Because There Are Forces and Forces Beyond Our Control

Dear Internet friends, you may, perhaps, have noticed that I did not post a poem last night. I did not post a poem last night. I was, in fact, unable to post a poem last night, due to an Internet outage in the area which lasted through three incredibly confusing phone calls with my Internet service provider, the night, and most of the morning. Ah, Internet! My dearest friend! Without you, I was forced to actually work and be productive, rather than examining blogs, examining Facebook profiles, playing rounds of Scramble, and looking at various forms of fashion. How could you do such a thing to me? How?

Now, however, the Internet has returned to me. And to prove my fidelity to NaPoWriMo, I shall post today not once, but twice! Here is the first poem, written in the middle of a Rock Concert (sadly, there were no fabulously fashionable top hats or white feathered jackets, so I’m not even sure it could be terms a Rock Concert) in a bar. I’ve long been fascinated with closed captioning, and spent a good deal of time glancing back and forth from the television to the Rock Concert to the sorority girls who were sitting in a corner with tube tops and look of utter confusion on their faces when someone pulled out a banjo. Here is the result.

Close (Captions)

Because Ten PM Is Very Bedtime If You’ve Been Working All Day

As Vivienne has. And so, dear readers, forgive me for providing no poemlogue other than the following video. This one may be the creepiest, if only for its vaguely sexual overtones and creepy accompanying puppets.

A Self-Help Guide to the Meaning of Goodbye

Has, itself, said goodbye.

Because Teen-age Angst Has Paid Off Well

Oh, dear readers. Oh, dear, dear readers. Vivienne is beginning to feel the ebb of NaPoWriMo’s tide. Vivienne is beginning to feel An Awful Lot Like Exhausted. And what happens when Vivienne feels An Awful Lot Like Exhausted? For one, she turns to Zelda’s Prompts of Fashion, which is a wonderful thing, as the Prompts are Wonderfully Fashionable. For another, she turns to do strange things in her poems, such as odd confessions about pickled beets, or, in this case, parentheses and references to now-canceled television shows. So perhaps, dear reader, you should gaze at this photographs of Rupert Giles, who very well might be the love of my life, instead of reading the poem which follows.

And, Zelda, um, OMG yes, we should most definitely nominate both Madonna and Judy Blume for the Ultimate Diamond Heart Necklace Award. Here’s the question, though: Ann M. Martin? Is she fashionable enough? Remember Claudia’s collection of shoes! Her habit of wearing Most Fashionable Tights with Shorts!

Poem Guest-Starring Buffy and Boots

Sadly canceled without an appropriate ending, much like Buffy herself was.  Le sigh.  And let us await the film version …

Because It’s Terrible, I Mean, It’s Hairible, I Mean, It’s Horrible!!!

I am always basking in the glorious glow of The Letter People. People are always telling me, there never was a program called The Letter People! You are a liar! A liar, I say! Then YouTube appeared and got in ur copyrites, and now I can prove that the glorious glow of The Letter People is not an imagined one. Observe the legend of Mr. H, whose theme song I sing most mornings upon seeing my own hair in the mirror:

After the Dress He Unzipped Is Zippered Safely Back into Its Bag

Across the sun-sheered lake

stuff happened.

Because Judy Blume Rules Us All.

This shall also be short, dear readers, as I am traveling as well, and really can express anything no better than Pat Benetar in the video posted below. Seriously. If you haven’t seen The Legend of Billie Jean, go and rent it or Netflix it or whatever the hell you have to do to get it, get it NOW.

I wonder if the key to this poem, and to what quickly appears to be becoming my Self Help Series, may be that I learned almost everything about life from four sources: The Legend of Billie Jean, H.R. Puff N’ Stuff reruns, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video, and, most importantly, Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. This book was pretty much my Bible for most of my adolescence. I remember using this book as a holy guide, to the point of hiding it in a special corner on the top shelf of my closet, only to pull it out when those embarrassing and (sometimes literally) burning questions which tend to arise between the ages of 10 and 16 arose. Imagine my horror, dear readers, upon starting my period one morning, having only recently turned 11, before my mother could give me The Talk, and reaching into that dark and sacred corner to consult The Holy Blume and finding — Horrors! Egads! Oh, Gods! Sanitary BELTS? Seriously? Let us all thank the Kotex corporation for taking us beyond the advice of the Good Blume Book. And let us turn our attention to this poem, and to performing strange exercises whilst chanting we must, we must, we must increase our bust.

A Self-Help Guide to Finding Yourself Drunk on Wine Coolers and Once Again Turning to Judy Blume for Advice about Boys

Don’t drink too many of the Margarita flavored wine coolers.  Really.

