I Forgot 97 so THIS is the real 100th Sonnet

Number 100 The Last Sonnet

Sonnet one hundred is eluding me

I’d like to end the whole thing with a bang

I never found the rhythm or the key

My lady doth confess they never sang

Will did have his mystery dark lady

But aging broads are dismissed as stalkers

Regarded more as Sad Sack than Miss Sadie

Unsexed by their medicine and walkers

Still, there are proud moments to remember

And gave to me respect for poet’s muse

Apt it is to end it in December

And while we still can do it without booze

And thus I end my farting with this biz

The final sonnet and Whoot! Here it is!

A Novel Idea -- Roxy's Lost Years Inspired by 'Amour Americain'

Day One Year One: I Am Reborn

I open my eyes and still I am in darkness. Slowly, shapes and dots of light reveal themselves. White and silver on a canvas of ebony black. I realize that I am breathing hard, with cold air ripping through my lungs. Some THING rattles by and I do not know if it is a rat or an autumn leaf. The poem! Find the poem! Reach into my coat to touch the envelope and I smile, I can breathe again. I remember that, despite losing everything, all of my worldly goods, that I am loved by God and one woman. There is nothing more a man needs in this world. Nothing!

However, it is dangerous in this alley at two o’clock in the morning when even the sounds of taxis and the number 6 train are rare and there are strange and desperate men like myself moving through the empty streets. I shiver from the chill as I only had a moment when I realized that the men were coming up my stairs and I only had seconds to decide on what I could grab before being dragged out and cast into the street by the goons…no! No, Robert, don’t do that to them and yourself…by the men send to clear me out of my home.

Of course I made sure the poem was safe against my heart and then I went to my easel and found my oldest and dearest friend: a camel’s hair brush that I have been using since college; and slid that into my backpack. No time or room for canvas or color except for a new tube of crimson red that had yet to have its mouth unstopped. Unstopped. Strange word to use right now. The poetesses in my life have left their mark.

R U HERE? M I – September 22, 2013

R U HERE? M I – September 22, 2013

So, after forty years of good playwriting and three years of mediocre poetry, it’s been suggested that I hunt down and tame the elusive essay. Ah, what an intellectual bunch we are on Facebook: suggesting essays instead of flower arranging or knitting. Yes, I know that I will get fifty FB comments defining ‘essay’ and how I’m screwing up the form, but…your suggestions will be appreciated…through gritted teeth at times…but appreciated, damn it. I pray that you will not sweat the grammar to death, as the reason I became a playwright is that I do not see dangling participles but I will put them into a speech if they sound natural. Playwrights don’t have to do that there grammar stuff right.

Thank God for Spell Check.

I will begin this with a statement you will not agree with. While we are all shining stars, all alike and valuable…I am flawed. Please, no happy bright reassurances, I have to confront the reality of being raised by a control freak Mother. When I ran screaming into the night at the age of 19, I was not aware that she had undermined my self worth and self confidence and had habituated me into taking care of She Who Deigned to Permit To Live If I Was of Service to Her.  That I left her was also the best thing that happened to her as she remarried to find companionship.

As for my companionship, I was ripe for anyone who needed to control others. Being rudimentarily female, these masters would all be men. It’s taken me till the age of 64 to realize that they were all also as rejecting and impossible to please as Mom. Part of the Controller is that they will always criticize you, no matter what you are doing for them. (Including paying the bills and keeping house for two husbands.) But I always tried to do better for them. I always thought it was my fault that they didn’t want to do anything for me, that I was unlovable and unreasonable and uneducated and inferior. I eventually left them all and here’s the funny thing…they are all still alone in their 60’s and 70’s because is no way to satisfy a control freak. It’s not about whether or not you do it ‘right’, it’s about control, and so you can never do it ‘right.”

All right. This is Essay 1 and the fun has just begun.

And only one Spell Check error!!!!!

Final Sonnet and end of Reinhard Rites Blog

Sonnet 99 -- Hey Now! Get your game on!

Sonnet 98 -- Life is More Than Sex and Romance

Sonnet 98 -- Life is More Than Sex and Romance

I don’t live in a theatrical script

Nor in the Most Magical Place on Earth

“Happy Ever After” leaves me feeling gypped

         As it’s too late now for houses and birth.

         Marriage is more about mealtime than sex

And Romance withers when the bills come due

Got some idea what a guy expects

And the message is she’s nothing like Sue

But you are as big a fool as I am

If you think that all that matters is bed

Men, without money, chicks won’t give a damn

Women, Love Sweet Love won’t comfort the dead

So I wish you all to find perfection

Just don’t look for it in an erection

From the play "Frenzy Witchcraft"

My Final Word on Sex (Down, Boy!)

