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Happy Howl-O-Ween

  EAT, DRINK & BE SCARY!

♦♦♦♦

Broomstick Rides Available:  Click Here

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Little Orphan Annie

by James Whitcomb Riley

Little Orphan Annie’s come to our house to stay,
And wash the cups and saucers up, and brush the crumbs away,
And shoo the chickens off the porch and dust the hearth and sweep,
And make the fire, and bake the bread, and earn her board and keep;
And all us other children, when the supper things is done,
We set around the kitchen fire and has the mostest fun
A-listeniin’ to the witch tales that Annie tells about,
And the Gobble-uns that gits you if you don’t watch out!

Once they was a little boy who wouldn’t say his prayers–
And when he went to bed at night, away upstairs,
His mammy heard him holler and his daddy heard him bawl,
And when they turned the kivvers down, he wasn’t there at all!
And they seeked him in the rafter room, and cubby hole and press,
And seeked him up the chimney flue, and everywheres, I guess;
But all they ever found was just his pants and round about!
And the Gobble-uns’ll git you if you don’t watch out!

And one time a little girl would always laugh and grin,
And make fun of everyone, and all her blood and kin;
And once when they was company and old folks was there,
She mocked them and shocked them and said she didn’t care!
And just as she kicked her heels, and turnt to run and hide,
They was two great big Black Things a-standin’by her side,
And they snatched her through the ceiling
‘fore she knowed what she’s about!
And the Gobble-uns’ll git you if you don’t watch out!

And little Orphan Annie says, when the blaze is blue,
And the lampwick sputters, and the wind goes woo-oo!
And you hear the crickets quit and the moon is gray,
And the lightning bugs in dew is all squenched away–
You better mind your parents, and your teachers fond and dear,
And cherish them that loves you, and dry the orphan’s tear,
And help the poor and needy one that cluster all about,
Or the Gobble-uns’ll git you if you don’t watch out!

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Believe me, it’s very scary when PQS reads this aloud to you!  That man has a way with him.  Oh yes he does.

The poet’s website:  Click Here   Wikipedia Page:  Click Here

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And did you hear about the Twitter "Tweance" wherein a psychic contacted Michael Jackson, Kurt Cobain and River Phoenix?  Sadly, Avon Bard, Shakespeare was apparently rather tired and chose not to participate.  You can "see" the Seance HERE.  And read about it HERE.

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Before you go …

… shall we Dance? 

Dance the Monster Mash?  Click Here

BROADWAY MELODY

by Frederick Seidel

A naked woman my age is a total nightmare.
A woman my age naked is a nightmare.
It doesn’t matter. One doesn’t care.
One doesn’t say it out loud because it’s rare
For anyone to be willing to say it,
Because it’s the equivalent of buying billboard space to display it,

Display how horrible life after death is,
How horrible to draw your last breath is,
When you go on living.
I hate the old couples on their walkers giving
Off odors of love, and in City Diner eating a ray

Of hope, and paying and trembling back out on Broadway,

Drumming and dancing, chanting something nearly unbearable,
Spreading their wings in order to be more beautiful and more terrible.

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Poetry:  I just can’t get enough, it seems.  Yeah, I know you come here to read dirty stuff from the Phone Sex Goddess, the Queen of Kink, the Damsel of Debauchery.  I get that.  I really do.  But there is a lot more to me than "Smut Literatrix" and if you don’t want these other parts of me … sorry, chump.  Google your favorite dirty words and get on with it. Or you could hop on over to Blistered Lips, where I keep my little trove of personally-written FREE smut.  Either way, I’ll be here when you get back. 

So let’s get back to talking about this poem/poet.  First off, from my point of observation, it’s comme il faut to blog about this poem today, because I’m going to a Broadway show tonight.  And, oh yes, I am excited.  But more about that at some future date. 

It seems that Mr. Seidel is currently the toast of the town with the recent publication of Poems 1959-2009.  Everybody’s talking and I’m listening. 

Michael Hoffman of The Poetry Foundation notes: 

From the beginning, Seidel was always a bogeyman, a Bürgerschreck, an épateur—a carnivore if not a cannibal in the blandly vegan compound of contemporary poetry

From Wyatt Mason at The New York Times:

 … novelists are among Seidel’s most articulate advocates. Norman Rush recognizes how Seidel’s choices can be misunderstood: “The risks Seidel takes have to do with threatening the potential affection of new readers. They may see him as a ‘swell’ and take that presentation as reason enough not to be interested in what he’s doing. He doesn’t cozen the reader. But if you persist, the power and profundity of Seidel’s games, and his nerve, will get you — draw you into the extremely complex set of experiences that he’s laid out for you to have.”