Because Public Shame Is Occaisionally A Necessity

Dear reader, in order to properly poemlogue this poem, I have to make a shocking and shameful confession.

I am a power walker.

Yes, a power walker. One of those people with bent elbows swinging you see on the side of the road and instantly, almost despite yourself, want to smash to paste beneath your tires. One of those people you sometimes see in the mall very early in the morning, before the stores have even opened up, zooming past you with footsteps that you notice are nightmarishly in tune with “Eye of the Tiger.” One of those people who invest in sports bras and special power walking shoes (yes, there are such things) and breathable athletic shorts simply to, well, walk.

But there is a reason behind this madness, dear reader! For the walk is an important — nay, essential! — part of the creative process! For the walk stills the mind! Centers it! The walk is the only time during the day when I’m not, well, thinking about fashion and diamond heart necklaces and the awful sin of sixteen birthstone grandmother rings! And focusing! Seeing! The things one will see! Which are, sadly, often smashed to the paste one often wants to smash power walkers into. Thus, the poem:

Roadside

[Nasties.]

Because Rue Really Is Indeed Something to Rue

For this poemlogue, I shall adopt Zelda’s third person narration, for there are really times when first person absolutely will not do. This is one of those times, for, you see, Vivienne is a woman of Odd Interests: collecting pennies she finds on her walks, hunting for Sears Merry Mushroom products on E-Bay and at thrift stores and in relatives’ closets of abandoned goods, learning about the digestive systems of pelicans, the lost art of macramé … And though Vivienne is not especially ashamed of her Odd Interests, they are nonetheless Odd Things for her to bring up. To whit: spurred by a children’s book on astronomy, a Young Vivienne developed an abnormal interest in red giant stars. One Christmas, after unwrapping a most fabulous and fashionable Rose Petal Place Roadster, Vivienne sat on the couch and proceeded to tell her cousins everything she knew about red giants, especially their propensity to explode. The cousins responded with wide-eyed looks of horror and shock (please note: the linked cartoon is what Google Image thinks I must be looking for when Googling the term “shock”), and Vivienne was scolded and told to better learn to gauge others’ interest in celestial explosions. Vivienne has since learned that there are a good many Odd Interests she should keep to herself, but can’t seem to follow this rule when it comes to herbal folklore, especially that used by so-called “witches” in the middle ages. How else would she know not to accept an offered cup of henbane tea? How else would she know to induce lust in others with lettuce? How else would she know that there is nothing better than rosemary to cure a weak memory, or aconite to draw the poison from the bites of venomous animals?

Herbal

Don’t eat the berries.

Because the Good Lord Made Coffee for a Reason

And this is a morning when I most appreciate it: both the reason and the making of coffee. It is a gray morning, here, and a morning spent mostly in preparation for the evening, and the evening’s events, which will, sadly, take me far from the safety of my computer, meaning that, when I awoke, I awoke to the ugly fact that it was time for NaPoWriMo. Now. And now, uncoffee-ed and feeling rather like that fellow to the left there, I post the poem, early. This one, thankfully, at least does not contain the fancy formatting WordPress Will Not Allow, as the last poems have.

Stasis

Poem has been returned to dark depths of hard drive so it can think about what it’s done

Because the Delicious Ought to be Edible.

When I was in first grade, I sat next to a girl whose name I don’t remember. Let’s call her Melissa. She might as well be a Melissa. When I was in first grade, I sat next to Melissa. The thing about Melissa is that she had, as an ex-boyfriend once said of me, “a great hunger.” Melissa’s great hunger, though, was not whatever the hell my ex-boyfriend thought I had a great hunger for; no, Melissa’s great hunger was for all of those inedible edibles of the first grade classroom: paste, that nasty, snotty glue stuff you brushed onto papers which never stuck, and, especially, more than anything, crayons. Melissa loved the taste of crayons so much that she stole mine, and when I tried to get them back, I found that they had vanished, only their wrappers remaining, like some sad kind of candy that stained your face blue and red. Melissa stole so many of my crayons that my mother found herself purchasing a 24-pack a week to feed her addiction. I spent much of first grade in great anger and then thought, well, if she’s getting use out of them, why not.

Such, often, is my attitude about lines that strike me — in advertisements, in news stories, in other people’s poems, in my own old poems, in songs. When it comes to poetry, I can be a Melissa. I do not borrow. I steal, and I use, and I do not give back. And so, Paul Simon, forgive me for this poem. My mother will buy you a new pack of Crayolas on Monday. I promise.

Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover

Oh, best to just listen to the song.  The poem is gone now!

The Calm Before the Storm

Gird your loins, ladies.