The Lady and the Tiger

March is almost over. Another Slice of Life Story Challenge about to go into the history books. Today is also the birthday of my friend Heidi. And April starts National Poetry Month.  I thought of all that, and suddenly I knew I needed to repost a couple of very old posts.

Heidi is a musician. Her professional name is Heidi Sabertooth (hence the title of this post). Back in 2012, she embarked on a writing challenge just as I started the SOLS challenge for that year. Her challenge? Write, record, and post a song a day for 100 days. Seriously. And then she upped the ante on the challenge by undertaking to create a video for each song. Because she is clearly so very much more ambitious than I can ever pretend to be!

I interviewed her when she was almost halfway through her challenge. And she had chosen one of my poems to set to music, so the interview and the song were posted on the same day.

Beans and Rice: Power and Control is the 8-year-old post that led to the poem Heidi set to music. Catching a Tiger by the Tail is the interview with Heidi that includes the video of the song. And I’m still trying to do that, still trying to catch that tiger, still taking on the SOLS challenge every March, still pushing myself to write a month of poetry every April, still striving.

It’s been a good month of writing. A good month of priming the pump to get ready for the grueling challenge of April. I am, as I am every year, grateful to everyone who reads here, grateful to the wonderful team at Two Writing Teachers who keep this challenge going and hold this space year after year.

❤

---

It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!

Contact

Today was better than yesterday. There was a little weepiness when my work hours began, but then things smoothed out, brightened.

It kind of had to be a better day because I started it so wonderfully, listening to the lovely, peaceful-spirited Okorie Johnson (aka OkCELLO) playing his soul-embracing music to sing up the sun.

The ways people are finding to find and share themselves during this period of self-isolation is beautiful and inspiring.

We crave connection, right? Even those of us who are happy alone at home, sometimes we want to know that someone’s out there, someone’s looking for us, listening for us. This need makes me think of Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch” …

I’m waiting for ignition, I’m looking for a spark
Any chance collision and I light up in the dark
There you stand before me, all that fur and all that hair
Oh, do I dare, I have the touch
Wanting contact
I’m wanting contact
I’m wanting contact with you

We want contact. So we’re creating it, we’re shining our lights at each other, hoping the sparks catch long distance.

I’m doing my part, adding to that reaching out. Tonight I had a cross-country zoom writing date and I’ll be hosting a zoom storytelling event on Friday.

I’m closing out the night listening to the final set of D-Nice’s house party on Instagram live. I’m already in bed, so no dancing for me, but I’m enjoying the energy and the thousands of people listening along with me — 32,600 when I first logged on (including an actual cavalcade of bright lights: Mc Lyte, Valerie Jarret, Halle Berry, Chuck D, Ruth E. Carter, Laila Ali, Dule Hill, and the Rock)! His Prince set — a gift to Ms. Berry — almost made me miss posting on time!!

This might have to become a shelter-in-place habit!

---

It’s March, which means it’s time for the
13th annual Slice of Life Story Challenge!
Curious? Head on over to Two Writing Teachers
and see what the rest of this year’s slicers are up to!

E is for: Earworm

Yes, of course I’m still watching April. Tell me you’re not. How are you managing to resist?

But I have other things going on, too. Thank heavens for multi-tasking skills.

__________

There is a random man I see on my way home from time to time. He’s one of my “bus neighbors,” someone I don’t know but recognize because we’re both regulars on the B65.

He seems a nice enough man, but he drives me crazy because he’s always listening to his music and doesn’t use headphones. Last night I learned that he’s bought himself a little bluetooth speaker!

He plays music I like, for the most part, but that’s not entirely the point. If I’m trying to read or write (or sleep), that music is the bane of my existence. If, like tonight, a song gets caught in my head … GAAAAH!!

Till We Just Can’t

Your repetition
driving me out of my mind.
Same nonsense words, looped
over, over … and again.
You keep telling me
to “get up on the floor” —
you’ve been telling me
near a solid forty years —
If I dance, will you fade out?

This, of course, is utter I’m-so-tired foolishness, but it is also a chōka, and I’m going to take these where I find them until I can get some rest and try to find some deeper inspiration.

_____

A chōka is a Japanese form poem with a specific syllable count per line: 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 5 / 7 / 7.

---

---

It’s alright if you love me …

Had an audio flashback yesterday that’s still playing its tune today. I was sent back in time to the first time I heard Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “Breakdown” was an instant favorite for me. Something about the way Petty sang those first lines:

It’s alight if you love me.
It’s alright if you don’t.
I’m not afraid of you running away, honey.
I get the feeling you won’t.

I’d never heard anyone sing like him. The sound of his voice, the sound of that lyric. They just clicked so hard for me. I was young and unworldly enough that I didn’t fully understand what Petty was singing about, but the song communicated with me all the same. Fox (my younger sister) and I used to sing this song all the time. I was Petty, she was the Heartbreakers. If we’d grown up Irish, “Breakdown” would have been one of our party pieces.

Heard five seconds of the intro guitar behind a promo for a news show on my way out the door yesterday … and I was cast back, back upstate, standing in the living room in front of the stereo, singing with Fox.

Woke up with the song in my head today. First thought, before “snowmageddon 2015,” before conscious thought. Thanks, NPR, for that musical time travel magic.

Something inside you
is feeling like I do.
We’ve said all there is to say.

Baby —

Breakdown, go ahead and give it to me.
Breakdown, honey, take me through the night.
Breakdown, now I’m standing here, can’t you see —
breakdown, it’s alright.
It’s alright.
It’s alright.

---

It’s Tuesday, friends. There’s snow on the ground, and it’s a Slice of Life day. Head over to Two Writing Teachers to see the rest of the day’s slices.

You Are My Destiny (30 Stories — 25)

Kids in my neighborhood had silly names.  Names like Bunky, Swish, Momo, and Crayfish.  They had clubhouses and hideouts, played kick-the-can and never went home in time for supper.  We would sit with our heads bowed for grace and hear mothers’ voices screaming up and down the block and in the alley behind Shopwell.  As soon as grace was said, my mother would frown and say, “Trash.”

Swish and Bunky and Coco-Johnny were trash. Crayfish was probably trash. He moved away when I was six and I didn’t really know him, so I couldn’t say. Creep-Eddy, Broke, and Shave were brothers and lived next door. I supposed they were trash, too, but they were nice to me and never teased me because I had only my real name. Momo was my husband.

Shave had married us.  Creep-Eddy gave me away and Bunky sang the wedding march: “You Are My Destiny.”  When it was over, they locked us in the garage and said we had to make a honeymoon.

The garage was crowded with bikes, lawnmowers, tools and lengths of hose.  There were three small windows at the top of the roll-up door, but they were gritty and black and only a dim grey-dusty light came through.  I pulled myself up to sit on the work table, and Momo paced around, poking into things, picking up reflectors and nails, leaving them beside me on the table.

He tipped his head toward the door.  “Some joke,” he said about the oohing, aahing and sloppy kiss noises, but over the top, I heard Bunky’s melody.

I leaned into the dream as Bunky’s sweet soprano dripped passion: “You are my destiny.  You share my reverie.  You’re more than happiness.  That’s what you are.”

__________

Originally intended to be part of 30 Stories 30 Days / Tumblr.