Running Out of Rhyme, Book 2

Running Out of Rhyme
Book 2
Poetry by Jeneane Sessum

In case anyone thought I was serious about pulling content behind a pay-per-view model, I thought I'd make a clear stand on what I think we should be doing here by giving and receiving one another's voices.

So here's the next Running Out of Rhyme poetry collection as a PDF.

Enjoy, and if you feel like donating, know that the Sessums and our COBRA health insurance plan appreciate every penny. If you don't or can't, read on just the same. It's all goooood.

I'll put a link to the side with the other volume for easy access as this post will move along its merry way into my incredibly free archives.

when the dog bites...

when the bee stings.... when I'm feeling sad....

--------------------------

It was a surprise when I heard her yelp LOUDLY from the side of the pool. Yelp? How about scream bloody murder. Yes, sweet girl got her first bee sting today. So many firsts at five. This was yet another. Having never been stung by a bee (yes, I know, weird) even though I used to catch them with my hands and put them in jars, I didn't know exactly what the right course of action was. Luckily one of the pool dads swooped to our rescue, found the stinger, and pulled it out. Of course, it started to swell with nothing to put on it in sight.

"Tobacco" two people said in unison.

Get one of your cigarettes, soak it in water, and squeeze the juice on it. That's what they advised. Nearly everyone there had their grandpapa use the remedy. Is this a southern thing?

For the first time I was glad I still had some cigarettes. I soaked one and made a paste of ground American Spirit tobacco.

"What's that?" Jenna asked.

"Something for bee stings," I lied.

Sort of lied. Thing is, it worked. Within five minutes she said it wasn't hurting so bad. Within a half hour, besides the lump on the bottom of her foot, you wouldn't know anything had gone awry.

This is your Southern tip of the day.

If you get stung by a bee, throw some chaw on it and carry on.

just back from the pool...

while travelling through my archives

I reconsidered today. I have decided, if you can't beat em, join em.

All bloggers will henceforth adopt the subscription model, pull our archives behind a password and charge $1 per post for downloads. We understand that the NY Times and the Times Online are right. If something's old, it is worth more. Like antiques. Content appreciates with age.

I believe.

I believe.

travelling through the archives.

a song from jenna

Uncle Daddy and the Cousin Jumpers

McWTF?

the strep diary and more strep (oh my goodness... i remember may).

JBMCSE CorpoBlogging Methodology (it was supposed to be funny.)

RageBoy's Outta Juice

If you thought Boulder, CO was immune to the dastardly effects of the North East power outage, think again. Oh dear, RageBoy has been sucked into the black hole of Panix's New York power outage. (If the links work, then that means shit's working again).

No blog (hosted on panix). No email at the old homestead (clocke@panix.com). No nothin'.

BUT, he has asked me to let the blog world know he's still alive and can be reached for sympathy, empathy, and generous monetary donations at entropygradient@earthlink.net or through that obsolete boat anchor known as the telephone (720-304-8077).

Glad to be of assistance.

'Til the next lightning strike,
--jeneane

too much power

the power is on in georgia. i wish it weren't. at my house anyway. I wouldn't want to have to throw out food, or re-set the alarm clocks in the middle of the night, or perspire in the late evening heat. I wouldn't want to not be able to blog or to have to explain to jenna that it will be okay in a few hours.

But I could go for a nice, brief, bring-people-out-of-their-houses-with-a-bag-of-ice-and-some-beers power outage about now.

I hear the lights are coming back on. Or so President Johnson says.

fame in the UK

This Article from the Sunday Times Online gives a shout-out to BlogSisters and a mention of yours truly.

I would link to the actual article, rather than the 10-pound (as in money) version I paid to download (can't download individual articles--only in multiples of 10 at a minimum). However, my emails to the editor who contacted me back in June about the story went unanswered once the article appeared. So I never saw it. Never knew when it came out. And now it is, of course, in big-media fashion, behind the pay-to-play firewall.

Obviously, given context clues, my photo made it in, but I'll never know which photo since they asked for a few and since archived articles appear sans photos. Sans personality. Let's see, remove the layout and design, remove the photograph, and charge for it. Um.... okay. That's one way to do it.

If I had time, I'd launch into a rant about big media and its cluelessness as to things even beyond blogging, as in: pulling content behind the magic curtain where people--even the people who contribute to stories, people who are quoted or featured in stories--need to pay for the privilege of reading them.

But I don't have time this evening. So I won't. I'll just bask in another five seconds of fame, which in the end, cost me somewhere close to the tune of $20.