Adam Kirsh (The New York Sun) answers the question, "Who is the best American poet writing today?" with:

Though the news will not be welcome to prize juries, literary philanthropists, and the people who choose the poems for the subway, I think it may be Frederick Seidel. There is a reason why Mr. Seidel, whose first book was published more than 40 years ago, has not accumulated the cargo of honors that turn so many poets his age into mere worthies: no Pulitzer, no National Book Award. Indeed, if you go to the "about the author" section of Mr. Seidel’s new Web site, you will find no curriculum vitae at all. Instead, Mr. Seidel offers a clipping from a 1962 issue of the New York Times, about the controversy that resulted when a panel of poets chose his first collection, "Final Solutions," for the 92nd Street Y’s inaugural poetry prize. Though the judges included Robert Lowell, the sponsor refused to publish the book, on the grounds that it libeled a living person.

Now — to my mind — this is an exciting and fascinating man/poet/iconoclast.  Being somewhat of a maverick myself, I am downright rapturous over this guy and his book.  I want to know more more more.  Give me more more more.  I want a biography.  I want an autobiography.  I want that book of poems.  I want it bad bad bad.  I want it yesterday.  I want to prop it up next to my PC so I can cast loving glances at it.  I want it in my purse so I can take it out at the nail salon and impress my fellow fashionistas.  II want it under my pillow at night so I can fondle it and smell it up-close-and-personal.

But that’s beside the point.   What’s more important is that I feel and see so much with this poem.  First of all — despite the fact I’ve never been even close to New York — I feel the New York-iness of this poem.  I can see the City Diner.  I am sitting in the City Diner, feeling the aged leather of the booth cling to my legs as I peruse a yellowed menu of cheap and fattening food while watching the natives order french fries (not home fries!) with their bacon and eggs from a waitress named Frannie, wearing a triangled handkerchief above her left breast. 

I know that elderly couple and the scent of their weathered love.  A love so strong and so anchored in time they could care less what a poet sophisticate thinks of them … they have each other.

And how dare Mr. Seidel  talk so candidly of aging women.  Ouch!  It just touches sooo deeply  — and I’m not complaining, mind you.  bring it on, Mr. Seidel.  make me choke on your poem — because I fear aging, having played the youth card for all its worth in the pursuit and conquering of men. 

Can you tell I’m excited?  Yes, indeed, I am.  I’ve caught up with some of Mr. Seidel’s work elsewhere.  And I’m more than excited:  I’m downright smitten.  I’m hot to trot.  I’m turned upside down and inside out.  This guy is a versifying genius.  I just might make him the Poet Savant of Zen.  A new savant is — after all — long overdue, and I don’t think there’s anyone else even close to being worthy of carrying the mantle.  Although I don’t think he’d thank me in the morning.  *wink*

I’ll be thinking about you and Mr. Seidel and all that jazz on my way to the theater this evening.  I’m much excited, and engaged and enthused  — the three "Es" of Self-Actualization (I made that up, but it works for me).  A special thank you to Mr. Smith who sent me a link in an email and got this whole ball rolling.  The only other occasion he took time from his (most likely) busy schedule to write me was to complain about something we’ve since ironed out.  So it was with much pleasure I received this particular email today.  You did good, Mr. Smith!

xo, Angela

ps. Speaking of Fredericks … Fredrick the Cross Dressing Cat has started his own blog.  How cute is that?  I always knew he was smarter than the average kitty.  He’s also tweeting at twitter, so make sure to follow him.

The Wussy Boy Manifesto
by Eric Ott (Big Poppa E)

my name is big poppa e
and i am a wussy boy.

it’s taken me a long time to admit it…

i remember shouting in high school,
“no, dad, I’m not gay!
I’m just… sensitive.
i tried to like hot rods and jet planes
and football and budweiser poster girls,
but i never got the hang of it!
i don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

then, i saw him,
there on the silver screen,
bigger than life and unafraid
of earrings and hair dye
and rejoicing in the music
of the cure and morrissey and
siouxsie and the banshees,
talking loud and walking proud
my wussy boy icon:
duckie in pretty in pink.

and i realized i wasn’t alone.

and i looked around
and saw other wussy boys
living large and proud of who they were:
ralph macchio, wussy boy;
matthew broderick, wussy boy;
and lord god king
of the wussy boy movement,
john cusack in say anything,
unafraid to prove to the world
that sensitive guys much kick ass.

