She bit my lip
As if she’d been caught in the act
In the single-wide, Magnolia white trailer
With the missing window
Lined up with the rest
In rows like the houses
Where I grew up
(But not at all)

This was my town
But I was the stranger here
She moves with practiced pace
Silent not for the two at stage left
(The now familiar sounds of that Act
Barely reaching the spotlight here)
But for the sake of the other
The wife
The mother
Sleeping sound backstage; babe in arms
(The pang only now creeping back to me)

She leans and bends preoccupied
Eyeing her reflection
Pulling on her shoe
Her mirror the glass of a portrait
Hanging flimsy on the wall

I’m lying on the floor
Licking my wound
Liking my new adversary
A little amazed
A little amused
The taste of blood on my tongue
Salty. Bitter. Alive!

She knows I pretend at being a writer
And she walks towards me:
Will you write about this someday?
What will you say?
Do you like my hair this way?
Do you think we’ll kill more time this way?

There is a bruise above her left knee
Like a dark, blue rose
My first brush with irony

It’s warm enough now
Come Sunday morning
She’ll not have to cover it up
With nylon hose

~ Kitter LaGore ~

I am most likely very late to this party, but a FB friend I’ve come to respect highly suggested I like the page of an “alternative model based out of New York and southern CT” who goes by the nom de guerre Kitter LaGore. My friend offered no explanation…only the suggestion. I perused all of the available pieces of her portfolio and while she still seems to need to “own” her body as a tool of expression, she is most definitely accomplished. But one link revealed what is, to me, one of the boldest, most fearless, and contextually powerful – considering this is the Internet – statements I have come across of late. It reminded me, somehow, of the poem below…of how it was born of form in strict defiance of function. And as to Ms. LaGore’s defiant statement, I leave this link:

Colliding With Forever – Kitter LaGore

She lies as if dropped from the sky
just across the room,
sheets discarded to the waist,
eyes closed, mouth slightly open, asleep.

Sweeping curves
which cut across the surface of the bed
suggest the passage of life at high speed.
Her milky skin represents the road,
the brown the landscape,
the blue the sky.

Her dream is a tempestuous blend
of primary colors and furious brushwork.
Her eyelids are a rapid veil
through which abstract forms
derived from organic shapes such as flowers,
milkweed, and cocoons can be vaguely discerned.
I sense there is something hidden
beyond the knotted brow of the hill.

Her dreams are measured in wingspan,
powerful and graceful,
expressing the idea of soaring freedom,
yet they are also a perpetual handicap
confining her in the veering gallery space of this low-slung world.

She is an exercise in perfect but seemingly impossible balance.

The room is full of signs of human presence,
the wine glass,
the other with icewater crafting layers of condensation,
toppled shoes,
forgotten paints and canvases,
decorations instead of Modelo.
She has created this atmosphere
with focus and grace.

And so I ask myself why it is impossible not to look at her.

She is a monochrome in shades of gray,
a preliminary drawing in full size
executed entirely with a brush and usually in a wash.
And this gradual visibility of underlayers with the passage of time,
this bleeding through:
her skin is canvas,
her heart beats outstretched in gilded brocades,
her hands are filled with colors,
her blood is wet paint,
her eyes moving light,
her mouth sleepy music.

She wonders how much I pay attention,
how much I understand,
and this is the story of how I became a nightwatchman.

Because the river froze
Before my sore heart in repose
Nobody traces every sky
But any dead dog knows
Never trust a weather girl
She grins when she warns you
Never trust a weather girl

Everything gray was silver
Everyone wise was blind
All that I knew was falling into her eyes

Because the wolf was howling
Because the moon was on the rise
Because the sun was fading
Because the storm was in her eyes

She’s a wicked cloud
The devil prays for her
You know she tastes like cinnamon rain
And she reeks of myrrh
Never kiss a weather girl
She grins when she warns you
Never kiss a weather girl

Everything gray was silver
Everyone wise was blind
Heaven itself was falling into her eyes

Because the wolf was howling
Because the moon was on the rise
Because the sun was vanishing
Because the fire was in her eyes

Never trust a weather girl
She laughs while she kills you
Never kiss a weather girl

Everything gray was silver
Everyone wise was blind
The sound of her heart was drowning my replies

Because the wolf was howling
Because the moon was on the rise
Because the sun was fading
Because the storm was in her eyes
Because the wolf was howling
Because the moon was in the rise
Because the sun was vanishing
Because the fire was in her eyes

The bottom line is the spilled wine
The ruby lake on the table
Dripping on my knees
Like the tears of a blind man
Who newly sees

The bottom line is the familiar ache
Too real to shake
Too hard to explain
Too easy
Like a prism of colors in the rain

