Liz Baumann

Red sky at morning
A little late for the warning
Messenger’s last say
Now released to the day

Wings melt like lemon drops’
Underneath the pillow, pops
Will April’s flowers
again have the same powers?

Onward near the catstalker’s circle
Forgot when it was that
I stopped wearing purple

Raining on the ceiling
Then they blow the ice
And he said
We are here, both of the same year
Oh isn’t that nice

California Dreamin’
On such a winter’s night
Bluebird made his dreams come true
Why oh why can’t I?

(Note: All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons – living, dead or undead – is purely coincidental.)

Jake was a monster. He didn’t know how long he’d been a monster; maybe it happened in his sleep one night and he just didn’t realize it. Or perhaps he’d been a monster all along, even before when he had not noticed the physical markings; perhaps the monster was there all the same, just underneath, lurking, and dormant.

Jake had grown accustomed to his monsterness, of people saying they were afraid of him and running away at his approach. Indeed, monsterness had become a natural part of him, like the color of his hair or the size of his feet, and he’d come to accept and even appreciate it for what it was. Like a black widow spider has reasons for being what it is, he figured it must serve some purpose in the greater good, and therefore was simply a natural state and perhaps not inherently evil or bad.

It came to pass that the monster named Jake met a ghost. Ghosts of course are not real and things that are not real do not have names, so we shall only refer to this presence as the Ghost. Jake felt a strange kinship with the Ghost, even though he knew the apparition was a figment of his imagination and therefore shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Before long though, Jake and his imaginary friend had words and fell out. Jake, being a monster and all, figured he was the one to blame for the unpleasant discourse, even though what he said to the Ghost was not meant to be unkind in any way. Jake and the Ghost became strangers sharing the same house, not speaking to one another, each pretending like the other didn’t exist. Jake wished the Ghost would just leave. Of course Jake knew that the Ghost wasn’t real anyway, for the Ghost was at most just a ghost, but somehow this didn’t make things easier.

This sorry state of affairs carried on for a while. And even though Jake knew he shouldn’t be so sensitive – after all, he was a monster, and monsters are not known for being sensitive, especially concerning things that aren’t even real – truth is the icy silence was eating away at him. He’d told people of the Ghost he had once befriended but of course they didn’t believe him, and now that the Ghost wouldn’t talk to him anyway it just all felt like a dream, or a dirty little secret, something he should not speak of. He felt guilty even though he didn’t know what he should feel guilty about, for he was just as much a victim of fate as the next person, or spider, or ghost for that matter.

Then one day he was talking with someone who seemed to get what he was thinking even though he didn’t realize he was thinking it and at the same time managed to extract one of the ugliest of uglinesses from his psyche and place it on display for the world to see. It all happened so fast that he didn’t know what to think. He hadn’t even had time to put a name to this particular ugliness but then all of a sudden there it was, lying like a tangled mess of ribbon tape pulled from his gut against his consent.

And yet there, looking at its perceived ugliness, it didn’t seem negative at all, in fact it made people laugh, and many said they could relate.

Maybe he’d been looking at things wrong, he thought. Maybe this perceived negativity that was a part of him wasn’t really monstrous, but more like electrons: negative but necessary, sometimes meant to be shared, not always entirely insulated from the rest of the world. Maybe there was a bit of monster in everyone, not just himself, and letting a little of it out once in a while makes other people feel a bit more human and a bit less monster.

I wrote this about a week ago for some friends in L.A. who had a new cat visit them and win over their hearts. Pennycat ended up with their daughter and family and is doing great – and they all enjoyed the poem!

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Penny for your thoughts,
mister starving cat
where did you come from?
can’t help but wonder that

Persistent you were
with those big green eyes
charming us with your purr
and to our surprise

We caved in quickly
even Bruno is adjusting
we couldn’t leave you sickly
and you seemed so trusting

Now you’re with us
and it seems so right
having you is a plus
asleep on our bed at night!

I’ve had lots of seemingly random thoughts lately regarding words, so I thought I’d combine them all into one… well, maybe two… blog posts.

1. The most interesting words or phrases have got to be the ones with multiple meanings. Maybe this is why so many of us like to use metaphors and riddles, which produce a similar effect. It’s as if these enigmatic utterances speak across multiple dimensions. And the more dimensions something has, the more unforgettable it is. You might also say that metaphors are like art: it takes time, talent and patience to get it right, but if you are successful, you may discover you’ve created a Mona Lisa. Someone painted me one of those a little while ago, and I can’t seem to forget it.
2. Have you ever experienced a situation where someone says something that leaves you feeling… exposed; like they’ve somehow read your mind, or your deepest secret? For instance: “that – that can’t mean… I mean, he couldn’t possibly have found that, could he?”
3. Sometimes the trick is not what to write, but what order to arrange your words and sentences, and even more importantly: what to leave out. I once spent the better part of a Sunday agonizing about what to write for something, something I thought was important. In the end I realized I should throw away 90% of it.
4. Sometimes I’ll say something with positive, unmalicious intent, but when I see it in print and know someone else may be looking at it, it starts looking negative and I find myself wrestling with second thoughts and wishing I’d said it differently. Maybe this is a case of those multiple meanings again.
5. When you say the wrong thing, it can be very difficult to take it back. Written words linger longer visually, so they command more respect from me and I worry more about getting them right the first time. Maybe that’s why it’s been over a week since I’ve done a blog post?
6. Honesty is the best policy… but some things are better left unsaid. Oh, whatever is one to do??? I don’t know. But I tend to err on the former. Or do I?
7. On occasion I feel insecure or experience feelings of self-doubt regarding whether I should share some random thought. But, I’ve realized something from being on the other end: sometimes the crazy things in other people’s lives actually make a lot of sense in the strange spectacle that my life has become over the past few months. So, I figure, maybe it works the other way around, and the freakish things happening in my life might make sense to other people. I’ve noticed I’m not alone in complaining about trouble sleeping…finding happiness… general angst, and the like. I try to restrict my maniacal musings to metaphor to mitigate the real meaning… refer back to #1.

I think that’s enough for now, I don’t want to bore anyone with a that’s-a-bit-too-long blog post