Identity, Ischmyidentity

They’ve ripped the top layer of skin off.
Let the city walk around with its chicken skin
shining and stubbled, defeathered.
The whole damn town has gathered on a corner
like blackheads on the end of a nose
and chanted the poem into tying itself to a post
to torch itself, a saint.
It’s a sea of gaping cod mouths,
chins dropping and throats wanting.
They wander home and find their fingers have pens.
They rhyme wars to storms to towers.
They scratch haiku in the name of fire.
They go to retreats and suck up themselves
beside honeydew melon and club sandwich corners,
shave their armpits and pluck hairs from their chins,
research the internet and interview cherry old women.
They dot their i’s with ink blots
and knight the piece Deep or Mother.
They reward themselves with saucy wine.
They mail the grits for Ed. Pub. Crit., the theorists,
because they can afford the postage.
They get it published.
They can afford anything.
They afford new boots daily, stock shares,
messages, themed hotel rooms, mail-order panty-hose clubs,
surgeries, hand-held audio recorders
(only to pass a road moment like a semi),
Prime rib and T-bone steaks
(they lie and say they’re vegens),
vinyl siding, lawn boys, online certifications,
the idle title “Writer.”
They “humph” and “ugh” to their neighbors.
They smoke cloves because they’re sweeter.

Meanwhile, the essence sits on town square, in a bleached skeleton
dappled with black ashes, and stinks up their manuscripts.
Where the voice flowered gods, nations, mammoths,
lovers, marijuana, the many faces of Jesus, aliens . . .
Now the body shivers from the lack of breeze
but smiles out of a tipped skull
because it has to.
And us rats and roaches are creeping up out of our crevices,
wrapped in the city’s ex-lavish, bearded and saddened
by the heave of the crowd and the way they clapped
for the death of it.
We crawl up on the platform and each steal a bone
to take home to our mud castles,
even if it’s just the tip of a phalange,
and we think we’ll make a lamp
(just hollow the marrow and add wires)
Or build a curtain of rib-cage wind chimes
that splits our time from their space.
Someday we’ll grow whole churches.
It’s ripe picking.

I used to lie about how many kids I had. It forced me to quit a good job once when I got caught in the lie. I don't lie anymore, but it's not unusal for me to feel like an idiot listing ages and genders and feeling like my age is getting "sized up" by the person doing the questioning. I figure I'm finally getting enough wrinkles to where people are just beginning to think that I only look really young for my age because I couldn't be that young . . . Truth is, I look old for my age because I've put myself through hell and have birthed four children before I was thirty . . .

Yesterday, I let myself be easily convinced into skipping work. Matt stayed home with me. He enjoyed not having to shower, getting to play WOW, and (oddly enough) getting himself caught up on the laundry. I felt awful missing the day, but then it was a cloudy tiring day. We both called and told everyone that I had a migraine headache. I was fine. In fact, yesterday morning, I was fully dressed and ready to head out the door when Matt put the second little suggestion in my head that I should just stay home. His mom had already put one there the day before. I had hid grandfather come by and want to fix the van. We felt like we had been caught doing something dirty.

What I wanted to write about though was how I spent all morning working on a story that literally drained me. I went back and forth over this thing and it was so much a part of myself that once I made myself pull away from it, I felt exhausted and depressed. It was a depressing story (surprise!). It was a part of an old memory and it literally felt like I changed it, like after writing the story I couldn't draw the boundaries between what had happened in my old memory and what I had imposed through the story, seeing as I made up all of these twists and turns and new characters, new cities. But the feelings were the same. It was the same old feeling I was sharing. And if I hadn't made the twists and turns, I wouldn't have been able to get that point through to anyone else who had to read it.

