Postcard from 'Nam

  (for Jeff & Bobby, and all the rest)

He and I got into it

a shouting match

a big one

snatches of overheard conversations

“. . . he had Jane Fonda arrested,” and

“. . . near Pleiku . . . ”

and that lousy packet coffee

“. . . either a major assault, or a major offensive . . .”

and picking out several big, fat thorns

and I said to this guy --

he was a sergeant, too --

“Otherwise we’re gonna get greased,

according to my LRP teams”

I drank the coffee, said

“Can you spare another one?”

(meaning smokes)

thinking

and when they come

they’re gonna come in swarms

but sweat drying, now and

those thorn-bites, ruby beads

laid in three new stripes

I’d finished the coffee

and thanked him, hugged him

and I said, “Get your shit together:

this is a heads up”

slapped him on the shoulder and said

I’d told him everything I knew,

told him to get the hell outta there!

and he got pissed off

- kmf (RedSonja)

Author's Note:  "LRP," for those unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Long-range Recognisance Patrol, and is pronounced "lurp."

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja Nam Vets

7 comments View Entry

in response to a perfect Zen toe-shoe Friday

Zen

I, as Teishu, invite him in 

to our tea house for chanoyu

slide the newly papered shojis 

leftward two thirds, with the left

and the remainder with my right hand

having prepared already 

the zen garden outside carefully

raking the sands in waves 

breaking 'round each island

itself a cleansing, calming act

a light course of stone soup, made in advance

have swept the heavy cedar beams and steps

and bathed in deep hot springs and fresh

sunset hair in wild clouds over

deep earth-tone silken plaids mounded

by a shy indigo and crimson obi 

mufti restrains passion in neat lines

seated on the cushions

the honoured, only guest, my Shokyaku 

now waits

in with the brazier, utensils set out

each with a solemn purpose

we're meant to discuss these

I kneel on fresh new tatamis

instead of customary sweets, 

place a pussywillow twig

with two sprigs of foxglove

promise and menace

onto a green slate board

the scent of cedar, straw and eucalypt

so like the powdered macha, green tea

hot water ready, poured into the vessel

emptied and now ready, poured again, oyu

I fold the fukasa a second time, silently

and cleanse the rim

as ritual allows us and

tea drifts over, sinks

a gentle stir

our eyes meet

this deceptive simplicity

seemingly careless

play of light and shadow

practiced economy of motion

gliding without touching ground

implies abundant leaping 

in absentia

he reaches out

against convention

a perfect speckled eggshell bowl

raised on his empty luminescent palm

now overflowing

an endless well-spring

of possibility

- kmf (RedSonja)

Author's Note:  Huge liberties taken with a summer chanoyu (lit. hot water tea, or rather tea-hot-water) and hakobi-temae (hakobi: to carry in the fumo-brazier and other items, rather than on display; temae: ritual steps in ceremonial preparation of tea),  which reflect in part my attempt to meld occidental & oriental. Some may also know 'stone soup' from Russian folklore, and my favourite recipe.

And of course, how this reads depends on the reader's approach.

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja erotica spiritual world Zen Love

4 comments View Entry

green spectre

I remembered what parted us

3 decades past

what green spectre of jealousy

Kermit Ness! Elliot the Frog!

a slim stylish, lip-less fellow

prone to intimating mysteriously

a career as a secret agent

to get girls

he had a plane, or access to one

to impress the birds

and flew me across state lines

to visit my Oma

treating me to my favourite view

I don't remember seeing her

so guess it was just the blue-lights

lining the runway

at the airport Opa would take us to admire

apart from an assurance

there was nothing to it

I didn't defend

- kmf (RedSonja)

this was the last thing I put up before I accidentally deleted myself . . . 

(and for the record, that mendacious frog-chap may've impressed other birds, but not this one)

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja jealousy

1 comments View Entry

veiled . . . to shield public sensibilities ;-)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

first the good wine . . . above the salt

I had a dream

about fellatio

sparkled with play

an elizabethan soft-lace 

scrungii collar

snugged over 

extended and loving

a smiley face in gel-pen

(ala chin-puppets)

the only appropriate use

for smileys

smeared off

mentioned in passing

asked, how'd you feel?

without thinking, said

needs salt

- kmf (RedSonja, aka RunswithScissors)

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja erotica RunswithScissors

1 comments View Entry

email

  (a prose poem)

Okay, so you went back to work.  I went back to work.  Reading neurosurgery, specifically anterior cervical fusion (spinal).

But I can't concentrate.

It's all your fault.  Not angry, I don't do angry, generally.

I'm squirming, a little.  And laughing.

Laughing at my undisciplined mind, at my ridiculous infatuation with someone I'm unlikely to ever meet face-to-face.  We could be imaginary lovers . . . or already are.

So here's how it goes.  See if you can follow.  "(The Caspar) distractor is used to distract...to expose the converging posterior lips of the superior and inferior (endplates)...(The posterior) annulus is temporarily left in place as a protective shield...meticulously drilled...until reduced to thin shells...(The posterior) longitudinal ligament is completely...from side to side...to fully expose and decompress..."

