Tuesday, April 30, 2013

An Eclectic Collection of MY Poetry

Steal upon pain of death!
haha, guillotine bowling!

Anyways, this is a collection of poems (some of which are old and some of which were written for my Intro to Creative Writing class) that I'm going to be sharing with the aforementioned class on Wednesday for a peer-review. 

For readers of a sensitive disposition (aka - my family - my entire readership) there is a naughty word at the end of "Ode to the Fairytale Princess"  and one less naughty word at the end of "You" Other than that, it's perfectly fine.  Happy reading!



Prose Poem

 

Cold coffee is a graveyard.  It makes my stomach sick – churn like an ocean.  My mug is a little urn with the ashy remains of cheap dining hall brew.  I can feel particulates on my tongue, sliding, tumbling down the tube into my body.  Neither warm nor cold, it is that awful temperature in between.  From yesterday—it is stale.  Around the edges, the meniscus, the brew turns green.  The tumbler is silver and fades to copper; it’s rusting from the inside out. 

 

 

You,

 

How do I convey my scream from me to you?

To scream aloud I suppose would do

To get this thing from me to you.

I do, I do.

The words belong to you.

I thought you knew

What you would have to do,

You swore to see it through.

You went back on your word, The Word, the “I love you”.

You liar, yes you, oh you,

I wish you’d dealt me a through-and-through,

Carved out my eyes of blue

So I didn’t have to see her and you;

A year long memento of what I couldn’t do.

I hope she breaks your heart, yes I do,

So you will see that I, that I was true.

You damn liar you.

 

 

 

 

 

Peanut butter and jelly—

My roommate is smelly.

I used to think

That the awful stink

            Was from her boyfriend.

            She said he smelled like peanut butter,

But really, it smelled like feet—

What kind of peanut butter do you eat?

 

Now, the boy is no longer here

And the air still hasn’t cleared,

So I’ve done some logical reasoning;

It is my roommate with the unconventional seasoning.

 

 

 

 
Ode to the Fairytale Princess

 

Spin and twirl and silver

Goes the virgin’s gown.

This is your magic night.

 

Don’t listen to the world,

They’re not screaming,

There is no death, no hurt.

 

Keep your eyes closed,

Princess,

We want you stupid.

 

Don’t ever learn, because only

Your Prince can make you happy.

You are not your own.

 

It’s a rape, your Blindness.

Glossy eyes and a pretty face,

But no soul.

 

So swirl and twirl and dance away

Your life.  Nothing else is out there,

The world is this ballroom.

 

Didn’t you know,

Kind-and-gentle-heart,

A man is either handsome or evil?

 

Happily ever after ends with

Scribbles on your headstone.

No one knows your name.

 

You should have lived,

You stupid girl.

You blind little whore.

 
 
 

 

The Necromancer

Knocking bones answer the call

The green-black spells,

Of ancient words read from moldy pages

In the elder tongue,

The primal speak,

The fears woven into man’s soul.

He trucks with devils

That roam the hearts and lands.

Flesh and sinew remade out of smoke and ash—

His bloody children,

He makes life from the clay.

Through the dank night air

The conjuror searches

For a fresh new stone

With pasty, fleshy bones,

For eyes to see behind him,

And bones to walk beside him.

Through bog and peat and moor,

This crow snatches at the secrets to life.

Sliming eyes peel open at the touch of a hand,

The will of a mind.

The white and clicking children

Walk through the fields at night,

Peering with eyeless sockets at the fireside,

Running down travelers on the roads,

And sheep in the hills.

Flesh and blood,

At work over a corpse;

Stitching and switching,

Summon the dead.

Arise from what is beyond

The misted river.

He lifts the veil

To peer with living eyes

Into the world of the dead.

 

 

 

 Poem

 
Happy


Flubber


Pub


Tree
 

Bumblebee

It's Me Again! And I'm Going to Build an Arts Colony (not really)

First and foremost I would like to apologize for my lack of online presence in recent weeks. 
But I have some lovelies for you
First off, and not so lovely is the two papers I wrote for my Cultural Anthropology class.  Yeah, they're not smashing pieces of writing (or of intelligent work) but, hey, I'll post them anyways.


The Lakota people are part of the Sioux Nation—a confederacy of three tribes.  There are seven bands of people within the Lakota tribe.  There are the Ogala, Sicangu, Hunkpapa, Miniconjou, Sihasapa, Itazpacola, and the Oohenupa.  The Lakota are the largest tribe within the Sioux Nation. 

