Uninspired, I Take an End of Summer Vacation

I’m using the end of summer as an excuse to take off from the blog, but really it’s hard to think of poetry right now. I’ll try to do something over the weekend, once the taste of this nasty, racist Republican Convention is replaced by one that is more likely to be telling the truth and more welcoming to women, gays and minorities. I lack inspiration as I’ve realized that my inspiration of late has all been a desperate lie. And the hilarious part is that sitting at the computer, wearing Depends because of MS has left me with my first diaper rash in 62 years. I am writing this wearing only a T-shirt and please, don’t imagine this poor old body. So, if anyone is curious, there you are and here I am. Back by the 4^th of September on a regular schedule, I swear.

Something new Haiku on a Picture: Haiga

Just One More Bit of the Book and Then We Write

Chapter One – Denim, Sweat and Linseed Oil

Liquid silk.

That’s what how I want my men to remember me.  There’s a certain liberation in knowing that the men from your past don’t give a damn about what you think. Not that many men, but enough. 

Recovering from Love is not about finding someone else, it’s about finding yourself. It’s a dance, you see. Part Apache and part minuet.  Everyone should have a bruise or two, but no one should be injured.

We were the generation that studied the Kama Sutra. We were the generation that memorized Kinsey and The Joy of Sex with those flabby, hairy and eager Hippie drawings that clumsily recreated the poses drawn much more elegantly in the Indian texts, but possessing a happy American spirit buoyed by commitment and rebellion. You wanted to have an Old Man and you wanted to be his Old Lady. Orgies were rare and legendary.

Let me just look at you for one more minute and then I’ll leave. I won’t say a word, I’ll  just stand here and breathe in your scent. Some women might say that you smell unwashed but it doesn’t strike my nose that way. Because it’s yours. I will remember that forever, the way it touches the back of my nose and fills my mouth with the taste of dried flowers; a blend of denim, sweat and linseed oil.

I remember you as velvet stone. Warm stone, carved by Michaelangelo.  A strong back, wide at the shoulders, wet from the shower, head thrown back and water running down the curves of your back and over your strong bottom, dripping down your long, muscled legs.

An Attempt to Write A Novel -- First 2 Pages

LIQUID SILK

By Susan B. Reinhard

"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength,

who makes enormous demands on me,

who does not doubt my courage or my toughness,

who does not believe me naïve or innocent,

who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
— Anaïs Nin

She was not a person who wrote about sex. She believed that humans should simply do it. She did not need pictures or lace or leather or “dirty” words. She was a gray-haired older woman with her hair in a bun and she was speaking of long ago, but vivid memories. “You know from his touch. You know from his scent. This is my male. I want to mate with this one.”  Susan lowered her coffee cup and asked rhetorically:  “Does the Wolf in the forest know the age of his female? Does he check her over from head to toe and reject her for an asymmetrical paw or ragged patch of her fur? No. The Wolf has never seen a commercial or read a book. His mind is completely free of all the noises that infect that of the modern human male. They sniff. They mate. Then, trot off to live together forever.”

Velda and Brigltte exchanged the tiniest of quick glances, praying no one in the crowed atrium restaurant could hear. They were holding their breaths, praying that Susan’s lecture would not demand any audience participation. Velda, the redhead, and the taller of the two, raised her hands and mimed writing on a pad,  the universal gesture for “bring the check.” Brigette, the tiny blonde her purse up from the floor and began looking for something, anything, to change the subject.

Back in the 1960’s, you didn’t need anything but a naked body. Maybe because it wasn’t a world of television and commercials and the internet, people weren’t seduced into thinking that they could have the movie star…that they DESERVED the movie star and would get him if they just bought this product or that service.

There is a sterile scent to sex nowadays. It is perfume, not scent. There is a shiny paper, computer screen indulgence that lets you have anyone, take anyone in your imagination. Worse of all, there are prices for services and not just from prostitutes. The best women, meaning most sexual, will get the best men, meaning most salaried. She will close her eyes and dreams of his checkbook will inspire her to act out whatever climax he needs.

But women are are only permitted to select if she is young and beautiful. One wonders if animals need anything other than health and strength If we had not gotten so far from our animal instincts, we would not need pornography. We would know what the word “satisfaction” means.

So who am I writing this for?

Am I writing it for the women of the harem or the Prince who is peeking in through a crack in the wall, silently praying for a flash of flesh? Would that I had a way to secretly glimpse at him asleep in his bed, his broad shoulders bare. The throat flowing into clavicles like graceful bows of bone that lead to strong arms which end in those amazing long and tapered hands that we would happily fill with our velvet breasts.