Reason 567 why we'll be here long after they go away.

another version

No time to investigatae, but I think this is another version of the Sunday Times article here.

the night in me

It's been this way forever, really. No matter how little sleep I get, no matter how early I wake up (5:30 this/yesterday morning), at 10 p.m. my internal alarm goes CLANG and the night in me comes alive. It's a curse, being a night person in a daytime world.

The night is when I write, the night feeds me, the moon not the sun cuts a path just bright enough to wander through, not knowing what could jump out, what might surprise, what waits quietly inside thick midnight blue.

Midnight blue--the first color I ever chose from the crayon box. Since I was old enough to scribble, it has been my favorite. Draw bright dark circles, press hard, see how black blue can get.

As a teenager, I'd take a flashlight under the covers and write in my notebook sometime after 1 in the morning, poetry, stories, loneliness mostly.

In that bed, the orange-yellow of the flashlight painted the white cotton sheets like the sunset, bright-white paper gleamed so fresh, dying for black ink to press against it, to make love, flesh-like pulp welcoming the stain of words, giving in to voice, receiving.

In college I'd pop no-doze and crank out 20, 30, 50 pages in a night. It didn't matter. Exhaust myself for morning so waking up wouldn't hurt so bad. Night was my heart's bandage.

And then, you start to like it.

You don't mean to.

But what you find in the locusts and crickets, the air alive with deathly quiet, no birds, no singing, just stillness--it aches for voice, for words, for sound, for touch--your sound, your touch.

The night is the empty room waiting for sound, a whisper, a scream.

Dark silence is electric. It is a hand poised with a knife aimed just-so at the socket.

It's the moment before, the time that is not yet.

At night there is hope things can get better. By morning hope gives way to blazing sun, to pain that cracks the eye and welcomes tears down.

I have to take the night. I have to.

The night is in me.

is it bedtime yet?

today I did six errands before 11 a.m.

i also got more coffee beans.

this is what I did.

that is all.

school girl

morning

apparently there is something to be said for this hour of the morning. Me, I don't see it. Things should be asleep at 6:30. All things should be restful and dreaming inside peaceful slumber. Not knocking around the kitchen hitting the right side of their heads wondering how they could have managed to run out of coffee beans.

It's dark out.

Dark = sleep.

Oh my goodness.

I am a night person. Have always been. My system is in shock. What do people DO at this hour? Even when I commuted to midtown, I couldn't do this hour. I never strolled in before 9:30. It was not possible for me. Accept me as I am. Love me in spite of my early-morning hatred.

My aunt tells me that I will learn to find something special in the beginning of a new day. That there is something incredible about watching a new day wake up.

I'm waiting.

It looks dark. Quiet. It looks like things should be sleeping.

I've seen this hour many times in my life, but most often from staying up all night. And I include in those early morning feedings of a new baby.

6:30 for me is a stop along the way of nightime. It's the end of the previous day, not the start of the next.

All things are changing. Time to go wake the kindergartener!

we made it.

she's there. i'm back here. all is well.

?

to be continued...

kindergarten jenna

Went to see jenna's kindergarten classroom today and meet her teacher. Monday is the first day of school. OH My goodness. I really liked the teacher. She's calm (that is good with a room full of five year olds), not too young, not too old, and has a nine-year-old daughter herself. Wshew. The room is nice and loaded with learning tools, plus five computers that look rockin'. Only 15 kids in the class. Nice teacher-student ratio. Wondering if I can just go there to do my work every day. Wouldn't that be cool? Back to kindergarten I'd go. Don't mind me, I won't get in your way. I'm just going to sit over here and blog and suck my thumb and maybe take a nap.

Anyway, some of Jenna's classmates-to-be were there getting acquainted. A wonderful blend of hues and backgrounds. That is the best thing about the south. Especially this big-city south. But everywhere, really. Even the small towns; even the country. There is blending in the south that goes waaaay back. Even those who don't want to admit it know. It is much less segregated here than in the northeast and midwest--those other parts of the country I'm intimately acquainted with. That is important in our world. Jump in and experience the world of people the world over.

So the children seem great, the teacher seems great, the room is nice and cool and clean, the learning tools are top-notch, and I am breathing an unbelievable sigh of relief--until Monday. Monday our baby girl takes the first step out of this front door into the real world.

It's a tiny step for her, and a big one at the same time. For me it's a step I will never take again in this lifetime, an ending as much as a beginning, and it's as heavy as it gets. Truly.

Wish me a good cry and a strong coffee.

