Thursday, April 17, 2014

Poem! Olyver Currant: April at Burlesque Press

View the entire 12-part series as it is published at Burlesque Press!

April is the cruellest month, its rainstorms
bleed and mix cold earth with warm rain, churning
dead soil to create bright new life, growing
strong and furious with Spring’s impatience,
prying the sleeping dead from their stone homes,
thunderstorms fixing the air with changes
wrought by flashes of brilliant golden lights
that tear their way through the green of trees,
sparking deep golden flames that sizzle loud
with the falling, pounding, malicious rain,
broken up, cold and hot, by the sun’s shine,
illuminating the manuscript leaves

read the rest!

#NPM14: Poem! Day 17: Supplies

From my NPM series on Twitter:

Supplies

Playing with paperclips
like I was ten again:
friendless in an office,
bending something,
anything to my will.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

#NPM14 Day 16: Poem! A Poem for Ashol-Pan

As always, you can follow the poems on Twitter!
HT to Ernest Hilbert of E-Verse Radio & William Kremer & Asher Svidensky & Ashol-Pan


A Poem for Ashol-Pan

In Mongolia
a girl loves her eagle.
I wish my poems
had wings & claws
so you would love them.


Tuesday, April 15, 2014

#NPM14: Day 15 Poem! "April: Still Cruel"

A poem for tax day:

April: Still Cruel

Taxing to
keep climbing
Parnassus
as if class
were what you
wished for when
closed eyes kissed

#NPM14 Day 14 Poem!

Posting today but wrote yesterday on Twitter; I think I'm going to reline the poor thing one day:

breezes bat
wide window
screens sift silt
rich rivers
clouds carry
I spy sky's
meek meaning
know nothing
still searching

Monday, April 14, 2014

#NPM14: Day 13 (catch up) Poem!

Untitled on Twitter because of character limits.

Kintsugi

When the form firms
to formality

When the dream dims
to reality

When the song sinks
to banality

Break it
but repair it

beautifully

#NPM14 Day 12 (make up) Poem!

I rather like this one. Working with the limitations of Twitter is a fascinating exercise.

My desk a mess
I confess my best
Investments miss
What this insists:
Dark cysts of sense
Intense words pinch
I inch my pen
Again to sing.

Mad Men 7: Post 01: Broken Peggy: She's not That Girl

It ain't Diamonds and Daisies for Peggy Olson, y'all.

Look at this picture:


Peggy's all fresh and lovely in her cute powersuit. Does she look familiar? She ought to.
She's "That Girl":


Now this is 1969, January 20th to be exact, so That Girl has been on TV for three years. We know Peggy watches it. That's the image she's giving off here. Girl about the world, high on life, joydeeveevree, all that jazz.

But Peggy knows a lot of things that ain't so. She's stuck with this jerk of a boss (please, please, please get rid of this cardigan wearing jackass by episode two, preferably in Bert Peterson fashion) and everyone she's ever loved: Don, Pete, Ted, Abe: all gone. She's alone as an incapable landlord in an undesirable part of town, pretending she knows what she's doing. While I'll admit that sounds a bit like this show (and Peggy could really use a competent Super), the whole point of dressing Peggy up like Marlo Thomas is to let us know that she doesn't have it going on. If we haven't picked up on that by the end of the episode, Weiner & Co let us know:

 
Here's Peggy, broken and alone in a scene that makes Janie Bryant cry. What this season will hold for Don, Pete, and Peggy is a bit unclear. We know Pete seems happy in California. Don seems happy back at work (even though he's Cyrano). Peggy is miserable. How will all of that change? How will these folks learn to live with who they are by the end of the 14th episode? Will they? Can they?

Do they have time to improve their lives?