Poetry Night Upcoming!

To those of you who haven't heard the news yet, I am holding a Poetry Party on Saturday night!

Here's a sneak peak at some of the poetry I'll be reading:

at least two of them I am reading just for the sound or the sensation....

Swimming Sonnet

How icy at first the water so seems!

Splash in and spin around, cold goes away.

Hold your breath, swim beneath the dancing beams,

then kick your legs, let exercise be your play.

Be a ballerina with outstretched leg,

down where the waters to your shoulders creep,

Become a mermaid with a fishy peg,

then, human again, come back from the deep.

Go to the ledge and let yourself free fall,

race down, touch bottom and then upward fly.

Kick and churn the water, there feel the thrall

wherever you surface facing the sky.

Get out, rinse off, make yourself dry again,

and in repose you'll see the mountains spin. 

 quite a few I am sharing just to share my life experience with my friends.

 

Broken Umbrella

(Written in Fall 2008, Arizona)

Umbrella unfurled –

done with difficulty.

Dangling rod

hanging from the spidery frame –

dangerous.

Ignorable.

Walking into the rain.

Person running across the street,

soaked.

Wet shirt flinging.

River running down the hill,

in the gutter.

Friends join.

Laughing.

Running through the puddles

in the rain

pouring.

Perfect day for a splash –

Laughing,

Splashing in puddles.

Wet.

Rainy day

perfect for a broken umbrella. 

and of course I'll be showing off my latest creations...

 

 (this photo is copyright me)

Meditation on a Meandering Stream

 

Sometimes life

is like

a stream

and with it

we

must flow,

resting where

the eddies

stop,

running where

they

go.

Nearly bumping into rocks,

gently carried

around,

drifting where

it slowly

crawls,

drowning

where rapids

sound.

But is life always

like

a stream?

Do we float

without

oar?

Are we

only

drifting?

Is there something

worth drifting

for? 

and here is one more to reward anyone who reads this far

Cup of Life

Sweet cup of life!

I take thee by the glass

and tip thee to my lips.

All at once I am joined with thee!

Sweet nectar coming in

from out of my mouth,

my hands are fastened, never to release!

I drink to all my health and happiness,

the painted galaxies and myriad stars,

the forces of time and fate and destiny,

of choice and consequence,

to things broken and remembered,

people loved and lost!

Hurts made whole,

ancient things fulfilled and remembered.

I see these things in thy waters,

O cup of time,

and I drink to them.

and here are some tulips from earlier this spring (photo copyright me) 

Genre Collision--This Seriously Just Happened to Me!

(pictures are from Google Images, for your pleasure only)

I talk about the genre collision at the end. In the meantime, NOVEL UPDATE!

Repairs for the Blue Swan are well underway.

Brittany got to watch the crew at work while they repaired most of the ship with magic. That was fairly exciting for her and for me because I never considered including that scene in previous development of the story.
 

“All right, magicians! Begin!” came a shout from the beach.

Jack began muttering a slow stream of strange words. The low chant reminded Brittany of a Native American medicine man that had once visited her school and sang to them. Jack lifted his short arms slowly, and then began moving his hands, up and down and back and forth and in circles. Gold flames appeared in the air wherever his short fingers traced. Then more of the flames—pale gold, shimmering, not radiating heat, making zinging and zapping sounds—began to appear on the cliff against which the ship was leaning against, and they acted as a wedge which tipped the Blue Swan away from the rocks. On the sand, Eylon was making arm motions similar to Jack's, except much more dramatic. Brittany could see red flames the color of laffy taffy encircling the port side of the vessel, clamping onto the deck and the hull like a vise and then moving it away from the cliff. Small blue flames appeared, flickering at the prow and the stern of the ship, lifting the ends slightly. Circling

above, Minta gave a loud chirp.

“NOW BOYS, PULL!” came a shout from the beach. The animals began to pull on the ropes, guiding the ship as the conjured magic did the heavy work. The ship groaned loudly, and then slowly the masts began to tip over sideways and the hull, with much shattering and splitting, broke away from the rock.

Brittany gave a huge gasp. Then she ran inside to the living room. Jessie and Mickey were on the floor playing a game. Danny was on the armchair with his gameboy.

