May 9, 2008
May 6, 2008
“Doubt whom you will, but never yourself.”
May 6, 2008
Ever read the term “smart casual” and wondered what that meant? It’s an oxymoron, I’ve decided. There’s either expensive casual, or stupid casual. Expensive casual is clothing designed to look relaxed that only looks good if you pay a small fortune for it. Stupid casual is what you do when you try to have a ‘casual’ relationship.
May 4, 2008
The next door neighbour cooks toast
onion molecules filter from the pan to the window
where the window is open they saunter into the garden
where the window is closed they draw rings on the condensation
where both windows are open there is onion on toast on onion
onion and toast
run the tap
tip the crumbs out of the toaster
rinse away
toast crumbs float in the wind
off the tea towel
leaves and onion and soil and lungs and
electrons suffused with scents of the kitchen
sizzle into wire
into the phone
give a taste of home and rain and
tears wiped away
knife left on the chopping board
to get the washing
off the line.
May 4, 2008
“Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.”
- H.L. Mencken, journalist and satirist
May 3, 2008
White lines
slipping in wet distant hyphenated
punctuation
aerial waving
to the wind
on the hill
to a lost conversation
we turn on tyres bald and worn weary
suspicious of truth
‘cause it’s an excuse for cruelty.
Secondary scars
those lines are
added as an afterthought
once direction is imminent
marking out
red earth and green fringe
slashed into respectability with
white dashes and
pale woodworked crosses
as a tangent
talking point for sorrows and
… silence.
It roars
static counterpoint to motion
wavelengths washed over with
distance and deliberate
forward progress
and if we look back
we
get
sick.
April 30, 2008
I graduate tomorrow with my B.A. in English. Four years… two degrees… a procession and a ceremony and photos and gowns and hoods and… a promise to myself that in another two years I will go back to get my honours and my Masters.
For now- a celebration. I did it! I’ve finally got my first degree.
April 30, 2008
Dorothy L. Sayers
“The worst sin - perhaps the only sin - passion can commit, is to be joyless.”
Robert Sternberg
“Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.”
April 30, 2008
Someone once asked me to write something happy but I’m pissed off with the shampoos I’ve been using. A woman can’t write about joy and sunshine on a bad hair month. I suppose I’m supposed to use appropriate salon terms such as hair products but seriously, these things are expensive and they’re shit. I’m not happy.
I do actually know what hair product I should be getting but I’ve been an idiot and tried other hair products instead. Remind me again that I am graduating this week, and by virtue of two degrees, should actually have some vestige of intelligence left. That’s often hard to acknowledge when I am spending money on stuff for my hair that doesn’t work.
Speaking of wasting money on stuff that doesn’t work, can someone explain why half the skin products on the market combat anti-oxidants while the new improved skin products claim to infuse the skin with oxygen? Anyone who can explain this to me, a cynical woman with lax skincare regime?
I give up, actually. I’m going to ring my friend and ask her again what that hair product was that she leant me because it made my hair so good- not so crap like it is now. And then I’m going to wait until my pay day, and I’m going to fix my car, and I’m going to get some new hair stuff that doesn’t make me look like I’ve been electrocuted.
I know it’s trivial but I’m going for lighthearted stuff, and this is the truth, for the moment. The poems and stuff come later, trust me. (And if you don’t want that stuff, um, tough!)
April 28, 2008
I have never been so happy to see a pair of straightening irons in my life. Sure, they’ve been in my bag all weekend, but nobody watching me as head referee at the canoe polo tournament this weekend could have understood how traumatised I was by those blasted ringlets cascading down where a lovely straight fringe should be. Yes, I know, the players were getting beaten to a pulp with sharpened paddles wielded by the unscrupulous opposition, and I was their only hope, but… Bad hair? Bad hair!! Oh god, the horror. I should never have had that haircut. And that, dear reader, is where you find me today. I can’t wait to straighten my bloody hair- right after I’ve undone the horrors of that dreadful ‘to do’ list.
