Society of Friends

Tags

Elaine Stirling, poetry, Quakers, romance, schism, Society of Friends

Elias Pegg wrote

a Hicksite schism Quaker

Artist unknown

romance novel, about a

group of whom eleven

members still live in a

farming community,

none of them younger

than seventy-four.

~

He sold one signed

copy of his book to a

schizophrenic with an

abhorrence for authority.

~

Most of the romance

takes place in the silence

of Meeting with the lovers

sitting five meters apart

with a pot-bellied iron

stove between them.

~

That she became pregnant

with no evidence that the two

had ever spent time alone

further schismed the schism.

~

The author of the romance

that no one buys is her

great-grandson.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

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Death Coach, Part III

Tags

Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos, dice, Elaine Stirling, poetry, Toltecs

Hey, wait, they’re all threes!
you might cry, when the death

Make death your ally, said the old Toltecs, and she will never catch you unawares.

coach she throws gator dice
at your toes, and they land
side by side like a man and his
bride in the honeymoon suite
of the great Woebetide Motor Inn.

♣

To my personal tale I shall now
turn, when the old hag she stared
at the dice till I burned. What does
sex mean—I mean, six? I inquired.
Not six, she replied, only two, ever
two—one is you, one is other, and
how you connect in one of four
ways. She made a quick dance of
her hands like mudras…I don’t
understand. Yes, you do. Top dot
is head; she gave mine a whack,
middle dot, heart; third is down there
in your twitchety parts. The other, your
world, is exactly the same—three dots,
one die, maybe come back again.
Die and come back, you get it?

♣

She cackled and hooted at her unfunny
joke, then ordered me sit on the floor
while she poked at the dice and I felt
every jab like a doll made of wax.

♣

She explained. If the dice had landed
like this, \/, twitch to twitch, you’d be
slow dancing, French kissing, and
smothered in bliss; you wouldn’t need
death coach on your shopping list.
If you and your other had landed
this way, //, you’d be pushing
toward dreams of the glorious kind.
Obversely, \\, is cruising downstream
to all worries joy-blind.

♣

But we landed this way, /\, head to
head, I said, catching on to the patterns
of diagonal threes. That you did, said
the hag, which is why you are stuck
like a truck in proverbial muck. Thinking
too much of the world and its woes forces
the world to think too much, and leaves you
no space for dreaming and bliss and for
cruising downstream like a new sunfish.

♣

So you’re saying that I…
That all I’d have to do is…
My half-assed questions remained
half-asked. I don’t know when or
how it occurred, but death coach
didn’t seem anymore so scary
and old like a big butcher bird.
In fact, she was looking like me
on my very best days, in the years
of my many and very best lives. A
warm tingle began in my twitchety
parts and rose to grow strength from
my opening heart. Agility in my head
the tingle derived by squeezing through
hemispheres of my mental divide. From
my crown it sprang out, a magician’s
bouquet, to shower petals and pearls
of adventure and joy to the world
beyond, to the other.

♣

Though I knew in my soul there
was no need to ask when I reached
for the dice, I waited for death coach,
now radiantly beautiful, to give me
her nod. Then I picked up the pair
of ever-bearing threes,
and I threw them.

♣

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Death Coach, Part II

Tags

Baba Yaga, Elaine Stirling, famous witches, free will, poetry, sin

SPOILER ALERT: If you’re new to the Death Coach poetic mini-saga, you may want to scroll down to the previous blog where the story begins.

♣♣♣

The haggardly death coach
if you let her come in, you’ll hear
an uncomfortable barking of sin
at her heels wearing faces of all

Baba Yaga, the famous Slavic death coach, lives in a hut that stands and runs on chicken legs.

that you wanted and got, and
the ones you discarded to
follow a new set of—

♣

Not! Mustn’t go there, says who.
Who said that? Nobody. No body,
no spirit cuts us from ourselves
but our selves, we are born with a
pair of retractable eyes with layers
of lids to affect a disguise of
disinterest, desire, whatever might
serve us; the lies and the truths
they are bound to build up, and
the death coach she sees them
and chops them to digestible bits
or assigns them to slots in
appropriate seasons and whispers
with deep and lascivious glee:
wanting is holy, yes, wanting
is Meeeee…tee, hee, hee, hee!

