writing

Upside-Down World

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upside down hanging lamp

This is a short excerpt from a project I’ll be working on during the month of July for Camp Nanowrimo. This work currently has no name.  It will be a cross-genre work of fiction blurred with non-fiction, poetry, memoir, prose, stream-of-consciousness, epistolary forms.  And whatever else may work its way in there.

Upside-Down World
by Debi

Friends become enemies. Lovers, exes. Families, estranged. What the hell’s happening? The world is upside-down. My world is upside-down.

I’d lie on my back, hang my head down over the edge of the bed—down over the edge of the world—and the ceiling of my childhood home became the floor. The floor, the ceiling.  Magic.  This was Upside-Down World. A charmed world peopled by people similar to my people. But altered. Different. Stronger. Bolder. I was younger. Ceiling Girl older.

Upside-Down World was sparse. The only décor, an occasional floor lamp (the hanging lamps of right-side up world). The floor (my ceiling) was white, flowing-from-room-to-room. White. Always the same. Uniform. Level. Steady. I sensed something serene about those sparsely furnished and simply colored ceiling spaces. I knew nothing of Zen. But felt the truth. Less was more.

Lying on my back in this house, this home of my grownup years, the ceiling’s slanted. Unsteady. Yes. So is grownup life. No level surfaces. No easy answers. No sure footing. An upside-down world.

Dear Ceiling Girl …

You’ve watched. What did you see? What do you see? Does it make sense? You’ve followed me forever, looking down. A witness. Seen the highs. The rockbottomness of rockbottoms. Can you trace the path, the twisted journey, that led here? I’m lost. I’m here, but lost.  Confused.  I miss the surety of childhood’s future. The hopes. Dreams. Imaginations. Magic. Witchcraft. Wishcraft.

Are you still there, Ceiling Girl? Or did this upside-down world shake your footing, too?

~Me

Poem: Night Skies

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by Debi

dark arch of sky
millions of stars
mysteries of the cosmos
blazed in darkness
gleaming jewels
of rose or crystal hue
beauty overhead
a clear night
without a moon
alone with the stars
patterns of constellations
standing out
bright and clear
misty river
the Milky Way
drink in the beauty
a blazing planet
low on the horizon
look up at the sky
breath-taking glimpse
observant
clear-eyed
the night skies are alive

Poem: Dragging the River of Memory

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(In case this poem looks/sounds familiar, this is an updated version of a poem previously posted on this blog.)

cropped-grafitti-3.jpg

by Debi

dragging the river of memory—
.           in search of her younger self
it’s already too late

her life was her torture
she was capable of imagining
.           a life outside of housework
that sense of youth
and immortality disappeared
.           in the destruction of the old familiar

the river hurtled toward the sea
inevitable
.           foretold
.                      foreshadowed

re-seeing herself
creating multiple mirrors
dreaming again
re-writing her life

don’t look back
.           or you lose her forever

Erasure: LISTEN

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I’m currently working on an erasure poem of an entire book. Is there such a thing as an epic erasure? That seems to better describe this undertaking.  I actually completed the book’s erasure and now I’m working to format and edit it.  I’m sort of excited.  It’s been quite a project.  🙂

Here’s a brief sample of a small part of one of the poems I found hiding in the text of the book I’ve been erasing. Stayed tuned for more on this project.

UPDATE!  The book is now in print!  Click on the book cover for details!

by Debi

31m2vqk1gvlyour       freedom
distressed
people

LISTEN

you         learn
significant
truths

BAD THINGS HAPPEN

you         read
you         know
you         think
you         do

LISTEN

Poem: at fault

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by Debi

I sat alone                with them all
my greatest fear        realized
.

alone

 

I would’ve been
.                              less alone
if I’d stayed
.                              home alone
.                              brokenhearted
is it
.                   my       fault
.                   no        fault
.                   his        fault
.                   her       fault
.                   their     fault

 

when     everyone’s
.                 at           fault
who’s    to                  blame?

 

I would say
.               our            fault
but there seems to be
.                               no our

 

is it no one’s fault?

 

I’ll take the                blame
sometimes                 it’s easier to be
.                               perceived as
.                               the one wronging others
.   rather than             convincing others
.                               you’re the one wronged

 

if it keeps the peace

.                               then

 

it’s my fault

 

(does this make me a doormat?)

Writing Prompt: The Freezer

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This was written in response to a writing prompt given in an MFA class last year:

“Write from the perspective of a common home appliance.”

I found that if this is read without knowing who or what the “I” is, it’s quite unnerving.  Serial killer, perhaps?  I stumbled across this on my computer today and had forgotten I’d written it, or even what it was about.  Creeped me out.  It brought to mind for me “Psycho” and someone a bit like Norman Bates.

The Freezer
by Debi

Darkness, total and complete.  Bone-chilling cold.  Stacks of frozen carcasses.  Solid ice.  The never-altering, eternally freezing, condition of my life.  Waiting.  Always waiting.  Quietly humming tuneless songs. Wondering when a flash of light and heat will signal the entrance of The Family, disturbing my solitary, frozen existence.

My downstairs neighbor receives frequent visits from The Family throughout the day.  Although my neighbor’s darkness is also complete, the blackness never lasts as long as the darkness I live in.  His cold environment isn’t enough to form ice or frost.  The fluids are chilled but still liquid.  The carcasses are preserved for a time, but not eternally frozen.  The Family worries when the small glass bulb which provides light burns out in my neighbor’s apartment.  My living space has no light source of its own.  Only when the door opens do I see the contents of my own interior.

Notebook Cento #5 – now is a now and this is a this

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Sometimes I go back through my notebooks from Graduate school and make centos (collage poems) from phrases I find in the pages.   This is the fifth of a series of centos from my notebooks.

now is a now and this is a this

Notebook Cento #5
by Debi

a now is a now is a now
creating space
.                        between self and outside
.               inside and out
1st person and 3rd
disjunctive
.                  disruptive
find a place, not a position
not an either/or
.                    but an and and an and and an and and …
respect the thing itself
this is this, is this, is this—
.                 rather than this is that

Reading

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When I read The New
Yorker, it reminds me of Sunday

newspapers from my
childhood.  I always read

the comics first.  If I never
read anything more, at

least I’ve had laughter
in my week.

Poem: In the Beginning

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by Debi

in the beginning
a god-breathed whole
holy and holistic
I wanted so much
the mysteries of earth
the people who walked
out of paradise
destroyed burned
when the final darkness comes
neither you nor I were ready
blowing up
falling down
bombs and tombs
holes and horrific
at the end

Poem: The End of the World

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This was written in response to a gallery exhibition at the University of Washington Bothell called “Particles on the Wall” which had artwork and poetry created in response to the Handford nuclear site in Washington State.  I wandered back through the gallery a second time and wrote down images and phrases that were either inspired by the work, or seen in the poetry, thus creating a response to the totality of the exhibition.

The End of the World
by Debi

I forgive
I forgive
I must forgive

Shall I show you how we dressed our wounds?
downwater downriver
terminal winds
leaking glowing circling dying

someone launched
someone drove
someone fished
and never knew

easy to bury
in the late afternoon
dragged home
bedded down
the rest of us slept
in the river’s shadow

half a million years til Spring
what fossils will the future find?
we have gone blind
we are blind
the desert eats dust
a rabbit digs its own grave

obsolete history
drafted history
voided history
closed history
engineered history

restart
by dawn’s light

origami made from living flesh
unrecognizable
graying

the children unborn
carrying on the family business
cleaning up the waste
from the death beds of their fathers

this is my blood
a chalice of death
the last power
the final cover up