Everyone has to write something....

Paint it empty
        paint it grey
   This world seems such
 a crazy place
      We've only proved it true
   Our lives are empty
           Shadowed grey
Turning 'round a sacred void
       Not knowing that it's there

  We're old, we're empty
     We're faded grey
Watching ancient days again
        A memory that's died
   Though it is empty
      And sullen grey
We need to fill the sacred void
            For we don't understand

It isn't empty
        Just painted grey
    A waking dream, filled emptiness
A never-ending prayer
                We think we're empty 
        So wrapped in grey
Too caught up in the paint to see
                   The Presence that is there....
          NsB 09-11-02
                  "Painted grey"

Shandahr's name...

One of those unwritten stories in my head that I'm still trying to work out.

And bones of white forgotten lay
   With eagle's flights to bind them,
To caves of night they bring false day,
   And seeking shadows, find them.

Walk softly here among the bones
   That wait with shadows lining;
My Shandahr sweet now make thee known
   To loose the eagles' binding.

And who, my Shandahr, hast thee found
   In summer-silvered meadow
To tell the tale of night unbound
   The triumph of the Shadow?

Thy hands, my Shandahr, only thine
   May false obeisance shatter - 
And bring once more the dark divine,
   Thy night to settle matters.

Unbind the bones, my Shandahr cold,
   And burn the eagles' feathers;
Replace the paths that lay of old,
   Of bone and ash together.

This ancient peace is stale and strained
   Sweet Shandahr mine, thou know'st it.
Usurping crown - too long hast reigned - 
   Now thy sweet hands o'erthrow it.

Take up thy crown, thy rod of rule,
   O Shandahr, cruel thy making!
Rise up from bones thy armied ghouls
   And bid them share thy waking.

O, silvered locks and eyes of mist,
   O, child of smoke and sorrow:
Take up thy sceprre as they wished - 
   Those who foresaw this morrow

And Shandahr mine, bring forth thy night,
   All clad in royal raiment,
And cloaked in thy unholy light,
   And crowned with bone and radiance.

Thy armied ghouls about the shand,
   Now ready for the battle - 
'Tis thine, O Shandahr, all this land,
   Its peoples all - thy chattel.

Raise up the gleaming rod of rule
   And see the shadows greet thee - 
Stand proud, my Shandahr, cold and cruel,
   For none will now defeat thee.

And night will settle on the land
   O'er all but silvered meadow
A path of blood before thy hand
   A war of smoke and shadows

In fire and blood my Shandahr proud
   Thine upstart king destroying
And speak no word - condemn nor laud - 
   Send him to caverns cloying.

With rising sun thy armies fall
   No charge they need to break them
But Shandahr cold, thy hate is all
   The conquered lands to take them

Then rest, my Shandahr, on thy throne
   And with thy people quiver
Then slip away, just thee alone
   To cross the moon-dark river

Cast off thy crown, thy robe of night,
   Abandon rod and shadows
And Shandahr sweet, then take thy flight
   Back to thy silvered meadow

O Shandahr-love, until the call
   Of false obeisance summons
Come dance, come sing, forget thy fall
   In meadows sweet with summer

And arms await thee, Shandahr-mine,
   My love, my light, my only
We'll sup and drink and love like wine
   And never leave thee lonely.
                        NsB 21-08-02
                                "Shandahr my love"

A few poems (2) In the middle of the night.

This one only bears explaining for those who aren't familiar with my own imagery. Ask, if you really want to know.

And I - I am the raven
     That rare and radiant maiden
   Emboldened by the shadows
          Of the night's forgotten lore

Be silent, ancient craven!
        For thou with lies are laden
    I am not now thy maiden
             And will be nevermore

My soul is now forsaken
         to he who's tamed the raven
      And reaches 'cross the shadows
            To recall the long-lost lore

For I - I am the raven
          That midnight-tressed maiden
    Begone, ye ancient craven!
       Beset me nevermore!

No more send fair lords laden
        With gifts for maid and maiden
     She loves no more thy shadows
  Will hear not now thy lore

Her soul by one is taken
           The lay of night forsaken
     This rare and radiant maiden
               Is claimed forevermore.
        NsB 03-09-02
              "Edgar Allen"

A few poems....(1) From the refrigerator door.

