a stuffed taco, Potato Ole's, drinks, and some guacamole, queso, and sour cream. Honestly, it's not that bad for today's prices, but I can remember when I was in high school and would go to Taco John's instead of eating the cafeteria swill. I'd have five bucks on me and get a whole meal and still get change back. Well, so it goes.

We went to Home Depot and bought a propane-powered space heater and looked into getting a backup generator. We picked up a snow shovel, which I thought was steel. It was aluminum and it bent easily. Not a winner there. We got a flashlight and a mini lantern. Then we headed to visit my son's second cousins on his father's side. They said that if the power was going to be out for a while, we could bring the cats and stay with them.

We hit the King Soopers to get some nonperishables like crackers and tinned kippers and then headed for home.

My son was reading the instructions for the space heater and I was getting the snow shovel out of the car when he came running out in an excited mood. The power was back on! I looked down the street to see the blinking red light just beyond the general store, and it never looked so beautiful!

It's still colder than a well-digger's ass in the old Hotel, but the furnace is back on and the temperature is rising. I've got salmon, potatoes, and corn in the oven. I also have (I hope) a fun opportunity.

I am going to need help deciding which poems to put in my manuscript for the November PAD Chapbook Challenge. So, for the next month, I will be having a Battle of the Poems. I will put up two poems, and I would like readers to decide which of the two they prefer. You can give me a reason, or just say "I like number (one or two) best." 

There will be a prize as an incentive for helping me. 

The person who comments on the most poems will receive a $5 Amazon gift card in their email. In the event that there is a tie, I will use a coin, dice, or Random Number Generator to help me choose.

I think this will be fun, and I hope I can get a few people to play along.

The first Battle of the Poems will appear tomorrow!

~Cie~


Wednesday, May 1, 2019

Insecure Writers' Support Group May 2019: Cie Plans Ahead

Image copyright Conger Design on Pixabay

As the sort of person who tends to fly by the seat of my pants, I like to instill some discipline into my program by participating in writing prompts. However, as I discovered this year when participating in Camp NaNoWriMo plus the NaPoWriMo and Poems in April prompts at the same time on my poetry blog, and the A to Z challenge over at Naughty Netherworld Press, too many prompts can feel more like a cluster flock than an inspiration.


This nightmare vision is a massive flock of starlings. I don't have a bird phobia, but I find this a bit unsettling. I don't like swarms of anything, and that includes people.
Camp NaNoWriMo is much more flexible than NaNoWriMo. I was using it as a tool to inspire me to pull together my first poetry book. I'm not sure it succeeded. 
NaPoWriMo's prompts are optional. One can participate in NaPoWriMo without ever using one of their prompts.
Poems in April's prompts are not flexible.
The A to Z blogging challenge doesn't have any hard and fast rules other than, you know, having your posts go in alphabetical order. The subject you choose is up to you. 
I used the A to Z challenge to introduce the bold and bawdy characters from Naughty Netherworld Press' Carnal Invasion series to the world. This was enjoyable but labor-intensive. I don't think it would be a bad thing to plan next year's A to Z Challenge this year and have at least a rough draft version of the posts ready to go for next year.
For the poetry project, I believe that next year I am going to go with Carpe Diem's Spring Kigo. This will work fine with NaPoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo, plus there is a feeling of continuity, and I can hone my Haiku. There are people who loathe Haiku. I am not among them.
If either the NaPoWriMo or Poems in April prompts strike my fancy, I can hammer out a bonus poem. My -666 fans will be thrilled!
I had planned to answer the Insecure Writers' Support Group question in this month's post, but I'm not going to--again. Maybe next time.

~Cie~



Thursday, June 1, 2017

Charge

Image by Dora Wednesday

If it gives me a charge
To escape this miserable world with its forced marches to an early grave 
And run away to a realm extraterrestrial, extradimensional
To find a small portion of imaginary happiness
I care not if you believe
For I need to retreat to this realm which is often more real than the real to survive

~Cie~

Prompts Used:

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Compound Carrion: A Poem

Poem written by The Real Cie and Writing Sister Opal Zushaquon for Imaginary Garden with Real Toads and NaPoWriMo. There is no official Crazy Creatives Cheerleading Camp post this month, as we are participating in NaPoWriMo. However, you are welcome to follow all the weird and depressive poetry along the way at poetryofthenetherworld.blogspot.com and starrydemons.tumblr.com


Lady in search of peppermint
And sweetmeat
Instead found eyeballs
And rattlesnake hamburger
When she followed the fireflies
To the moonlight schoolhouse
Where the supergiant throwbacks skateboard

She was seeking homemade popcorn
A slice of shadyside honeydew
A sweet morsel of honeycomb
Instead she found an overabundance
Of undercut forefingers
In the underground household
Of the underage bootstrap babysitter
And the weekend watchmaker
With his supersensitive, supersonic pacemaker
And the lifeline, lifeblood keyhole on his forehead

Somehow the sunbathing superwoman found herself in the supernatural underbelly
Behind the bookshelf in the bookstore belonging to the bookmobile bookkeeper
While looking for the washroom in the firehouse
Where she sought a ballroom friendship with the supercool fireman

Her bellbottom daydreams now in upheaval
Her dishpan hands clasp the newspaper
Where she seeks the carefree undercurrent
Along the moonbeam superhighways
Once a moonstruck firecracker
With a crush on a sweetheart schoolboy
She instead found beneath the moonlight
One too many a hookworm playboy

The afterimage of the life that could have been
Reflects mockingly in her stoplight eyeglasses
Everything has been a comedown from her tailspin pinup dreams
So she orders shortbread takeout
And climbs warlike to the housetop
Her tailcoat flapping like a skylark in the wind

On the sunroof in the sundown
She watches the watchman in the watercolor watchtower
The downbeat wastewater waterlogs the waterfowl below
She walks down to the woodshop
To say goodnight to the waxwork scarecrow
She adjusts his sunray bowtie
Before stepping onto the centercut turntable

A blowgun to the forebrain
Nothing to forewarn the foregone horseman in the forecastle foreground
On the moonlit grassland
Her foredoom was foretold
Her washrag fallen in the rainwater
Flows downstream to the uptown washhouse
Where the cardstock newsman reports as an afterthought
The death of nobody and nothing

~Cie and Opal~

This went much further than we ever imagined it would!

Prompts used:

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads