Weird Wednesday Love Poem

The World’s Worst Fugitive

I do not have a shovel.

The warden here is 

as wily

as she is wicked.

I do not even have a spoon,

because we never eat soup.

I suspect we never eat soup

because

it would require spoons.

I dig with a fork.

As you can imagine,

it takes some time

to dig a tunnel

with a fork.

Five years,

to be precise.

I dig with a fork

for five years.

Four tiny tines

to freedom.

A tunnel

under my bed,

under the fence.

The stars beyond the prison wall

are brighter.

The air is fragrant

as it kisses my cheek.

But, no.

Oh, no.

Those are lips

against my cheek.

I know those lips

against my cheek.

Those weren’t stars,

but the searchlight,

reflecting in her eyes.

That wasn’t a breeze

but her breath,

her whisper

her words.

“Don’t leave me.”

So I don’t.

Ten years, day 26.

I’ve been working, I swear. I’ve mostly been going back to edit a monstrous 130,000-word draft in an attempt to get it down to a query-able length. I’m hoping to get it down to 100,000, but I think it’s going to be more like 110,000. My understanding is that in the current publishing climate even 100,000 is really too long, but I’m just trying to get it down to a length where the agent won’t throw it out without even looking at it. That’s really all I’m hoping to accomplish at this point.

I’ve also been struggling with the question of how much WORK I really want to put into my writing and what that means for how far I can really take it. I love writing, but am I willing to SLOG for it? Am I willing to go back and edit things ten, fifteen times? Am I willing to do full re-writes? Am I willing to make edits with which I don’t fully agree? If an agent, or a publisher, asks me to make big changes, how far am I willing to bend? I think those are really important questions to answer if I want to publish, really regardless of whether we’re talking about traditional or indie publishing. I think traditional publishing requires you to bend more, but indie publishing probably requires more outright slog.

Weird Wednesday Love Poem

Oh, how they scream so sweet.

My dog loves squirrels.

I love my dog.

Do I therefore sanction

the ‘Slaughtering of the Squirrels’?

It is his sacred holiday.

his raison d'être.

his joy.

What it is to love a creature

who loves cruelty.

He doesn’t just kill them.

He tortures them.

He plays.

He listens to them scream

and he shudders in pleasure.

Oh, oh, how pretty.

how sweet.

He licks his lips.

He sinks his teeth into their flesh.

The wet crunch of a spine snapping.

I offer him other joys

but he wants no other.

How can I love you,

when you love only death

and pretty dying?

I cannot scream

so sweet.

Ten years, day 18.

I always feel like I’m being less productive re: writing when I’m in between novels, but the truth is I think you need the downtime, or at least I do. (I’m not sure if YOU do, I suppose.) My brain has to have rest periods. It’s apparently about a 50/50 split since the natural flow of my writing seems to be that I write a novel first draft in about 3 months - regardless of the length of the novel it’s usually about that long - and then I always seem to take about three months ‘off’ before I start the next novel. The ‘off’ times I do beta reading, edit other works, write short stories…

I did finish writing a short story this week, so that’s something productive. I think I’m going to go back and edit a previous work before I start really thinking through the plot of the next novel in what I’m calling my ‘carnivorous plants in Cleveland’ series. My brain just doesn’t feel like it’s ready to dive into that again yet. Soon. Maybe a couple of weeks.

I need to finish planning by early June though because I got into a master’s degree program and I start classes June 03. I want to be WRITING the next book again by then because writing I can fit into small blocks of time but the ideation phase is harder to do in short snippets. I have mixed feelings about going back for a third master’s degree because it is going to take time away from my writing, and it’s another concession to safety. I think the degree will help me to advance in my ‘day job’ career. But it won’t help my writing. So. Why am I pouring time into advancing in a career that I like, but I don’t love?

Ah, because there are other things I want out of life too. I want to write full time, yes. But I also want to have children, for instance, and that requires a steady source of income. So I compromise. I don’t honestly know if that’s the right choice or not - to compromise - but I keep doing it because I’m just trying so hard to balance all the competing desires.

I desire too much, and too immediately.

But I think that’s just what it is to be human.

Weird Wednesday Love Poem

Here’s yet a spot.

I have apologized 109 times.

If I thought it would help,

I would apologize

109 times again.

But I don’t think this is a matter of,

“I’m sorry.”

Except that,

I am a sorry sight.

Will you forgive me if I suffer enough?

Will you forgive me if I tell you,

every time I close my eyes

I see you?

I cannot sleep,

for dreams of you

keep my tired eyes open.

You are a permanent spot

marring my field of vision,

right there in the center,

so I can only see the world

from the very corners of my eyes.

I can never look at it directly.

Out damned spot.

Out, damn you!

Please, damn you.

My queen has left me

quivering with regret, and 

stained with longing.

I cannot say ‘amen’.

Ten years, day 13.

I haven’t updated my accountability posts in a few days because I was driving back from a work trip to the east coast and a) visiting family, b) researching for my current book series, and c) having a little fun. Those seem like good reasons to be doing things more than telling you about all the things I’m doing, right?

A) My first stop on my long drive home was dinner with a family member I hadn’t seen in a few years. She just lost her father and as well as all the emotions I felt that were rooted primarily in empathy, I was also struck by the knowledge that her father was a few years younger than mine and I’m facing that same loss and life transition at some point in the next decade or two and how the f*** am I going to get through that? My dad is one of the few people I can really talk to; partially because he’s one of the few people who will just put up with me long enough for me to meander my way to my eventual point, but also because so many aspects of who I am are rooted in him. He is the source of my humor, my intellectual omnivory, my artistic temperament. In a lot of ways he doesn’t understand me either because I think he’s suppressed some of those aspects of himself for so long that he really can’t understand how I embrace them in myself, but he’s the closest thing I have to a compatriot in my family and it will be hard to lose that.

I have also been plagued in the intervening days with the question: What if I haven’t done anything to make him proud by the time he goes? What if I haven’t accomplished anything with my writing by then?

I am the disappointment in my family. I don’t mean that in a cruel way. No one in my family would say that to my face, but I am the one who has not lived up to expectations. I know what those expectations were, and I know I have not achieved any of those things. My sibling has two advanced degrees, a truly meaningful and traditionally revered career, a spouse, and three children. All the hallmarks of success. I have… a dog. I didn’t pursue terminal degrees because I knew I wanted to pursue writing and I wanted a career that was easy enough, flexible enough, that I could funnel a lot of my energy into my craft instead of my career. The spouse and children part, well, I’m weird and awkward on my best days, so to find someone who wants to put up with me for a few months is a struggle, let alone a few decades. It’s also true that from my end I rarely meet people I feel truly passionate about. If our ship was sinking, I would rather stay and sink with you than catch the last lifeboat to safety. That. I’ve never felt that.

My point with that whole ramble being that I haven’t achieved anything my father can talk about at parties and say, hey, my kid did THIS. He can do that with my sibling, but not me. I’m going to be so disappointed in myself if I don’t have something for him to talk about at parties before he dies.

B & C) I took a research trip to Cleveland, OH on the final leg of my drive back home. I know Cleveland doesn’t have the best reputation, but it was actually really, really great. My current set of novels is set in Cleveland, so I wanted to do some on the ground research. I told my friend it felt a little like meeting a celebrity. This city is my celebrity. I’ve seen so much of them in pictures and film, read so much of their history, but never got to see them in person. We went to a few locations I plan to have as settings in the book in the future - an epic battle in The Arcade, a sexy confrontation with a Big Bad in The Vault, a Big [Maybe not quite so] Bad living in the art museum - and we saw the two buildings I have designated as the homes of my MCs in Little Italy! I’d ‘walked’ those streets on Google Maps Street View but now I got to see them in person! Also, got to eat some very enjoyable pastries at the one location, since it’s a bakery IRL.

Got back into town yesterday and had to rush to finish up a short story for my local writing group’s critique circle next month. I used the opportunity to write a short explaining the backstory of the next novel’s main antagonist, so even if the story itself isn’t particularly strong, it’s helped me to understand a character we won’t get to hear from directly (she’s not a POV).

Onward, forward, all that good sh**.

Ten years, day 9.

Someone asked me at dinner last night if I’m a Wiccan because I’ve been wearing a bird skull necklace around conference all week. I’m actually not sure what the connection between bird skulls as Wicca really is - is there a connection? - but I told this colleague that, no, the necklace was from an Oddities and Curiosities Expo in town a few weeks ago and, “I’m a mystery writer, so it really fits my whole vibe, you know?” Two things:

1) I’m probably too old to be saying ‘my whole vibe’, but I’m not sure what phrase is more appropriate, and maybe it’s because I’m so old that I’m still using such awkward phrases, huh?

2) This was after two glasses of wine.

I realized though that I’d been a lot more open about my writing this whole conference. I told people I’m working on a short story. The first night I was honest about the fact that I was slipping away from a networking dinner to go to a virtual meeting of my writing group. So I guess that’s my accomplishment re: writing for these past few days: that I’ve tried to talk about myself a bit more as a writer.

Small step, but feels important.

Ten years, day 8.

I think my accomplishment for the day was that I wrote an epic death scene during the middle of our lunch break at my professional conference. Sitting in a room with thirty of my colleagues, everyone munching away on pizza, taking a break to go for a walk, whatever, me in the corner, epic film score music blasting through my headphones to drown them all out, writing a dramatic death sequence.

(Don't worry. None of them suspect a thing.)

Ten years, day 7.

I’m at a work shindig this week, so long days. I think yesterday I was ‘on’ from 8am to 8pm. Conference presentations, networking lunch, vendor dinner. As an introvert, it’s hard for me to socialize for that long and I feel really wrung out by the end of the day. I didn’t get much writing done in the morning either because I was trying to catch up on a little sleep after the 12-hr drive the day before. But, BUT, I actually managed to jot down a few story ideas while I was walking a couple of miles on the hotel treadmill before bed. Put on some movie soundtrack music - Hans Zimmer, Mat Richter, Rachel Portman - and stared at the hotel’s blank beige wall for an hour and just let the ideas come and go as they pleased.

I think I’ve planned out an ending for the short story I’m writing. Might not be the ending we end up with, but enough to get this draft in to my critique group on time.

Progress.

Ten years, day 6.

I didn’t write anything, but I had a fourteen-hour workday, so I think that’s a pretty good excuse.

Ten years, day 5.

Working away on a short story that’s giving me some further insight into one of the Big Bads coming up in a future novel. Of course, was also hit by a BRILLIANT new story concept, totally unrelated, while I’m in the midst of planning a FOURTEEN book series. But. It’s good. It’s all so good. Swear.

Ten years, day 4.

I’m posting this on day five, so I’m already a day behind, so that is very promising.

I did write a little yesterday. Maybe 1,000 words again. I’m working on a short story that’s essentially just an exercise to help me work out the backstory of one of my villains. Running into some questions for myself about how much research one really should do for a short story. This short story, theoretically, should be taking place in Brazil, though the location doesn’t really impact the narrative (just that I mentioned this character was from Brazil in a different piece, so this story taking place in their childhood should probably be taking place there) and I just… Beyond researching actual locations, flora and fauna, etc. I don’t think I have time for a short story to try to really dig into what it means to be Brazilian. Like, if you’re going to write that character, from a Brazilian’s POV, I would think there might even be nuances to how they use language that would be relevant. Super small example, but, like, how we curse in different nations is different, what you call your parents. Mom, mother, momma, etc. Even if you translate it all, the designation the word choice itself, might be different, no?

So maybe I should just set the story in, like, Arizona instead and be done with it. But then all my fiction is completely America-centric because that’s all I know. It’s sad that’s all I know, but it’s true, and for something I do purely for ‘fun’ right now, I don’t know how to find more time to make anything beyond what I know more accurate, believable, representative, true. So maybe I just stick with what I know.

Ah, debate.

Ten years, day 3.

Tiny, carved bird skull necklace!

I didn’t really do any writing today, but I did go to an awesome expo and I bought this necklace that I’m totally planning to wear every time I write from now on to help me get in the right macabre mood. It’s awesome, right? And completely counts for being productive since it’s going to help so much with future writing. Clearly.

Ten years, day 2.

I didn’t accomplish much on the business side of writing today, but I did write. It was about 1,000 words, which is a middling day for me, but I’m also midway through a story and I have a few things I need to think out before I go barreling on ahead. I also decided that to match my ten years of effort, I’m also going to promise myself $10,000 towards the goal of becoming a full time writer. That’s over the course of the ten years. I’m not made of money. (I’m a librarian. Did I tell you that already? It’s a lovely job, really. Just takes up eight hours a day I’d rather be writing.) But if this is something I’m really serious about, I figure I should invest in it like I’d invest in my retirement account or something. That might be where some of the money ends up coming from. But, you know, full time writing could BE a retirement income stream, right? So it’s practically the same thing.

