and this is the hardest game.
more from What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire
Author: l noelle mclaughlin
Ghostwriter for hire.
maybe if we write well enough
and live a little better
life will improve a bit
just out of shame.
(from Bukowski’s Christmas Poem to a Man in Jail)
dissociation, or, how to be everywhere at once
The scene changes: It appears that the audience, in this case
me, joins in during the last act. One must kneel down as the
Good Friday service begins: Parsifal enters-slowly; his head covered with a black helmet. The lionshn of Hercules adorns his
shoulders and he holds the club in his hand; he is also wearing
modern black trousers in honor of the church holiday. I bristle
and stretch out my hand avertingly, but the play goes on. Parsifal
tal<:es off his helmet. Yet there is no Gurnemanz to atone for and
consecrate him. Kundry stands in the distance, covering her head
and laughing. The audience is enraptured and recognizes itself
in Parsifal. He is I. I take off my armor layered with history and
my chimerical decoration and go to the spring wearing a white
penitent’s shirt, where I wash my feet and hands without the
help of a stranger. Then I also tal<:e off my penitent's shirt and
put on my civilian clothes. I walk out of the scene and approach
myself-I who am still kneeling down in prayer as the audience.
I rise and become one with myself22I
The Red Book, Jung
stay in and take a stab at salvation
When the time has come and you open the door to the dead,
your horrors will also afflict your brother, for your countenance
proclaims the disaster. Hence withdraw and enter solitude, since
no one can give you counsel if you wrestle with the dead. Do not
cry for help if the dead surround you, otherwise the living will
take flight, and they are your only bridge to the day. Live the life
of the day and do not speak of mysteries, but dedicate the night
to bringing about the salvation of the dead.
The Red Book (hey. it’s been awhile.)
Honest Apple and Fourberous Orange
was a small zine put together by a guy named Pat which featured my poems Martyr and Weathermen, and Poetry Motel a poetry mag that supposedly published a particularly poor poem of mine about making out in the back seat of a car (I never forked over the few bucks for a copy), but I cannot find any links to either on the internet, so yeah…I am an expert at losing track of time.
A Mid-February Sky Dance
This blog will be one of those oh so official and probably public ones you link your silly writing to for self-promotional purposes. Boring Sidney, Boring. Named after a poem written by another.
“A Mid-February Sky Dance”
Dance toward me, please, as
if you were a star
with light-years piled
on top of your hair,
smiling,
and I will dance toward you
as if I were darkness
with bats piled like a hat
on top of my head.
Richard Brautigan
should i be worried
when an account of typhoid fever before death is the most accurate description i can find written about the mental state i suffer from in cycles? Great, that’s just what i need, to become a hysteric over imaginary drastic physical ailments. Luckily, I think I’m way too lazy for that.
in shadows, underneath the sheltering sky
Once in the garden she found herself pulling off her clothes. She felt a vague surprise that her actions should go on so far ahead of her consciousness of them. Every movement she made seemed the perfect expression of lightness and grace. ‘Look out,’ said a part of her. ‘Go carefully.’ But it was the same part of her that sent out the warning when she was drinking too much. At this point it was meaningless. ‘Habit,’ she thought. ‘Whenever I’m about to be happy I hang on instead of letting go.’ She kicked off her sandals and stood naked in the shadows. (Bowles, 246)
(Sounds slutty, but she is just going for a swim alone in the dark.)
l noelle mclaughlin 