I don't know why I was compelled to write on my fiction story. I have plenty of time before it needs to be handed in. I have so many other things piled up and closing in. Last night, trying to push myself to read another lengthy story, write an annotation, and read a piece by another student and write her up a page or so of feedback, I wanted to stop and ball my eyes out. Things felt crazy. I felt so guilty with Matt running around me doing the laundry, doing the dishes, the girls having to make their own supper (BBQ chicken and Tater Tots). Something inside me couldn't cry though, as close as I came. The kids wouldn't leave me alone. Heroes was on TV. I thought I might go nuts. But I got it done. I went to sleep wondering if I couldn't set up an appointment with my fiction teacher and ask her how crazy she thought it might be to get an MA in Creative Writing over the MA in Digital Storytelling. I can't travel far enough to get an MFA. I should've went after Creative Writing from the get-go (as bad as these little entries may sound). I could be teaching a class by now.

Fall is my favorite season. The smell in the air, the crispness, and the colors always make me remember trick or treating around my entire hometown, mom pulling me in a little red wagon when I got tired of walking, sometimes taking me for three nights in a row until my bag was toppling over and stuffed full. I remember those little old ladies who never had candy but would give you a handful of Ritz crackers or invite you in and heat you up a hot dog. All that was okay. It was the early 80's but we still didn't take our candy to the Hospital to get it x-rayed. Of course, there was always that local legend of the man who put razor blades in the apples. We never ate the apples. And who in the hell invented the idea of trick or treating inside a mall? We'd trick-or-treat until midnight, not between the hours of 5PM and 7PM. Safety, schmafety.

I remember hayrides and bon fires. There were a ton of them. And then I remember (later) running around town soaping car windows or driving out to the middle of nowhere to drink cheap whiskey and hang out in a cemetery (of course, it was cool to drink and hang out in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere year round, but it was more fun in the month of October). There were always little shithead boys TP-ing the highschool - the big oak trees that stood out front - and kids throwing corn at passing cars from a hiding spot along the highway and those same little shithead boys running around and smashing everybody's pumpkins. I wonder if they still do that stuff down there . . . I know the big oak trees are gone. Either I don't see it up here because I'm so busy that I miss it, or these northern yuppies just aren't as creative and nasty minded.

I must have listened to the soundtrack of The Lost Boys and The Craft a million times. And then of course, us redneck kids had an even fonder spot in our hearts for good ole' Ozzie and Alice. Jason and Freddie were characters who hovered in my everyday existence. I remember having seances and playing Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board. Nobody ever had a Ouija board. I have one now. 'Found an old Parker Brother's version at a yard sale.

Tonight, Matt and I are going to a legitimate Halloween party within campus range and in full costume. And here we are in our thirties. We're actually going to a costume rental shop later today and then we're getting a hotel room so we don't have to drive home. I sure never approached a Halloween party with that sort of plan in the good ole' days. I've never rented a costume; it was always self-conjured and involved lots of Aqua Net. I tried to talk him into going as two young lovers who'd been on Lover's Lane. I wanted to put lipstick prints all over his face, make his shirt all disheveled, his fly down, maybe give him a couple of hickeys. I could smear my lipstick, show some cleavage, have him put a big hickey on my chest, and put a big rat-ball in the back of my hair. He didn't like the idea. I think he wants to be a knight or something chivalrous seeing as this will be the first impression he'll be leaving with a bunch of my classmates/friends. If such is the case, I think I'll find something witchy. Once we get over our nervousness (who's more nervous?), I think we'll have fun. I imagine us just hanging on to each other by the bonfire and laughing our asses off at everybody in costume getting drunk like college idiots do. I'm not sure if I can even GET drunk anymore. I do believe that I'll try. I'm also thinking that we'll bring the Ouija board for fun, maybe even a set of tarot cards. Of course, I'm worried they may get lost among the mayhem . . . I'm not sure how crazy things will be. Regardless, I'm in need of some craziness.

Disgusting Rain. The lack of sunshine steals my motivation and energy every time. And it's my morning off. My morning that I have to sit home and finish up stuff that I should've finished last night but put off. I would still be sleeping, but my boss called to wake me up and ask me about purchase orders and memberships and whatnot.