♣

Alas, the thought, the mere notion
of harnessed emotion released
by a crone with a passion for
calling attention to tension sends
most mortals running in search
of a group with a steeple or
bottle, some form of escape we
can make at full throttle, for surely
if God, if there be such a thing,
didn’t mean what he said about
will being free, or we’d all become
savages, cokeheads and slumdogs…

♣

and while your mind conjures lists
of the terrible things you would do
to the world, were you given the key
to unclad liberty, the death coach
she cackles and rattles a pair of
dice carved from juvenile alligator
teeth, and she throws them…

♣

[to be concluded]

♣

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Death Coach

Tags

clinging to the past, death, Elaine Stirling, life coach, shame

She calls herself
death coach, personal
obstructor to stars and

Iconography from Mexico’s Day of the Dead. Mexicans have one of the best attitudes toward that event and condition.

black holes and
to all that is vain, supercilious,
predictable and strained.

♣

If you’re plugged up
with shame, had enough
of the game, she will
ravage and savage
what’s left of your name.

♣

Death coach lifts freely
from pockets to spend
the loose change you
refuse to deploy that
would remake your
life, so that you might
enjoy all that still can be
yours—if only you hadn’t
hung a name to the cross
of your past that you wear
on your neck, like a stone,
like a fossilized kiss
made of bone.

♣

There are pills to get rid
of her, thrills you can buy
for 12 brain cells per dime,
but there’s no way in Hades
to banish this lady, for she
lives in a hut in the back
of your gut and sooner
than later—doesn’t matter
you hate her—she will knock
at your barque on the night
that your shipment comes in,
and you’re sure you’ll depart
for that tight pair of buns
who is calling you Hon . . .

♣

You’ll want to keep her out
but on the other hand
if you let her in . . .

♣

[to be continued…]

♣

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Don’t Bell Jar that Mojo

Tags

bell jar, boredom, Elaine Stirling, mojo, poetry

Don’t bell jar that mojo
don’t fiddle with what’s true
the little that has reached you
has better things to do
than talk through a haze
that extinguishes praise
by the hour.

You’re like the Venetian
who slowly went blind
pursuing masked women
in search of sublime;
we’re all wearing charms
to cover the scars
of betrayal.

Extend your reach.
You’ve nothing to teach.

I’m not here to rattle
the bars of your cage
that turtleneck you wear
will not cover signs of age
you’re reaching the end
of the lie that we tend
that we’re dying.

On your murals of pity
the paint never dries
while the studio grows smaller
kills the light in your eyes
I’ve broken my jar
I’ve taken my pay
I am going.

The lamenting of boredom
it may see you through
I think you’ll be chasing
a mask yet or two
I’ve a song in my heart
that sings of a spark
it is bringing.

Shatter the glass.
Be done with past.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Silent reader, we know what you’re going through!