My Final Word on Sex (Down, Boy!)

Perhaps my least appetizing memory of sex was in an improvisation class meant to help us free our minds to become better playwrights. We were given some simple situation with which to make free associations, and the key instruction of improv…go along with whatever your partner says or does. A geeky boy, whose name I didn’t know, interpreted this as permission to fly across the room and grab my then younger and perkier breasts; stand on his toes and shove his tongue down my throat. I pried him off and quit the group, but this is what often happens, at least metaphorically, whenever women try to talk about sex.  

Now, I’m a bit old fashioned. I believe that sex is to be performed by two consenting adults of any gender who want to get naked and jump into the fray. I don’t really believe in talking, I believe in doing…just not with random men in a writing class…or any educational setting. I have received two different phone calls from two different Facebook men and did not realize until later that they were looking for that legendary hot phone sex I had heard of, but never learned. I just cheefully talked about the weather and what I had had for dinner. WELL, I DIDN’T KNOW!  I’M AN OLD LADY!

We didn’t need to talk about it back in the nineteen seventies Free Love days. The most verbal we ever got was reading the pages of The Joy of Sex old loud to my husband while trying to place our knees and chins in the correct places that the flabby Hippie Couple in the drawings were demonstrating. This usually ended in a hysterically funny tangled crash to the floor followed by just DOING IT the same old way but on the carpet instead of the bed.

Although I can write a fairly hot seduction scene in a play (Talking God) and give dirty details (Amour Americain), I really never contemplated talking about any of my own excited protrusions or tunnels. If I attempt it, I sound like Lilith Sternin of “Frasier” with her emotionless, flat voice going “Oh do it, Baby. Do it hard.”

Alas, no. Despite my age and illness and unattractive body, I still believe it is something to do in reality, not on the phone or on Skype. I’ve heard it can be done so well in chat rooms that people pay, and you’d think as I playwright, I would be interested. God knows, I could create a false identity for myself, become Bambi the yodeling seventeen year old shepherdess, but you can already see I simply can’t take it as seriously as the chat room experts need.

And what I miss most about men is laying my cheek on a strong, denim covered shoulder, while we talk about our day. I miss their scent and their laughter. I miss having our fingers entwined as we walk silently breathing in Autumn air. Those little closed mouth kisses hello and goodbye, which was my last physical contact with a man and I’m smiling to remember it. So, I’m going to retire from all that and formally announce that the VIP box is closed. My last experiences with actual sex got worse and worse until that last pathetic, unexcited, inept tussle with the wrong man. But my final memory of men will be a sweet, friendly kiss on the lips with the right one.  What more could a girl want?

Sonnet 96 – Elvira Is Slowly Leaving the Building

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Sonnet 96 – Elvira Is Slowly Leaving the Building

She moves like Quasimodo, not Jagger

Her hair is white, her skin sags and wrinkles

To walk with cane has taken her swagger

And her day is ruled by poops and tinkles

Reading great books was not her specialty

Nor did she paint or sing or play guitar

She toyed with dialogue’s simplicity

She was an able worker, not a star

In short, she was simply not good enough

For a well read, talented, handsome man

Trust me, Angel, admitting it is tough

But I have to understand why you ran

May you find a Queen worthy of your throne

And makes both your brain and manhood moan.

Sonnet 95 -- Footnote in Some History Archival

Sonnet 95 -- Footnote in Some History Archival

Real life is about cleaning the damned house

Cooking meals and washing the damned dishes

I have no children or beloved spouse

It grows too late to make three more wishes

I am not smart enough for you, my love

I do not possess your dazzling talents

But you aren’t good enough for me, sweet Dove

You would never keep it inside your pants

So here I stand with dishes needing washed

Papers to shred…a muffler to replace

Worried about daring a rhyme of “frost”

While the sags and wrinkles demean my face

All we can hope for is raw survival

Footnotes in some history archival

Sonnet 94 - Too Much Time On My Hands

Sonnet 94 - Too Much Time On My Hands

 

