OK…getting ready for the SLIP N SLIDE PARTY!!! Tomorrow involves getting food, drink, rum, more rum, pirate costumes, checking the tarps, torches, tribal music. There has been a request for karaoke…so I’ll see if I can swing that. Come on down – adult slip N’ sliding is the next Olympic sport. We aren’t going to party…we will REVEL!!!

OK…writing, writing, writing. So the epic poem opens (post prologue) with a voodoo prayer. I started with a genuine voodoo prayer…then some modified verses…and then slip into my own words (I figure that’s like blues or jazz…you start out paying homage to those who came before you – and then you improvise).

Then, the voodoo priestess (the speaker) enacts a vevé – a drawing made by sprinkling some granular substance (ash, crushed chalk, etc.) on the floor (each vodou spirit has one). It’s considered a powerful form of magic (more so than just prayer or offering). I wreslted with this a bit…but found a way to “illustrate” it using text.

Spells away!

I hope to have the first part of the story arc (which mostly takes place in the real world) done by Monday. Then it’s on to the Underworld (Sheol) where my sad hero (a lost angel) must traverse.

OK…so I have a couple of poetic fragments that I’d like to harvest images and lines from to make a real poem (or maybe just use some of the images in my epic – waste not want not). Both feature vultures. The first, is a rough poem. The second is really an old live-journal post (about what happened to me that morning) that I decided to get all cutesy with and write in verse. I like to show off like that – attention whore that I am. Both of them got thought up while I was running in Springfield. Here goes:


RUNNING DOWN THE VULTURE BLACK
Every day, I ran
To the lake mouth
To clear the branches
Of vultures brooding black
In the thick of thorns
Hungry for messiah blood
Tiny Spears of Destiny
Having to instead subside
On meager meals of road kill gore
Dangling in the thorny wind
And every day
And every run
One less vulture
And then no more
And the crow laughed
And I knew I had come home

CHASING A SUGAR-GLIDER GRAVE
I decided to run alone today
To chase away wakeful demons
Catch sleep on the other side

Ran, pre-dawn, to where
I’d buried Rocco, at the lake mouth
At dead end peninsula
Under the thorn tree
My favorite Springfield spot

Straight shot, from my room
Down a shadowed road
Old homes, older trees
Down the shadowed road

Halfway, I met a little beagle
Zig-zagin’ happy on the shadowed road
Hey pooch, I said breathing hard
In the air cooled darkly
What are you doing on the shadowed road?

I’m following you, he said.
And I, Alright, and we ran
And ran
A ways

But beagle, zig-zagin’ happy
Suddenly sped away
And, Why? wondered I
Did he go back, we’re nearly at
Shadowed road’s end

And there they were
Eighty, maybe a hundred black
Shapes perched in the trees
Perched in the jagged-zag branches
Like black, mascara tears
Hangin’ on the crows-feet
Of a beat’n harlot’s face
Dark pimp, Night, leaving her
For the Day

Who’s that, they croaked,
Trip-trappin’ under our tree?
Their voices grated
Like Caine’s teeth on
Able’s skull
Sable feather flutterin’
In the wind.

Trip-trappin’? I asked
Aren’t trolls supposed to hang
Under bridges, gluttoning
On living flesh
And a gruff goat’s entrails
Trailin’ from fangs?

Naw, they cawed
We’re vultures
And we go overhead
We’ve got the etiquette
To wait to eat you
Till your dead

Plan on diein’
Any time soon? they crooned

Naw, I said,
Not in the plans

But you’ll let us know, they cried

Sure thing, I lied

Back on the shadowed road
And the shadows melted
And I got to the opening
Of the lake mouth
Near the peninsula’s dead end

Hundreds of seagulls, ducks, and geese
Struttin’ in the way
Move, I say, or I’ll tell the vultures that you’re dead
And they fled and fled and fled and fled and fled

Out of a hundred-hundred birds
One lone crow, I’m not lyin’
Black blanketed and bitter beaked
Crowin’-Cawin’-Keenin’-Sighin’-Cryin’
To quickly melting night
Crows are Night Birds, it’s true
Some of them misdirect
Like magician’s hands
In the day
So you don’t see what
They’re doing at night

Got that poem done?
He asked, anxious-like
Size’n up my eyes
Hungry for my eyes
Taught the Aztecs
To eat their enemy’s eyes

Workin’ on it, I said
Ready by December
Here to borrow some
Inspiration and sleep and dreams

Aye, he sassed
Flying from his tree
As I passed

There, at the peninsula’s dead end
Surrounded by lake and islands and
Gulls and geese
The thorny tree
And a sugar-glider’s grave

Hey Rocco, I said and
Hey little guy, I said
Need to borrow some mojo, bud
And I did, stooping down
To this familiar past
To this past familiar
Every magician needs a familiar
Says the book on my shelf
Even the word-weaving kind

And I ran back to my dorm…