25 days of joy, constraint, & my holiday brain: Day four.

Visit “Ornamental Illness” to catch one of my favorite writers, Chris Fay, fleshing out days of joy in a “holiday brain” series that is wry, ironic, and subtly earnest as well. Chris’ writing is conversational, taut, wry, wickedly funny, and always also seems to end up somewhere inextricably beautiful. Each piece seems to start with an expectation of ennui and effacement, but cannot stay there. He has too much love for the beautiful to sustain a winking pretense of smarm, and you find that the accretion of charm leads you before you are aware of it, to the great satisfaction of the landing.  I always get some chuckles and smiles from his work, as well as a sense that the world might be better than what the evidence would otherwise suggest.

Enjoy!

Ornamental Illnesses

The album art, especially the lyrics, for Goodbye Yellow Brick Road because Grooving Is Fundamental.

In my seven-year old opinion the finest turntable that folded out of a wall was made by NuTone Inc. of Cincinnati, Ohio. Only the truly civilized had turntables that folded out of a paneled wall. The first time I saw a turntable that just sat on a shelf, doing nothing, I was confused.

Strathmore was the eighteenth subdivision built by Levitt & Sons on Long Island. Situated on 677 acres on both sides of Exit 50, Bagatelle Road, in Dix Hills, they built 560 homes on large lots with no sidewalks. To get to the subdivision’s pool, you had to cross over the Long Island Expressway.

Most of my world consisted of one of four colonial-adjacent floor plans: the Endicott, the Fairfield, the Judson ranch, and ours, the five-bedroom Valbrook. Neighbors my parents did not…

View original post 1,178 more words

Ragdoll

Everyone needs to see this poem by Amaya, my long winded ramblings about it in the comments not so much. Ok everybody get ready to go a little limp in love…

Gospel Isosceles

I’m a ragdoll, carried by my God

I hear Jesus speak

Speak in a language I do not know

He takes my limp hand in his

Looks at my thumbnail

Addresses the atoms by name

I understand

They are neither male nor female

Like God or colors

View original post 57 more words

BTT #40: Four Poets You Gotta Read.

Hey Y'all.  Thirty years ago I was listening to a poet being interviewed on the radio.  Apparently such things happened back then and sometimes still might.  I don't remember who he was, I was busy driving on a busy Omaha winter road at the time.  He read a poem of his that had something to …

Windswept

Travel with Tosha to a place of quiet contrasts, peace, reconciliation. One of my favorite poems, opens the antithetical interiors of a quiet afternoon by the sea to the sweeping pathways of the the hearts breezeway. I love this. So I am reblogging it.  Link on in to it and get swept. Thanks Tosha, Lona

Everything I Never Told You

I am not she.
The view is not the same.
I sit by roses but don’t
see the thorns.
Even after all these years,
still full of the blush
of wonder

My air is warm, fragrant.
My heart speaks of
watercolor nights and
a breathless yearning.

I’m wild for you, but not
afflicted. I recite charms
through verse and song
by a bending light.

I speak in sunlight even
when the cumuli
starts to gather. Lying
face down in the grass.
Hope imprinted on my cheek.

My heart bleeds in syntax.
Just a gleaming of my
streaming soul. Writing what
touches me best.
Love. Fear. Happenstance.
A trembling mind.

The punctuation peppered
with sea salt and caramel.

I steadfastly sit by the ocean
as the boats drift away.
I choose to contend with the
wind. Making a symphony
with the air.

Chopin playing against
the elements and tide.
Never just…

View original post 47 more words