Cerulean

I love the idea! Especially the weekly part, since I only seem to be here for any length of time on Fridays, recently. Bugger work and the horse it rode in on! Now I have an image of work being a Rider of the Apocalypse and I want to write about it lol. Is there any hope? C. edited for spelling - bah!

Hey Vlad, Just an extra *huuuuug* coming your way. Cerulean's philosophy: You can never get too many hugs or too much pizza. Take care, C

Happy belated Birthday! And good luck in eating Wyvern's chocolate with your gums, old-timer! Best wishes, C

Tassle - I admire you for writing out all of your thoughts that way. It's not an easy thing to do. Just hang in there as others have said, it doesn't get better all at once, but it does get different slowly - and then gets better bit by bit. 'sides Dorothy Parker had it sussed, she wrote: Résumé Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live. Love and hugs to you and Brute. C.

Forgive me being late? Happy Unbirthdays to the both of you! I hope you had a lovely day. C.

This was the last thing I read before sleeping last night. Its rhythms and repetitions haunted my thoughts for quite some while. I've come back to it a few times since - and I want to read it without the line 'over my nose'. I can see in 'nose' a connecting assonance with 'bones' which comes before and later.... but still, for some reason, my idiot brain wants to skip over this line directly to the more powerful 'No' lines - which read to me as three hammer blows echoing the 'There's no trace of the smear' line. Hmmm - I'm well aware that this may make no sense at all. Here's a grain of salt Cyril, I give it out along with all my attempted crits. C.

First off - thank you Tzim for the thumbs up Wow - What a topic! There are too many works that have affected me to choose one in particular as a favourite. Furthermore, I'm not particularly consistent - mood, environment and circumstances determine what I appreciate most at a given moment. Sooo, I'm going to cheat and divide this into categories. Translations: I'm very impressed by what I've seen so far of Alan Sullivan and Tim Murphy's translation of Beowulf. I don't go to the site where Alan moderates any more because of the shoddy politics and witch-hunts, but the man's a fine writer, no question on that score. Prose/essays: Some of the most haunting prose passages I've read would come from the introduction to Arthur Miller's collected plays, or his autobiography Timebends. Songs: Today I can't get this one out of my mind - it's connected to something I read in the Banquet Hall maybe and resonating personally, I must be feeling melancholy. The Dangling Conversation It's a still life water color, Of a now late afternoon, As the sun shines through the curtained lace And shadows wash the room. And we sit and drink our coffee Couched in our indifference, Like shells upon the shore You can hear the ocean roar In the dangling conversation And the superficial sighs, Are the borders of our lives. And you read your Emily Dickinson, And I my Robert Frost, And we note our place with bookmarkers That measure what we've lost. Like a poem poorly written We are verses out of rhythm, Couplets out of rhyme, In syncopated time Lost in the dangling conversation And the superficial sighs, Are the borders of our lives. Yes, we speak of things that matter, With words that must be said, "Can analysis be worthwhile?" "Is the theater really dead?" And how the room is softly faded And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand, You're a stranger now unto me Lost in the dangling conversation. And the superficial sighs, In the borders of our lives. (Simon and Garfunkle) Poetry: I enjoy Larkin as a technician and Auden and MacNeice for the sheer sonic feast they provide. My ex-hub is the person I enjoy reading most though probably (I just never tell him that ) Here are three of his poems: Sweet Dreams When my eyes are candy-creams and wrapped up in their box, their heated, glacé sugar-sheens will ooze their sticky drops. When my legs are liquorice-sticks and bundled in a bag, your sweetest, reddest candy-kiss won't bring their supple back. When my blood is turned to sherbet and fizzes in my veins, I'll crackle slowly in my bed as sweetness all-pervades. When my body's gingerbread and my eyes are frosted-to, do not cry with cloven breath just let me crumble so. Song of Sorrowful Songs Golgotha in a chair and the wheels within wheels move not. God in spit that streaks the cheeks and wets the jowls, God in shit that soils the sheets and smears the towels. Eloi! Eloi! Dans la pueur d'eau de javel, Dieu joue piano avec Ravel. Creuzfeld in a cell, Jacob falls from the spiral ladder. God in prayers etched in the wall, that make no bloody sense at all. God in fists with bleeding fingers, God’s indifference that lingers. Eloi! Eloi! Ston levko pyrgo dhen yparchei psyche; o theios einai o thanatos ste nike. Untitled Rondel Death comes no easier the next time around, it throws us again and we grieve; the next one a friend, who we’d never believe is one with the worms of the ground. Father becomes the memory of sound, his heart stopped dead on his sleeve; death comes no easier the next time around, it throws us again and we grieve. Mother has eyes as wet as the drowned children whose coffins receive the water of old men and the naïve. On this carnival merry-go-round, death comes no easier the next time around, it throws us again and we grieve. This was an interesting thread to read through, thanks to Rune for starting it. C.