Tags

book promotion, book reviews, e-books, Elaine Stirling, James McAvoy, parody

READER ALERT: The following is a parody and is by no means intended to downplay the hard work of writers, editors and publishers everywhere. It’s a comment on our times, nothing more.

~~~

Page One: Is there anything more intimate than eyes and mind upon a page well-writ, a solitary tryst where lover sheds his fear and pants, and reader licks her lips to see and feel—  

Painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Pop-up: “Hello, I’m the author! I see you’ve downloaded my new e-book. Thank you for buying. If you like what you’re reading, please click Like here.”

Click. Like.

—the scent of him upon the shirt he left, well-worn, a cambric grey with whalebone buttons and frayed tails. His boots lie skewed beside the door through which he strode, barefoot and brave with his longbow, to slay the beast that’s haunting—

“Hello, it’s me again, writer of the book you are now enjoying! Thank you for clicking Like. I wonder, would you mind posting a short review at Zamaron.com, .ca, .es, .uk, .jp, .fi. and at Bullreads? If you could make each of the reviews a little different, that’d be great! It won’t take long, and you’d be helping my sales bigtime!!!”

Click. Offline.

—and as they gazed across the rugged slopes of the Moribundo Range, he took her hand and kissed it, saying . . . yadda-yadda, nicely written, to The End.

Reader clicks off e-reader and night light, and, sighing, drifts off to happy sleep, dreaming of her hero.

Three months go by, and the author of the book invites reader to connect on Blinked-In, and she accepts because networking, as everyone knows, is important. Thirty seconds later, a message arrives at her Inbox from . . . you guessed it.

“Hello [insert reader name here], I’m so glad we have connected! My newest e-book has come out, and I thought of you because you were among the seventeen readers who bought the first one, and you were kind enough to click Like.  Here is the link to my Zamaron page where you can now buy—”

Click. Delete.

Years unfolded. The reader settled happily to past tense and watched online while the author’s newest e-book went to print, became a bestseller, was bought by a major house, optioned for film rights and starred James MacAvoy as the romantic lead. Forgoing the library with its forever waiting list, reader bought the mass market version long after everyone stopped talking about the book and the movie, at a yard sale. It cost her fifty cents. She read it in a hammock beneath the spreading branches of a walnut tree and loved every word.

I thought you’d want to know, author.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

 

 

Hope Comes in Shades of Indigo

Tags

civil war, creativity, deadly poison, Elaine Stirling, hope, monkshood, poetry, wine, writing

A quiet complementarity arrived

at my front door this morning; side

by side they stood, a nation state

of grays and blues like doves and

jays, they were a pair, though I

lost count of them way after two,

they multiplied in tones and rings,

my worded mind falls short to

comprehend, much less explain.

◊

Your civil war is done, they said,

the shopworn carpetbaggers fled,

we saw them leave with sorry

tales between their legs and knew

their fall you would no longer try

to stop. May we come in?

◊

I may have answered yes or not,

they filled the space so fast that is

the mess I call my home and set

up shop of sorts, a clearing house

of odd and even implements I’ve

never seen, except in dreams.

◊

And then it dawned on me I’ve seen

them come around before in shades

of hope and indigo, they hung the

drapes that separate the needless

and the false from where I keep my

word, and words I use to write.

◊

The table’s set, the pen and paper

stacked, no need to tear myself apart

from you, the dove and jay, at right

and left, will manage fêtes of merriment

and brew a purple monkshood wine to

lift the spirits of the poisoned thoughts

who felt themselves unworthy—now

they know that only friends of deep

and true affection gather here.

◊

POISON ALERT: Monkshood, all parts of it, are deadly. This is only a poem. Do not eat or drink anything from the plant, and if you must touch monkshood, wash your hands thoroughly afterwards.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Ra is the God of Rants and Radishes

Tags

Bill Maher, Billy Connolly, Elaine Stirling, Jon Stewart, muckraking, Ra, radical, radish, Stephen Colbert

I remember as if it were yesterday the happy day I learned that radical and radish source from the same root word, radix, Latin for root. I loved it because radish is a root vegetable, making the fact doubly so, and because radicals, at the time, scared me a little . . . no, a lot, because they tended to rant, but if I thought of radicals as red-faced root vegetables that become tasteless and woodier, the longer you let them grow, then I had less to fear from their noises. I may even have uttered “Hur-rah!” thereby summoning the protection of the patron saint of Egyptian homecomings.

Billy Connolly, my all-time favourite ranter. No woody veg grows in his lot.