Anatomy as long-distance foreplay.  Distracted, converging, lips (repeated many times), superior and inferior (positions), annulus (such a lovely word), protective shield (temporarily), met-i-cu-lous-ly drilling, until reduced to thin shells, and your longitudinal completely exposed and decompressed, after some side to side.  And you didn't even need to put pen to paper in this case.

~Sigh~

See my problem?

- kmf (aka RunswithScissors, aka Run-onSentences)

Tags: poetry prose-poem writing RedSonja RunswithScissors erotica email

4 comments View Entry

!  Rejected, briefly, at another site as too racey (see Author's Note, below)

my lesbian lover - I

she waits as instructed

behind the door

in white tie and tails

I hear her calling

entering, I sweep her

up! and into my arms

she nestles her head

beneath my chin

touching me

everywhere she can reach

stretching every sinew

moaning, a little

searching out where I've been

nibbling

and when she suspects a rival

bites

eschewing all table manners

we fall to the bed

fierce hunters, brought to ground

to sort it

and surrendering

she turns her head

exposing her throat

at once vulnerable and demanding

I take the hint

run my fingertips along that stretch of jaw

stroke the gentle arabesque

so strong it may shatter

with the force of all this love

trace the auricle with my lips

and tug on her ear

she likes this

impatient with the molecule between us

she would tear off her tux, popping studs

if allowed

instead I brush

her black-silk hairs from my face

while she purrs

- kmf (RedSonja, aka RunswithScissors)

Author's Note: originally inspired by the wild-ish black-and-white tuxedo cat sequestered in my bedroom for the other cat's safety - and mine. She leads with the heart. Passing thought to using this as an advert seeking a loving forever-home, but suspect it would garner some unusual (if appropriate) responses . . . 

Tags: poetry writing erotica RedSonja RunswithScissors joie-de-vivre humour

8 comments View Entry

Over Miso Ramen

geopolitics with breakfast

world-travel on my belly

over miso ramen

sharp pickled ginger

earthy fresh cilantro

hot red peppers

rare American beef

crisp green beans

almost pho, now

some garam masala

to bring in the subcontinent

contemplating

a political bumper-sticker:

“Reunite Gondwanaland!”

I could go them one better:

“Return Pangaea!”

our congruent continents

nestling like spoons

- kmf (RedSonja, aka RunswithScissors)

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja RunswithScissors global foodies politics geology

0 comments View Entry

Water

ruminations on desert ecosystems

bring to mind

all those scaly, spiky, hard survivors

making a good living

enduring thirst under a relentless sun

cleaners circle overhead, hovering in updrafts

or recon artists hoard the dark close

in thermoregulation

each occasional succulent, an oasis

hidden in plain sight

and one yucca shoots up its centennial rocket

we all adapt

but did you know

that Islam allows the supplicant

missing a prayer rug

using brush at hand

to sweep a space in sacred earth

and absent clean water

permits ritual ablutions to be performed

using sand

all adapt

and when the rains come, sometimes

covert seeds race up spawning

flowers in that brief ocean

adapt

- kmf (RedSonja)

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja global biology spiritual politics

0 comments View Entry

Astronomy of Pathos

I.

troubled by a harvest moon

made gravid with ichorous spatter

brain matter heaped in neat pleasing elevations

features arranged in a snarky implacable grin

rendered in greyscale

even before this I'd felt its gaze

the weight of photons striking my face

a fleeting barrage of cosmic hail

towed at high tide from my slumber

now could not bear the sight

blurred as it was through eyes near blind with weeping

drew the blinds against insinuation between the slats

bereft for my demon lover

trapped inside his airless engineer's capsule

an empty oyster shell shot glass left to toast

the precise mythos of indelible scars he'd drafted

II.

with thematic apperception, the other

crossed the Styx, eager, hastening to the caverns

foundered on dream-shoals, shipped by whiskey breakers and cheap wine

a toll paid in more than coin, I wonder

if pale sapphires, rose quartz, amethyst, emeralds and citrine

a necklace of fingerprints around my neck

can still be seen under black-light memory

if it was enough to pay the fare

utterly inimical to joy

abandoned like a backpack on the opposite bank

soaked Eurydice wanders, her way lost, in those dark corridors

infatuated with her own suffering

until the mass of all his traumas collapsed inward

sucking all the air from the room

enlarging the void in his soul

she awaits a rescue that never comes

III.

I've stowed my telescope

now prefer my stargazing from the driveway

under a darkness more than night

punctuated in brief sharp notes by winking distant fires

to usher these gathered dots into their coherent constellations

yet the sun rises over charred rubble

green shoots snake upward through irrelevant concrete ash

and beetles gird up shining chitin armour, always the first to return

all this promise rooted in relentless gravity

still our heads turn reaching toward the light

- kmf (RedSonja)

Author's Note: May read less obscure recognising my attempt to make sensible some painful history – my 1st husband's suicide, the 2nd's descent into madness, a little murder (almost) and co-dependence thrown in for good measure – speaking in my milk-tongue and poking the wound, insisting on a true voice. May not have hit it yet, metaphors being such slippery little bastards. Subterranean moonlight, long ago and far away.

Tags: poetry writing RedSonja suicide grief madness resilience astronomy mytholog

0 comments View Entry