LaDonnaWitmer

The Mystery of It All

smm_talk
Mood: Busy
Drinking: Tea

I’ve been asked to post some information here that might be of interest for a few people who stop by this space.

Wow. That was vague.

Trying again: Not all of my faithful readers (oh you few, you happy few!) are poetry fans. Some of you are church people. Don’t deny it. I know you’re out there.

I have this whole other history of being a former church person, and for reasons which remain mysterious to me, I have a few fans in the pews even still.

If you’re new to the scene, you can catch up by reading this post back in February of 2007. It will give you the history of me and a little video called “This Is Who I Am” that’s been circulating the church scene for oh, about 10 years now. Yes. It’s true.

It will also tell you the story of how I traveled to Alabama last year to speak to a conference of Reverends and a church full of nice Southern people about why I don’t go to church anymore. Intriguing, no? (That’s a picture of me standing behind their nifty plexiglass pulpit right there.)

ANYhoo, for multiple reasons not exciting enough to get into here, I am now the proud copyright owner for not just one but two DVDs of things church-related.

And since a lot of people out there in church-land still want these DVDs, I now am the proud proprietor of another website, SundayMorningMisfit.com.

So if any of this made sense to you (or even if it didn’t), you can check out some clips and see what it’s all about over at www.sundaymorningmisfit.com. And if you’re still interested after that, you can buy yourself a shiny DVD.

That’s it for now…

-Lo, who thinks she looks like a wee little babe in that first video.

Stupid Girls

Mood: Soapboxy
Drinking: Water

I swear, the dumbest things make the rounds on the internet. This is news to no one, I know.

But today I saw this awful list posted on facebook, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen it.

Apparently a gaggle of single women (girls?) out there think it’s undeniably profound, the ultimate guide to how a guy should treat his girlfriend. And so they keep it alive, posting it on the profiles of the boys they’re crushing on, thereby ensuring said boy is scared off forever.

But you can’t share my angst if you don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’m going to post the offending list here. I apologize in advance.

Here we go…

When she walks away from you mad [Follow her]
When she stares at your mouth
[Kiss her]
When she pushes you or hits you
[Grab her and don’t let go]
When she starts cussing at you [Kiss her and tell her you love her]
When she’s quiet [Ask her what’s wrong]
When she ignores you [Give her your attention]
When she pulls away [Pull her back]
When you see her at her worst [Tell her she’s beautiful]
When you see her start crying [Just hold her and don’t say a word]
When you see her walking [Sneak up and hug her waist from behind]
When she’s scared [Protect her]
When she lays her head on your shoulder [Tilt her head up and kiss her]
When she steals your favorite hat [Let her keep it and sleep with it for a night]
When she teases you [Tease her back and make her laugh]
When she doesn’t answer for a long time [Reassure her that everything is okay]
When she looks at you with doubt [Back yourself up]
When she says that she likes you [She really does, more than you could understand]
When she grabs at your hands [Hold hers and play with her fingers]
When she bumps into you [Bump into her back and make her laugh]
When she tells you a secret [Keep it safe and untold]
When she looks at you in your eyes [Don’t look away until she does]
When she misses you [She’s hurting inside]
When you break her heart [The pain never really goes away]
When she says it’s over [She still wants you to be hers]
When she reposts this bulletin [She wants you to read it]
– Stay on the phone with her even if she’s not saying anything.
– When she’s mad hug her tight and don’t let go.
– When she says she’s ok don’t believe it, talk with her.
– Because 10 yrs later she’ll remember you.
– Call her at 12:00am on her birthday to tell her you love her.
– Call her before you sleep and after you wake up.
– Treat her like she’s all that matters to you.
– Tease her and let her tease you back.
– Stay up all night with her when she’s sick.
– Watch her favorite movie with her or her favorite show even if you think it’s stupid.
– Give her the world.
– Let her wear your clothes.
– When she’s bored and sad, hang out with her.
– Let her know she’s important.
– Kiss her in the pouring rain.
– When she runs up to you crying, the first thing you say is, “Whose ass am I kicking, babe?”

