delusions of grandeur. what a pompous phrase.

found out via i.m.
a few days ago

talk about delusions of grandeur

after all HE dumped ME
9 years and 7 1/2 months ago

i dreamed last night that she has

bad skin, frizzy hair

and frumpy clothes like
Maggie,
Cliff's one-time fiance on Cheers

Part of me believes the engagement happened
because his clock is screaming for kids

Silly.

He must love her.

These past years, I enjoyed showing him
I'm married
I have a daughter
Now a son
The handful of times we saw each other

I caught him watching us once,
and in my mind he was thinking
he wished he was in Tomek's place

I wanted him to see us, the young happy family
of the girl he dumped
and feel
regret.

it's windy i think i'll go fly a kite

For the last, oh say,
3 weeks
(ever since my . should have started)
I have been a horrid horrid
HORRID
pissy bitch.
Constantly pissed off, but contained throughout the day
so as to not take it out on my
daughter who is in the throes of the terrible twos
son who is in the throes of teething.
Some days when Tom came home I felt like
I just blasted him right out the door again.

Horrid.

Still no . .
And no I'm not pregnant.
At least, not according to the test I took yesterday morning.

But I think the pissiness is abating a bit.
How do men endure women? Honestly?
And how do women put up with men?
It's an odd odd world.

My day started by killing a spider.
The apartment is a mess.
3 people are coming to visit today
at 2 separate times.

2 visits = 1 frazzled mommy
maybe I could just subtract the apartment from both sides
and end up with 1 visit and no mommy
I'd blow out of that equation and zoom zoom

here














Three hours of nothing

but trees and mountains
and the occasional tractor
for sale
some cows
and a white dotted line
stretching
into darkness

I drove this road the last 2 weekends
back to back
there are so many great photos to share
maybe later
after I give up on the cleaning.

*this post totally inspired by the awesome radmad*

on being cryptic

Phil's comment to my last post got me thinking about being cryptic in my own writing. I'm relieved to know the reason behind some of his posts... all those that I had no idea how to comment on, and therefore, didn't. To know that they actually stand for something... I'm more likely to dig in and try to pull some meaning out of it.

I think I've always been this way--even now when I do crosswords and there is one word tripping me up, one word that I'm unsure of that is making it impossible to complete the puzzle, I am the one who flips impatiently to the back of the book to see if I'm right or not.

Recently, my brother, D, who is moving to the UK soon, gave me two boxes of his books. I'd forgotten about so many of them, and am THRILLED that he gave them to me. Included in one of the boxes are Usborne Puzzle Adventure books. I can remember reading these books and flipping to the hints or answers page when a particular page was taking me too long to figure out. I just wanted to get on with it and finish the book.

What I'm trying to say is that Phil has inspired me to look at things differently. To approach puzzles and cryptic things with more patience, and to try using that style of writing here, when things get so that I can't just write about them.

Here's something mildly cryptic that I wrote back in 2005...

Wish

Little Silver Dragons
Like Sucking Dynamite
Living Simply Dumb
Love Someone Dangerous
Lightning Strikes me Dead
Leaving Smarter Devils

Live Some Dream
Lacking Sense Desirous
Laughter, Spiting Death
Late, Stumbling Drunk
Leaving, She's Delirious

Make a wish.

Nuptials On a Luscious Scented Desert

He'll shrug and walk away.

grind

involuntarily
i bite my lower lip
and know you are watching
though my eyes are closed

away

Everything was so fresh and full of promise
Life had turned into an adventure
One we'd conquer together

Now it feels like we have to fight for happiness
Lousy drivers
Shitty jobs
Crappy weather
Too many "things" to do
Too much stress

We're being buried

And I'm not strong enough
alone

I wish we could fly

shards

It's been a hard day, but no one asks.
I understand.
We went to the park twice today, this is important.
She hasn't cried all day, and our home is tidier.
I haven't cried either.
I vacuumed.

Some days I cry. Like now.
Some days I'm just so alone.
Even friends visiting can't fill that certain void.
The one that fills when you unlock the door.
No matter the precious, countless moments I share with our daughter,
Nothing compares to you walking through the door.

And I know, I know it doesn't mean that much to you
Tired, dirty, hungry, stressed
I'm just a constant.
I try to listen, to care, to take the little one away so you can
accomplish things.
Things that would, we always hope, take a bit of that stress
away.

Motherhood is a very, very lonely place sometimes.

No words of my own today

I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB
Carl Sandburg

I AM the people--the mob--the crowd--the mass.
Do you know that all the great work of the world is
done through me?
I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the
world's food and clothes.
I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons
come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And
then I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.
I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand
for much plowing. Terrible storms pass over me.
I forget. The best of me is sucked out and wasted.
I forget. Everything but Death comes to me and
makes me work and give up what I have. And I
forget.
Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red
drops for history to remember. Then--I forget.
When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the
People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer
forget who robbed me last year, who played me for
a fool--then there will be no speaker in all the world
say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a
sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
The mob--the crowd--the mass--will arrive then.

yeah, i'm a hopeless romantic

So I was going back through poetry journals I'd kept for a few years--poetry's been on my mind more and more lately, especially after discovering this medium through a site I found via StumbleUpon. I've long wanted to effectively mesh my poetry with photos I've taken. I can feel myself getting back into the head space where I actually could be creative to the point of creating something I'd be proud of.

Like this poem, I wrote back at the end of January 2004, 9 days after meeting Tomek:

you asked me
"where have you been all this time?"
i smiled, blushed and didn't know
but skin touches melted fear
one look untied a heart of knots
you smiled,
i found a part of me long lost
and then i knew--

you asked me where i've been all this time
i've been searching for you

Should re-reading my own old poetry have this much effect on me? I don't know. But I read that again and again and the power of the emotions I felt upon first meeting Tomek come flooding back. My feelings are just as strong now, if not stronger, but back then, it was all so raw.