I don’t scare so easy now and have also learned to appreciate ranting. I’ve come to adore radical thinkers who can, with wit and precision, fire up a head of steam and bulldoze over hypocrisies and the cheap fence seating we put up, and not give a tailor’s twiddle about how much they are liked. Billy Connolly, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart—they’ll take on all of us. They are not partisan muckrakers.

I love the emotional freedom that comes from pulling an uncomfortable topic up by the roots and brandishing it like a big fat woody radish: “Look at this! This is what we are or what we might become if we let our thoughts about XYZ grow past their harvest date.”

Most of what I encounter in real and virtual worlds, and perhaps this is true for you too, does not qualify as ranting or radical thought. It is bludgeoning, the repetitive thumping of a personal opinion, over and over, redundantly, to the point of way-too-much-kill.

What we’re mostly seeing in these instances are pout-ons, harrumphs against the world. A pout-on, unexamined, is neither radical nor rant. It’s a tantrum pulled like taffy (tapeworm would be too icky an analogy) from some long-ago thwart that probably involved not being able to play outside after dark or finding one’s refrigerator art in the garbage.

The things people did to us then, people seem to keep doing, long after the original perps have moved on, only now we perceive our thwarters as political opposition, or that other religion, or my ex, or the pain in my joints. A complaint that keeps on giving has deep roots, to be sure, but a stadium of fellow radish growers, no matter how reassuring, cannot pull the roots up for us, and the harvest will still taste like crap.

Tell me what upsets you, I’m fine with that; I will do my best to empathize. Once I’ve registered a person’s opinion, however, on a computer model or brand of beer or the issue of gun control; and if I’m not in a position to supply that person with a laptop, Danish lager or legislation, for or against, then their going on and on about it turns pretty quick to white noise. Worse, my fed-up limbic system begins to define that person by the repetitions and not what makes him/her radical…i.e., unique and lovable. It is our uniqueness that originates, I believe, that creates the change we want to see, to paraphrase Gandhi.

I don’t know if changing the world is why we’re given these revolutions around the sun, each one more precious—or ought to be—because they’re not forever, but if it is, I hope to learn from the growers of the world and find joyful, crazy-loving ways to let my personal overgrown radishes go to seed.

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

When I Was Your Helium

Tags

Elaine Stirling, helium, magnetism, poetry, superfluid

I lived a noble state, inert,
imagining myself as superfluid
when you landed in my air space
thinking I was Jupiter—a common
mistake, given my alpha particles.

∞

Actually, I’m—

∞

But you wouldn’t listen. My boiling
point was low, and you were in
search of a protective atmosphere
capable of cooling what you smugly
described as your superconducting
magnetism.

∞

Lift off! I should have said, and
didn’t. My melting point is also
notoriously low.

∞

You talked a lot in our early days
about equilibrium, and while I didn’t
like the pressure much, I agreed
to liquefy, but the cooler you became,
the more I longed for those halcyon
years on Vesuvius with Luigi—
mmm, hot lava, who’s your Papa?

∞

I will never—I shouted in our
first big argument—solidify for
you! You still weren’t listening.

∞

Then came the day while trying
to escape you, that I met Erasmus
and felt for the first time appreciated
for the abundance of my high
binding energy

∞

and though I wore no nuclear
halo during our antics in Manhattan,
you and I did achieve pitchblende
of a sort; my lighter than air
matched your need to rise and
we bonded in a spectacular
nucleo-genetic bang they’re still
talking about in bars in the
outer cosmos.

∞

Alas, my dear, your continued
preference for my liquid state
isn’t good for you or me.
Push me below lambda, and
I’ll head for the exit hatch
every time. The day you woke
up and I wasn’t there, I had
already evaporated.

∞

But things aren’t all bad. You’re
airborne now, fueled by other
noble compounds, and from
where I hover, happily ionized,
I can see that planet you were
aiming for where the lovin’ is
good and the solar winds
run high.

∞

Yeah, those helium-3 regoliths
will take some getting used to,
but you and I have whipped
up some exotic isotopes in
our day—and you’ve
finally learned to listen.

∞

So go ahead and land,
pilot. You’ll be fine, and
you will always know
where to find me.

∞

© Elaine Stirling, 2012

Equinox

Tags

Elaine Stirling, equinox, money plant, poetry, silver dollar

A shower of silver coins

emptied of their centers fell

lunaria annua, a.k.a silver dollar, honesty and money plant

across the bed of nettles where

I’d laid my head to rest from stings

of barbéd jests whose wit had

flayed me past the point of

mercy or indifference.

~~~

They made no noise

the silver coins, and when

I tried to grasp and count they

gathered into heaps of thirties,

sixties, nineties, more—three million

strong, a range of dappled light

and shade, an armoury they made

to supplement the golden rods

and cones grown bleak from

summer’s overburdened quest.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2012