Ten years, day 1.

I’ve made a promise to myself. As of this day, I am going to devote the next ten years of my life to seriously pursuing writing as my main form of employment. That sounds super dry, doesn’t it. As my passion. As my whatever. As the thing I get to do for most of the day, most days. Whatever that is. I’m a hedge my bets kind of person, I just am, but it’s left me with a life that doesn’t fully satisfy. My life is nice. It’s comfortable. I’m incredibly privileged, what the hell do I have to complain about… But I’m still not happy.

I’m not happy - well, actually there are lots of reasons and I should probably talk to a therapist about some of them - primarily because I don’t get to devote my life to the thing I feel most called to do. That phrasing probably sounds a little weird to other people too, but it’s not that writing always makes me happy in and of itself. Sometimes it’s frustrating. Sometimes it’s boring. Sometimes I wish I could turn my creative mind off for a few days. But then, in the moments where it does go quiet in my mind… It’s too quiet. I miss it. I miss my characters. I miss the words. Writing is the thing that makes me feel most at home in my body, most in an alliance with my chaotic mind, most useful to the world.

Whew, boy. Gettin’ a bit big for my britches on that last one. ‘Useful to the world’? Here’s me gonna save us all from damnation and destruction with the mighty strength of my tippy tippy fingers. But that’s the closest way I can think to say that this - writing - is my thing. I’m honestly not sure if I’m that good at it, at this point. I’ve been doing it for seventeen years and I still feel like it’s hit or miss when I write a draft. Some I think are good, some not so good. It took me seventeen years to think I had drafts good enough to sen out to agents, good enough to publish, good enough to hold in my hands as a book someday.

Then I meet people in writing groups, hold other people’s books in my hands, and it’s their first or second attempt at a novel and I think, well, shit, then maybe I’m trying way too hard and something that should come easy. Maybe I should take a hint after seventeen years and give it the heck up.

Then I send out query letters and can’t seem to get past the form rejections. No partials. No fulls. No interest.

And then I think, well, then I definitely suck, right?

It makes me question my self. Not myself. My self. My being. My purpose. My thing.

But I just don’t think I can give it up. I’ve tried, from time to time, but nothing makes me feel as much me as writing. It’s how I hear myself think. It’s how I hear from the parts of me that are too scared to actually speak to me. It’s how I hear my own secrets. It’s how I unearth the things I didn’t even realize I’d buried, I didn’t realize I was missing, I didn’t realize there were bloody holes in me where those brave little bits should be.

So, if I can’t give it up, then I should go all in. Cross the Rubicon.

I’m going to spend the next ten years doing my very best to make enough money writing that I can pursue it full time. I don’t know what that will look like in detail yet, but I can figure it out as I go. (Ten years just feels like enough time that I’ll have really given it an honest go by then, and if it’s still not happening, after throwing in my all, then maybe it really will be time to store my pages in a chest somewhere and let the world discover my strange and staggering genius when I’m gone.)

Day one: made the decision.

My New Characters Won’t Stop Having Really F***ing Random Conversations…

“Don’t worry, Pig is our friend.”

“Is she?”

“Of course.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Well, what makes you think she isn’t?”

“Well, what makes you think she is?” Lore insists. “A talking pig shows up and you just assume she’s here to help? Couldn’t she just as easily be a nefarious pig?”

“A nefarious pig!” Sage scoffs. “Don’t be silly. Who’s ever heard of a nefarious talking pig.”

***

‘The big wigs all think I’m useless, but I’m also symbolic, so I think they’d be pretty pissed if anything dire happened to me. I’m the baby of my… paramilitary organization.’ Lore’s expression must be blank because she tries to clarify. ‘I’m only 105 years old.’

Lore opens and closes her mouth a few times before she manages to echo, incredulous, ‘You’re 105 years old?’

Sage grins. ‘I know. It’s shocking, isn’t it?’

Lore nods. ‘It really is.’

‘Easy mistake to make,’ Sage assures her. ‘I act very mature for my age.’

