kitschy

In the beginning,
everyone looked like faded crystals.
Dusty brown rose covered cheeks,
gossamer lips, celestial tongues.
Everyone was a lover.

Head wounds grew flowers,
the sky sighed in purple
and ribs were just pure quartz.
(They never broke, just bruised
a bit now and then).

Language was a fluid thing,
just vibrating vocal chords.
There was no need call out,
spread the gossamer and
open the tongues.

The universe is waiting
for a second invitation.

Please excuse the pun, though, I just can’t help myself. It’s no secret that I’m a writer - I am always working on a piece. While editing my poetry chapbook collection, I’ve been procrastinating with window shopping for new writing tools.

1. May Books, Initial S, $12
2. The Stud 2GB USB, $39.99
3. Crush by Richard Siken, $11.56 (this is an amazing poetry collection everyone needs to read)
4. Fred Flare Predict-A-Pen, $10
5. Hello Kitty Ball Point Pen, $4.95

Sometimes we all need a little help getting started. A great springboard to our notebooks and pencils (or pens, or clicking laptops, whatever writing utensils you prefer). I think prompts and little musings are smooth way to break the writer’s block “ice.”

1. Write about a postal worker.
2. Write about a television that won’t turn off.
3. Write a story solely based on dialogue.
4. The first pair of shoes you see in the room: write about them.
5. Write about doing laundry.
6. First kisses.
7. Getting stuck in the rain.
8. Hailing a cab.
9. Write a story without using “I.”
10. Write a story only using “I.”
11. Blind dates.
12. Crazy cat ladies that like tea.
13. Food for thought: “Hope is the thing with feathers.” - Emily Dickinson.
14. Car pooling.
15. Telemarketing - workers, disrupting phone calls, blocked numbers.
16. A young girl that collects jars.
17. The life of a newspaper on a commuter train.
18. Baton twhirling.
19. A girl with teal colored hair and gold rings.
20. A man that misses his bus stop.
21. A couple moves into a new house. The previous owners left a photo album behind.
22. The best machine never invented.
23. A department store clerk that only sells gloves.
24. Petty theft.
25. A gardener with two dogs.

Once in a while, Paul’s knees would lock and then he knew the rain would come. It happened like clockwork before any major storm. When he was younger, his mother said it meant a person’s body was sensing new changes in life. Paul assumed it meant that he would develop arthritis in thirty years.

He was a delightful combination of understated and complex. Black coffee, one sugar. He worked in a used bookstore that had more must and old words than customers. His shifts were marked by frames of silence and shuffling consumers.

His knees clicked and locked that morning. The sky was murky and the inside of his throat felt like dried paper. He walked to work; silently, passing through his simple apartment. Paul admired his apartment with its old, carved silver ceiling and hollow walls. He liked the cobblestones on the street and the neighborhood’s ghostly antiquity with old billboards and concrete remembrances of things past.

Each day, Paul shifted through a slush pile of dime store novels, probably belonging to an old lady with too many cats. Books that smelled like people’s houses, attics, or basements. It made him wonder about the lives of strangers. It started out mundanely; what kind of houses these people lived in or the type of coffee they drank. Why were they living in this city as opposed to any other? It was a game Paul played with himself to pass the time until he could down cups of watery beer in the pub around the corner.

Today was no exception. In the middle of his game playing and stiff knees, Paul saw a sign of beauty. She was not particularly tall and had dark brown hair with straight across bangs. She looked like any other girl but with soft, pinkish lips and a quiet kind of smile. She looked like a girl he went to college with in Boston, Marina; they had a few philosophy classes together and spent more time playing Beirut than anything else. He often thought about her life, whether she got a big acting break or settled for a doldrum nine to five job.

Now, she was here selling books. Paul organized his files and receipts. He would approach her and asked about her fantasy life. When he turned the corner among the moldy stacks, she was gone just like all the other beautiful girls in New York.