I am caught in a hurricane that won't end. Being in Katrina, even fictionally, is depressing. This made my day a little brighter, though.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
Obama has jokes, and so does Wanda
Both of these videos are from the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
I'm a nerd. I giggled several times. I admit it. And how refreshing to hear him speak about how necessary healthy journalism is to democracy. I heart this man.
They do always catch him with his shirt off, don't they, Wanda?
I'm a nerd. I giggled several times. I admit it. And how refreshing to hear him speak about how necessary healthy journalism is to democracy. I heart this man.
They do always catch him with his shirt off, don't they, Wanda?
poetry becasue I cannot sleep
Most of the poets that I know would think me juvenile for loving Anne Sexton's poetry, but I cannot help it, I do. There is so much beauty and such sadness here.
WHERE I LIVE IN THIS HONORABLE HOUSE OF THE LAUREL TREE
I live in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
Too late
to wish that I had not run from you, Apollo,
blood moves still in my bark bound veins,
I, who ran nymph foot to root in flight,
have only this late desire to arm the
trees I lie within. The measure that I have lost
silks my pulse. Each century, the trickeries
of need pain me everywhere.
Frost taps my skin and I stay glossed
in honor, for you are gone in time. The air
rings for you, for that astonishing rite
of my breathing tent undone with your light.
I only know how this untimely lust has tossed
flesh at the wind forever and moved my fears
toward the intimate Rome of the myth we crossed.
I am a fist of my unease
as I spill toward the stars in the empty years.
I build the air with the crown of honor; it keys
my out of time and luckless appetite.
You gave me honor too soon, Apollo.
There is no one left who understands
how I wait
here in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
WHERE I LIVE IN THIS HONORABLE HOUSE OF THE LAUREL TREE
I live in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
Too late
to wish that I had not run from you, Apollo,
blood moves still in my bark bound veins,
I, who ran nymph foot to root in flight,
have only this late desire to arm the
trees I lie within. The measure that I have lost
silks my pulse. Each century, the trickeries
of need pain me everywhere.
Frost taps my skin and I stay glossed
in honor, for you are gone in time. The air
rings for you, for that astonishing rite
of my breathing tent undone with your light.
I only know how this untimely lust has tossed
flesh at the wind forever and moved my fears
toward the intimate Rome of the myth we crossed.
I am a fist of my unease
as I spill toward the stars in the empty years.
I build the air with the crown of honor; it keys
my out of time and luckless appetite.
You gave me honor too soon, Apollo.
There is no one left who understands
how I wait
here in my wooden legs and O
my green green hands.
Monday, May 04, 2009
don't get mad
I'm kind of scared to post this video to my blog since Malice has been putting people on blast on twitter, but I can't help it. I laughed out loud at the beginning of this video, and I have to give him props for saying what he says, for being honest. Also, I love his flow and regularly cosign all of his verses on all of his songs, so yeah, I'm a sucker.
Malice Video Blog 1 from Malice of the Clipse on Vimeo.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Janelle Monae: "Many Moons" Official Short Film
I thought it was funny that one of the characters has my family's last name (it's Dedeaux, for those who don't know). Beautiful video, and Janelle's a real performer, and has a beautiful voice. Now that's artistry.
Friday, April 24, 2009
viral video: Pharrell vs. McDo
Pharell Vs Mcdonald's
View more presentations from tblogosphere.
Here's an interesting video that Tarik Mousselmal at SCANBLOG (a French site) sent along to me about the viral video Pharrell vs. McDonalds. You should check it out. Sarah's right; I need one of these viral videos for my next book. Maybe I can get someone famous from the South to come to DeLisle and hang out on St. Stephen's Road with me and some pitbulls. We could have a squirrel barbecue, and then skinny dip in a swimming hole (yes, it all happens in the book). Who's down? David Banner? Bun B? Three 6? Maybe someone from a Northern city should come so the hook would be a city boy encountering the dirty country. Jadakiss? Common? Kanye?
Can you imagine Kanye barbecuing squirrel? Instant viral sensation.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
the flights, the fly
It was hot here in San Francisco. Two days ago, I woke up late after dreaming about my brother, and I puttered around the house before dressing in jeans to meet Sarah for laundry (yeah, when I dream good dreams, I always sleep longer in hope that I can jump back into the dream. We had dinner, and I hugged him. I miss my brother.) Anyhow, as soon as I stepped out of my door, I turned right back around and changed out of my jeans and into a strapless dress and flip flops. In my car, the thermostat read 87 degrees. In Bernal, Mitchell's ice cream at Progressive Grounds kept calling my name, but I had to resist; I'm such a sugar junkie, and I know I shouldn't be exposing Sarah's lovely kid to the bad shit. Lol. It was hard, though. I've been so hungry for this kind of heat. It's the one of the myriad reasons that I can't wait to go back to Mississippi for the summer and eat shrimp and drink beer and get ice cream and sweat. Hmmmm, summer in Mississippi, I miss you. (Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever endured was summer in San Francisco. Word.)