“Jessie! Mickey! Danny! Get outside! This is amazing!” Brittany shouted all at once. “They're moving the ship with magic!” The children looked at each other, then out the window at the moving ship, then jumped up and ran outside to watch. Mickey screamed.

“Whoa!” gasped Jessie.

“Unbelievable,” said Danny quietly.

Jack had stopped chanting. He smirked at the four Stevenes. “Hah, I bet you think you've seen everything now, eh?” He laughed. After being dragged twenty yards by magic across the beach, the magic flames vanished and the Blue Swan came to rest. The crew dropped their ropes at once and gave out a huge cheer.

 and that's just the part where the ship gets taken off the rocks! cool, eh?
She also got to put on a mini trumpet recital for Captain Eric and his brother Evan. Those two cats were fairly impressed. Eric applauded, even.

 So now the crew has come back into the babysitter's house and Brittany has gone outside, leaving us to the last scene of chapter 5, which I am looking forward to writing tomorrow. :)

But in the meantime, I am preparing for a poetry recital within the next week or two. I need to get my calendar for next month organized first, but sometime in early June I am going to read some of my poetry to my friends here in Provo. I'll publish more details as they develop.

I have been looking through my poetry files from over the years--dating back to high school--and finding lots of amazing stuff that I could share.

One weird thing I am finding is that some of the poems from the blue notebook, written within the last year, sound like they were written just a few weeks or months ago. They invoke a lot of situations I have been in. Although I decline to go into detail, sometimes I wonder, and I have good evidence to suspect, that maybe through writing poetry last year I was sort of predicting the future, or even writing them against future need (frankly I wish I'd known that).

Now this is the genre collision I was hinting at earlier: One small example of the poetry I have been considering is the poem Northern Lights, which I wrote down last year in my blue notebook.

The northern lights suddenly came

streaking over the mountain,

flashes of multicolored light

washed the hillside

in gold and pink, purple and green.

They were broken, dancing beams

that stretched and shrank

like slow, liquid lightning.

They cast bright-colored shadows

on the colorless lawn.

I ran to greet them there. 

(btw: the above picture is from APOD, which I highly recommend)

the whole point of writing down this poem in the first place was to capture a daydream moment I had been having for the past few weeks. But now that I have found it and re-typed it, it sort of reminds me of my novel (in a less freakish than some of my other poetry reminds me of my life ;) ).

 Since Revunia is so far to the north, it seems only appropriate that the northern lights would appear, perhaps while Brittany Stevens is sailing there or during the festival nights after its liberation from the goblins.

 Revunia is a little island way to the north, you see, between the very end of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and the coast of Siberia (eastern Russia). This is an interesting development because I have never considered throwing the auroras into Northern Warriors before. I will definitely think on it! :D

On Joining an Extraordinary Journey

I have been working on this novel since I was in middle school. I had nothing to do during study hall one day, so I got out a sheet of paper and started jotting down ideas for an adventure story. In the original story, Brittany joins the quest for Revunia after randomly meeting the crew of the Blue Swan on the beach. As the story has evolved, however, Brittany's first meeting with the crew has become much more dramatic.On a dark and stormy night at her babysitter Ellie's house, with her younger siblings...

...there was a loud gust of wind on the outside, a gust so strong that Brittany feared the wall of the house would blow off. She immediately thought of scenes from disaster movies where houses blew apart. And suddenly there was a loud, roaring crunching noise—but it was not from the house. It sounded like it was coming from the beach. And almost as suddenly as the noise began, it stopped.

“That wasn't thunder,” said Danny.

“No, it wasn't,” Ellie affirmed, glancing nervously at her front door.

There was only the howling of the wind for a few moments, but suddenly it was joined by other

noises. There was panicked shouting and yelling and groaning at first. And then there were animal-like noises, barks and squeals and moans.

“What was that?” asked Jessie.

Ellie walked toward the front door, slowly and with trepidation.

“No idea,” said Brittany.

“No kidding,” added Danny.

And suddenly, there was a very loud, deep bark, and it sounded closer to the house. Ellie's eyes widened with amazement.

“I'd know that bark anywhere,” she said, her tense voice almost a whisper. She flew to the front door and slipped on her jacket and rain boots. 