‘You look damn good for 105.’

‘Do I?’

Lore licks her lips before she answers. ‘Yeah.’

***

“Mouse!”

“Excuse you,” Sage mutters indignantly. “It is not a mouse, it is a vole. And observe, please, that it is red. It is a red vole. A Red Tree Vole, if you’d like to be precise. Truly, the lack of education is astounding.”

“Excuse me,” Loretta mocks, “a vole. There’s a vole in your pocket. What in the hell is a vole doing in your pocket? While you work in food service no less.”

“Red’s not bothering anything. He’s taking a nap. What do you have against Red taking a nap in my pocket while I work?”

“You named your red tree vole ‘Red’,” Loretta drawls.

“What, you think it should be something fancier? Burgundy, Merlot, Vermillion?” Sage scoffs. “He likes Red. We’re not fancy folks around here, okay?”

“You sell $5 lattes!”

Sage purses her lips, but admits, “Fair point. We’re a little fancy.” She seems to think about it for another moment before amending, “We’re professionally fancy. We’re personally simple.”

“Thank God we’ve cleared that up.”

“Agreed. Precision is important.”

Weird Wednesday Love Poem No. 9

August 16, 2023 prompt - ‘geometry’ 

I had no interest in geometry

until I had the opportunity to study

the complex shapes of your form

the golden ratio of your features

the undulating waves of 

concave to convex

the places in you that were hollow

and those thrusting forward to claim space

decare yourself

trumpet your coming

warn me away.

I ignored the warnings.

I whispered into the hollow places.

I filled them with words of admiration.

How beautiful, I would coo, how lovely this shape 

and how lovely this other!

I filled you all up 

until you were a perfect sphere

and had no need of further sweet words

and none of your pieces reached for me

or warned me

before you rolled down the street

like a stone

scared

so scared

I might stain you green

with the growth of moss.

Weird Wednesday Love Poem No. 8

08/02/2023 prompt - ‘I don’t want to know’

(next week’s prompt is geometry)

I don’t want to know 

what life is like

without you.

I don’t want to know 

who left lipstick

on your neck.

So, please,

stop whispering her name

in your sleep.

I don’t want to know.

Weird Wednesday Love Poem No. 7

Text of poem without formatting:

We broke up

thirty-three days,

eight hours, and

twenty-six minutes

ago.

I have vomited

nineteen times

since then.

If I just keep drinking

this particular whiskey 

you liked so much - 

you know,

the one they age

in barrels on boats,

the one you used to tell stories about,

laughing,

so beautiful

when your head was thrown back

and your hair was brushing

against my thighs,

and you would make up

all these fantastic

tales of the sea,

how far 

this sip

this sip

this sip

had traveled

and how one day

we would travel to all those places too - 

that one.

This whiskey

with the ship on the outside of the bottle

and the way you loved me

drowned at the bottom.

I figure

if I just keep drinking it

and vomiting

at this rate,

I should probably

be emptied

of every last drop of you

by December.

Just in time

for the winter winds

to bluster me

back out to sea.

Things my mother taught me by dying young.

My mother would have been sixty-nine years old today. If she hadn’t died more than twenty years ago. This day every year, and the anniversary of her death, always makes me a little melancholy and a lot thoughtful, no matter how many years have passed. So here are a few completely unfiltered thoughts I had today:

1. There’s a home video from one of my birthday parties when I’m a small child - I’m five or six maybe. My father follows my mother into the kitchen at some point and she complains about being on film, especially when my father mentions that she’s thirty-[whatever]. She sarcastically says, “Thank you, Dear. Because we wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m twenty-[whatever].” My dad jokes that they’ll watch this video when she’s in her sixties and marvel at how good she looks in her thirties. And it’s true, friends. She’s beautiful. She always was. So maybe that’s the first ‘lesson’ I take with me from my mother dying when I was young, or at least the first one I contemplated at some length today: You are beautiful. Right now. And you might not get a chance to look back and admire your own beauty later. So admire it now.