But he is not a Prince and American women do not live in harems. American women don’t want to dwell in Harems, even though it would mean we would have a sisterhood of enslavement. No. We want to be free. We want to be the only woman in his life. We want to be enough.

Sonnet 68 -- Daydreams End at 63

Why look for Love when all the world’s aflame

By now we know we are the fools of dreams

Our sires, our luck, our blindness are to blame

Despite the bromides of rife Facebook memes

Our faces are wrinkled, our boobs doth sag

We will remain unfamous and dirt poor

I am naught but an aging rhyming hag

A good twenty years past a saucy whore

No longer can I await Prince Charming

Nor you for a witty and brilliant slut

Age has a way of neatly disarming

And kicking our fantasies in the gut

Today, today is our only pleasure

Let me learn at last to savor leisure

Poems de Twit August 2012

1.

We daydreamers will never touch the ground

Because the shambles of our lives are sharp

Music in our heads blocks the ragged sound

Of time’s endless march and Death Angel’s harp

2.

we don’t know

what normal is

terrified

we escaped into

the dreams

3.

artificial air

thinking of a mountaintop

green and blue and you

Essay While My Hair Dries

Essay While My Hair Dries

Once more, I’m starting over with a clean slate. The heat wave continues and the Mississippi River is down to 9 feet deep and barges are grounding. Racism is rampant in the United States and if you just can’t get why that’s wrong on your own, I probably can’t teach you. I wish men could understand that there is nothing better and more empowering than losing your sex drive. The only problem is that I still have a Love drive and I can’t get that from a man without sex. It’s so wonderful facing my retirement knowing that the entire Republican Party doesn’t think I deserve the Social Security and Medicare I paid for and want to take it away. Eight hundred and fifty people on Facebook can tell me I’m wonderful, but if one person says I LIKE too much, I’m shattered. I know I have written many truly great plays, but they will never be produced or printed because every theater is buried under scripts and use any reason to toss submissions into the trash. It’s the old merry-go-round…can’t get a production without an agent and can’t get an agent without a production. I have never, in one moment of a relationship, been looking at the man I was with. I always was daydreaming of someone better but instead of looking for for the right man, stayed until I was forced to leave. 63 years old with MS. Game over. Hair is almost dry and I must think about going to the gym. Think about it. The next step is getting my fat ass in there. Later, with more amusement.

Sonnet 67 -- The Heat Driveth Me To Yon Facebook

Sonnet 67 -- The Heat Driveth Me To Yon Facebook

What is this thing you call “reality?”

I fear I cannot breathe your atmosphere

On my planet, we live in a city

In which our brains and ears are never clear

Music and words and photographs explode

From strangers hiding from the prying eyes

Our frail brains boil in constant overload

Commenting on the posts of all youse guys

Outdoors today, all I met were cheerful

Gave me a smile and wave and happy “Hi!”

I doth wondered why no one was fearful

Did things different in the water lie?

Facebook I must flee to write my poem

But what better place there be to throw 'em?

Various, Leftover Short Poems

1.

I removed all the lies

And self delusions

Now, the well is empty

2.

First in fifty years
Not in love with anyone
Need inspiration

3.

All my crutches fall away save the cane

Tinting Depends lavender doesn’t help

My men, like my Mother, were all insane

Heat and humidity melt me like wax

Better to be never was than has been

Retired with disease is not leisure

Happy that I’m not addicted to sin

Poetry makes you like the Yoda speak

4.

dumped naked like the terminator

in a foreign world

i have no programming to tell me

what my mission is

My Favorite Shakespeare Sonnet...He Gets It Right

William Shakespeare - Sonnet #29

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 66 – Oh, Oh, My Brown-Eyed Boy

Sonnet 66 – Oh, oh, Brown-Eyed Boy

And Death has outranked Love inside my mind

Oh, Lord, I do not want to be retired

The hair is white, skin now a wrinkled rind

I need a brown-eyed boy to be inspired

Of course, I never had the skill of paint

And hated high heeled shoes and skinny skirts

No man has ever seen me swoon and faint

Pumpkin-headed women cannot be flirts

We writers feign that personality

Is so much more important than the looks

Real men have smote me with reality

They don’t care if I wrote a hundred books

It’s time, at last, to admit to you all

At heart, I’m a male homosexual