She walks over me.

My Dearest Readers: tonight, I shall take you back in time. Join me as I visit my old elementary school. Picture me in a most unfashionable sweatsuit (for I had a different colored sweatsuit for each day of the week then) as I take you on this tour. Behind my old elementary school there was a playground: a vast expanse of playground that stretched on and on for as far as the eye could see. Bordering the playground was a forest: a thick mass of trees, kudzu, wild honeysuckle, and poison oak and ivy so great that we called it the Great Woods. In this forest lived a woman. Her name: Bloody Mary. Now many of you may think that Bloody Mary is just an urban myth, a silly grade school legend, but I am here to tell you: Bloody Mary is real. During recess (for in those days, recesses were long and leisurely, and schoolchildren could evade the gazes of teachers quite easily), a group of us would tiptoe into the Great Woods in search of Bloody Mary, and many times, we saw the ragged hemline of her dress as she slipped behind ancient pines, and many times, we heard the snap of a branch as she, catching wind of us, headed deeper into the Great Woods, deeper than any of us had ever dared go (for, as everyone knew, Bloody Mary had no powers in the daytime).

One weekend evening, emboldened by our Great Woods Adventures, my best friend and I decided to call Bloody Mary out of the mirror in the darkest room of my best friend’s house. This room was a small guest bathroom that had no windows. Her mother and father had gone out for dinner, so we had the house to ourselves. We gathered all the candles we could find, put them in the Darkest of Dark Bathrooms, and lit them. We closed the door. We both stood in front of the sink mirror, and we both slowly turned around three times while chanting, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.” We looked deep into the mirror, and I swear we saw her face.

I did not look into mirrors or walk past mirrors for months after that.

And now, just for the fun of it, I shall present you with my favorite scene from Night of the Living Dead. They’re coming to get you, Barbara.

Oh yeah! The poem! So the zombie above was a quasi-transition, I suppose. The title of the poem was inspired by Suzanne Wise’s poem “50 Years in the Career of an Aspiring Thug” (click title to see poem) because Suzanne Wise is, well, The Most Awesome, and she deserves a Diamond Heart Necklace.

15 Years in the Career of an Aspiring Undead

Etched name in dirty oven’s ash.

[and rest-of-poem is now on a mission to find a better title for itself kbai!]

Because The Shameful Confession Never Goes Out of Style

So it is time for me to admit something: I adore Sondheim. Like, seriously. As in, I am seriously a serious Sondheim fan from way back, and I don’t care if it’s not fashionable. I MAKE it fashionable. As in, I know every word to A Little Night Music, and I know that every song is written in waltz time. I was singing along to Sweeney Todd before Johnny Depp had even heard of it (okay, actually, Johnny Depp is totally awesome, so he’d probably heard of it far before I did). And Merrily We Roll Along makes me cry every time.

Which takes me to the point of this confession: my favorite song from said musical is “Good Thing Going” (besides, of course, “Not a Day Goes By,” but we’re not going to talk about that one because I really will cry, okay? Because that’s the one I sing on my kitchen floor after four wine coolers, okay? And there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT, OKAY?!) (Ahem). I decided to take Mr. Sondheim’s advice and keep on going with my self-help series.

Only, of course, YouTube does not provide me with a clip of someone suitable singing said song, and so I supply you with a similarly titled song from — yes, yes, wait for it — THE TELEVISION SERIES FAME!!!!

A Self-Help Guide to Getting on Gracefully

Breaking up is hard to do.

Fashion Poem Prompt / Poem Prompt of Fashion — Prompt Three

Prompt Three — “New Fashion Forms / New Forms of Fashion,” based on Episode 403 of ProRun, in which the designers are prompted to design a menswear look, something many of them have never done before

Write a poem using a form you’ve never worked with before. Choose from the following: haibun, triolet (example found in the Graphic of Fashion above), jeu parti.

Postscript: And if you’ve worked in all of the forms previously mentioned, or if you’re just feeling really spiffy today, then you are a fabulously special person who, instead of working in the previously mentioned forms, must write a sestina (a webpage with an easy to read diagram of a sestina can be found here) using your choice of six of the following fashionable words/phrases:

diamond heart necklace
crystal earrings
smoothie
dramatic
oversized sweater
sprouts
leggings
fox
I wouldn’t be caught dead
doctors who can help
boots
that was exhausting!

Have fun!