The heat dissipated Wednesday, and San Francisco is once again 45-65 degrees everyday. And the only time my feet feel warm again is in the shower. But! While this heat was here, my roommate and I took advantage of it: windows open, hot breeze blowing through, lovely light moving across high ceilinged rooms. And while this was lovely, it has annoying consequences. Such as this damn fly flying in lazy, panicked, and then lazy circles in my room. Sorry, fly, but you're going to die in here. (I hate flies in the house. I wish I had my cousin E's bug zapper; it looks like a badminton racket, and it murderizes flies. Once, I zapped someone with it while they were drunk and asleep. They woke up with crazy eyes, but then passed back out. I was drunk as well. But that's a story for another time.)
When my friend bought me to the airport on Friday, I thought I was going to die. My last flight, 6 years ago, consisted of me taking vast amounts of dramamine and crying in airports and sobbing over the phone to my friend Mark, "Tell me I am not going to die." This was largely due to September 11, and the 2 plane crashes later that year. So, I arrived at the airport with a bottle of Xanax, an iPod, and my "Catcher in the Rye," The Hero and the Crown, which I have read at least once a year since I was eight years old. Still, when I stood before the security guantlet of x-ray machines and gray plastic bins and security personnel, I was still aghast that I'd committed to flying again.
The first flight from SF to Dallas was stuck in a holding pattern because there was bad weather in Dallas. We were then diverted to Abilene, TX, to get more fuel, and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours. So, by the time we got into Dallas, which was only 30 minutes away by air, there was a standby list of over 100 people for the flight out to Little Rock, and then American Airlines cancelled the next flight, and I ended up in a hotel near the airport, eating out of a vending machine for dinner. Corn chips, cheese & wheat crackers, powdered donuts, and Red Fanta. The next day, I flew into Little Rock, and barely made it to my reading/q&a session/signing. Luckily, I had a great moderator (Carol Ann of the Oxford American), and then I wandered around the festival, talked to readers, saw another writer read and speak, and got treated to dinner. I didn't get to wander around the festival at all the next day because everything started at around 1 pm to give folks chances to attend church, and my flight left at 1:30. I was still a little shaky on the flight from Little Rock to Dallas, but I was much better on the flight from Dallas to SF. I was actually so much better, I was able to watch some movies on my iPod instead of listening to my hypnotherapy sessions on repeat, as I had done on 3 of the 4 flights (on one of those flights, the stewardess talked to me the entire time because I was sitting in the very back of the plane).
It's a beginning.
A poem for you, as Poetry Month draws to a close.
Masque
By Brigit Pegeen Kelly
My foot bleeds on the rocks
Of the shallow stream. The crows
Thick above me and at their backs
The larger graveyards. This
Is a mean task, this business
Of burying oneself before one
Is dead. The shovel always
Breaks, the weather worsens,
The spot chosen proves to be
The wrong spot, and the words,
The words of mercy one must
Mutter, possess no mercy
For the flesh: Not with peace,
Not with peace but with a sword
Is the flesh stripped back,
Its many masks flayed off,
Each mask more extravagant
Than the last....
The chief crow performs with panache
His task as smart backdrop
For the naked body dishing dirt
With a broken spade. Brokered wings
And a beaten heart. Dear God! to be
More than a light-hearted jest,
Or a hard-hearted jest....
...The light
Strikes down between the trees.
The shovel strikes dirt. If the seam
Is good. If the seam is good. Then
The heart will put on for a moment
Its royal robes and become a grave man
Standing before an open crypt
With an air of such command
The stained burial wrappings
Of one much beloved, and maligned,
And many days dead, will drop
Away. The self step blind
From its watery grave. And there
Will be: No time. Nor crow.
Nor Lazaurs. Nor Christ.
Nor the hand that writes this.
The heat dissipated Wednesday, and San Francisco is once again 45-65 degrees everyday. And the only time my feet feel warm again is in the shower. But! While this heat was here, my roommate and I took advantage of it: windows open, hot breeze blowing through, lovely light moving across high ceilinged rooms. And while this was lovely, it has annoying consequences. Such as this damn fly flying in lazy, panicked, and then lazy circles in my room. Sorry, fly, but you're going to die in here. (I hate flies in the house. I wish I had my cousin E's bug zapper; it looks like a badminton racket, and it murderizes flies. Once, I zapped someone with it while they were drunk and asleep. They woke up with crazy eyes, but then passed back out. I was drunk as well. But that's a story for another time.)
