penzilla

I am absolutely adoring Marvin Pontiac’s No Kids. The layering is lovely in the second verse (or is it the chorus?). I think it’s difficult to say it in songwriting these days, like “Where is my mom?” and “I have some pain,” so this is very refreshing.

And because I must leave Rachel Ray’s scarf fiasco to my Dad, her biggest fan, I suppose I’ll turn to poetry instead and include some newish poem here. I don’t know why I’m having trouble breaking lines all of a sudden. It might be because I’m pushing toward the new year of non-fiction writing.

HIGH CULTURE: A PILCROW

In the lower worlds, where all things are slowed but not gone, they take the old diseases and give them new names. Suffering is a human cholera. It takes the nape of a child. Turns the skin in on itself. It’s easier to watch a skeleton become a skeleton after all. Who am I to question water’s holiness? Dip two fingers in. Take it to the forehead, chest, shoulder to shoulder. Take a rainforest by the mouth and see if it is a blessing then. In Yellowstone, half the bison herd died this winter. Herds once in ten millions that survived since prehistory on the grasses starved to death on the mountainsides. Or, animals of instinct, left the park for food and ended face to the slaughter cull. The bodies are sunken now. Thawing in the sulfur pits. Steam rising over their hides like claws.