Tuesday, December 29, 2009

carletta sue kay

http://www.saucefaucet.com/csk/

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

rainy days and mondays by paul williams





the rain as a running gag




And now it comes
Like stepping into a bucket
You fall to your knees in prostration to a better punch line
You knew it was out there
And you knew that it would return
But not with such comic grace
Not with uncanny timing and effect
And now you are covered in it
But the rain is merciful
The rain as a running gag

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Wheel of Fortune





That sound I try to avoid
The audience cries, “WHEEL OF FORTUNE!”
It sputters and scrapes in the periphery of my hearing
I don’t even have to force myself to not hear it
Which I do often, denying myself the acknowledgment of its frailty and fruitlessness
It could just as well be the fluttering of a bird’s wing which I try desperately to hear
But I couldn’t even if I tried
Everything is a blur
Everything is a slow heavy sliding of soundless iron
Soundless but still shrill in its imagining
That’s where you are now
Soundless in my imagining

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Sunday, January 25, 2009

A Whisper


a whisper
behind my eyes
it vibrates and my eyelashes flicker
if it does not see what it says, then it feels what it means
it says, "soft"
it says, "pretty"
come away with me
sink
slow
submerging
warm, tickling the hair on my arms
pulling
resting on soft silky tentacles of moss and green
blue, hugging
my mother's satin nightgown
a hot summer's afternoon blowing over my shoulders
the cool crook of my memory telling me...
"you remember sleep...let's sleep now."

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The Prayer that God heard




A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama
By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire

Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…

Bless us with tears - for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort - at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience - and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility - open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance - replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity - remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand - that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.

Monday, January 12, 2009

What a thrill I thought



What a thrill I thought
To sock you in the stomach
Right in the guts
The o-shaped comic book mouth acquiescing as I might expect
Watching
Feeling
My fist pushing, twisting, t-shirt
White
Around my knuckles, pulling out globs of you
…of who you thought you were
Dough
…of who you said you were
Sticking to my fingers I, in a panic
Flick to the floor
Still parts will not come off
My fingers pop and mock
I think I might fall to the ground and scrape the residual of him off like mud
Splaying my fingers where dry
Crackling in the lines of my hands
Flakes of you come off
What a thrill I thought

Saturday, January 10, 2009

This Bus



This bus smells like death
This bus smells like urine
This bus smells like humiliation
This bus makes a big black cloud
This bus feeds my children
This bus wakes the baby
This bus has bullet holes
This bus is warm and dry
This bus knows no color
This bus could care less
This bus will take you away
This bus is full of sickness
This bus has heard many stories
This bus will take me home

Monday, January 5, 2009

Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter, CH, CBE, Nobel Laureate (10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008), was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor, director, poet, author, and political activist considered by many "the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation"





After publishing poetry as a teenager and acting in school plays, Pinter began his theatrical career in the mid-1950s as a repertory actor using the stage name David Baron. Beginning with his first play, The Room (1957), Pinter's writing career spanned over half a century and produced 29 stage plays; 26 screenplays; many dramatic sketches, radio and TV plays; poetry; one novel; other short fiction; and essays, speeches, and letters—many of whose manuscripts are owned and catalogued by the British Library. His best-known works include The Birthday Party (1957), The Caretaker (1959), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which he adapted to film, and his screenplay adaptations of others' works, such as The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), The Trial (1993), and Sleuth (2007). He directed almost 50 stage, television and film productions.[1] Despite frail health since 2001, he continued to act on stage and screen, performing the title role in a critically-acclaimed production of Samuel Beckett's one-act monologue Krapp's Last Tape for the 50th anniversary season of the Royal Court Theatre, in October 2006.






Pinter's dramas often involve strong conflicts among ambivalent characters who struggle for verbal and territorial dominance and for their own versions of the past; stylistically, these works are marked by theatrical pauses and silences, comedic timing, irony, and menace. Thematically ambiguous, they raise complex issues of individual identity oppressed by social forces, language, and vicissitudes of memory. Although Pinter publicly eschewed applying the term "political theatre" to his own work in 1981, he began writing overtly political plays in the mid-1980s, reflecting his own heightening political interests and changes in his personal life. This "new direction" in his work and his left-wing political activism stimulated additional critical debate about Pinter's politics. Pinter, his work, and his politics have been the subject of voluminous critical commentary.



In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature and the French Légion d'honneur, Pinter received 19 honorary degrees and numerous other prizes and awards. Academic institutions and performing arts organizations have devoted symposia, festivals, and celebrations to him and his work, in recognition of his cultural influence and achievements across genres and media. In awarding Pinter's Nobel Prize, instigating some public controversy and criticism, the Swedish Academy cited him for being "generally regarded as the foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the 20th century" and noted: "That he occupies a position as a modern classic is illustrated by his name entering the language as an adjective used to describe a particular atmosphere and environment in drama: 'Pinteresque' " ("Biobibliographical Notes")—a word he despised and found meaningless. Two weeks after having to withdraw from the honorary degree ceremony at the Central School of Speech and Drama because of illness and receiving it in absentia ("Degree Honour"), Harold Pinter died from cancer and was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, in London

This is a link to Mr. Pinter's powerful and compelling speech given in honor of receiving The Nobel Prize in Literature.

Harold Pinter Nobel Prize Speech 2005. Art, Truth, Politics.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

The Diplomat Part One


I'm an all American boy
And that means I've got my shit together
An all American boy
I'm prepared at all times and in all states of weather
No one sees through my masque
or the thin ray of light that leaks out my eye
I don't take and I don't ask
I always bounce back, try after try
An all American boy
I see past the truth and I make things happen
It's a life I sometimes enjoy
I've got god on my side like all true madmen
Mad? Did I say mad?
Well it's not really exactly what I meant
And, if I may add?
Silly me! What am I saying? That's not what I meant!
My ruddy cheeks and crooked smile
Are well worth the wait and even the price
A master in the art of denial
A nod of the head will usually suffice

Sparks