April 29, 2010

The Titles of the Poems I Have Written about My Missing Winter Coat and When I Wrote Each

"No! No! No! No! No!" - October, 1984

"Then I Was Naked" - October, 1984

"Cruel Winds of November, '84" - December, 1984

"Reagan Did THIS to ME and Now He Can't Recall!" - March, 1985

"In Memoriam: One Year Ago Today" - October, 1985

"Worse Than Bananarama" - November, 1985

"Oh! Bitter Fruit! (The New Winter Coat)" - January, 1986

"Retracing My Steps, Redux" - February, 1986

"Suing Everybody for Stealing" - March, 1986

"The Heat of Summer vs. The Warmth of My Missing Winter Coat" - July, 1986

"Hot Leads in the Case" - September, 1986

"Observed In Silence: Second Anniversary" - October, 1986

"My Lawsuits Are NEVER 'Frivolous,' Your Honor and Other Truths Well-Spoken" - January, 1987

"One Single Tear / Where I Last Saw It" - April, 1987

"The Infallible Zipper: A Celebration" - April, 1987

"Your Hanger Swings Empty" - July, 1987

"I, Remaining: The Third Year" - October, 1987

"My Body Belittles My Pain: Growing Too Big for My Missing Winter Coat" - January, 1988

"Forgiving Myself" - March, 1988

"It Wasn't Supposed to Be This Way! (Starting College without You)" - September, 1988

"Drinking Drowns the Pain" - September, 1988

"New Friends: Blaming Others" - November, 1988

"The Pain Breaks the Bottle" - December, 1988

"Never Forgetting: Belated Fourth Anniversary" - January, 1989

"Salted Wounds: Bananarama Wins Frivolous Libel Suit" - January, 1989

"Blaming Others More Loudly" - February, 1989

"Hail Thee! Ex-Coat Most Snuggly: A Song Cycle" - March-July, 1989

"Pills of Empty Promise" - June, 1989

"Without: Five Years On" - October, 1989

"They Shoot Coat Thieves, Don't They?" - February, 1990

"Reborn: Girlfriend As Missing Coat!" - April, 1990

"Redone: Missing Girlfriend As Missing Coat" - April, 1990

"Refocus: Missing Coat, Missing Heart" - April, 1990

"New Evidence" - June, 1990

"Moving On / My Struggle" - September, 1990

"You Keep Pulling Me Back: Now We Are Six" - October, 1990

"Taking No Chances: The New Girl and The Contract Of Understanding" - January, 1991

"Letting Go" - March, 1991

"Burning Brightly" - May, 1991

"Never Gonna Give You Up: The Astley Pledge" - July, 1991

"Letting Go Again" - August, 1991

"Still Letting Go" - January, 2007

"Signing the Last Check to Bananarama, the Worst Group Ever" - December, 2008

"Letting Go Again, Redux" - February, 2009

"The Missing of Things: A Modern Day Verse Saga of Memory and Misplacement, Drugs and Drinks, Libel and Letting Go" - (in progress)

April 21, 2010

My Recommendations For People Who Are, At This Very Moment, On Fire

1. Find something else to think about. Are the birds singing? Don't you just love apple pie? Let your mind take you away from the burning of your flesh.

2. Stay away from valuable paintings in museums. Fire will damage most canvases by the great masters. You don't want that guilt hanging over you during your potential recovery.

3. Don't run! Walk casually so as to not attract embarrassing levels of attention. There's no need to turn physical pain into social discomfort.

4. If inside, make sure that you are in a properly ventilated room. This will help you to avoid legal liability for violating provisions of your state's clean indoor air act.

5. Don't re-invent the wheel! Many people have been on fire before. Learn from their examples and fine-tune only where necessary.

6. Stop blaming others for your fire. Own your burning, or your burning will own you, or at least the epidermal parts of you.

7. The human body is mostly water. Knowing that most of you will eventually put out the fire on a small portion of you, feel free to relax.

8. Is it a prescribed burn? Overgrown skin is more prone to natural burning and regrowth cycles. Nature has ways of making room for healthy new cells.

9. Admit that you are powerless over fire; so sit and do nothing.

10. Make sure that it is not a superpower with which you have just been invested. You would feel quite dumb if you extinguished a blossoming superpower, wouldn't you?

11. Learn to overcome your fear of water very quickly.

12. Document the fire so as to learn from it. Also, so you don't forget about it with all you have to do today.

13. Stop whining! You think other people don't have problems? Of course they do. Your complaining just makes your burning more insufferable for those unfortunate enough to be around you at the time.

14. Check with your health insurance provider to see if "on fire" is a pre-existing condition and if there are any specialists in-network.

15. Be sure to update your social networking accounts with a witty status like, "Is it hot in here, or is it just me on fire?" or "I'm a hunka, hunka burnin' flesh!" or "Goodness! Gracious! Great balls o' fire! Literally!" or "Need a light?" People will laugh!

16. Remember, it could be worse. You could be on fire and stupid. Count your blessings.

17. It may be tempting, but don't hold a grudge against fire. The anger will only burn you up on the inside, and the fire will win again.

April 16, 2010

Things I Might Yell At My Smarter Cat

1) That's not what Foucault meant! *

2) Because you have an insufficient grasp of fractals, that's why!

3) I'm so tired of your clawcentric diplomacy!

4) Of course the data look different than you expected! Duh!

5) What about MY id!?

6) Your suppositions would be laughable if they weren't so tragic!

7) Steer into the skid!

8) I distrust your family recipe for
coq au vin!

9) I demand a recount! **

10) Do you not understand why a three-party system would be better?!

11) To the breach!

12) Catsense as a phenomenon has been roundly discredited! ***

13) You, sir, do not know what pain - real emotional pain - is!

14) Fuck you, cat! You're a fucking cat! Untie me now! ****


* No one actually knows what Foucault meant, including me, but the cat doesn't know that nobody knows, so I usually get a pass on that one. Ironically, Foucault himself theorized that his cat was actually the only one who knew what Foucault meant, though Foucault's cat's own writings claimed this assertion "made as much sense as that bastard's thought processes which, in turn, made as much sense as an underwater clothesline."

** I am entitled to a recount by local election laws, but the cat has a powerful legal mind.

*** In some circles.

**** You fucker!