The bark that Ellie recognizes is that of a dog that once lived with her. She goes outside to bring him in and invite his friends to enter her house. Brittany follows her outside and sees the crew of the Blue Swan, mostly talking animals, abandoning ship for the safety of their house. When she returns, she finds this scene in the living room:

Across the living room were scattered various animals, all muddy and wet from the storm, and—strangely enough—all talking and laughing like humans. A fire had been lit in the fireplace, but to Brittany's amazement it burned without wood. Brittany saw two cats, both black and white, seated in front of the fire, along with a short yellow creature she thought could be a gopher, a duck, a small golden mouse, and a large bobcat with tough-looking scars and two belts crossed across its back. On the couch on the far living-room wall sat two large penguins, chattering away in their strange accents. A large rodent of some type, perhaps a ferret, was slumped on the seat of the armchair, dozing in the middle of the noisy crowd. Two dogs, a golden retriever and a basset hound, sat in the middle of the living room, receiving tickle treatments from Jessie and Mickey, who both screamed with delight as they were licked and coddled in return. Ellie sat on the couch to the right beside a raccoon, wiping down a third dog with a towel, this one a large hound dog that looked old and wrinkly.

“How is it you got on that ship, anyhow?” Ellie was asking the dog as she rubbed the towel across its shoulders.

“I'm a member of the crew, Mrs. Dingle,” the dog answered in a slow, deep voice. “I have been a-working for Cap'n Eric since two year ago last August. I took to the sea to have a job, ma'am.”

Later, the ship's officers hold a meeting to explain their situation to the confused mortals. Eric and Evan, brothers and both tabby cats, discuss their quest to the kingdom of Revunia.

Eric took the cue. “We are en route to the wizard nation of Revunia, an island kingdom in the northern Pacific that has been taken over by goblins from the Aleutian islands.”

“You don't say,” said Ellie. 

Brittany raised an eyebrow. “But I've never heard of that place,” she asked. “Is it even real?”

 ... 

“Revunia's capital is one of my ports of call. Or was, before the goblins took over. I have not gone back there for three years. The goblin invasion took place because of corrupt leaders in the government who were disagreeing on trade regulations and security measures with the Grand Prince, Orlando III. They invited the goblins to attack, and once they took over they ruined Revunia utterly.”

“The new government has used the goblins to suppress rebellion by force,” Evan commented. “And he goblins have pillaged everything since the invasion. Farmers couldn't plant crops because of the raiding, and the growing season that far north is so short anyway that there wasn't enough food to feed people. The goblin ships patrolling the seas near Revunia have burned every ship flying Revunian colors in truce, and since we carry that flag, well, we're not welcome there anymore.” 

...

“We are on our way with the fleet to Anchorage for a council of war,” said Eric. “And once we have come up with a strategy, we will launch an assault on the goblins and drive them out of Revunia.

And that is as far as I have gotten this week. Literally! 

And not to mention novel-writing is an exhausting process, one that delightfully entertains the mind but also drains the energy of muses deprived of their sleep...zzzzzzz...I have to say, Northern Warriors is one of my few novel ideas that has not been fueled by visions in the night. One can only hope that once the sun sets and the covers are over the head, the crew of the Blue Swan will find me and take me on the adventure. 

 

 

Anyone wonder what a goblin looks like?
Excerpt from Northern Warriors Chapter 1: The Invasion

The Princess and her Captors

Alexia sat at the end of the line, unsure how to feel or what to make of her surroundings: her family chained up next to her, the noisy crowd assembling in the square, the goblins surrounding the platform and guarding her. She had never seen goblins before, to her recollection, but she did not like them: short humanoid creatures with small, skinny bodies, reddish skin, yellow eyes, and large, scabby heads. They were just as rude as they were ugly, always poking their spears at her over the smallest thing, such as a sneeze or a yawn, and making jokes about all the people they had killed and the treasures they had stolen. Some female goblins had broken into the royal apartments and stolen items from the the princesses' wardrobes. She had seen one wearing a necklace and a crown belonging to her mother, and had been particularly incensed when she saw one wearing one of her favorite dresses...