            The Lakota were originally living in Minnesota, but moved west when they domesticated horses and European settlers moved into their lands.  They came to North and South Dakota and became a nomadic people who lived in teepees and followed the buffalo herds across the plains.  They began to use the horses that arrived in the Americas in the 1500s and became known among indigenous peoples as great warriors.

            They were a matriarchal society, and women ruled the domestic and family aspects of the various bands.  The Lakota had strict differentiations between the gender roles.  Men were hunters and had to defend the tribe if the need arose.  Monogamous marriages were most common, but men were allowed to have more than one wife. 

            Leaders of the tribe were chosen on a high social status from birth, but also on their wisdom and bravery. 

            Within the Lakota, there were two societies for men.  Membership in these societies would advance a man’s standing in within the tribe.  For the young men, there was the Akicita, who were warriors and hunters, and there were divisions among the Akicita.  For male elders, there was the Naca society, and they could declare war, determine the movements of their nomadic camp, and deal with community-related issues.

            The Lakota did not take to United States invasion passively.  There were several wars and many other battles (including the famous Little Bighorn battle) between 1862 until the massacre at Wounded Knee in late 1890. 

            Over many years and through several treaties that the U.S. broke, the lands allotted to the Lakota people shrank and shrank. 

            Nowadays, there are only eight isolated pockets of land mostly within South Dakota that the majority of the entire Sioux Nation lives on.  The government has tried to force the lifestyles of family farming and craftsmanship on them.  Then, during the Dust Bowl, much of the land in South Dakota was abandoned, and the federal government transferred the lands to the National Parks.  This land included the Black Hills which were sacred to the Lakota.  In 1980, the Supreme Court ruled that the land was taken illegally, but the US government has only offered financial compensation. 

            The Lakota still persist—they want their sacred lands returned to them.

So that's Part A in which we talk about a culture and their history and whatnot.  We were also supposed to identify a problem and then propose a solution to it - that's where Part B comes in. 

Now, bear with me here, because things are about to get conceptual and fancy.  (The article I read for research on this was informative, but also ghastly - and by that I mean boring!  I hope that my Part B isn't as ghastly as the article was)


A significant problem facing the Lakota tribe is poverty.  There are a few significant contributors to their poverty—a lack of adherence to the western notion of clock time, and the failure of the government to create job opportunities that can coexist with the Lakota way of life (Pickering).

            The Lakota sense of time is task oriented, meaning that things are not defined by the hour or minute, but rather by the things that get accomplished.  ‘Time was never a specific minute, but rather spaces of time, like early morning, just after noon, or just before midnight’ says a Lakota elder interviewed by Kathleen Pickering (92). 

            For the Lakota, socializing and working are inseparable, because “work happens where people are, rather than in an exclusive setting designated as the ‘work place’.  Economic opportunity is defined by maintaining good social relationships”(92).  Favors are traded and an individual or family can accumulate social capital so that, in times of hardship, their relations and friends will come to their aid. 

            Spending the majority of their days working in the western sense, would prevent them from having the opportunity to maintain their relationships.  ‘You have to take time enough to ask ‘do you need help?’ or ‘is there anything I can do?’ says a Lakota woman interviewed by Pickering (93).  The woman also says that those who don’t participate in the social network would be something of an outcast—unable to ask for help should the need arise.

            The government’s attempts to alleviate poverty in the Lakota tribe actually discourage them from work.  Aid programs like TANF operate on an income system, so that the more the recipient earns, the less aid he receives.  So if a Lakota woman was to sell a pair of homemade earrings, her aid money would decrease by the amount of money she earned from the sale—so why even bother?

            My proposed solution is an attempt to reconcile the two different notions of the economy that exist between western society and Lakota traditions. 

            Somewhere either extremely close to, or on the reservation, would be built an arts colony, to be staffed almost entirely by Lakota peoples.  An arts colony would need to be maintained, by housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners.  Instead of being paid by the hour, workers would be paid by the task they completed—a certain amount of money for tidying rooms, or mowing a lawn, or cooking a meal.  This way, the notion of work would still be task-oriented, and once the work has been completed, the employee is free to return to the reservation and maintain social relationships. 

            An arts colony would work better than a resort or a hotel, because the residents do not come to be entertained—they come to sit by themselves and to produce artistic works.  Therefore, they would not need to be constantly tended to.  One of the few people that would be required to always be on the colony premises would be security personnel.  The colony should be close enough to a reservation town so that artists could frequent is without issue.

            Usually, there are also organized events and activities in the evenings at an arts colony—these could be run by the Lakota as well, and would be good opportunity for craftsmen among the tribe to sell some of their works to other artists. 

