Craft Night!

On Wednesdays we craft. CK, Alex, and me. This week we were lucky to have the company of talented graphist (yep, that's a word now) MN!

Alex painted:


CK sketched the crowd:


MN gave us a ghostly forest:


And I put a bird on it:


Thanks for the pastels CK!

Alex made some progress last night. Isis helped.


And finally, I can't decide if Weds or Tues is my favorite day. Crafting with friends is rocktastic, but Tuesdays have this:

NaPoMo Day 30 Poem

So, I met my National Poetry Month goal at just about the same moment I found out Osama Bin Laden is dead. Weird.

This isn't the first NaPoMo that I have completed, but it is the first I feel really confident about. The photos were an awesome inspiration. Congrats, too, to fellow NaPoMoers Rach, Donna, and Kendall. Good show. Thanks for the prompts.



Photo from Black & WTF Photos:

We walk an elevated green field on the outskirts of a zoo in Cohanzick
for miles it feels
for seconds it feels
and on top of this hill
we come across a soccer goal
and inside the net is a panda.
We would like to play soccer
but how can you hit a panda
with a soccer ball? Peacocks
roam the brush up here and
we pass dried animal
ribs jaw teeth
we pass trash, stained orange,
tires bottles dolls that have
been washed again and again
by the mud.
We listen. The wind wisps
our hair. The peahen cries.
Remember the monkeys who
looked too human, the bear
who rested in a hammock
made of recycled fire
hose. Remember the chainsaw
art, the dingo who howled at
our smell. How do I blink
and you’re in uniform, approaching
the ball. Inside the net, the panda falls
onto his fluffed back. He is ready to catch.

NaPoMo Day 29 Poem

Photo from Black & WTF Photos:

A world without plastic
No tupperware to hold our leftover rice, no red solo
cup to drink our beer from at parties, to eat our cereal
from when our bowls our spoons are stacked dirty
in the sink. Without plastic, the snap of a new DVD
case doesn’t send your memory to the chalked desks
of fourth grade, the velcro latch on your trapper keeper.
In a world without plastic, our boots would be made
of rubber again, and they’d be everywhere: a woman
finds one floating in the sink next to the pestle;
somewhere a young boy hitches an old fireman’s
to his back and strides home, dreams future forming.
In a world without plastic rubber would make our bottles
our fake breasts our cheap picture frames our milk jugs
hopes future forming.

NaPoMo Day 30 Translation

La Grasse matinee*
Jacques Prévert
from Paroles
French version here

It’s terrible
the small sound of a hard egg broken on a pewter countertop
it’s terrible this noise
when it stirs the memory of the man who is hungry
it is also terrible, the head of this man
the head of this man who is hungry
when he looks at himself at six o clock in the morning
in the mirror of a department store
a head the color of dust
it’s not his head really that he looks at
in the window of Potin’s
he doesn’t care about his head the man
he doesn’t think about it
he dreams
he imagines another head
a calf’s head for example
with a vinegar sauce
or the head of whatever can be eaten
and it gently stirs his jaw
gently
and he gently grinds his teeth
for the world is paying its head
and he can do nothing against this world
and he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days that he hasn’t eaten
and he repeated to himself for three days
This can’t go on
this goes on
three days
three nights
without eating
and behind these windows
these pastes these bottles these reserves
dead fish protected by the boxes
boxes protected by the windows
windows protected by the cops
cops protected by fear
nothing but barricades for these six unhappy sardines
A little farther the bistro
creamed coffee and hot croissants
the drunk man
and inside his head
a fog of words
a fog of words
sardines to eat
hard egg creamed coffee
coffee sprinkled with rum
creamed coffee
creamed coffee
coffee sprinkled with blood!...
A man highly esteemed in his neighborhood
was murdered in broad daylight
the murderer the vagabond stole from him
two francs
to be a sprinkled coffee
seventy cents
two buttered tarts
and twenty-five cents for the tip for the boy
It’s terrible
the small sound of a hard egg broken on a pewter countertop
it’s terrible this noise
when it stirs the memory of the man who is hungry.

*La Grasse matinee is an expression for a lazy morning.

NaPoMo Day 29 Translation

Pater Noster
Jacques Prévert
from Paroles
French version here

Our father who art in heaven
Stay there
And we’ll stay here on earth
Which is sometimes so pretty
With its mysteries of New York
And then its mysteries of Paris
Which are well worth those of the trinity
With its small Ourcq canal
Its great wall of China
Its Morlaix river
Its foolishness of Cambrai
With its Pacific ocean
And its two docks at Tuileries
With its good children and bad subjects
With all the wonders of the world
Which are there
Simply on the earth
Offered to everyone
Scattered
Amazed themselves to be such wonders
And which don’t dare admit themselves
Like a pretty young nude girl doesn’t dare show herself
With the appalling horrors of the world
Which are legion
With their legioners
With their torturers
With the masters of this world
The masters with their priests their traitors their troopers
With the seasons
With the years
With the pretty girls and the old jerks
With the rush of misery rotting in the steel of cannons.