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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: amwriting

For Evelyn

08 Tuesday Feb 2022

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, dark, poem, sunrise

I don’t want to write in the kitchen with the light on

It’s too bright

Sunrise soon in my bedroom

but it’s still dark too dark in this other room to write.

Candles 50 solve the problem

but the soot and the scent overpower

nothankyou

So I’ll just keep getting up to check on the

black sky

indigo sky

blue sky

just the right sky

Like a child,

Now? Now? Now? How ’bout now?

Can I turn off the light

see ink on the page

legible

legit

Yeah now it’s time,

and I will spend the rest of the day

complaining

It isn’t dark enough to rain–

or to write.

Process

23 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, complaining, Dante, editing, Milton, noncomformist, poetry, process, verse

Well who’s going to write a story about that, he wondered. I knew what he was thinking and I was thinking not me, man, I got better things to do like re-arrange my sock basket. And then he pushed me and said write the thing and I spent many hours thinking about the thing. I wrote it in my head for days, preparing to put it formally on a document.

I sat down to write and found videos for a 100-hour-recipe for brownies and rescuing opossums and racist gift baskets and all kinds of good shit and then I went to sleep and woke up with no ink on my hands. I mean, who really wants to read a story about an owl, anyway? Actually I do because there’s something there and he’s telling me his story and I can’t get it out of my head. I’ve been writing the same story over and over and over, editing the same sentence because it’s my thing. It’s what I do. It’s gotta be perfect out of the box or just forget it all.

Then I think about Milton who wrote the epic “Paradise Lost” in free verse which is 10,000 lines; Dante who wrote “Inferno” in triple rhyme in 14,233 lines; Shakespeare who wrote 154 heart-tearing sonnets of 14 lines each… and I’m erasing the first sentence again and again and again. Modus Operandi.

The owl will pop out soon enough. I just needed a space to complain. Thank you and good night.

8 minute morning

04 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, Black Lives Matter, breathe, dragonfly, George Floyd, measuring, police brutality

Popped a big chicken pot pie in the microwave and tapped in the cook time: about 8 minutes.

Streamed 1/3 of a TV show while waiting: about 8 minutes.

Sitting at a writing prompt staring at the page for 8 minutes trying to figure out something creative and wild and awesome to say, and it felt like forever.

Asked to hold a plank position for 10 seconds, 20, 30 seconds and it felt like forever.

Remembering all those summer days poolside at our neighbors house, learning how to hold our breath and swim laps around the pool under water. I wish I could remember how long I held mine, the longest of long. I know it was pretty long and I can remember now as I hone in on those days the feeling of my heart pounding and my lungs getting hot. Breaking the surface for air was a bummer of an instinct, wanting to keep going.

Writing in my journal this morning for 8 minutes saying not much of anything. Mostly committing to page details of a quiet life and the emotions that come with it.

I want to write and tell you about the new cat on the sill across the way, keeping me company at 5 in the morning. It’s the first hot morning of the year and the dragonflies are here trying to find their way, and the cat is deeply interested in their appearance. I wish them well and hope they find nourishment and rest and achieve the apex of their life journey.

All I know right now is 8 minutes is a long, long time to be on my stomach with hands in cuffs and somebody keeping their knee in my neck. Why hell, I could be into a chicken pot pie and the tensest part of a Deadwood episode by now! Doubt me? Put your timer on your phone 8:46 and see how long “long” is. That’s your child, your brother, your sister, your father down there. But hey, what do I know.

Bonfire for E.

14 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, fire, mother, ocean, poem, woman

welcome enter
how did we find each other
doesn’t matter
our candles burn the same

i am crone in the cave naming
sea life remains
one long tide at a time.

the mother of me sees the mother of you
i have balm for that.
you are still spring and fight
where I am retreat and ruminate

the world is blind at night,
but for a little moon
we are unsafe on the waters
and deepest african shores
still we prowl, seeking danger

we are eating and drinking and laughing
when we should be
writing
writing
writing

when next you see me, darling
bring your book and your pen
refuse all distraction
enter the cave hungry and wet
and longing

bring basil and pepper and vinegar
ghost pepper
empty cask
bring your longing and prepare to
dash it on the rocks
fearless woman, rise up
stain your fingers with woe
and love and find liberty.

Holy Morning

03 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, awake, brother, Crystal Ship, headphones, James Douglas Morrison, morning, ocean, Ray Manzarek, son, sorting, sunrise, the Doors

Abruptly awakened
(charley horse and other reasons I rose before I was ready,
remembering a dream of sorting legos with my son and baby brother)
I dress in the dark and remember that I have headphones
and it’s the first time in weeks I can motor

down to the beach in cold flip flops armored in Carhart, otherwise
I crest the dune and come down into the beach and see a gull, torn.
Omen she is, she tells me ‘Ware, what you seek you will find here”
I take up the dare and keep walking, wiggling cold grains from my soles
giving up once I arrive at The Place.

I turn east and study the horizon with “The Crystal Ship”
absorbing me–that piano–one hand, now two
never heard anything so beautiful
god why can’t I do that
he croons effortlessly and the water has not come to hear him
It’s only for me and a wish of you, I suppose…
The orb rises behind thick clouds
I’ve seen the water mirror but not this morn
Small waves rise up and comb the shore though I cannot hear them
drowned out by Jim and Dionysus
(another flashing chance at bliss another kiss, a nother kiss)
Should I read what I wrote so long ago?