            Because of the unique task-oriented nature of an arts colony, I believe it would be a good fit for employment that does not clash with the Lakota way of life. 
Yeah, so that's that.  Oi vey.

I love a good pun. 

Monday, April 8, 2013

Cecilia's Fate, Round Three

So, after talking to my friend Taylor, I rearranged it so that it's completely chronological, and that's about it. Maybe just a few little details in the description of Cecilia.  This is what got submitted to the Writing Contest, so, I hope the revisions were for the better! 
 
 
Cecilia’s Fate

by Kayleigh McKay

 

 

            It was cold, and the sidewalks were coated with a layer of slush so that she had to step in the footprints left behind by others to keep her shoes dry.  No one had expected it to snow that day, it was too far into spring.

            The snow had only recently fallen—during the last few hours of the school day.  She had spent all of her fifth grade Arithmetic’s class craning her neck to watch the flakes come down and then melt on the street below.  She had been in a world where snowflakes were solid pieces of air, and when there was too much air in the world, some of it turned to snow and fell out of the sky.

            She was an average looking girl—her long dark hair fell loose and tangled down her shoulders.  She wore the same pair of black leather shoes that all the other girls wore.  Except her family didn’t have enough money to buy her new shoes that fit, or to repair the ones she had.  The soles were worn and along the seams there were holes.

            When the school day was over and groups of students poured out the doors and over the steps of the school, she walked home by herself—no one else lived where she did.

            There was only one set of footprints in the slush, and she hoped that whoever came before her was going was going the same way she was. 

            Her walk home to her family’s apartment was only a few blocks, but the wind and the weight of the books under her arm stretched out the streets and slowed down time.  The walk became too long.

            Across the street from her apartment building was a dumpy old fairground.  She’d heard that the city was going to tear it down as part of the president’s New Deal plan.  They were going to build another apartment complex.

            Today, there was something new to the fairground, a kind of light and sparkle that she’d never seen before.  Just inside the rotted wooden gate was a horse-drawn wagon.  It was colored a bright and obscene green.  The paint was old and discolored such that it appeared in different shades as she approached the wagon.

            The lurid green color was so out of place in the endless gray of the city that she was drawn to it, heedless of the cold soaking into her shoes.  Her footprints veered off the sidewalk and crossed into the road.

            It wasn’t like the wagons that sold vegetables at the markets—this was like the wagons in the photographs of the pioneers who first ventured out to the west.  It wasn’t roofed however, by canvas, but rather with wood—it even had its own tiny chimney jutting out from one side.  It was more common for vendors to use automobiles, but not unheard of for horse-drawn wagons to still come to market.

            As she crossed from the road to the opposite sidewalk, a young man appeared from out of the wagon.  He clambered down a set of rickety stairs extending from the rear of the wagon to the ground.

            The man came around to the front of the wagon and stopped short when he saw the little girl.  He was too tall and too skinny.  He father would have called him “a beanpole”.  There was a mess of earth-colored hair that fell somewhere between his shoulders and his ears.  He was a funny looking man—his eyes seemed too big for his face, and he wore boots furrier than a mink coat—

            “What?” the man said, looking down at his feet, “They’re better in snow than those ridiculous holey things you’re wearing!”

            She blinked.  “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to be rude.”

            He waved her apology off, “I’m not really offended.”  He turned and took a few steps back towards the wagon, then stopped.  “Aren’t you coming?”  The man turned again to look at her.

            She shook her head.

            He sighed.  “What’s the difference between over there,” he indicated the sidewalk, “and over here?”

            She stood just shy of the open gate.  The girl shook her head again.

            The young man looked exasperated.  “But I’ve got something for you!  It’s very special and I don’t think anyone else should have it.”

            The girl crossed her arms.  “What is it?” she asked with the voice her mother reserved for haggling with shopkeepers.

            “I won’t show you if you don’t come over here.”

 

            The inside of the man’s wagon was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. 

            There were two workbenches running opposite each other on either side.  Above the workbenches were shelves, cluttered with strange and obscure books with symbols on the spines that she would never see again in her life.  In between the books were haphazardly placed gadgets.  They were mechanical in nature, and defied all the young girl’s attempts to guess their function.

            There was a small fire towards the front of the wagon—no doubt attached to that odd little chimney.  The light from the flames lit the small space with a strong orange glow. 

            The young man sat on a wheeled stool and flew from one bench to the other with an air of much practice.  The spaced was cramped and the man hunched over—with his over large eyes, this made him look bird-like.  He was rummaging through drawers and looking under stacks of paper.  Finally, he found what was hers.