now i am no longer ashamed
of my wussiness, hell no,
I’m empowered by it.

when I’m at a stoplight and
some testosterone redneck
methamphetamine
jock fratboy asshole dumb fuck
pulls up beside me
blasting his trans am’s stereo
with power chord anthems to big tits
and date rape,
i no longer avoid his eyesight, hell no,
i just crank all 12 watts of my car stereo
and i rock out right into his face:
(devil sign and morrissey’s voice)
“i am human and i need to be loved
just like everybody else does!”

i am wussy boy, hear me roar
(meow).

bar fight? pshaw!
you think you can take me, huh?
just because i like poetry
better than sports illustrated?
well, allow me to caution you,
I’m not the average every day
run-of-the-mill wussy boy you
beat up in high school, punk,
i am wuss core!
(flash “wc” gang sign)

don’t make me get renaissance
on your ass because i will
write a poem about you,
a poem that tears your psyche
limb from limb,
that exposes your selfish insecurities,
that will wound you deeper
and more severely
than knives and chains and gats
and baseball bats
could ever hope to do…

you may see 65 inches of wussy boy
standing in front of you,
but my steel-toed soul is
ten foot tall and bullet proof!

bring the pain, punk,
beat the shit out of me,
show all the people in this bar
what a real man can do
to a shit-talking wussy boy like me

but you’d better remember
my bruises will fade
my cuts will heal,
my scars will shrink and disappear,
but my poem
about the pitiful, small, helpless
cock-man oppressor you really are
will last
forever.

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First  of all, thanks to PQS who celebrates with me and (and possibly now even transcends) my love for poetry.  I wish you could have heard his rendition of this poem (he reads aloud to me often and it is pure heaven) … I am still smiling.

Since PQS calls me and not you, your next best bet is to see the poet himself, the simply fab Big Poppa E, perform this poem on HBO’s Def Poetry Slam:  CLICK HERE.

Then you can read his Wikipedia page and, of course, buy his book.

xo, Angela

 Phone Sex

by Joseph Matuzak

Sending bodies over wire
water removed
broken further than powder
translated into sound
then reconstituted at destination.
Here is a warm leg turned
into inflection, here
an ear described by a sigh.
Fabric rubbing, soft creak,
and romance
is somewhere nearly there
area codes away
twitching through switches
like a snake biting at a chest
then filling your room
like smoke, a proxied body
that would scatter
at your grasp
or even if you exhale
because all that makes it real
is the slick spark
of electricity that runs
with a hoarse whisper
from there to here.

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I’m having a pretty busy weekend despite my Enforced Vacation, which I may go into at a later date.  But I wanted to let you know I was thinking about you; and what better way than with a poem about phone sex?  Hmmm.  I guess this could be akin to phoning it in, except via the net.   Typing it in?  Would that be better?  Am I phoning or typing it in?  Ah, what the heck.  At least I (with a little help from PQS) found you a good poem to read.

While the poem describes a type of phone sex to which I don’t particularly ascribe, it certainly hits the nail on the head for plenty of others.  So enjoy the pretty phrases and rhythms and pacing .. and who knows?  You just might have to make that call.

You can read more of Joseph Matuzak’s poetry HERE, and can listen to an interview and more HERE.

xo, Angela

Legs
Mark Halliday

In the last year of my marriage,
among a hundred other symptoms I wrote a poem called
"The Woman across the Shaft"—she was someone
I never met—she had long bare legs
on a summer night when she answered the phone
in her kitchen and lifted her legs to the table
while she talked and laughed and I tried to listen
from my window across an airshaft between buildings
and watched her legs. I doubt she was beautiful
but her legs were young and long
and she laughed on the phone

while I sat in my dark of dissolving faith

and I tried to capture or contain the unknown woman
in a poem: the real and the ideal,
the mess of frayed bonds versus untouched possibility,
so forth. Embarrassed now
I imagine a female editor
who received "The Woman across the Shaft"
as a submission to her magazine—the distaste she felt—
perhaps disgust she felt—I imagine her
grimacing slightly as she considers writing "Pathetic"
on the rejection slip but instead lets the slip stay blank
and then returns to another envelope
from a writer she has learned to trust,
crossing her long legs on her smart literary desk.

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**sigh*

Poets are sexy.  Intelligent, thoughtful men are sexy.  Introspective men are sexy.  Mark Halliday is sexy.

Mark Halliday is at Wikipedia.  Or …you might want to LISTEN IN.  Or … even BUY his book.