2. I think most situations in life can be looked at through the ‘good news/bad news’ lens we often use in my family. Not all situations - some situations are just plain shit - but most situations you can find some aspect to be grateful for, or ways you’ve been lucky as much as you’ve been unlucky. Almost every day I’ll be on the phone with one of my family members and someone will ask, “Do you want to play ‘good news/bad news’?’ Today my little good news/bad news was that my dog cost me $### in vet bills today. That’s pretty bad news. But I have $### that, while I can’t really ‘afford’ to spend it on his many, many issues, I have it. I won’t have to cut down meals or worry about a car payment or anything. It’s dwindling my savings at an alarming rate, but that’s kinda what savings are for. Good news. The good news/bad news of my mom dying when I was young is: Bad news, I lost my mom when I was thirteen. Good news, she was a fucking amazing mom for thirteen years. How insanely lucky was I to have a wonderful, loving, funny, smart, powerful mom for thirteen years? That’s thirteen more years than some people get. Though, admittedly, more bad news: She went to work one day and never came home.

3. I don’t want to belabor this post, so maybe I’ll end here, but on the note of ‘she went to work one day and never came home’ I’ll pass along that absolute truism, that lesson we all learn when we lose a loved one: Tell your people you love them. I was a big ol’ pustule of hormonal rage at thirteen (as many of us are) and I was constantly whiny and snotty and belittling and I regret bitterly that the last two years I had with my mother I was probably an ass 75% of the time. But, but, but… and it’s a big ‘but’… The last words I ever spoke to my mother were ‘I love you’. Very last thing I ever said to her. I hugged her that morning before the bus came and I remember her commenting on how she wished my arms fit around her expanding waist a little better, but I told her she was just the right size for hugging. And I remember she was wearing a black slip dress that was supposed to be anti-wrinkle because she was traveling that day. And I remember walking down the front walk backward, facing her, telling her, last thing before I turned away to walk to the bus stop, “I love you.” I know that’s a lesson that’s been shared a billion-bazillion times, but it’s so, so true. Thank goodness, for all my asshattery, the last words I spoke to her were true and if you gave me a thousand chances to rewrite the very last three words I could say to that woman, I don’t think I could come up with anything better. I really, really loved her. And I told her so. Tell your people you love them. All. the. freaking. time.

4. Okay, I lied. One more lesson that I actually think about from time to time throughout each year as it passes: Time does not heal all wounds. I think people came up with that saying, and keep saying it, because it’s supposed to be comforting. Or that story they tell about Abraham Lincoln giving a speech relaying some old king asking his advisors to give him a sentence that would be true and appropriate to speak in any circumstance and the phrase was: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’ I think that’s bullshit. I am broken from my mother’s death in ways that will never heal (or at least they haven’t healed yet). My grief will never pass away. It is with me, ever present, on the edges of every waking moment, trailing along behind me, hiding in my shadow. But I do think, for me at least, I’ve learned to work around the broken bits of me, and I’ve grown fond of my grief in a way. They are the reminders that my mother was here, and that I loved her. The reality of my mother, for however long I got to have her in my life, is precious to me. I don’t ever want her to fade and the truth is you can't separate who I am as a human being from that formative loss. The uncomfortable truth is I’m probably a kinder person that I might have otherwise been. I’m broken, but I think I have more compassion for people this way. I’m quiet and sad and my emotions are all twisted up and hidden in a hundred boxes in my mind where even I can’t find them half the time, but I was selfish and egotistical before. I was also thirteen before, and to have had my mother guiding me all these years, maybe I would have been a better person, I suppose. I can’t really know. But I know that every scar and every jagged piece inside me from her death is 100% worth it to me to have had her and I wouldn’t trade them away now for anything except having her back. Eventually the pain of losing her became less intense than the joy of having her in the first place. I guess that’s what I’m saying. Or, I don’t know. Something profound.

This post is longer than I intended, but it was nice to get a few thoughts out. I wish my mom could have watched that home video today and we could have all commented on how good she looked when she was thirty-[whatever]. I wish I could know what she would have thought of who I’ve become and how I’ve turned out so far. I wish I could have baked her a half-edible cake today and watched her try to be diplomatic in eating it. I wish I could have seen what her face would look like, wreathed in wrinkles and the light of sixty-nine little flames.

I guess the good news/bad news of today is that her presence, and her absence, are still teaching me things even all these years later. They’re not lessons I’ve enjoyed much, but it feels like such a mother kind of thing, you know? To still be learning from her. To still love her, and miss her, is just all the more evidence of how incredibly lucky I was to have her.