*Sigh*

Ok. Now do you feel my pain?

It’s just the most juvenile perspective of love, as if the author watched every Nora Ephron rom com, read every bodice ripper, and bought into every fairytale version of love she’s ever heard.

Girls who believe this are just setting themselves up for some deep-seated disappointment. I don’t care how stellar your partner is, he (or she) will NEVER be able to live up to this list. Nor should they.

Because if you take this list to heart, then a girl can treat her partner like absolute shit and still get treated like some kind of Disney princess. Kick your lover in the teeth, call him a motherfucker, cry and whine and bitch and wail and stop brushing your teeth altogether, and he will happily turn the other cheek while telling you how beautiful and wonderful and magical you are.

Really?

Nowhere in this ridonk-ulous piece of fantasy does it mention what the girl should do for her partner. Nowhere does it talk about mutual respect, or having consideration for the other party’s feelings.

Perhaps in the earliest throes of infatuation, before you’ve let Wonderboy into your pants, you can spit in his eye and he’ll still find you sexy. But let me assure you that 10 years down the road if you’re still spitting, he’ll be spitting right back. Assuming he’s still around.

So here’s what I really want to say to the girls who are circulating this bit of idiocy: Grow up! And pick up a bit of self-respect while you’re at it. No lover is ever going to give you everything that you need, want, and think you deserve. It’s impossible.

So quit waiting for Prince Charming to read your mind and pick up your glass slipper. Pick up your own damn shoe.

Stop loading up your lover with unrealistic expectations and feeling sorry for yourself when they can’t perform, when they don’t make you feel the way you want them to.

And ask yourself this: If your current crush gave you this list, do you imagine for one second that you could live up to it? Because it goes both ways.

If you want respect, give it. If you want to be heard, listen. If you want to be treated like you are the only girl in the world, then treat your partner like a treasure, too.

The world could use a lot fewer stupid girls and spoiled princesses and a lot more women who understand that true love requires sacrifice, selflessness, and commitment.

Rant over.

-Lo, packing up her own princess tendencies.

Cinco de Mayonnaise

buffysing2
Mood: Revving Up
Drinking: Nada

After 30 days of daily poem posts, I feel all rusty and creaky returning to the status quo of weekly(ish) posts.

But real life cannot sustain daily poems, at least not the kind of life I’m in the habit of living.

It was a brilliant idea, though, wasn’t it? Even though I thought myself insane in the beginning, I found it fairly easy to get into the regular rhythm of writing a poem a day, especially when I gave myself permission to post poems that unapologetically sucked or (this was even harder) poems that had the potential to be so amazing, but needed a few more days or weeks of percolating and editing.

Some of these un-percolated poems (Je t’aime, for instance, which now has a new name) are being re-thought and re-written as I type. Ok, not as I type, but in the general background of the return to real life, they are being revised.

Someday I’ll post them again in their better, shinier, actually finished form.

The best thing about all of this was that I wrote so many things that never would have been explored had I not given myself the daily deadline. Honey, for example, was an amazing accident, and I don’t think I would have thought to explore my personal history with bee stings had I not been wracking my brain for any scrap of story that could be whipped up into a poem.

The second best thing that happened was that I started tearing through several of the poetry collections I purchased back in January at the Associated Writing Programs conference in New York. I don’t make it a regular habit to read lots of poetry books, and it’s completely my loss. I found so much inspiration in the words of other poets, and I’m now simultaneously reading the work of Galway Kinnell, Laure-Anne Bosselaar, and Elizabeth Bradfield. What a feast!

So farewell, National Poetry Month celebration. Perhaps we’ll meet again next year.

A few bits of newsy things:
1. Michelle and I are editing a new cinepoem called “Yellow”
2. There is a ladonnawitmerdotcom refresh in the works that will include a real RSS blog feed (yay)
3. The Secrets of Falling is reviewed in the May issue of The Other Herald

All good things, all keeping me busy, busy, busy. Seems to be the way I like it… and off I go.

-Lo, with a “Grrrr” and an “Arrrgh”.