            It was a key.  It was old—antique—and had mother-of-pearl laid into the handle.  It had her name on it—Cecilia.  The letters looped and curled into themselves.  If she had tried to trace the path of a single line she would’ve gotten lost and stared at it forever.  The lines of her name would begin to dance and shift if she stared at them for long enough.

            The man didn’t want any money in exchange for the key.  He said it had been hers for quite some time and she pretended to believe him.

            “This key will fit into any lock, but the doors it opens…they will not take you to any place you know.  Listen to me because this is important,” he leaned in close to her and she realized that she could not name the color of his large glassy eyes.  “Are you listening?”

            “Yes,” the girl squirmed uncomfortably.

            “Good.  Once you use this key, and enter—you’re not paying attention!”

            Her eyes snapped back up to his.  She had been watching the letters on the key writhe around.  “Sorry,” she set the key down on the workbench.  It was heavier than she expected it to be.

            “Nothing that you see will ever be the same way again.  What you choose to do with this key is the most important decision of your life.”

            She didn’t want to be around him anymore—he was now no longer simply intriguing.  Now, he was talking nonsense, as her father would say.  He was probably one of those people that belong in a sanitarium.  “What are you talking about?  You’re not making any sense.” said her mother’s haggling voice. 

            The man became impatient.  “It’s a place, another place.  Don’t you read adventure books?”

            “They’re not real,” she insisted, petulantly, like an adult.

            “This place is real.”

            “Oh yeah?  Well, show me a map of it then.”  This was a child’s voice.

            “Only madmen make maps of the other world.”

            “Why?”

            “Because it is impossible to know.  It has many different…layers—levels.  It doesn’t function the way this world does.”

            She decided then that he did belong in a sanitarium, and the young man could sense that he had lost her.  His thin angular shoulders drooped.  He sighed.  “I’m sorry,” he said “but that key isn’t yours anymore.  You should go now.”

            Her eyebrows came together and she opened her mouth to ask a question, but the man waved her off and slid the key away from her.  It fell into his pocket.

            So the girl went, and stepped back into the footprints on the other sidewalk, and felt relieved when she passed the fairground the next day on her way to school and saw that the wagon was gone and the old wooden gate was closed.

            The snow had melted away and so she was free to walk wherever she chose.  Neither the man nor the wagon was there when she went home in the evening.  None of her friends had noticed them at all.  She suspected it was gone forever.

            It wasn’t until years later, when she was a mother of three screaming children, that she wished she had taken the key.

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Cecilia's Fate, Round Two

A revised and better version of the short story I had up here earlier.  I'm going to submit it to the Writing Contest here at my college, so I will be posting the results on that.  I have fingers crossed, but I don't want to get my hopes up.  Don't steal it, or I will hurt you.

Cecilia’s Fate

 

 

            It was cold, and the sidewalks were coated with a layer of slush so that she had to step in the footprints left behind by others to keep her shoes dry.  No one had expected it to snow that day, it was too far into spring.

            The snow had only recently fallen—during the last few hours of the school day.  She had spent all of her fifth grade Arithmetic’s class craning her neck to watch the flakes come down and then melt on the street below.  She had been in a world where snowflakes were solid pieces of air, and when there was too much air in the world, some of it turned to snow and fell out of the sky.

            She was an average looking girl—her long dark hair fell loose and tangled down her shoulders.  She wore a two-small pair of black leather shoes, like all the other girls.  Except her family didn’t have enough money to buy her new shoes that fit, or to repair the ones she had.  The soles were worn and along the seams there were holes.

            When the school day was over and groups of students poured out the doors and over the steps of the school, she walked home by herself—no one else lived where she did.

            There was only one set of footprints in the slush, and she hoped that whoever came before her was going was going the same way she was. 

            Her walk home to her family’s apartment was only a few blocks, but the wind and the weight of the books under her arm stretched out the streets and slowed down time.  The walk became too long.

            Across the street from her apartment building was a dumpy old fairground.  She’d heard that the city was going to tear it down as part of the president’s New Deal plan.  They were going to build another apartment complex.

            Today, there was something new to the fairground, a kind of light and sparkle that she’d never seen before.  Just inside the rotted wooden gate was a horse-drawn wagon.  It was colored a bright and obscene green.  The paint was old and discolored such that it appeared in different shades as she approached the wagon.

            The lurid green color was so out of place in the endless gray of the city that she was drawn to it, heedless of the cold soaking into her shoes.  Her footprints veered off the sidewalk and crossed into the road.

            It wasn’t like the wagons that sold vegetables at the markets—this was like the wagons in the photographs of the pioneers who first ventured out to the west.  It wasn’t roofed however, by canvas, but rather with wood—it even had its own tiny chimney jutting out from one side.  It was more common for vendors to use automobiles, but not unheard of for horse-drawn wagons to still come to market.