Wish Jenna much joy.

the young me

So let me jump right to this. While I was out to dinner last night, I was told I look 21. Then, no, wait a minute, 14 not 41.

That would seem like a compliment to some. If not that I have been trying to look and act my age--I have an age thing going on lately--you know? An age thing. I'm not sure what that means.

I'm trying to figure out how old I am. Really. Arrested development. Or something. So I've been coming out in this more grown up way, letting the wisdom of my years show for the first time, changing the way I dress some, those tall shoes and things like that, and then I get: 21, no 14.

Shut up, Jeneane, you're saying. Find something else to complain about. We know you have plenty.

But it's all related.

After I say my thank yous, I'm sitting there FEELING 14. Why try, you know? I feel my step father ready to belittle me. That's what 14 means to me. Dinner table arguments and drama. Become invisible--that's the answer.

The thing is, at 14 I didn't look 14, I looked 21. "You blossomed early," my mother would say. I'll say.

What does it mean--certainly it's not "the look" people notice when they tell me I look young as much as what--my manerisms? my humor? the way Jenna and I crack each other up? My vulnerability? My ....?

The harder I try, the younger I get, in some respects. In others I must be 100 by now. Maybe everyone's just too kind to say, 41? I thought you were 100!

I had an aunt--Aunt Gussie--the kindest woman on the Slavic side of my family. She never married and was the coolest of the cool, accepting and ever generous. She made tons of money during her lifetime, which she always shared with the children in the form of savings bonds. Aunt Gussie grew the best tomatoes I've ever tasted in my life.

She lived with her sister and her sister's husband in Ohio. They were mean to her, mean to everyone. They were just NOT nice people. Very unhappy. I remember the belittling that went on in that house when I would visit them with my grandmother. And I would think--but why does Aunt Gussie take it? She's the smart one, she's the rich one, and she's the cool one?

I don't know why she stayed. She never seemed to let it bother her, but it must have. I don't know. There is a lot I won't ever know. What I do know is that Aunt Gussie had a big laugh and a husky voice that always made me feel warm.

She lived to be 90, and she never, not ever, ever, ever, had a wrinkle on her skin.

I am serious. No wrinkles. Not one. I can't tell you how odd it is to look upon a woman of 70 (the last time I saw her) who's skin is as smooth as a baby's. Pure. Not one line. No one ever guessed Aunt Gussie's age right.

But it was more than her skin that kept Aunt Gussie young. It was something else. It was a reverse kind of thing. The something else WAS what kept her face and skin from showing her age. What was it? What was it? What was it?

Love? Joy? Fun?

Oh you should have seen her eyes. Sparkley blue with cheeks that rose to meet them when she smiled. I'm remembering her writing this, these words are forming her face for me, her laugh. Her bending down to pick me a plumb tomato.

I forgot her voice until I started writing this. Now it's in my ears and with me. Thank you, blogging.

Hello Aunt Gussie. I'm okay. I miss you.

morning coffee with...

tablespoon of non-dairy creamer, two packets of sweet-n-low, and two sugar ants.

yes really.

Too tiny to fish them out; too expensive to waste the coffee.

Ante Latte: Coming soon to a Starbucks near you.

down

but not out.

only 5 days left til kindergarten. must go spend them the right way. what else matters.

til later... j.

ain't it funky now

In a low spot today, trying to ward off Jenna's cold, and gettin' funky ova hea. Been listening to this.

I like this interview with George Clinton. Dig how he describes the funk beat:

"It's hard to stay there. You don't want to stay there forever because that would be RI-DIC-U-LOUS. That would be like coming 24 hours non-stop. And every time we start getting there, we'd push it to another level to reach for. We'll never be satisfied with where we're at, so we push it a little harder."

RI-DIC-U-LOUS. uh-huh?

Loud is the only way to go, driving the most funkless automobile ever built--this conservative blue Chevy Venture Value Van, which is no way to go through town or through life. But, it has wheels and a CD player, and four speakers that beat my head with the funk.

Be thankful for whatcha got, ya'll.

Atlantans in the House with the little bitty ants, lemme here ya say HEY! HO!

Hey!
Hey!
Ho!
Ho!
Hey hey ho!
Hey hey ho!

.....

Where the hell are these tiny fuckers coming from? All summer long, ant bait after ant bait, boric acid here, ant baits there. I've put them under the microwave, on the window sills, under the cupboards, and those teeny tiny stinking little millimeter sized sweet-eatin ants don't quit.

Is it all the water? Is it just me? I can't take them any more.

I'm beginning to think they're hatching out of me.

I see them in my sleep.

Help. Me.