Last night I worked hard on my project proposal for Digital Production, ranted on and on about how wonderful I could make a "poetic concept journal" with Flash. Yes, it's been done before. Time and time again. But never has it been done by me. I will have no idea how to put this thing together. What's worse is that I haven't got the time . . . I'm overloaded and feeling it.

Still, I find myself drifting off into little imaginary fleets regarding the skeleton of a short story or two. The ideas have been occurring to me frequently, but there is always something else required of me and I haven't got the time. The whole idea of starting on another short story kind of scares. The whole process can be so all-encompassing. I already let enough shit slide on by undone. Of course, I have made a few minutes to sit down here and write on this stupid thing . . . the confessional . . . where we confess but don't really do much about it.

Last night, Matt and I stayed up after the girls went to bed and watched the X-men 3. Yes, I admit, Jean Grey was a badass and they picked a good actress to portray her, but I didn't get to see the Dark Phoenix that I knew of in my old comic books, the one who I so fell in love with. Where were her flames? Her wings? In the comic books, she was much more cocky. And then killing Professor X? What were they thinking? Oh well . . . it's just a movie (I keep telling myself repeatedly in my head).

I do believe that I have Matt talked into going to a Halloween party on campus with me next weekend. Last night, we talked about costumes: He could be Chewy and I could be Hans Solo. Of course, we would only have Saturday morning to go costume hunting. Maybe, I could see what I could find on Wednesday afternoon . . .

Over the weekend, I had some homework in which I had to construct a Matrix of some type of genre that I was familiar with. So, I chose Slasher Horror Films. I have seen so many. They played at so many slumber parties. They molded my adolescent existence and taught me to never venture outside into the dark alone and in my underwear to see what the dog's barking at. It was fun considering what social elements may have spurred on such sensationalism and gritty violence: revolts against feminism, the Cold War, the gross fear of such serial killers of the 70's (Bundy, Dahmer, etc.), good ole' Sex, Drugs, and Rock-N-Roll . . . It was fun researching a few of the serial killers. I have read Helter Skelter, an interesting story that didn't quite have the same twisted breath seeing as guys like Dahmer or Gacey (The Killer Clown) were necrophiliacs and the like. Dahmer was a cannibal. They freaked the shit out of everyone. And Jason and Freddy and Leatherface freaked the shit out of me. So, I'm more interested to know what made us drifted away from an interest in them. I remember actually watching it happen. All of a sudden Comic Horror was the craze. I guess we desensitized the upcoming generation. Maybe it was a flooding of the market. Maybe they overdid it and bored us. They couldn't help but come out as parodies and make fun of the seriousness with which we once took them all. Serial killers are still out there in the real world (worse than before?), but we're trying to refocus our fears to terrorists on planes.

It's Friday the 13th; I have to write of something. Nobody's looking. This how-to book that I'm reading tells me that I should write everyday for two hours, secluded. Ha Ha. When am I ever secluded? Perhaps I don't have a writer's life. Perhaps. Still, I shouldn't neglect myself anymore than I already do.

This week in Fiction workshop, I handed in something that I tried to pass off as a short story. It was five pages pulled out of my journal. Yes, I ad-libbed, changed names, added a little scene here and there, distorted another little scene. Basically, however, it had no plot. Unless you would like to consider the portrayal of "life cycles" as "literary aim." What surprised me was the positive response that I got to my writing. Of course, they all said that they had no idea where the story was going or what they were supposed to take from it or how they were supposed to interpret it. But they all also said that the writing was really good. They said that it propelled them to read regardless. But then maybe there was writers' intuition that it was something really personal and there was therefore the, propulsion, that accompanies peering into one's quirky personal escapades.

Still, it made me realize that I can't keep pulling up old shit, trying to polish it up and pass it off. In spite of my lack of time and energy, I need to write a NEW short story. I've had lots of ideas. Endings have proven to be tricky for me though. I can configure a setting and characters and an instance, but the ending withers or never comes. For example, somewhere out there is the story of a young man, in the military, who witnesses a UFO and then starts sleepwalking . . . This initially came from some of Matt's personal experiences in Michigan. However, I realize that in order to find freedom in writing it, I have to make the guy a whole new character. Otherwise, I'll beat myself up trying to get it right. Oh hell, I'll beat myself up trying to get it right regardless.

