I found this poem just before going to bed last night. It is the sweetest, truest thing with the sort of humor that is so me I was both tickled and touched. If you like it and poetry is your thang, drop by Rives' site here: www.shopliftwindchimes.com and hit the rest of the poetry link for more.

Kite

I mistook a garbage truck for thunder.


The morning after the first night we made love,
I dreamt thunder was chasing rain
through your neighborhood,
flooding the streets and keeping the two of us
indoors for days or even weeks,
until some old prophet could drop, by in an ark,
to take us and the rest of the paired-up animals
to a very high place, or an island maybe,
where we could just
sleep naked for a living.


But the thunder was a garbage truck.
And when my eyes woke up
a note on your pillow said:
"Good morning, Sparkle Boy!
I'll be back around noon.
You--make yourself at home."
And so I did.



Maybe.


I'm saying maybe I put on your slippers,
which were as comfortable as bunnies
because they were bunnies,
and then shuffled over my new favorite
hardwood floor to the bathroom
where maybe I took a bubble bath,
which is not something I can do at my place
because, frankly, my tub is way too skanky
to ever sit my bare ass down in.
And then maybe I got so caught up in the romance of the suds
I started quoting old Latin poetry from my college days
like: "fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles..."
You know: "Verily a bright sun does favor me
this morning...muthafucka!"



And then maybe I...played with myself.
But it’s not what you’re thinking--
I’m saying possibly I just sorta
stuck my hand up from the water, going:


hand!(HERE I HOLD MY HAND UP LIKE A SOCK PUPPET
hand!WITHOUT THE SOCK AND MY HAND TEASES ME
hand!IN A HIGH, SMUTTY VOICE):


HAND: "Somebody got laid last night!
Ha-ha-haaaa!
It was youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!"



Or whatever.


And then maybe I...played with myself,
and it's exactly what you're thinking.
But if I did, it was only to put
the mental motion picture of our naked night together
on replay and replay and replay
so touching myself was just like...
Tivo in a way.


And yes, I was still wet when I borrowed your bathrobe.
And yes, I baked apples in your oven
and then ate them with your honey, honey.
And yes, I scared the birds away from your balcony
with my antics, dancing full-blast
to your old Prince CD's--
but please let’s just keep that my little secret,
because nothing is as private as a solitary dance
unless--maybe--it's standing in front of a full-length mirror
in a borrowed pair of bunny slippers,
slipping off a bathrobe and then wishing to a lightbulb
that my name, or my game, or my whatever were bigger,
wondering: "What kind of woman wants this skinny kid for her warrior?"



And so I made for you a kite, enormous,
out of coat hangers, brown paper bags
and the masking tape from that drawer in your kitchen,
and I hung it in the hallway
where you couldn’t hardly miss it,
and I tagged that kite with my words,
I wrote:


Just so you know--


My weird mind wanders and my brave heart breaks.
I've nailed some milestones, but I've made mistakes,
Cuz I got more faults than a map of California earthquakes.


I am taking a nap beneath your covers.
Wake me if you like me.
Wake me if you want me
Wake me if you need another poem.


Your once and future lover
has made himself at home.

© Rives

Have you found a poem, a piece of writing that means a lot to you? Be it writing, a song, lyrics, poetry, fandom snippits--is there a piece out there that you've read and gone: OH MY GOD ITS ME! Would you share it? :p

If it's too intensely personal, do you just have a favorite poem/song/piece of writing stuck in your head right now that you want to share?

I want to read it!

I hate the sound of night time. The whirring, spinning, whining hum of little plastic fans and my room alight with nothing more than LED. There is no joy in such sounds as there would be joy in the sound of a man’s snore reminding me there is comfort within reach or the gentle purr of a cat curled close.

These noises are that of dead things trying to be alive. They run and circulate air through bits and pieces which connect us to people trying to be alive electronically. They carry this false promise of human contact, helping us to forget what a hug truly feels like or how a kiss from a lover leaves a tingly-burn on the skin after.

They are wicked ghosts of life, and at night they arise to rattle their chains at me, mocking.

I will not listen to them. I bend down at night and make them sleep. I make them listen to the cat’s purr, to my lover’s snoring, to my own sleep sighs, to the sound of the morning coming, bursting, blooming, laughing life. I tell them when I leave to take pictures of sand that I hate them.

