#833: Hello, My Name Is Schmutzie, And I Am Smartarded (aka A Realized Intention)

Friday, October 26, 2007

Today, I am smartarded. That is what the Palinode and I call our cat, Onion, because he is almost not slow and guileless, but not quite. He knows how to get three thousand pets by bedtime but has not figured out how to push open a door in over a year of watching our other cat do it several times a day. He is smartarded.

The insides of my ears hurt, but let's move on from that.

Last night, I dreamt that the cool brush of mild winter-morning air was on my cheek. Everything was a dusty shade of perriwinkle in that moment before the sun broke over the horizon, and I inhaled deeply that scent of fresh, clean snow.

And suddenly, winter does not seem so much like a thing to mourn. For someone like me who has spent every winter of her life in some lesser or greater form of emotional distress, this is heartening.

Of course, the Funny left a little while ago anyway, but I am sure that that may correspond to the pain in my ears.

If you could hear the huge fart noise my cheap pants just made on my office chair, this whole thing would have a different tenor.

This whole thing would have a different tenor if I stopped saying things like "different tenor" and "heartening" and "so much like a thing to mourn". Sheesh. Who am I? Some early 1900s virgin authoress? I should bandy a whilst or two about just to overstuff the fainting couch which this entry has become.

Were we going somewhere? Yes, right, we were. I had an intention floating around here not too long ago, which I tried to weigh down with a stapler, but those intentions are little escape artists they are. Mine's a fugly little bugger who likes to run off with my realizations for twisted inter-wish-verb fornication.

You would think that sort of activity might culminate in the birth of a Realized Intention along the way, but no. When those flighty intentions knock up those self-aggrandizing realizations, what you usually get is sterile as a mule and just as likely to go nowhere.

And lastly, a poem:

With You, It's Always The Poor New-Yorkers

You say, but there's death.
There is hunger and dehydration
and murder and torture.
There are carnivores and weapons.
There is fire and disease.
Cars drive over people,
and the living eat dead food.
Some kids in New York have never
seen a live cow
or walked on soil barefoot
without fear of dirty needles and broken glass.

I want to say that these are only bodies, only bodies,
that we carry them around,
that all of these will go.
In one hundred and fifty years
not one of us will be here
to recognize the face or hair or gait of another.
These bodies are the meat we antagonize,
not the things that flesh them out.
You are confused.

If anything at all,
we are not to be here.
The world despises us
as much as we do any weed,
and we should accept that fact
as much as we accept
that we will kill the mushrooms
that pop up in brief rings before we uproot them
to make way for grass
that we won't allow to grow.

Labels: the poetry

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15 comments:  palinode Good poem.    pepektheassassin Better than good. Super, even.    pepektheassassin I knew a guy, a truck driver, who put vegetable soup in his ear when it hurt. After a while, he couldn't hear. Wull, duh. Don't try the vegetable soup thing.    Ceridwen I like how this poem goes about making its argument. Have you read Kay Ryan? Your poem has her sensibilities in some respects, although your lines are longer. It's had to have shorter lines than Kay Ryan.    Ceridwen had = hard. I'm typo-prone lately.    TX Poppet Lovely. Read it once. Read it again. Read a third time savouring the imagery. Printed it out and felt the cadence of your words in my ears. Just. Lovely. Thank you.    paper napkin You had me at "my ear hurts." Do you think you have an ear infection?    Amy schmutzie? you are too cool for words.    Gwen The older generation of my family swears that earaches can be cured by blowing smoke into the ear. I have memories of it being done to me but I don't remember whether or not it worked. Maybe it was funny smoke.    Danielle Blogging for Balance Just stopping by to take a peek and to thank you for stopping by my place. I enjoyed your black and white photos a few posts back (and of course the post that you wrote - very compelling). Thanks again I'm going to go back to the front page and browse around a bit more ;)    Marie Does that intention have a gold tooth?    Schmutzie Marie, that intention does, indeed, have a gold tooth.    Heidi LOVE the new banner.    Cecilieaux Your poem evokes several things. First, the converse of the feeling about New York City kids. It would be, had I cyberknown you guys when I was a kid in the Big Apple: hey, some Saskatchewanian kids think there are these animals called cows. Doesn't everybody know that milk really comes from cartons? Second, the notion of 150 years hence (I come to you in my bowler hat, Ms. 1900), summons the thought a photograph of my mother's family, taken in 1914, has in recent years brought home. My grandfather, who actually wore a bowler hat, my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles, the cook and the nanny, are all there in those stiff poses people had then. I could tell you the story of each one, enough to fill several novels. They stand there, so innocent of the 20th Century, never having heard of world wars (but soon about to) or the Holocaust or the atomic bomb. Yet they are all dead.    li'l bro o' schmutzie I especially like the drawing of the intention squirming to get away. Intentions are so like that and your cartoon is very apt. Thank you for the connection of writing. Toodaloo   blog comment guidelines post a comment ~ Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom] ~ main page