Pintath, a Goblin Warlord

...Two goblin guards marched up the steps, followed closely by a large, exceptionally scabby goblin in leather armor with a short cape and a large, horned helmet like a Viking hat. He was frowning when he ascended the steps, but smiled with evil pleasure as he saw the prisoners. He looked like he was trying very hard to suppress a cruel laugh...

Excerpts from Marginally Crossed: An Essay

It'll be nice to start the blog with a little more info on my background. I try to be revealing but concealing at the same time. The whole point is to point out the absurdity of everyday life. It is also an attempt at some dry humor, so bear with me. Maybe if you like I'll post some pictures to illustrate. ;)

Crossing streets was never my favorite activity. I am little used to it. I grew up in the country, five miles from the nearest small town where I went to school (with only two traffic lights, last time I checked), ten miles from the nearest big town with proper crosswalks and traffic lights that I never had to use, and thirty miles from the nearest major city where crossing busy streets was only marginally more occasional (marginally being a term that tends to be abused if one took calculus in high school and never took math again, especially if one decided to be an English major and to never bother with numbers. Being able to use that word is ample evidence that one did learn something in high school calculus, particularly that the rate of change of an equation can be a marginal or slight change or something like that). But, more annually than marginally, I grew up crossing the busy streets of Salt Lake City, Utah when my family paid our annual pilgrimage to Temple Square, holding hands with my younger siblings and waiting patiently for the light to change as we crossed the blocks between our chosen parking lot, the Conference Center, and the Square itself...

 

Crosswalks have been a part of my everyday existence here since I left my little country home in Texas to attend Brigham Young University. Until recently, I have never had to bother with traffic lights to get to campus, it was always watch for cars and cross the intersection quickly without irritating what drivers would have to wait for you. If possible, cross in a group. My only regular encounters with traffic lights were en route to the Provo Temple, having to cross major intersections two or three times to get there. In this case, crossing streets has been a case of hitting the button on the traffic pole, waiting patiently for the light to change and traffic to stop, and then walk while the signal of the walking man on the black box on the pole across the street glows and the signal beeps repeatedly with a CHIRP! CHIRP! Or a Bop-bup! And counts down the number of seconds until the red hand flashes and stays and then the waiting cars have the right to move and possibly turn you into mincemeat if you don't get across fast enough. Or one would think they have the right to do so, if one is an irritating enough pedestrian, which one is constantly trying to avoid being. Pedestrian etiquette is not one of my strengths, alas.

The little crosswalk with light poles in front of the Tanner Building is another case entirely. Having worked in the vicinity of Helaman Halls and the Cannon Center, it is always the last small hurdle before descending the hill to freshman territory... One of its more curious aspects is that the buttons to push for the crosswalk signal are different on different sides of the street. On the East side, it is a small metal button in a large yellow case that likes to resist being pressed down, while on the West side it is a large metal button that one can simply touch to hear a satisfying beep. And when the signal to walk turns on, it goes CHIRP! CHIRP! But the walking man does not stay up for very long and one must scramble across the road in the company of whatever crowd of freshmen that are still straggling across in spite of the red flashing hand, using their presence as a cover for the questionable legality of crossing the street while the hand is flashing or, more obviously, holding still while cars are waiting on both sides of the light to pass. Sometimes one crosses here in a panic if one is running late or desperate to beat the flashing hand. My worst crossing to date at any BYU traffic light, particularly this one, occurred last spring term. I had arrived at my class at the JKB only to realize I had forgotten to turn in my work keys at the Helaman custodial office. Having just a few minutes before class, I ran back outside and to the crosswalk and impatiently ran more or less at a red light. A police vehicle—the ignominy of it!—screeched to a halt and honked angrily while, shamefully, I ran back to the Cannon Center and discreetly turned in the keys. I suspected that the policeman in the car would report my illegal crossing, identify me somehow, and report me to my work supervisors for crossing the street in front of him at a red light in order to return one of their keys I had accidentally stolen. Fortunately this fear never materialized and I have safely suppressed the incident until now.