            As she crossed from the road onto the opposite sidewalk, a young man appeared from out of the wagon.  He clambered down a set of rickety stairs extending from the rear of the wagon to the ground.

            The man came around to the front of the wagon and stopped short when he saw the little girl.  He was too tall and too skinny.  He father would have called him “a beanpole”.  There was a mess of earth-colored hair that fell somewhere between his shoulders and his ears.  He was a funny looking man—his eyes seemed too big for his face, and he wore boots that would rival a mink coat—

            “What?” the man said, looking down at his feet, “They’re better in snow than those ridiculous holey things you’re wearing!”

            She blinked.  “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to be rude.”

            He waved her apology off, “I’m not really offended.”  He turned and took a few steps back towards the wagon, then stopped.  “Aren’t you coming?”  The man turned again to look at her.

            She shook her head.

            He sighed.  “What’s the difference between over there,” he indicated the sidewalk, “and over here?”

            She stood just shy of the open gate.  The girl shook her head again.

            The young man looked exasperated.  “But I’ve got something for you!  It’s very special and I don’t think anyone else should have it.”

            The girl crossed her arms.  “What is it?” she asked with the voice her mother reserved for haggling with shopkeepers.

            “I won’t show you if you don’t come over here.”

 

            The inside of the man’s wagon was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. 

            There were two workbenches running opposite each other on either side.  Above the workbenches were shelves, cluttered with strange and obscure books with symbols on the spines that she would never see again in her life.  In between the books were haphazardly placed gadgets.  They were mechanical in nature, and defied all the young girl’s attempts to guess their function.

            There was a small fire towards the front of the wagon—no doubt attached to that odd little chimney.  The light from the flames lit the small space with a strong orange glow. 

            The young man sat on a wheeled stool and flew from one bench to the other with an air of much practice.  The spaced was cramped and the man hunched over—with his over large eyes, this made him look bird-like.  He was rummaging through drawers and looking under stacks of paper.  Finally, he found what was hers.

            It was a key.  It was old—antique—and had mother-of-pearl laid into the handle.  It had her name on it—Cecilia.  The letters looped and curled into themselves.  If she had tried to trace the path of a single line she would’ve gotten lost and stared at it forever.  The lines of her name would begin to dance and shift if she stared at them for long enough.

            The man didn’t want any money in exchange for the key.  He said it had been hers for quite some time and she pretended to believe him.

           

            When she passed the fairground the next day on her way to school, she saw that the wagon was gone and the old wooden gate was closed.

            The snow had melted away and so she was free to walk wherever she chose.  Neither the man nor the wagon was there when she went home in the evening.  None of her friends had noticed them at all.  She suspected it was gone forever.

 

            “This key will fit into any lock, but the doors it opens…they will not take you to any place you know.  Listen to me because this is important,” he leaned in close to her and she realized that she could not name the color of his large glassy eyes.  “Are you listening?”

            “Yes,” the girl squirmed uncomfortably.

            “Good.  Once you use this key, and enter—you’re not paying attention!”

            Her eyes snapped back up to his.  She had been watching the letters on the key writhe around.  “Sorry,” she set the key down on the workbench.  It was heavier than she expected it to be.

            “Nothing that you see will ever be the same way again.  What you choose to do with this key is the most important decision of your life.”

            She didn’t want to be around him anymore—he was now no longer simply intriguing.  Now, he was talking nonsense, as her father would say.  He was probably one of those people that belong in a sanitarium.  “What are you talking about?  You’re not making any sense.” said her mother’s haggling voice. 

            The man became impatient.  “It’s a place, another place.  Don’t you read adventure books?”

            “They’re not real,” she insisted, petulantly, like an adult.

            “This place is real.”

            “Oh yeah?  Well, show me a map of it then.”  This was a child’s voice.

            “Only madmen make maps of the other world.”

            “Why?”

            “Because it is impossible to know.  It has many different…layers—levels.  It doesn’t function the way this world does.”

            She decided then that he did belong in a sanitarium, and the young man could sense that he had lost her.  His thin angular shoulders drooped.  He sighed.  “I’m sorry,” he said “but that key isn’t yours anymore.  You should go now.”

            Her eyebrows came together and she opened her mouth to ask a question, but the man waved her off and slid the key away from her.  It fell into his pocket.

            So the girl went, and stepped back into the footprints on the other sidewalk, and felt relieved that she never saw the man or his wagon again.  It wasn’t until years later, when she was a mother of three screaming children, that she wished she had taken the key.