Refracted Neurons

You will never be the reason I push the air out of my lungs, You will always be the reason I dance. Did ya know?  It's not breathing in that's the hard or important part.  Breathing out, expelling the oxygen-depleated air is what requires the muscular movement of the diaphragm.  Exhaling creates a vacuum and air rushes in to fill it. 

Today I was kidnapped by three old (one old enough to be my dad, two old enough to be my grandfathers) Baptist men.  Well, I wasn't really kidnapped. One of them had this giant Cadillac that would probably float if you put it in water.  We all went to the Country Buffet.  It was funny because I don't spend a lot of time with people outside of my peer group.  It also was the first time in five years that I got to eat fried okra.  The last time I ate fried okra I was in Tennessee on my way to visit my (at the time) fiance.  But that, is an entirely different story.

I've been in a terrible mood this whole past week, and stupidly deleted the only copy of one of my poems.  I had already lost another poem when my computer died an untimely death due to cat.  So after freaking out a little, I realized that I had read the poem to one of my friends and that she had asked for a copy.  She still had it and has loaned it back to me with the request that I read it at the next slam. Speaking of the slam, yes, I read during the open mike this week for the first time!  I read a poem I wrote about my best friend.  She read too, so did my other friend's boyfriend.  You can read the poem I wrote about her (It's called "If In Fact") and many, many others at mellla.tripod.com/poetryarchives

A while ago I saw a middle-aged man, wearing jeans and a Mariners jacket and carrying a leopard-print umbrella.  The umbrella was so out of place, that I immediately made up a story about him: He had to borrow his daughter's umbrella because he had left his navy blue umbrella at the office and had broken his black one by throwing it at his wife's car.  She was supposed to pick him up, but didn't see him even though he was waving his umbrella and shouting at her.  So he tried throwing it at her car to get her attention.  She didn't even seem to notice the umbrella bouncing off her trunk and landing on the opposite side of the road, where it was immediately run over by about five cars and a suicidal bicyclist.  So today, he had taken the only umbrella in the coat rack, his daughter's.  Although people gave him weird looks, and his co-workers made snide remarks, his only comment upon arriving home was, "We need to get Mina a new umbrella; this one has a brok...

"Librarians know sh*t you wouldn't even believe."-Overheard from my roommate about two months ago. I thought it was really funny and wrote it down. 

"Smoking during pregnancy boosts the odds that your baby will have the wrong number of fingers. Smoking 10 or fewer cigarettes a day increases the risk of too many, too few, or webbed fingers by 29 percent. Smoking a pack a day almost doubles the risk." I know someone with a webbed toe.  I paid him a dollar to take off his shoe so I could see his webbed toe.  I'll have to ask if his mother smoked while she was pregnant with him.  Or maybe toes don't count? Unfortunately, statistics are deceitful above all things.  I bet the chances of having a a baby with the wrong number of fingers is probably under one percent.  So increasing one percent by a third is not really that big of a deal.  Even if you double it, you only get up to two percent. 

This poem is in Pantoum form. I wrote it last week and I think it pretty accurately illustrates how blind I can be to other people's faults. Anyway, Pantoum form looks like this: ABCD BEDF ECFA You Try To Fool Me You pull apart your ribs to show me your black soul all I can see is your beating heart of gold. You show me your black soul its shadows falling on my face your beating heart of gold like halogen, like the sun's rays. Your shadow is falling on my face and all I can see is you, like halogen, like the sun's rays, when you pull apart your ribs. 

"You should move in with me. I'll give you lots of space . . . although I might kill you in your sleep . . ." "No, that's okay." "I made it in your colors." "What are my colors?" "Dirt." "Are you still carrying a torch for him?" "No, just a little tiny candle."