Text Impossible

zurichbirds
Mood: Amazed
Drinking: Power-C

Text Impossible

To be so close and stay
so silent, though all sorts of words
come tumbling out of your ears,
your eyes, your unmentionable orifices,
the out-always-possible-aware
frustration.

Eloquence used to hang so easy
on you. All your consonants
and vowels would line up
with spines perpendicular,
baring eager Vaseline grins like
so many beauty contestants. But
where are all those bleached queens now
add talk this…?

You open your mouth and
words scatter like birds
after buckshot leaving behind
such a small selection
of wing-draggers and stragglers
that you hesitantly send out
all roads way.

I know I know I know
this conjugation is not
what you intended. But
the better linguist remains
dumbstruck, lost somewhere
in an alien hemisphere,
our the wondering.

What will you say when
you come back to us if
you come back to us
full of new words?
You’ve never climbed so high
in all of your living, still shouldering
the implicit expectations of so many eyes
believing someday you will. You will
expand your creations horizons.

*****

Uh. Did you just see what happened here?

31 poems in 30 days, that’s what happened.

As soon as I decided to write a poem a day for April to celebrate National Poetry Month, I knew I was off my nut. But I did it anyway, and not only did I not miss one single day, but on one occasion (April 24th), I got extra crazy and wrote two poems in one day… and posted them both!

Today’s poem is extra-special, not only because it is the last poem of the month, but because it was inspired by a dear friend of mine who suffered a catastrophic stroke a couple of months ago, and is still suffering from aphasia, meaning his language is very limited. He knows what he wants to say, but the words just won’t come out right.

I received an email from him earlier this week titled “Text Impossible!”, and it is directly responsible for today’s poem, which also incorporates several of the phrases he’s written or spoken recently in attempts to communicate. Even though he’s not yet saying what he wants to say, the words he is saying are strangely beautiful.

I thought it quite fitting to close a month of extremely prolific communication with a poem about being unable to communicate the way you want to.

So thank you to DZ for his beautiful bravery, and thanks to all of you who have been reading along these past 30 days. I’ve written so many things I never expected to write, and it’s all been really very wonderful.

Thanks for being here!

-Lo, who’s going to get real quiet now.

Catastrophe Waitress

catastrophewaitress
Mood: Stoic
Drinking: Something Pink

Catastrophe Waitress

i.
Lunching with women in ruffled collars
and buckled heels I reveal
far too much
over split pea ravioli.

I am so full of dreams I can
not stop them spilling over
so I ask for the check
to regain my restraint
and holster my smoking tongue.

ii.
No matter what she says,
I cannot think it anything but cruel
to divulge dreams of childbirth
to a woman whose womb
is a minefield.

She sips her Diet Coke, extra ice,
with what should pass for nonchalance
and says her body is slippery
and far too dangerous. “Even
the rats have abandoned ship.”

Attempts at wry rodent humor
are not a good sign.

Very few people follow up a miscarriage
with abortion. But she is
a condemned building in which
no one can be allowed to live
and here I come
banging down the door
bringing torture cupcakes.

iii.
Attracted by the attention
the local paper has brought
to the dead heads of stuffed game
that decorate the walls, we visit
the new place on G Street
to sample pancakes and controversy.

You position the stroller so
he has the best view of the room
but laden with milk, he sleeps
right through breakfast, oblivious
to the glassy brown gaze
of taxidermied antelope
who dream of lost safari fields,
ghost limbs twitching.

-Lo, who is now twitching for pancakes.

Earthquake Weather

flameon
Mood: Funky
Drinking: Water
Earthquake Weather

And in that moment I knew
what my choice would be.
What, indeed, it already was,
as if all my life I had been
waiting for someone
just to ask the right question.

A question of love, yes,
and a question of lust, too,
but when you lay back
the skin of the thing
and find fire pulsing
in its core, then
you need only review
the essence of flame
to reach your answer.

If you want to burn
without getting burned
you must either
carry ice in your veins
or flame out before morning.

I have always been afraid of fire.
When playing with matches,
I am careful to singe only
fingertips.
Caution serves one well
in earthquake weather.