And it makes it a little easier the next time sleep dances away, and I begin to hate the sound of night time again.

I found Problogger.com, through StumbleUpon! and The Junky's Wife (Great read by the way, her writing is honest, blatant, a touch of sarcasm mixed up with a huge helping of humanity). While I'm not into blogging for change actually, there are some really great suggestions on what to write in your blog to capture readers and visitors.

One of the things I liked from the Group Writing Project was the Top Five.

It got me thinking about what I could do, and then that got me thinking about the reasons why I sometimes don't subscribe to a blog or friend a live journal. Here's my top five for that, and remember that this is 100% my opinion!

5. Your Blog/Journal is using a default template.

If you're using Live Journal's using s1 generator or the default template you chose when you signed up for it and it hasn't changed in several years, nine times out of ten I'm staring at a wall of text that doesn't catch me and make me want to stay and read. This goes for Blogger sites, Vox, or even personally hosted journals using a default template.

A blog's writing has to really capture me to make me stay if such is the case.

If you don't want to change it, try putting something on your page to catch the eye. I know I've already mentioned her, but The Junky's Wife is a great example; she posts using some very bright, unusual, or wonderful little images with nearly every post she makes. It captures my attention and makes me want to read what she's written to see if the post has anything to do with it or not.

A little splash of color makes all the difference to me, have something that draws the eye a little more than just your text. You don't have to overload an entry with an image, but shuffling one in there from time to time will help.

4. You got yourself a nice custom template, but went a little overboard there, cowboy.

So you've read about how a custom design can draw a reader, have your journal stand out. You teach yourself a little (or a lot) about PHP, CSS, HTML, or run on over to your journals add on section and start piling them on.

And piling them on.

And piling them on.

Then I come along, via a search or Stumble! and it either takes me several minutes for me to load all of your images, your side boxes, you Amazon wish list, your spinning, rotating, fade in and fade out top menu, your image map, your spliced side box headers, and by the time your content is loading? I'm already moving elsewhere or I'm hitting the StumbleUpon! button again.

This is a sad, but true fact. Most people (and that's myself included) don't have the patience for a site that takes minutes to load. We want instant gratification, or at least, dangle us a worm that's so very juicy we want to stay and wait for your content to load.

I was guilty of this when I first started to design my own journals. I'm certainly no expert, but I've been trying to make myself more simplistic layouts as I go, less huge images, less special effects means a reader will most likely take a second to ogle what you've written, instead of spending twenty minutes playing with your shiny, shiny, menu buttons that make that neat little sound when they hover over them.

Not that I've ever done that.

3. hi whut r u dion?????????

Chat speak. 1337 speak, or internet short hand if you will. I despise it. I despise it with the white hot intensity of one thousand suns, as the saying may or may not go. Speeeling mistakes? We all make them! Typos? Bound to happen! But if your entire content is written poorly I'm not going to stay and if, (and that's a very BIG if) by some act of a random deity I do stay to try and wade through what you've written--I'm not going to take you very seriously.

I'm sure there are a lot of people who take my own grammatical errors and sentence rape just the same way, but at the very least, I try, and I think that translates. Seeing someone type U instead of you makes me think the writer doesn't give a hoot about what he writes. Readers will think so too, and tend not to give two hoots about what you're writing either. Use your Blog or Journals spell check! If they don't have it, try pasting what you've written in a Windows Word Doc, and if you have Fire Fox, they even have an extension that will spell check as you type!

2. No content what-so-ever, about YOU, the writer!

Some personal blogs are chalked full of products. Beauty products, computer, cell phones, art, pictures with NO content about the writer. I've gone through your archives, I've gone through your About Me, which is nice and all...But where are your entries about YOU?

While I find journals with product reviews informative and insightful, if I am visiting your personal journal like any good peeping tom I want to see into your life. Give me a little of your day, even if it's mundane. Give me a taste of who you are, not a cold blank screen filled with cool things that have nothing to do with you.

If you think whatever you have to write is too boring and no one will find it interesting, you don't -always- have to blog it. (*Clears throat* Like I do...ahem.) Go ahead and try a product review then, or a funny link or show your favorite picture. But don't keep an impersonal, personal journal!

1. Your site is simply RIDDLED with ads.

Don't get me wrong! Hey, if you can make a buck by implementing a single script or maybe including a banner to Google, than go for it.

