another draft - done with thanks and appreciation for my muse who tells me, "keep on, lil, keep on.  i'm watching you begin to transit the one degree between you and immaculate..."

You said,  "I do not need, not you, not anyone, not now..."

Yes, that's what you said,
Two nights ago and 
Wept so silently
I could hear the sound
Circling you,
Small notes
Writing rage
And loneliness
On the staff
Of your thin body,
Opened like a mirror
Of the crucifixion

Once a year, 
True as moon cycles, 
The movement
Of  tidal waters
In caves near shores, 
Need insists
On its own overture.  
You drum
With the flow of the words,
Their ebb.
You know the rhythm,
And mask the cry 
Of the circling song. 

Or do you hear,
And take the need,
Hug it,
Rock it,
Pat it softly,
Then put it to bed,
Whispering orders, 
"Sleep now,
You must sleep.
This year,
You need
To play dead."

You turn away
Walk out,
Looking for songs, 
Not understanding 
I'm the singer. 
Sleeping,
I cannot sing, 
I cannot search.
I will not
Find you again. 

pearlbamboo

copyright e.p. hodges  2005. 

a protected post , a poem, follows

another first draft...

Burnt Offerings

You tell me, "Don't need me.."

I need air, food, water, fire,
A talisman against
The inside dark.
My little jar of fireflies
Will do
Except for the hardest times.
Then I need a pure light.

Air's just there,
And water's in cisterns on the roof,
Falling from faucets in my house, 
Cold in cases at the corner store,
The places I know to go
For necessities.

You are not fire,
Though you hand it to me
Most Wednesday evenings,
My turn, for creating,
Or for warmth. 
You sometimes write me, 
While searching
For your own light,  
What passes for fireflies
In the dark.

Your laughter breathes
Cardamon's fragrance, 
Your entanglements
Crush out the essence 
Of persimmons,
And taste, sometimes,
Of honey,
Thrown in 
With half a lime. 

You are the drummer
Marking rhythms
Of the dance,
The beats
For the singers of songs. 
I'm a singer of songs,
And know
No song without a pulse
Underneath the words. 

You are the sandalwood scent
Released by the press of your feet
Where you walk
In forests of unknown trees,
The small bursts of ash
Disturbed
When you navigate
The burned woods.

You are the savior
Of the green orchid
Hiding on the vine
So high I cannot see,
But know you're there
Because I've felt you
Walk through clouds
To treetops.

These are not necessities
So it cannot be
That I need you .
Have I said it
So that you can understand?

pearlbamboo

copyright  2005  e.p. hodges

Written immediately upon reading and then writing a comment on That'sMyPoint's provocative and excellent piece...

Another draft - as always cheese and drivel warning issued....  readers of all ages beware.


I find no protection
From winds -
No shelter, no celler,
No leeward side
Of the island,
No shallow cave
Blown into rock
In a million 
Hurricane years.

The air takes me - 
I'm buffeted in clouds,
Flying faster
Than indicated
By the instructions,
With little mercy,
Maps torn into strings, 
Now tangled in my hair.

Blue, indigo,
Grey like my hair, 
Red deep as the taste
Of pomagranates,
Orange fire, searing me,
In a July noon's air, 
Purple, the hue
Of dying bruises
Mottling me
Around the heart, 
These colors,
Spell the trajectory, 
Towards death in the sun, 
Mornings or deep night, 
But do not promise
Endings
Beginnings,
Or places to land. 

The winds will not
Release me.   
On the lost map
I remember
A small x,
And the word,
In a child's hand, 
"Home."

pearlbamboo

copyright 2005  e.p. hodges

                       Three Coats That Just Have To Go  - Elsewhere

This faux lynx - great fabric,  good with jeans and fancy pants, larger size, always a good selling point.

and this nifty little faux minkie jacket - complete with your very own cat toys attached.... fur balls, fur balls, somehow I don't think that will do in the listing at all., calling them fur balls...

and a totally wonderful 1950's swing "cloth coat" - I want a grey fedora with red feathers for my manni for this soooo much that I almost bought one just to sell the coat... silly lily.

It's also the week for Irish sweaters - always a good sell through there - and I enjoy them because I always do a little research on the history of the particular company, know which ones still piece out sweaters to hand knitters, which ones use knitting machines,  and use three charts to explain the meaning of each of the stitches used in the design of the sweaters.  So there is a confluence of history, art, women's economic history, and commerce - love it, most of the time, I really love it.  

pearlbamboo

copyright 2005  text and images  e.p. hodges

                                                   One Can of White Paint

Well, I can tell you this - the secret, hidden bathroom is  now white, totally white, pure white, ceiling and walls, as are spots on my hair until i wash them out in a few.   The portraits of two women I worked with in my village women decision making survey are hung, as are the mexican birds made of red feathers, excellent birds.  The Freda Kahlo painting of a wounded deer pierced with arrows, with Freda's face, is up on the wall, the Chinese paper cut dragon is there too, a gold dragon on red silk and framed in gold, and, in a few, I'll have put wire on the back of the painting Joe, of The Love Songs of Pearl and Joe (no links to that yet, will do that tomorrow, it's a seminal piece for me), gave me so that I would never forget him, as if I ever could.  

I'm about to wire the mirror so I can get it off the floor for the first time in 5  years.   The 50's vintage barkcloth red and yellow flowers on white drape is in place, the tassel for tying it back in the bag on the table.  The rattan shelves from Bangkok and the little chest that fits exactly between the door and the shower wall have been repainted, white.  

