Halloween---a week later. Sorry about not sharing sooner. I spent most of last week exhausted and unable to concentrate on anything. I ended up taking half a sick day on Thursday and then proceeded to sleep the afternoon away.
Friday night before Halloween we carved our jack-o-lanterns. This proved to be very difficult as two of the pumpkins we had picked out were rock hard. After pounding one of the pumpkins with a hammer and knife Chris ended up using his jigsaw to cut the rest of the design out. The pumpkin Chris picked was a regular pumpkin and he did an amazing job with his design.
Chris spent Saturday helping our friend, Bentley, move. Jordan and I spent the day getting the garage ready for all of the trick-or-treaters we were told would descend upon our subdivision. We picked up some decorated plastic that turned our garage into a stone dungeon so Jordan and I spent the afternoon getting that hung. This was not an easy task as the wind was blowing which made it very difficult to tape the 'walls' to the garage door. I used a heavy duty project stapler to hang the plastic from the ceiling of the garage. Since we had recently had a garage/yard sale and what didn't go was given to charity...the garage was basically empty. Chris put a TV out there, we hooked up our DVD player and played an eerie Halloween dvd that was on a loop, so it just kept playing.
As I was gathering my costume together I realized something terrible. I sold or gave away the black shirt that I use with my costume. So, I was not dressed in all black as most witches are, I was dressed in a combination of purple and black. Chris made it home in time to get his costume on and then he helped Jordan get into his.
We/I bought about $75 worth of candy to hand out to the trick-or-treaters. I had picked out several bags of candy that was not our 'favorites' so I opened them to hand out the Pixie Stix, the gum, and the nerds out first. Towards the end of the evening I opened one of the five/six bags of chocolate. We were left with four/five unopened bags of chocolate. We don't know if it is the H1N1 that kept people at home or if it was all of the churches having their Fall Festivals on the same night as the trick-or-treaters....we just know that we were left with almost as much candy as we had given out. Chris took most of it to the office on Thursday.
One of my VOX neighbors is in the hospital and she wants to keep a diary of sorts with her thoughts and feelings. She has an iPhone and wants to know how she can go about posting to VOX from her iPhone. I don't have a clue as I don't have a cell phone of any kind.
If anyone knows how or can offer up a suggestion it would be very much appreciated.
THANK YOU!!
Leaving the Hospital
I am climbing the golden stairway of my hair
to the sweet hereafter
a flute is playing and I wonder if it is real
music of heaven and I am deceased
my legs somewhat numb
but no, I see the flautist in his tuxedo
I half expect him to have donkey ears
but he does not, so he is really here
my companion assures me of his reality
and the reality of the music
and that in fact I am alive
and that the baby in the car-seat
is our own baby with her thin patch
of red hair and her white knit bonnet
looking like a child of another era
an error of the anachronism the car-seat
and the shiny white hospital lobby floor
The flautist plays his Caliendo concerto
number whatever
inspired by Corot's gypsy painting
I will lay in the night later
with no guitar
only the baby and her face
pale as a moon
against my pale as moon breast
Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 11/5/2009
Go forth and fill your libraries with media.
Seriously, thanks to everyone for being so amazing and patient. You are the reason I love Vox.
Her Auburn Spiral Staircase
I have waited
for birch-wood fingers
to unclasp taciturn bun
and auburn steps to fall
loose with flame-fish
swimming the dull light
of a dirty-shaded lamp
where she sits
brush clutched in hand
torturing her scalp
with one hundred strokes
till hair shines
her eyes narrow to jade slits
caught in last light
of day’s fiery end
I am left wondering
if her hair was something
that needed
to be tamed
to become the spiral staircase
to the Hagia Sophia
of her domed forehead
Lucy Simpson
Seattle
2/25/2006, revised 10/2009
My Moses
Big Jack and his walking stick
live on the ridge. Navajo
orphan kids dance for him,
bobcat urine's in the weeds,
the shotgun barrel's up his sleeve,
a Persian coin is on the wind.
The Chinese Mountains smell the moon
and arch their backs. I tell him, Jack,
there's times I wish I was living in
canvas France, the old west,
a picture book, the Sea of
Tranquility, or even in
the den near the hot spring.
He says, kid, to hell with
phantom limbs; spring is a verb
a wish is a wash, a walking stick
is a gottdam wing.
Wendy Videlock
Soft Spots
They're worse than weak links
in chains, which we can blame
on blacksmiths' fire, and chinks
in armor, made by rain
of arrows. Soft spots,
those parts of us that bruise,
prove we're fruit that rots
as hourglasses ooze.
But I've a spot spot for,
a phrase we tend to whisper,
is what we say before
we name our guilty pleasure--
the damper pedal that pounds
sonatas into mush
the critic Ezra Pound
would call, with a shudder, slush.
Jason Guriel
Twittering
The spent rocket shuddered and sped toward the blue world below.
The people were twittering on the sidewalk.
The birds in the trees were also twittering
When the debris crackled and hissed in the sky
the birds stopped twittering and flew off
The people looked up and then back to their cell phones and kept twittering
but now they had something new to share.
A record store clerk on break described the plummeting metal
like the tongues of flame above the apostles' heads.
He was very proud of this line.
He started to think he'd write a best-seller one of these days
if he could find the time.
A little man made mockery of the "fish-mouthed" people around him
He tapped a descriptions of them all:
of the balding man in shorts and knee-high socks
and the young woman with the black knee-high socks and just that little bit of
holy tan skin, who was also looking up at the sky
and then back to her phone
She was trying to tie it all into the “buddhistic acceptance,"
that she had learned in Eastern Philosophy Class
under Professor Kreely, a woman who always sat too close
and hitched up her skirt, revealing the two perfect white globes her knees
Kreely had lost a son to suicide.
There was only one in the crowd, an old man,
who hobbled very slowly out of the way.
pushing a stroller with a wailing infant.
He stood on the corner and railed at the group
to come to safety. He screamed. He tore his
yellow-white beard.
The baby also screamed, till it was red as coral.
A woman wrote that his hair was like
pissed-on snow and thought she should
write poetry someday and try to publish it
do something other than tap into her little box
and receive the affirmation she so longed for.
Lucy Simpson 10/31/2009, Seattle
Will you be giving out candy to trick or treaters this year? If so, what goodies can the ghosts and goblins expect to bring home?
Ohhh....I have all kinds of candy and goodies to give out. Gum, Snickers, Tootsie Rolls, MIlky Ways, Reese's and all kinds of things. This is our first year in a real neighborhood since leaving Missouri eight years ago. Jordan missed out on all of the Halloween fun that kids have. We really hated not being in a neighborhood. This year we are getting our yard all spookied up and setting up some party food in the garage. We will be showing scary movies/music on the TV and playing darts while we wait on the ghouls, goblins and witches to come trick-or-treat us.
oh...and uhm....This morning I listened to _I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas_. :D I can hardly wait to decorate for Christmas. This whole house is going to be so awesome and pretty decorated for the Holiday season.
I was just told that the Amazon Conduit will be fixed by tomorrow. I will post here as soon as I get word that it's back up and running.
I know this has been frustrating and I am sorry there wasn't more I could do to make it less so. I really appreciate your patience though.
Cheers,
