highrise living for a joke like me

The remix is currently with the beta, and I'm hoping to have it posted up before I go to work today. Long, nasty shift (1:45p until closing, which means 10p usually), so you're all invited to visit me. *hint hint* I tend to ply my guests with coffee...

Also, insta!rec: In Civilized Parts by penknife, written for lgbtfest. It wasn't that Jack grew up without any rules, but he's not sure he likes these. In his early teens, Jack Sparrow is sent to live with his aunt and uncle so he can get a 'prenticeship in an honest career. The story perfectly captures Jack's voice and his inability to fit into the social mores of living on land. Not incredibly long, non-graphic R, definitely worth the read.

And now to catch up on my poetry:

Some songs have the kinds of lyrics you ignore, or can't hear anyway, but some deserve to be written down in poetry books.

( And your bones have been my bedframe. )

Really, I should have better self-control than this. I really should.

Oh, I keep meaning to comment in some meaningful way on the poems I choose. I tend to like Maya Angelou because her stuff is so musical. Does that make sense?

Alone, Maya Angelou
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Picked the fic I'm remixing today, at least. Now to actually plot it all out.

Mannahatta, Walt Whitman
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon lo! upsprang the aboriginal name.

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane,
unruly, musical, self-sufficient,
I see that the word of my city is that word from of old,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays,
superb,
Rich, hemm'd thick all around with sailships and
steamships, an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets, high growths of iron, slender,
strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies,
Tides swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining
islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters,
the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model'd,
The down-town streets, the jobbers' houses of business, the
houses of business of the ship-merchants and money-
brokers, the river-streets,
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week,
The carts hauling goods, the manly race of drivers of horses,
the brown-faced sailors,
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing
clouds aloft,
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells, the broken ice in the
river, passing along up or down with the flood-tide or
ebb-tide,
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form'd,
beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes,
Trottoirs throng'd, vehicles, Broadway, the women, the
shops and shows,
A million people--manners free and superb--open voices--
hospitality--the most courageous and friendly young
men,
City of hurried and sparkling waters! city of spires and masts!
City nested in bays! my city!

Just finished going through everything my remixee has written and put in the internet. Six years of fic. And I'm really concerned that I'm not going to be able to write anything. Gar.

After Apple-picking, Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

So, remember how I thought I had work this morning?

It's actually tomorrow morning.

Dear God, kill me now.

Still I Rise, Maya Angelou
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Ok, my poem for the day, in honor of Dr. King:

I, Too, Sing America, Langston Hughes
I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

Mildly more productive day, but the rain was downright depressing.

So, depressing poem.

There's a certain Slant of light, Emily Dickinson

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
'Tis the Seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

Gah, there is so much stuff I should be doing right now. I've got to leave for work in 20 minutes, and I accomplished pretty much nothing today (folding two baskets of laundry while Mom screamed on the floor beneath me doesn't really count). I will write my essay for fandom_grammar tonight! And I will be productive tomorrow! You see if I don't!

And now, a meme and a poem:

Everyone has things they blog about. Everyone has things they don't blog about. Challenge me out of my comfort zone by telling me something I don't blog about, but you'd like to hear about, and I'll write a post about it. Ask for anything, and post/don't post this in your own journal.

maggie and milly and molly and may, e.e.cummings
maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

Woo, my birthday is soon.

Not doing a prank this year, because it's so not my style, and it's not like I can top last year's, anyway.

The most recent issue of imaginarybeasts came out. My story was Danse Macabre - Making It Official. Another Danse Macabre prequel, sadly sans illustration, but still good, I hope. The rest of the issue, if you're interested, is here.

As it is April, I'll be posting daily poems again this year (and hopefully make it through the whole month). Here's today's:

Originality, Piet Hein
Original thought
is a straightforward process.
It's easy enough
when you know what to do.
You simply combine
in appropriate doses
the blatantly false
and the patently true.

Oh, and have a meme:

Comment to this entry with any fandom. If I'm knowledgeable enough in the fandom to have ships, I'll tell you one non-canon ship I like, one canon ship I like, and one ship I really don't like (either canon OR fanon). Then post this in your own journal to offer up the same responses.

Dude, has it really been a week since I posted anything of substance? Freaky.

I can't even recount it all day by day. Saturday was Pride Prom, so I wenched up, put on my dom boots, and danced until I felt like my feet were going to fall off (three hours, almost non-stop). Then I went back to the room, changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and trainers, and went back for another half hour and then bugged a ride to the after party. My feet are fine, but my calves are still aching, though I have discovered that C gives really great deep tissues massages. Mmm.

Speaking of C, I think she's considering trying to hook me up with one of her friends. Oh dear. I should never have told her what I like in a girl.

(Also had a little bit of a sexuality crisis last night and today in therapy, but I'm better now.)

School-wise, I've registered for classes for next fall, though it's not set in stone, so I shan't announce anything yet. We're getting into semester crunch time, so I just turned in one paper on Friday and am up to my elbows in two other projects. One of them I don't actually have a group for yet, and the other one I might be doing by myself because my partner comes to class even less often than I do. I have exams one after another for four days during exam week, so that's going to suck, but the end is in sight!

Tomorrow I'm going to put up my Remix/Redux thoughts/recs/etc, but for now I leave you with one last poem.

Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought--
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.