I guess I'm a bitchy grumpy old broad

Too damn comfortable for my own good

I’m sick and dull and obviously flawed

I could have I would have done what I should

And as you fade away, your beauty grows

With dark eyes shining through papyrus skin

No more do I know what is truth or pose

You won’t get a chance to make it again

I don’t have the strength to get to the top

My body’s too old to capture a man

My theatrical life doth went kerflop

Fantasizing dumped my life in the can

But still, I don’t mourn my life or my fate

It’s just that we learned our lessons too late

Sonnet 93 -- I'm getting too old for this sh*t

Sonnet 93 -- I'm getting too old for this sh*t

With the damned whole world falling to pieces

And our lives being sold to the Devil

The whining about love never ceases

We mourn that boys no longer do revel

While we still are trying to please Mother

Business picks our pockets clean and laughs

Yet we weep that he left for another

Dying our hair red or slimming our calves

Daydreams of vampires sucking our necks

Or men wishing to buy the youngest doll

I fear that men are addicted to sex

And all distracted by trips to the Mall

History cries to cease solipsism

So dazzled by society’s prism

Sonnet 92 -- Learning What the Word Means

Sonnet 92 -- Learning What the Word Means

The years we spent at playing Love are lost

One must not try to bend it to our need

Demands and expectations raise the cost

And happiness is lost in selfish greed

We do not see the person, just the dream

A fantasy to rescue us from fears

And fill the hours sometimes with a scream

Addicting us to cheap dramatic tears

How much sweeter it is to simply care

With nothing of ourselves set on the line

The veil of selfish needs no longer there

We let them go to seek their needed sign

And stop the insanity called “In Love”

And offer simple care to rise above.

Sonnet 91 Reality Is Not A Theater Script

Reality is not a theater script

When fear and terror stills your fingertips

And a breathing human is torn and ripped

There’s too much stress as the hero lingers

I want it over and the curtain dropped

At last to get the car from the garage

And think about getting the bathroom mopped

Wash my hair and give the cell phone a charge

Reality kills my rescue daydream

I’ve played this scene a dozen times before

A man who needs a psychiatric team

Will reward generosity with war

No more of men other women don’t want

No more of being a pathetic c#nt

Sonnet 90 -- May Earth Outlive The Idiot Humans

I see a riot of green and yellow

I’m wide awake beneath a blue May sky

The breeze is cool and the air is mellow

But the birds are few and the bees don’t fly

The night air goes into a sudden freeze

Yet in seven days the June sun will boil

The Winter and Summer dance in a tease

Both freezing and heating the seeded soil

As Earth descends into raw insanity

And we look into the birth of the end

All  of us guilty of depravity

Watching humanity go round the bend

Forgive us all you innocent species

Please survive the reign of human feces

Oh, Great! A Two Year Old Poem and Nothing Has Changed

Sometimes

I’m as inspired

As the Rumi dripping

Buddha spewing

Aphorisms

Want me to be.

 

But then

There are days

Like this

Where all the Breyers

On Earth

Wouldn’t help.

 

Tell me

Why the Hell

I want what’s bad

For aging female

Playwrights

Like me.

 

Maybe

It’s just

Springtime allergies

Fucking up

What’s left of

My mind.

 

and they're not talking at the moment

Speech from "Bulldog"

Mary German

There used to be something called a newspaper. Not just a brand name on a web site, but actual paper with ink on it. Ink that would stain your fingers and newspapers had weight and they landed on your front porch with a “Thump!” And I’ll bet your kids have never touched one. You never read them the funny papers sitting on the couch. You probably don’t have the time to “waste” reading silly colored panels to your children who were holding their IPhones in their hands, waiting for you to shut up so they could to get the important news…their Junior High friends and pictures of their friends and little damned else in a day that will probably change their lives because some law was passed, or some great man was shot, but they didn’t care and they didn’t notice.

Thousands of us in the newspaper business reported and researched and laid it out and printed it and delivered it and today, all you need is one man on a one computer. And the computer does all the work, corrects the spelling, lays out the type and the pictures and then delivers it all with one push of a button. And the irony is that’s the only way it might ever reach those children with their noses locked on their electronic device. 

Bad Mood Rising

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On the brink of reality, I stop

And look behind me at my life

I pretend it’s all sunshine and blue birds

But I have to face the failures.

We repress anger and lie to ourselves

Hooked on fantasies and daydreams,

The lie that if Life doesn’t work right now

We will force it to go our way

I at least have comfort and medicine

While a lost world is on the brink

The surest sign of insanity is

Doing the same thing over and

Over and expecting a different end

My Knights had less than shining armor

And tilted at rainbows, then fell

Sancho Panza here had to rescue them

And escape ere they bled her dry

It is what it is it do what it do

So said the Master Ray of Charles

Anger and depression changes nothing

But sometimes reality is a bridge

To carry us to an answer

Sonnet 89 -- Aren't YOU Little Miss Sunshine?

The age of fantasy is dead at last

Your lovely daydreams can never come true

We have a glorious, glittering past

But our future might be a nasty zoo

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or false

As long as it gets us through one more day

We silently cling in an empty waltz

And quiet our minds with the swing and sway

But the sun is warm and the sky is blue

And for a moment we can laugh and sing

Or smile when I see the beauty of you

Or trees or sky or a cute fuzzy thing

At least we can cling to fun memories

Before we’re cut down by guns or disease