When my friend bought me to the airport on Friday, I thought I was going to die. My last flight, 6 years ago, consisted of me taking vast amounts of dramamine and crying in airports and sobbing over the phone to my friend Mark, "Tell me I am not going to die." This was largely due to September 11, and the 2 plane crashes later that year. So, I arrived at the airport with a bottle of Xanax, an iPod, and my "Catcher in the Rye," The Hero and the Crown, which I have read at least once a year since I was eight years old. Still, when I stood before the security guantlet of x-ray machines and gray plastic bins and security personnel, I was still aghast that I'd committed to flying again.
The first flight from SF to Dallas was stuck in a holding pattern because there was bad weather in Dallas. We were then diverted to Abilene, TX, to get more fuel, and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 3 hours. So, by the time we got into Dallas, which was only 30 minutes away by air, there was a standby list of over 100 people for the flight out to Little Rock, and then American Airlines cancelled the next flight, and I ended up in a hotel near the airport, eating out of a vending machine for dinner. Corn chips, cheese & wheat crackers, powdered donuts, and Red Fanta. The next day, I flew into Little Rock, and barely made it to my reading/q&a session/signing. Luckily, I had a great moderator (Carol Ann of the Oxford American), and then I wandered around the festival, talked to readers, saw another writer read and speak, and got treated to dinner. I didn't get to wander around the festival at all the next day because everything started at around 1 pm to give folks chances to attend church, and my flight left at 1:30. I was still a little shaky on the flight from Little Rock to Dallas, but I was much better on the flight from Dallas to SF. I was actually so much better, I was able to watch some movies on my iPod instead of listening to my hypnotherapy sessions on repeat, as I had done on 3 of the 4 flights (on one of those flights, the stewardess talked to me the entire time because I was sitting in the very back of the plane).
It's a beginning.
A poem for you, as Poetry Month draws to a close.
Masque
By Brigit Pegeen Kelly
My foot bleeds on the rocks
Of the shallow stream. The crows
Thick above me and at their backs
The larger graveyards. This
Is a mean task, this business
Of burying oneself before one
Is dead. The shovel always
Breaks, the weather worsens,
The spot chosen proves to be
The wrong spot, and the words,
The words of mercy one must
Mutter, possess no mercy
For the flesh: Not with peace,
Not with peace but with a sword
Is the flesh stripped back,
Its many masks flayed off,
Each mask more extravagant
Than the last....
The chief crow performs with panache
His task as smart backdrop
For the naked body dishing dirt
With a broken spade. Brokered wings
And a beaten heart. Dear God! to be
More than a light-hearted jest,
Or a hard-hearted jest....
...The light
Strikes down between the trees.
The shovel strikes dirt. If the seam
Is good. If the seam is good. Then
The heart will put on for a moment
Its royal robes and become a grave man
Standing before an open crypt
With an air of such command
The stained burial wrappings
Of one much beloved, and maligned,
And many days dead, will drop
Away. The self step blind
From its watery grave. And there
Will be: No time. Nor crow.
Nor Lazaurs. Nor Christ.
Nor the hand that writes this.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
N.E.R.D @ Warfield
I went to this show on Tuesday night at the Warfield in San Francisco. See if you can spot me onstage. See, I wasn't lying! Bless my country mouse heart; it's so sad that I lack the groupie gene. If I only had the courage to rub my crotch into Pharrell's onstage. Lol. (For those of you that are hard of seeing, I'm the one in grey all the way to the right of the stage who keeps pulling up her shirt by the straps and flailing about with her arms.) As soon as I hit the stage, I lost all sense of rhythm. All of it. And I actually have it, too. And yes, I did want it, and I did hope it would last forever.
I also should have posted about this beforehand, but I had a reading last night at Stanford. I read along with Dina Hardy, an amazing poet. I read part of the 8th chapter of my novel in progress, Game Dogs and Game Men. The chapter I read was chock full of explicit sex in a bathroom stall, basketball, a mob fight, and profanity. It contained the word 'dick.' After I stopped sweating, I had a great time.
This has been a great birthday month so far: first my birthday, then an insane N.E.R.D. concert, then my Stegner reading at Stanford, and then tomorrow I'm heading to the Arkansas Literary Festival in Little Rock, AK as an author. I'll be showing on Saturday at around 1:00 PM in ASI 110. Go to http://arkansasliteraryfestival.org for more information and to download a program. If you're in the area, come out!
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