Crossing University Avenue is a completely different can of worms, if one likes their worms exposed to one of the busiest streets in central Provo and at the mercy of oncoming traffic. I recently moved to an apartment complex opposite University from campus, a good twenty-minute walk to the library and easily five, if you drag it out, to your certain death if one does not cross the street carefully. Crossing the street in midday invokes the crossing of a river of fire or molten lava that one enters at one's peril. The only thing standing between me and work and a day of productivity on campus is this wide, busy street full of rushing cars that up until this term one took pains to avoid without provided transportation. Having no vehicle of one's own, and one's walking turf naturally expanded by the change in living quarters, however, one realizes that these risks are necessary and the wait at the traffic light is worth whatever income or peace and quite that one can find on the other side (unless, of course, it is a loss of income due to negligent spending at the BYU Bookstore).

To be honest, the wait at the light at four in the morning on the way to my custodial job is the least of my problems. Hardly any drivers are out at that ghastly hour—what time am I out there these days? Three-fourty in the morning? Bah. Hardly noticeable. One waits more patiently than one would otherwise in broad daylight, what few cars there are slink past like shadows, stop readily at the light, and then zoom past once you have crossed.

The most of my problems, on the other hand? Crossing in the middle of the day to get to Campus for no reason whatsoever except for one's own pleasure, or crossing in the evening during rush hour traffic in order to get home. Certainly the benefits of an excursion from the apartment—sunshine, fresh air, and exercise—outweigh the costs of having to pack everything one must take to campus, but when one considers that one has to cross that marginally perilous street to get there one is rather more inclined to sulk in one's bedroom, curl up on the bed, and waste the afternoon on a lovely nap, in spite of knowing that it is more proactive to spend time outside of the apartment than inside.

There is something my brain does not like about crossing University Avenue. While it is a lovely street to drive down when one is safely inside a moving vehicle, and it is a gateway to so many pleasures elsewhere, the reality for the pedestrian is that the road is a torrent of moving vehicles all large enough to kill a human if impact occurs at the right momentum, which at the speed limit on University Avenue or just the sheer appearance of the cars rushing past could likely happen. Furthermore, when one is eager to get across and is in a hurry to simply not be bothered by crossing the street, one is more inclined to view drivers as one's mortal antagonists who would love any excuse to strike and kill you for no reason if you set so much as one foot into the road beyond the safe limits of the crosswalk. One brings to mind an image of Gandalf confronting the Balrog in Moria, banging his staff and shouting, “You shall not pass!” but unfortunately in this case Gandalf is the guardian wizard of the so many drivers who are out to get you and you are the Balrog who is going to give them a bad day if you misbehave. So one waits until those perilously antagonistic drivers are willing to slow down and brake in front of the lights at the change of color, contemplating how one shall get across the street safely. One brings to mind, with an uneasy nostalgia, the lessons from Barney and Busytown on how to cross the street safely: look both ways before crossing, wait for the light to change colors and the cars to stop. Halfheartedly, one tries to be true to one's childhood values, but does a twenty-something really care more about their their childhood television shows more at a moment of peaceful reflection or a moment of impending death?

And then the green light that seems to be holding on for forever finally changes to yellow and then to red and then the red hand on the walk signal across the street becomes a white walking man, and then one is rather inclined to make the crossing across the street with as much haste as possible. One who crosses University Avenue does not look up at the vehicles but rather down at the road, where one notices the thousands of narrow grooves in the pavement and hears their own hurried footsteps and breathing to the backdrop of so many growling, hissing cars waiting to charge the minute the light changes colors and you are conveniently out of their way. And once safely across, you do not care to look back or, depending on what's in your day planner, even think of going back ever again until the scanty food that one has packed to take to campus has run out and one's wallet is depressingly empty and it is deemed necessary to brave the perils of the marginally treacherous road in order to reach home, food, and safety once again.

*Fuzzy voice on a radio* Three, two, one, LIFTOFF!

Greetings, Friends! Welcome to my blog of awesomeness! (muahaha)
To those of you who will be stumbling across this blog from the world wide web, and to those of you who will be following my posts from Facebook, I am using this blog as base for my creative writing activities. I will be uploading an archive of my best poetry and stories, and I will be reporting on my current works in progress.

It has been a very productive week writing-wise. My major project for spring/summer terms, the novel Northern Warriors, is looking in excellent shape. I have written chapter one and almost completed chapter two (more details to follow). I have also written a creative essay, parts of which I will be excerpting later. For now, I am on my way to go hiking and I hope to post more later. Signing off, Lizy. :)