Aiwa habibi

A Double Dactyl for Gwai Higgledy-Wiggledy Gwaihir the protector puzzled the readers with gender untold. Was this particular nonspecificity caused by an oversight - or getting old? Hehe - hope you don't mind!

A Valentine for Huda, my Iraqui student Will you sift through the sand for his blood, my love Will you rub through the mud of your tears? Will the lies in their eyes guide your hands, my love Will the lie of the land calm your fears? Will they choke on the bones of your love, my dove Will they splinter the span of your smile? Or will night clasp your light in its glove, my love Starving the dawn with its wile. A Valentine for my mother Hell is in the spaces between words docking, this time we're clocking, ears pressed to the phone, choking on pauses. The lore of love says - you won't ask me to come home, because you know I can't refuse you. Anti-Valentine, from Dubai 8000 miles from Washington, 800 from Baghdad. You make me want to burn the Union Jack. Those things you seek to take aren't yours, Such filth won't wash from stinking claws. Some things, once sold, Can never be bought back. A Valentine for him Thanks - for the joy the heart-glue and you.

I liked the momentum of this, it was driven. Thanks Wyv *hug* C.

wiping wet from cheeks i damn lands that sing war like a jingle leaving others to ring hands over the dead. This appeared when I was working on something else entirely in The Writer's Workshop, funny how that happens sometimes. C.

Don't give up hope. Stranger things have happened. C.

Done - thanks

ROFLMAO!!!! I shall henceforth be known as Babe who is the color of the S!!!! Kinda has a nice ring to it

Haha Zoolio - and she would have deserved everything anyone could have thrown at her! Rune - thanks very much - I'd have been scratching my head for hours without that pointer. Hopefully I got it right... testing now

I'd forgotten all about that cracking title Orlan! Can anyone explain how I add it under my name, so it reads Weenie Mistress of the Desert and Babe who is.... etc. Can I adjust it myself under my settings, or does it have to be modified by an Elder? Thanks for any help, in advance.

I enjoyed reading this one. Thanks! C.

The person above me has a rubber chicken and a toupee called Matt.

Cerulean contemplates the removal of the final letters of names. She scratches her quill busily over a sheet of parchment, until she has some workable examples. "Okay let's see..." she murmurs, checking the parchment studiously. "I think we have an astute theory here... Zombie goes to Zombi, fair enough Zool would be Zoo (somewhere safe to keep his mad chickens? lol) Peredhil would be Pered-hi (always a friendly greeting for folks) Rune would be Run (She certainly runs a lot of great threads) Yes, I think the theory pretty much holds up. As the last words have barely left Cerulean's lips, Harpy enters with a grin and a wink. "That'd make me Harp then?" The two women share the same improbable image of Scarlett in angelic attire, reclining serenely on a cloud, issuing delicately plucked melodies into the ether. Cerulean tears the parchment up into confetti-sized pieces.

Let me add my thanks and praise to Wyv too. You're very much appreciated - cheers mate for all of your hard work, creativity and good humour. C

Hehe - thanks Vlad, I think the ladies are done now! *Does a mad jig* - Yay! That's the first thing I've written in over a year - silly though it may have been, it's unblocked the block! Don't abandon hope all ye who enter here!!! Cerulean and Scarlett are chased off-screen by the Excessive Punctuation Police. Both of them are laughing their heads off* * Sorry, I'm British, I tried to laugh my ass off once, but had nothing to sit on until it grew back. My head, however, I can do quite nicely without.

Thanks Big P! *eep I'm on a roll* But Scarlett! (Cerulean cried) that's simply not an answer! So if you're paid, you're not dismayed, if he's an awful dancer? You don't think that a lingering look is utterly disarming? And Peredhilian politesse is absolutely charming? Come on my dear, speak without fear of what you find enticing, If love's a fresh baked home made cake, then romance is the icing.

Oh Harpy would you walk this way and join me in my musing? I’m trying to define romance and finding it confusing. Does it gain lift from thoughtful gifts, or kisses bathed in star-shine? Do daisies know when plucked just so, exactly who will be mine? It really is a puzzling quest , I find the task gigantic, I think without your input dear, that it will make me frantic!

Cerulean enters the chaos. She bears a more quizzical than usual expression and her tongue appears to be stuck firmly to the tip of her nose. Several lip contortions are executed in rapid succession, but her tongue remains glued in place. Ith noh my thult she enunciates carefully Hath anywon theen an alnothst dwagon round here? Noting that the spoken word is possibly not the best medium in this instance, she scratches a brilliant blue quill diligently over a scrap of parchment. When the message is finished, she holds it up for view: My name is Cerulean, Mistress of the Desert. I'm a Quill-Bearer. It's nice to be back. From the sidelines a voice interjects... No you're not, you're a Weenie Awardee Cerulean blinks, blushes, blinks again for good measure - then smiling as winningly as she is able with a half-open mouth and protruding tongue, sidles off quickly...