The trance is broken by dog-walkers, neighbors, sweet and kind.
Sweaty headphones off now for momma raised me right,
thou shalt not be rude to thy neighbors

I don’t need a reason why.
I am awake and alive
purple ink on my wrist
candle burning
it is morning
I am writing.
(rejoice. delicate.)

Isn’t All Poetry Confessional?

30 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, angry woman, confessional, labels, Mary Oliver, poem, Robert E. Howard, Sylvia Plath, woman


They had to call it something.  Everything has a label, has to have a label otherwise it cannot be understood?
Things cannot be as they are, they must be classified and microfisched for further review by busybodies who write the law.

I wanted an MFA tag, but that’s fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (of)  
I refused to pay the price.
‘stead I carry pomegranates in my apron
I never share them because that would be truth-telling, that would be
the real deal.
Who wants to hear more sylvia plath confessionals
yet another unhappy woeman
writing names in the sand
counting down?

I would rather have been Mary Oliver in the end
some kind of smooth stone you keep in a mason jar
or a sassy fawn named for a childhood friend
the one who still carries the North star

or better,
a body carved with hieroglyphs of the sea
wrapped in a Robert E. Howard shroud, epically 

or simply

e e cummings
      free

(in Just-) e e cummings

21 Thursday Mar 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, begin, childhood, e e cummings, inspiration, Pan, poetry, Solstice, spring

in Just- 
spring          when the world is mud- 
luscious the little 
lame balloonman 

whistles          far          and wee 

and eddieandbill come 
running from marbles and 
piracies and it’s 
spring 

when the world is puddle-wonderful 

the queer 
old balloonman whistles 
far          and             wee 
and bettyandisbel come dancing 

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and 

it’s 
spring 
and 

         the 

                  goat-footed 

balloonMan          whistles 
far 
and 
wee

Backspace Delete

22 Thursday Nov 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, backspace, boring, delete, family, grateful, keep going, pablum, pain, PC, politically correct, rage, Thanksgiving, writing

After much thought and personal debate because it’s been a long year of night I have decided to give thanks.  Everyone is giving thanks for something right around this day, right up until they pass the gravy. How could I resist thought, debate, and gravy? 

The “winner” of my thanks is three-fold:  The backspace bar, ctrl+backspace bar, and the delete button.  (Note the Oxford comma there?) 

This year (and I am not kidding) I am grateful for the ability to backspace or delete.  I would rather remain on a blank page with a blinking cursor tempting me to “go on… go on… you know you want to say it!” than saying it, the satanic cursor that wants me to puke out every last thing I think or feel and make it public with the push of a button! “Go on… do it… it’ll feel so good, it’ll be okay….”  So I took up the keyboard and wrote terrible things, damning things on long pages of Word documents or little tweets or other social media platforms that zoom past where we are always in danger of being pushed off into an oncoming train. I wrote missives and critiques and opinions no one asked for while dabbing lukewarm coffee I spilled on the tablecloth or sucking Chinese food sauce from my fingers and (allegedly) from the keyboard from which I write this thing, the letters “j” and “g” are sticking…. 

I am grateful to be able to scream to the holy high heavens that everything sucks and I hate everything, that I am a miserable piece of shit and nothing matters, but the backspace button gives me space to take it all back before you see it. It allows me to wail and whine and cuss and be so damnably politically incorrect. I get to be petulant, pedantic, sexist, racist, ageist, uniformed, uneducated, illiterate and worse–boring! 

You don’t get to see that I still hit the @ key when I meant !  and that’s because the blessed backspace button exists. You don’t get to see my exposed private parts that disclose rage and horror in favor of vanilla and pablum.  (Somebody who reads this might know where that came from.)  

So, thank you, backspace and delete for allowing me to tailor my thoughts and words to be delicate, kind, favorable always.  I guess it’s what I believe everyone needs.  Thank you for giving me space to scream and throw things and give you a piece of my mind and then deleting it all because the world doesn’t need another angry woman. How could that be helpful in any way? Thank you for helping me sort out tornado thoughts from surgical words and maybe that’s not the right thing after all, but today is a day for grateful, for sharing, for embracing those we love who we haven’t seen in a long time where we keep our real words in purses on the floor in the bedroom and we don’t open them until we get home and we weep.  

Thank you, backspace delete for helping me figure out why.  

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, beach, dragon, egg, fear, Jim Morrison, ocean, pain, poetry, prompt, the Doors, weather

I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

Work Zone Awareness Week

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, April, birds, distractions, not writing, proof of time, work zone

It’s mostly starlings zooming by my work zone
blackflash streaks past the sill where I keep heart-shaped rocks
rusticles, and a plastic shell that some anonymous person placed
one day when I wasn’t looking
(I don’t have the heart to throw it away)

I am waiting for the dragonflies to drive by
misguided missiles on a southern trajectory,
herded mistakenly between these yellow canyon walls
forgotten which way is west!
Where are they?
(Soon
they’ll be here soon
don’t force larval days to arrive)

It’ll be election day tomorrow,
my work zone will become a dehydrated mess that I will abandon
in favor of watching warships cruise by
contemplating the nature of the clammy quartz I sit upon
fondly remembering Glen and Mike and Fitz and Steve and Lucy.

Sunrise kindles my work zone
predictably pedestrian in its charm
Fingers and face stiff in April’s chill
Slurping java waiting
for the skimmers to skim by
while I watch the paint dry,
rerouting all forward momentum
towards the laundry room.

Ah look, a white butterfly!

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