The bottom line is the warm blood
That seeps its way out of my cold heart
To the beat of a drum
Always carried
All the time
Always a rhythm rhyming inside
Making me a tall, awkward song

The bottom line is the sometimes welling up in the eyes
That the noisy world
All too eagerly dries
With whatever it happens to be selling
At the time

Or is the bottom line this?
Beauty and terror on a dreamed date
Moving each other close
Dancing a slow motion universe bending down sarabande
Locked staring into each other’s eyes
As if for the first
Or the last
Time

The bottom line is some unknown, unspoken word
I need another word
For that which comes out of nowhere
So good
Like a smiling child
Glimpsed in a room full of strangers
A room full of good things to eat
As if it has all been somehow prearranged:
She’s smiling at me
Even though we both know
We’ll never meet

At some point during what had to have been at least 3 days straight without sleep last week (brought to you by Adderall: “Because the doc’s not allowed to tell you that a slight meth addiction would actually help you, in your case.”) I caught this on BBCA – the version of BBC intended to convince Americans that all Britons are highly cultured people with a refined tastes for intelligent entertainment like “Doctor Who” and would never air something so vapid as “Jersey Shore” or “Teen Moms 2″ (check our sister channel for the version of Big Brother with naked breasts!).

I’m not sure how old Anthony Hopkins is here, but this is such a captivating combination of voice, face, and expressive eyes…all with impeccable timing. Even though I knew the poem by heart, seeing this made me hear it anew:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, to late, they grieved on their way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Do you ever notice that life seems to take on a theme at times? Perhaps subtly or perhaps forcefully, everything for a period seems a variation on a theme…usually for a week or two, but sometimes longer. I know this is a type of confirmation bias, but that doesn’t dampen the impression. Sadly, life of late has appeared to be too much about loss…about death. Almost death, sudden death, heartbreaking death. This is for someone, but maybe for me as well…that maybe it would be a coda on this theme, or at least a note to turn the page.

The taste of your sweet breath
The salt of morning tears
The last time I said goodbye to you
Hold on tight
So good to hurt so bad
So sad to fly away renewed
Go on laugh
Go on cry
It’s alright

There’s something wonderful about love
There’s something wonderful about love
There’s something lost about me with you
There’s something blind about the smitten few
There’s something wonderful about love

Was I meant to be yours
Only to find my fate so soon
Do you believe true love is blind
‘Cause I don’t know
It’s such a fragile thing
And weren’t you glad to be mine
Just don’t laugh
Please don’t cry
Just say so

There’s something wonderful about love
There’s something wonderful about love
There’s something dark about destiny
There’s something blue about you with me
There’s something wonderful about love

I know the call came late
The world had turned four times
Now I’m on your mind but I’m nowhere
In your world
Please kiss the little bird
I’ll watch over the cozy cage we shared
You thrilled me
You filled me up
You were my dreams, girl

There’s something wonderful about love
There’s something wonderful about
There’s something liberating death alone brings
There’s something funny ’bout a lot of sad things
There’s something wonderful about love

Lovely

I miss the curves
Of the slender girl
Who lied to me
With boundless joy, it seemed
Who spun some future
From gossamer thread and broken glass
A fragile thing
The shape of which came naturally
(To her, I suppose)

Beneath the drifting ship of sky
With clouds for sails
And rocky shores for rope
If all else fails, we’ll keep the lie alive
Until it’s true

Words grow stale on my tongue
Robbing the past of its flavor
For what do you hunger now?
Empty calories at best
At best

From the ashes of the flame you sparked
Gather your tassels and fly
On wings laden with fear
Into a sun setting in the east
Then color me impressed
Distantly, and with shades of grey

We wore those days
Like charms around our necks,
And dragged those nights out
In a bed of starry laughter
Now your charms they drown you
While mine are washed away
Swallowed up in limestone fields
You count the tides, I court the moon

Many dishes are best served cold
I know your kind of chivalry
May it ruin you beautifully
Some glorious conflagration
And may you rise again

You’ll not know (from me)
There’s a shred of something
Left in these shallows
Something lovely that you overlooked
And failed to kill

There are no right or wrong answers about language in the sense in which there are right and wrong answers in Arithmetic. “Good English” is whatever educated people talk; so that what is good in one place or time would not be so in another [...] Don’t take any notice of teachers and textbooks in such matters. Nor of logic.

1. Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

2. Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.

3. Never use abstract nouns when concrete ones will do. If you mean “More people died” don’t say “Mortality rose.”

4. In writing. Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”; make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”

5. Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Finally, and most importantly…

If you become a writer you’ll be trying to describe the thing all your life: and lucky if, out of dozens of books, one or two sentences, just for a moment, come near to getting it across.

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