I've ordered plain round wood drawer pulls and am going to paint some sort of something that matches something in the drapes on them, line the drawers with the vintage liner paper I found on ebay.  Then add my new ginger and green tea candle, and all the 1950's red roses reverse carved lucite pieces, disport them about. 

My friend/muse/fellowpoet wanted to use the john a couple of weeks ago.  Kado, one of my housemates, takes looooooong baths, and friend asked that I not disturb him.  K.  But the little bathroom I use was a cross between an ebay storage room and a third world slum, besides containing a sort of folk art shrine to my old boyfriend's and my relationship.  No way the muse was going to get in that room when it was in that condition.  No way.  Better he should piss off the fourth floor balcony than get in that room.

So, during the week, I took all the remainders of the long and true and sad love affair between me and my high school boyfriend (he's the one who turns up under "lost love" in the links on the left) and put them away, piece by piece.  It was hard.   There are still feelings on both sides, but he will never have the courage to act.   Now, he's all filed away, all thatI didn't just roller paint over with that gallon of white paint...

Oh, but I must tell you that I didn't get the shower painted yet - it has a tent in it that I need to put on Craig's List and get rid of first.  Yes, it was an interesting place before the recent bulldozer operation .   Yes, indeed. 

I'm still up to my neck with ebay, and may not have time to get around to read until the middle of the week. 

pearlbamboo

© 2005  e.p. hodges. 

.  

ATTENTION!

I've really not been run over by the bus, overcome by paint fumes in the
bathroom, swooned somewhere and remain unidentified,
since I never carry an ID, in a back ward for lost lovers.  

No, it's more pedestrian than that, it's eBay time again. (the link is 800 miles long.
To see the real deal, go HERE to eBay, hit "advanced search" up in the
top right corner, then "search for seller" and enter "ghostbutterfly.").

That six weeks in the fall when I transform, become a merchant, move merch... 
I sell my ragged little heart out, wash, iron, (linen/flax, bah, everything else, I
can use my steamer..), ponder over hex codes, whether or not I want
to tinker a bit with the template, write some new code, or just don't fix
what isn't broken.  I look for fresh adjectives - at this point I'm not finding
any - new ways of selling hope, at a reasonable price, and wind up with
lots of Eileen Fisher.  I wash wigs, mend hems, find a giant snap to fix the
red coat from the early 70's below which makes me think of the cover to
the Beatles' Yellow Submarine.  And am, finally, at the end of it all, when
everyone's gathered up their holiday sweaters and gowns,  tired, and
bored too, there's that...  

Here are my three favorite coats this fall - a Sasson blue faux fur from the
80's (I love the color) and a marvelous little cusper, early 60's, sedate style,
yet the pink and blue tweed inches forward into the more colorful part of the
decade.  The buttons are celluloid, such period pieces themselve that I do
swoon, and exactly perfect for the coat. Then there is the coat to end all coats,
an early 70's red one, with a golden lining inside to echo the metallic gold
piping.  Everytime I handle it, it reminds me of something that should be one
of the costumes on something like the cover to a Beatles' album, it is just soooo
70's. 

And ---

Ya know, it really is fun finding these, it really is, digging them out of rack after rack of dreck and mall  trash at the thrift, doing my own thing towards both preseveration of artifacts and recycling.  Waiting for my fingers to hit a luxe textile, flipping every  hanger so I can actually see the label (found a Sonia Rykiel that way last week), wearing a mask so that I'm not dead with dust mites and asthma the next day...

Actually, I love it.  It's more fun than shopping for myself, because I can buy anything that catches my eye and that I think will sell, no matter whether the size, color or style suits me.  In the past, before the eBay market softened a lot, my sell through was over 90%.  That always amused me, the Berkeley anti-fashionista who has four things to wear in her own closet, doesn't read fashion magazines and buys only what she likes when picking out things to sell.  

pearlbamboo

© images and text  e.p.hodges  2005

Thinking about the gift of trust, I moved off in this direction, rather unexpected....

Draft Warning .....  Draft, the first.... possible cheese and drivel Alert

Unexpected Offerings

I craved romance.
Flowers and rings,
You and your guitar
At my window singing,
Giving me pretty things,
Nights by candlelight,
Gold and silver,
Bright
As the moons you imagined. 
Then there's the cashmere coat
I thought you knew I wanted.

I wanted for bouquets
With curling ribbons.
You gave me essences 
Of sandalwood,
Sweet grass
And pine,    
In a plain box, 
Imbued with hard-cried tears,
Sweat, acid, passion, trust, 
Leftovers from night,
Light, lust,
Small fragments of stars,
One tiny cottony tangle of fear.

I'd hoped
For handmade papers
Enfolding something silk.

pearlbamboo

©2005 e.p. hodges

there's a protected post following this. on writing.  

if you are not on my subs list or i have not added you because i like your blog, email me or leave a comment here if you'd like to read.  

nothing sexy, really, just stuff i'd rather keep out of the public view for the moment....

another draft

Your sanguine kiss
Explodes, 
Raspberries 
Striking round red fires
In my mouth.  
Waves of
Crimson whirlwinds  
Fold me inside
The color of hearts.   

You garland my wrists
With pigeon's blood rubies, 
Fingertips tattoo
Your voice 
Underneath those stones 
Where your fingers
Circle my arm
Another bracelet. 
Warm

pearlbamboo

© 2005 e.p. hodges