Now I can’t sleep
until you come home.
Last night I lay in bed
and wished the neighbor
would turn out his light.
And in that moment I knew
what my choice would be.

Without you here to cool me
I begin a slow burn.
When morning comes,
you will find only ashes
between the sheets.

There is no such thing
as one true love
so pick your number
wisely.

I know you’ll be awhile figuring that one out. I’m still working on it, myself. So here’s some fun new things to distract you.

My favorite Wicker Kid has been writing again. I highly suggest you read his new posts over at The Wicker Chronicles.

A lovely lady from the UK named Melissa contacted me over the weekend to ask if she could add some cinepoetry to her website. And that’s how Bored Now and Slow Roast came to be a part of Beat the Dust TV. Check it out.

-Lo, who thinks the last stanza, though possibly misplaced, is the key.

Sorority Sister Number 2

sorority
Mood: Tired
Drinking: Soon

Sorority Sister #2

This is the part where
the entire theater screams,

“Look behind you!”
but you remain deaf

and ever so doomed.
The End inches closer

with every baited breath.
They’re numbering your

screen time in seconds.
You’re not going to be

the final girl, the one
who puts up plucky fists

and fights. You’re not even
going to extend the inevitable

by running, spilling your screams
into the eager, waiting night.

Your part’s only filler –
everyone knows the real hero

is the killer. Time to
turn and face the blade.

-Lo, who doesn’t even know where that one came from.

Bloodlust

redrose
Mood: Rushed
Drinking: Diet Coke

Bloodlust

I’m not asking you
to fall on a sword
to prove your affection
but

once in awhile
a little jealousy
wouldn’t hurt, you know
just

enough green
to indicate your
heart’s really in this
and

keeps is what
you’re playing for.
So

I’m not asking you
to fall on a sword
but

once in awhile a knife
or small dagger would do
not often
but

enough for me
to know you really
feel it
enough

for you to press
me to your lips
and

stop the bleeding.

-Lo, getting all abstract on your ass.

Happily Ever After

twoton Mood:
Drinking:

Happily Ever After

Only in America
do people expect to be happy.

It’s in our constitution
to demand pleasure
or at least the pursuit of it.

We want our picket fences
and chocolate cake, too.

We want not just true love
but unending adoration
with some instant gratification
on the side.

We want to make a difference
by making ourselves feel better.

We want to save the world
with shopping malls.

Elsewhere, success is survival.

But in the land of the
buy one get one free
we are not satisfied
until we are famous.

And even then we want more,
now,
again.
again.
again.

-Lo, running so late.

Fantasia/The Gelding

fantasia_run Mood: Astonished
Drinking: The Usual

It’s a first during Poem-a-Day Poetry Month: 2 for 1. That’s right. One day, two poems.

It’s as rare as a three-legged cat, but it sometimes happens.

Both of these poems kind of go together, anyway, so it’s only fitting to present them that way. They’re both about the same guy and yes, that’s him over there on the right.

Fantasia

You were all wrong for me, yes
but that never stopped a girl
from falling in love. I had a
bad boy complex even at
age 12.

But bad boys don’t love you back
the way you wish they would.

You never forgave me
for tying you down,
for filling your mouth
with cold metal.

And though I tried to
make it up to you with
a warm bed, a good gallop
through pliant green fields,

you wouldn’t let me break you in.
I could never make you gentle.

The Gelding

Side by side, we tracked
chronic circles in the snow
until his knees buckled
and he fell gently to sleep.

The man in blue coveralls
swooped in then with his scalpel
kneeling in the slush
to do his work.

I stood feebly by
clutching the useless
lead line in one mittened hand
trying not to watch.

The cuts came quickly,
with business-like amounts
of blood. Castration as cure
for misbehavior.

When it was over, the vet
tossed the soft pink testes
across the paddock
to his waiting collie.

That’s when I finally broke
and bent to stroke the gelding’s
sedated head, murmuring soft
comfort and betrayal.

-Lo, with a thing for the blue-eyed boys.