Also, there's a story that reflects my old experiences at the EMGE meat processing plant, back when I was 19 and 8 months pregnant. They used me and abused me for an entire evening, got me to clean toilets in the men's locker room that likely hadn't been cleaned in decades (during which I was granted the passing glimpse of an occasional old worker's bare ass). They left me in another locker room, while they all took their lunch breaks. I had no idea of how to find my way around the enormous old, blood house, so I couldn't find the cafeteria on my own (instead I just sat there among the shoes and more prestigious lockers of the managers and line leads). I remember once seeing a worker come out of a set of huge swinging double doors in a white apron, splattered with bright red blood. The whole place smelled like old hamburger (rightfully so). I thank the powers that be that I never once had to witness a hooked cow carcass. I remember that I drove in with a vanful of Mexicans (my boyfriend's mother was married to one who owned a van and made frequent trips to the border). Anyway, they let me work my ass off the entire night, and then, when the evening was over, they told me that they didn't think that they could hire me because I would need to lift 50-80 pound hoses to spray off the decks of all that blood and shit. Did I mention that I was eight months pregnant? What was I thinking? Still, it had offended me. I thought that I had been truly wrong and underestimated. I could lift those damn hoses once I had the baby. Still, I am so damn glad that I never had to take some 80 pound hose and spray blood off of the floors of an EMGE meat processing plant. I do believe that I was the only woman in the building. And this was the 90's. See, it could be a good story. But, how does it end? What revelation is there? We just needed money. I already had two kids. He was working at the Turkey factory. The whole thing seemed justifiable. We be a pair of meat processors (rather, I would be a janitor of meat processors . . . geez). In fact, it felt like a "good break." It was so long ago.

I am thinking that before this semester is over, I will have gone nuts. I really stacked it up. It's really stacked up from now until the end of the year. I still have an incomplete hanging - one requiring a literary review in light of academic research on interactivity. All this will fit nicely into my thesis. My thesis has always hung before me, obscure but there nonetheless. Now, it need only start piecing itself together. This is the hard part. More work. Geez, after telling my little story of EMGE, I do believe that this work looks like a parfait with a cherry on top. Life's not so bad. Not so bad at all.

I just realized that I live within a constant rhetorical situation. Most often, however, it lies in decay. Sometimes, the "fitting" response shows up here.

She says, "And I can't believe the way some professional women dress to come to these conferences . . . just as total slobs." She sneers a little and I'm thinking, well, here sits me in my blue jeans and sneakers. I haven't had a professional hair-cut in almost a year (I've been chopping on it and you can definitely tell). I'm thinking: it was a Saturday. I shrug. She says, "Yes, I know. Times have changed." She always wears tidy, well-matched, quaint clothes, often coordinating with the holidays and what-not. No white shoes after Labor Day, blah, blah, blah. Her shoes make her feet look tiny. She smears self-tanning lotion on her legs and shaves daily - no matter what. She has a flip hair-do that is always cemented into place. She still walks like a conceited ex-cheerleader (flipping her hair, letting her nose float, twisting her ass) - reminds me of one of those self-proclaimed hotties who left the team to tailgate, drink beer, and make-out, only she was never no where near to being half that cool . . . she just thought she was. She speaks with a low pitched nasal twang. Her voice makes me grind my teeth. But she's older and she makes more money than me. She would only have to mention one word to the el supremo and I could have my ass tossed into the mulch of the playground out back before I could even catch my breath to pull up a philosophy of priorities or gather the courage from a state of pissed to flip somebody off. She reminds me of all of those other women that I grew up with, the women who managed to slap welts of insecurity across every other poor girl's forehead (to bear the scar for all of eternity) - my sister's fourth grade teacher and her bulbous, black hair (who always had a snotty grimace for any girl who got free lunches) . . . the women at my mother's church (who treated my mom like a leaper) . . . Eventually, I will get out of here on my own accord, and if Kharma plays fair as it claims, then I will never see these women again. You'd think sensibility left the heads of an entire generation of women. And they think we're the lazy, silly ones? Okay, lazy . . . maybe.