If I visit your site and the top header banner has an ad, I get a pop up, your side bars are ads in between content in between ads, if I find an ad IN BETWEEN your entry, there's a talking ad in the bottom corner telling me, "CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE WON,"--and I can't hear what else is said because by that time, my ears are bleeding. AND, certain words in your journal are click able links, which I find out are ALSO ads? I'm so outta there.

I don't have a problem with one or two of these things together, but nothing turns me off of a blog or journal than one littered head to toe in advertisements. The internet is simply flooded with it and when I visit someone's blog to read, I don't want a giant flashing half-naked woman telling me that if I brush my teeth with this toothpaste, men will flock to my door just because of my awesome smile.

Choose smart ads that don't get in the way of what you're writing and that don't distract a reader.

And there you have it. These are the top five reasons why I don't subscribe to some journals or blogs.

Join me next week, when I cover the topic of Underwear: Why your husband can't ever do anything with them but throw them on the floor so you trip over it and bean your head on the side of the book shelf and you know, murder is only illegal if you get caught.

Some where, in a universe far, far away, where men are scared and mosquitoes are giant, there's a fat lady writing poetry and leaving it in her fat man's lunch:


You make computer
go, I make tasty cookies
True love for fat geeks.
~

Your farts do not smell
nice, but I will survive.
Incense is godly.
~

Kitty has cold nose,
Wife has sub-zero feet
Shawn becomes heater.
~

I do not know where
your shirts are kept, I only
Know that I love you.
~

I made you lunch, k
Now you can bring me ferrets,
or maybe slurpee
~

Heron steps careful
garbage rattles with the wind
white wings become shadow

Once upon a time, in a universe far, far away on the internet, there was a girl named Kels. She was a ninja pirate carrot who loved her cats, books, and poetry.

One day, she decided to start a Deviant art.comDeviantart.com is a website of free galleries for artists of all kinds group using amazing photography to inspire writers and poets. Lo, Kels saw that this was good and it was motherfuckin' so.

Last week at FotofridayFotofriday inspires poets and writers to create using stunning photographs. we were challenged to expand our brains for Haiku's. What will this week bring? NO ONE KNOWS! (dun, Dun, DUN!).

So, here's the deal, if you have a Deviant.art account, go forth my minions of silliness and join Fotofriday, because it's not JUST for writers, it's for artists too. Inspiration is the name of the game and it's packed full of awesomeness.

Even I tried my hand at some Haiku's last week, and I can't write for shit! So go make the word sex! RIGHT NOW!

It's all over every fandom Community, rachaelwynter has a great entry on it and femmequixotic has quite the informative post about this.

Just in case other's of you who watch me don't know, WFI (Warriors For Innocence Organization) is supposedly(I wish there was a sarcasm font.) spam-reporting ANY journal that REMOTELY mentions anything untoward regarding children.

The majority of journals being suspended and deleted are role player's, creative writing and fan -fics. IF YOU HAVE ANY OF THESE, OR ARE PART OF ONE, BACK YO' SHIT UP, NOW. IT COULD BE GONE WITHIN SECONDS.

I am not currently aware of Six Apart/Live journal re instating any of the suspended journals that were wrongfully hit, and apparently aren't going to in the future. So, if you know someone, or are that some one who owns a journal you think may even remotely fall under their eye, I suggest letting them know and if you don't back up everything you write already--now is a REALLY good time to start.

  Oh,
         Do not ask me why the wind blows,
              Why the skin upon the inside becomes softer,
                   I do not know these things. No ancient mystery unravels itself to me.
                   Instead, ask me why I find such fascination with his bottom lip.
             The way it quivers if I kiss the corner of his mouth
        These short gasps of air caught between pillow's sigh
   And the way he whistles to himself, day after.
  Oh,
        I do not know anything these days.
             Simply,
                  that love works under the cover, a fuzzy blanket worn to
                  nubs and weak spaces from skin until
          you cannot tell where top is from bottom.
           Warm. This answer do I know
              and the way he smiles to himself, the day after.

~~
Short random bits:

It is difficult to
reach behind your neck and
pick yourself up.
I fall a lot.
~

If clouds could feel
and should they ever be
sad, I bet they'd cry
rainbow cotton candy.
~

grass stalk bends in wind
summer breeze dried small pool
a koi gasps for air.