Lucid Writing

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

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

I often feel, of late, that I am two places at once, as I flit about the house cleaning, cooking and making social arrangements for my children.  Home-schooling this year really takes all of me and I have had very little left over.  I was considering nursing school etc.  I realized we have to live with less materially, because my autism-spectrum son needs me so much.  Regular schools eat him up.  We have tried it.  We have come up to speed in reading and math.  Both things his first teacher said would not be possible.  I have watched him obsessively create art and engineering projects.  It seems like I have a brilliant child on my hand, rather than one "at the level of a baby."  His last special ed teacher said he was like a baby.  It was then I realized that the "village idiot" could not possibly understand Joseph.  We have been home-schooling since last December with it currently heating up with anatomy and social engagements.  Bridget wants to go to school, so I may put her in pre-school.  The girl is writing, reading some and playing princesses any chance she gets.  I am always a blue-skinned princess from another planet, a persona since childhood. 

The book of fairytale poems by me and fabulous art by Katherine Sanderson is still in layout.  My husband insists on having his name in the book and is doing a wonderful, if slow job at doing it right.  I went through it the other night and it was like reconnecting with an old friend.  I will keep you all posted.

I try to divide my time equally between writing, reading, critiquing, sculpting and photography, but I have found myself sculpting a lot lately.  I have also met a wonderful sculpting buddy.  It is so nice to sit down with another woman and create and talk. Knitters and quilters often feel this connection.  A sculpture takes a commitment of days.  It is not like a photograph or a poem that can sit on a computer.  Leave a sculpture too long and you have a big expensive paperweight.  I bet those would sell on Etsy.

I now have an Etsy store with framed photographs and clay masks.  It ain't high art and it feels weird selling creations, but I have too many of them.  I hang something up and then want to make way for the new art.  If you want to check out my online store, the addy is http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=8348606  or www.luciditywalking.etsy.com.

I also feel an urge to get back to my novel, since a scene came to me the other day.  It is a story that takes place in 1905 and 2005.  It is a story of pregnancy and ghosts. 

Off to plan the boy's and girl's lessons for the day.  Thanks to my friends and neighbors for your continuing kindness and inspiration.  I have enjoyed Kris' photography, Renee's poetry, Lavender's photography, Candy's photography, Emjay's essays and photos, Corbin's photos, Charmagne's art and Aubrey's brilliant essays.  I have enjoyed much more and hope to reconnect with the art and literature on Vox in a few days time.

Lucy, whose daughter, Bridey, is dressed as a fairy princess

The Museum of Asian Art and the Greenhouse

I walk out of shadows

I walk out of light

in the valley of tumescent flowers

In the museum of piebald heirlooms

the checkered past sighs

in the silk kimonos

of straight-backed okusans

Outside the sun sets

through the portal

of a bronze sculpture

fraying at the seams

of petunias in an urn

beating the bronze doors

striking the green house

tiny peens of light

The greenhouse settles down

for the night

White waves of mums

close slightly inward

to introversion

and cacti sing the water

in their flesh

wiggle their thorns

ever so slightly

and I sleep in my bed

in a kimono's sigh

with white crested waves

like thousands of mums

curling in the blue

in ship of my skull

Lucy Simpson, October, 2009, Seattle

ragged small world

through a lens

a torn leaf

a frayed seam

a tattered petal

a wizened carrot

the stain

on the blanched

sky

through a lens

a killer

can be lavender

ovals swimming

deadly bacteria

in a sea

I am home to millions

I feed millions

I am a planet

of tiny mites

and bacteria

in soft motion

Lucy Simpson, October, 2009, Seattle

Seeing Helga at the Museum

(for Andrew Wyeth)

In the valley of flickering lights

dancing – fireflies – tumbleweed of the sky

drift among gas nebula – angel-tossed

Cable cars – like horned beast pass by

in the city of lights and fog –

Lusty Lady – All Clothing 100% off –

neon-glows the sign – my son has found

a numerical pattern in the blinks

We are here to see Wyeth's Lady

clothed and unclothed – Helga in her incarnations

The waiter wears Groucho Marx eyebrows and glasses

Hear the sound of over fifty spoons and forks

the chatter of a crowd – my children's voices

We saw Helga floating on crushed velvet –

a black night sea

Little fish of light swam her body tide-pools

Her knees were raw – red from the winter

We saw her in her Austrian cape coat

standing for hours in the snow

We saw her with her braids – the nape of her neck naked

where spine joins brain in – Halleluja –

a white triangle exposed – holy peephole

We saw her smile lines and knew she smiled often

her blue eyes – like a slip of horizon over wild grass

and her hair – you could feel it – the oils – the texture

the softness – the neatness in those braids

We went home in dark and rain

the autumn trees lit our path

every leaf

a flame

in a lantern

Lucy Simpson, Seattle, 10/15/2009