The Housewives' Tarot

(the answer to all my problems . . . wait a minute! I'm not a housewife . . . )

So, we're talking about Aristotle's Poetics and Tragedy and Comedy and Epic and the next thing ya' know, there's Bigg & Rich on the big screen at the end of the conference table singing "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" in full stereo sound. She lets the whole video play! Chicks on John Deer Tractors . . . Dwarfs in cowboy hats blowing kisses . . . All this to make a simple point. Definitions and standards of poetry change. No shit. Plato would've puked on his shoes and then hung the bastards. In this case, I would've been right behind him with my pitch fork to jab Bigg & Rich in their asses as they swung from their nooses. It's not that I'm not a fan of country music because I am (considering my home state and genetics, it is unavoidable). Of this contrast/parallel, however, something was just devastatingly wrong.

So, all be said, I have still enjoyed my day. My boss is gone. I had loaded potato soup for lunch again. I'm sitting here typing instead of working. Don't get me wrong, though, I have been busy . . . the door has been in a constant state of swing. BUT I'm leaving in a half hour and when I get home I am going to be pressing my head into my latest short story. I do believe that last night, as I was trying to get some sleep, I figured out a way to narrow things, to fix the "magnitude" if you will. The pop machine upstairs started carrying Diet Mt. Dew. My van is now driving like it's on a cloud in comparison to the shakey state that it was in on the old worn tire. Life is not so bad. It's hump day.

Oh, Geez . . . I had an absolutely awesome weekend. Not only did I take off Thursday and Friday, but due to the fact that I ran my poor little ole' Dodge Caravan to death over the weekend, it was in no state for me to drive it into work on Monday (i.e. the entire contents of the radiator had spilled out onto my driveway by Sunday evening). So for the end of the week, I was beautifully lazy, hardly inspired to do anything that was worthwhile. On Saturday, we got a wild hair up our ass and decided to drive to the Renaissance Festival in Harveysburg, OH. Why Ohio? You ask: Why not Fishers? Because Fishers is Fishers and if you know Fishers, you know why I might have my biases. Harveysburg was awesome. Absolutely awesome. We witnessed the Pumpkin and Watermelon Wars, among other things. On the drive home, we felt as though we had just stepped out of another world . . . And, yep, once again Matt and I got this little itch in our pants to be more creative. Matt was talking the whole drive home about starting to work with leather. I was dreaming of painting faces and selling ceramics. Even more so dynamic and crazy, I was dreaming of dressing up in the character of a moon-worshipping witch (a long black cloak, white hair, opals around my neck and in my ears). The moon, I read on a little card attached to a cheap silver necklace that I bought -- is the symbol of feminine spirituality. The word artisan keeps popping up in my thoughts. I have lots of cool pictures of the festival and I plan to eventually post a few.

For now, however, I am at work and I have been working my ass off to get caught up on all that I have gotten behind on by missing three days. Yes, there is a part of me that wishes to be fired.

Meanwhile, I have lots of work to do this week. I need to conjure up another short story to distribute by Thursday for Fiction. Thus far, all that I have is an odd little interior monologue/confessional that was originally pulled from the stark pages of one of my old journals, back when I lived in the city, by myself, freshly divorced, trying to recapture my dreams. I wrote page after page about a little mouse who had found some D-Con and stumbled out onto my counter in plain sight for me to watch him die. It goes on and on from there . . . I also have to come up with a 25 word summary for my Cultural Immersion presentation (coming up in a few weeks). I have two articles (Aristotelian Poetics) to read for Wednesday. I'm skipping the Dreamweaver tutorial on Thursday night and, by golly, before this damn weekend is up, I am going to find some time to creative something unusual (aside from an odd combo for supper).