Lumbergh & the Cat's Ass

Some time ago I set up the dining table as my writing desk. This was a good move because the dining room of this cottage has an old world feel that inspires me. It is, in fact, my favorite room in the house. Everything I need is here: books, the piano, photos of everyone who means anything to me, my guitars, a china hutch full of wine glasses...

The table itself  is heavy wood, solid with no leaves, and seats six. It reminds me of the antique partners desk I used to have in Ventura, before my ex sold it out of spite after I left her in 1999. For some reason, though, I couldn't settle down here and write for long hours. Something was amiss. I put all of my favorite things on the table, but it didn't seduce me. Last weekend I decided to place the chair facing the room rather than the bay windows. Bam! That did it...

Such Stuff

The numbers must be in the tens of thousands, maybe higher. Although not every squealing Beatlemaniac in the Sixties developed a genuine love of Indian classical music apart from George Harrison's contributions on the Beatles' albums, many did. His three instances of adding sitar (Norwegian Wood, Love You To, and Within You, Without You) only granted a tiny bit of exposure to a music that was so alien to our ears, we either loved it or hated it. Our parents certainly didn't get it.

Creatrix

Poets's Sleep by
Chang Hong Ahn, 1989

Unborn characters die and decompose,
empty skulls bleaching in the sun.
Hollow sockets, gaping jaws;
I sleep on,
dreaming, dreaming.

Their spirits try to wake me by throwing pebbles,
shattering the windows and lining the sill.
Like stones on grave markers;
they whisper,
don't forget, don't forget.

When I die they shall crowd around me,
holding me accountable for their premature expulsion.
Howling voices, accusing eyes;
didn't you know,
We could have lived, we could have lived.

Mag 208

Copyright © 2014 SK Waller

Someday, the Knife

Someday, when I've completed my current writing projects and I have nothing to do (hah!), I'll go through each of my 50-odd journals and redo them. I'll buy some of those bound, black sketchbooks and I'll transcribe the good stuff into them, adding more content, photos, drawings, watercolors, and all that sort of thing. I'll also take an X-acto knife to some paragraphs and drawings and paste them into the new volumes. Then I'll throw the originals in a barrel and burn them...

1962

bitter end
bitter cold
cheap chianti
cheap cold water flat
music n poetry floatin
over west 4th street
sh
dylans writin

Mag 207




Copyright © 2014 SK Waller

The Promise of Spring

"I don't mind complaining about the weather.

It's fun and makes for good conversation."

Arlo Guthrie

Everywhere I went yesterday, people seemed to want to talk about the weather. Even the morning's bomb scare on the OSU campus wasn't as popular a subject as the blue, cloudless sky and warmer temperature. Talking about the weather is only natural, I guess, since it's the one thing we all have in common. We're all subject to it and, whether we complain or rhapsodize over it, we generally agree...

Echo

I am the echo of a distant star,
a star that expanded
and glowed,
then burned out
many thousands of light years ago.
Bumping my head on the moon
I reflect back to my source,
but no one's home.

Alternate Realities - a Repost

Originally posted on this day, 2009.

Have you ever thought that a blog could be more than just an update of someone's daily life, or a political opinion, or any other left-brain expression? What if a blog could emanate from the right brain? I think about it all the time. In fact, I've thought about it since I first encountered the medium nearly ten years ago, and I've experimented with it. In fact, I continue to experiment with it. I envision spaces on the web that make us reach beyond ourselves in the same way that literature does. Spaces where we explore the world of mind (not thoughts, mind you), a world where intuition creates the reality and invites readers into alternate realities which, in the world of literature are called "fiction"...

The Last Refuge of the Unimaginative

A Gloomy Day by Angela Northern

I suppose that, like me, you're pretty tired of winter by now. Winter doesn't usually get me down, but this year it has been gloomy more than not and the snow just never seems to go away, completely. When it does melt, leaving dormant dapples on what used to be a lawn, it's usually replaced within a day or two...

Meat

I cannot love on a size zero body,
I cannot live on a size zero brain;
hearing about your hair and your friends,
and how they daily let you down.
I need the meat of brain, meat of body,
the meat of words and ideas,
the meat Goya and Boucher,
of Kant and Descartes.
The hollowness of your shadowed eyes
and practiced posturing
causes my belly to gripe and ache.
Where do I sink my teeth?
Where do I sink my body, my mind?
Where do I find you behind the shallow pretense?

Mag 206

Copyright © 2014 SK Waller

Thoughts of a Sun-Drenched Elsewhere

Invariably, just around the middle of the winter season, I begin daydreaming about living someplace else. After I've sat down with a cup of tea following a frigid dog walk in the snow, warmer climates come to mind. I consider Mèrida in the Yucatan, and a village on the Costa de Oro of Spain. And when blistering summer has me feeling faint from its heat and humidity, I dream of England and California...

A Most Pedantic Legacy

“Little Jackie Waller” was a Vaudevillian child star who took his first baby steps on the boards of theater stages across the Midwest. His babysitters were bare-breasted showgirls and his guardians were alcoholic clowns. He sang and danced both in minstrel shows and as a solo act, but his normal shtick was to interrupt the adult acts with wisecracks and stunts while winning the hearts—and cheers—of the audience.

He was diminutive, red-haired, and freckle-faced, the epitome of the Huckleberry Finn All-American boy, a new and popular archetype in the late 19th century. Was it in the Palace Theatre in Cincinnati or the Madison Theatre in Peoria that he enjoyed his first standing ovation, received his first hugs and kisses from a large-bosomed patroness, or read his first glowing newspaper notice? I have one such item; it’s the only physical reminder I have of him...