It's busy. So very very busy...and I don't have time to write much. So I do it with that blasted magnetic poetry.

he summers here in
     whispered springtime worship
   behind a forest
          misted like the wind
 --asks: when will these
        delirious purple moments
recall the smooth and languid
       sleep of sin?

and singing sweet
       of luscious places shadowed,
    of dreaming under
           sordid bitter moons;
bare petall'd power 
  floods the diamond winter
       and death is yet a beauty--
     all too soon.
           NsB 02-09-02
                "dandelion"

The Flood....

Coming soon (like tomorrow).. ....Or never..

It's too darn hot.

It's like 10:00 in the morning, and my brain is already melting. Skidoo! And all that jazz! Sometimes I hate living in the Midwest. It goes from cold and bone-dry in the winter to hot and swimmingly humid in the summer. Consulting the temperature-sensitive mouse pad at my side...its' only 80-85º. Could've fooled me. Anatomy remedial exam is Friday. Friday Friday Friday. And I'm flat-out terrified that I'm somehow going to fail it. Oh, Fred? Yeah? Nobody walks out on me! *bang* Sweetheart.... Oh, don't sweetheart me, you sonofabitch! *bang* Whoopee. Hot-cha. Jazz! I love Chicago. The city somewhat less than the musical, but they'll both do in a pinch. Ah. well. My brain is melting once more. I'm going back to the one air-conditioned room in our house to study until I know I won't fail. Pop. Six. Squish. Uh-uh. Cicero. Lipschitz. He had it coming.

Quizzical goodness

Which movie heroine are you?
Dangitall...these things are addictive.... The Multidimensional scale of Sexuality? ...And would anyone like to guess how I scored? i am



what microsoft OS are you? i am



what sexual performer are you?
I am Little Red Riding Hood! Find your fairy tale character at kelly.moranweb.com.
Which LOTR Woman are you?

Who...are....you....

Victims are tied into you and stretched inch by agonizing inch, until they are either rent limb from limb or they confess. Or hey, maybe both. Not as bad as some people, someone tells you what you want to hear you'll feel better.

What torture would you be? Stretched inch by agonising inch. I like it. There are three boys in the computer room right now - my husband, his best friend, and my stepbrother. MattMattDavid, which always sounds like I'm stuttering. They're taking advantage of the last few days of the Warcraft III Beta test. So for the last few hours, all I've heard is explosions and screams. Rawr. So I'm attempting to amuse myself with things like online RP. Which isn't working, because there are very few people around to roleplay with - excepting the loser assholes that I always seem to see hanging about, looking for roleplay so they can DISCONNECT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT WITHOUT WARNING Okay. Anyway. That's enough of that.

The Grommet Story

For those of you who either don't know what a grommet is or who 'Gromit' is, this may not make much sense. First advice: Go check out http://www.aardman.com/wallaceandgromit/index.shtml and return once you've read it thoroughly. I was in high school when this happened. To be specific, I was a senior at the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities in Muncie, Indiana. We had a solar car team. As in, a professor at said Academy had gotten the bright idea to give science credit for our attempts to engineer and build a car to race in the Solar Car Challenge. After much discussion, we'd decided to build the car out of angle steel, the kind that's punched every inch. The building of said car is cause for another rant entirely, boys and girls. After two years, when we completed our prototype (using a list of all the triangles we could think of that had integer-length sides within 0.1 inch), we wound up with something that, from the front, looked something like /--0--\ With 0 being the driver, and /\ being the wheels. Which were supposed to be straight, mind you. In any case. The grommet story. For the driver to sit in, we'd decided to put in a hammock-style seat, made of durable canvas and attached to the frame using some extra bolts. After much discussion, we came up with the idea of strengthening the seat with grommets. Also known as hole-reinforcers, for the uneducated. See, if you have a tarp....But we'll get to that. The important part of the story at this point is that "grommet" is pronounced identically to the aforementioned "Gromit". Thus, when someone (maybe it was me, I forget) suggested grommets, Mike piped up with "Gromit!" in a high-pitched, positively atrocious British accent. This was funny of its own accord, let alone once he'd -explained- who Gromit was. Thus, every time someone said "grommet", the entire Solar Car Team would echo with a chorus of "Gromit! Gromit!" like some sort of deranged murine choir. One fine spring evening we headed out to find some grommets (Gromit! Gromit!) for our solar car. We drove up to the northern end of Muncie, where there are quite a few stores all set up together, and surveyed our choices. "Lowe's!" it was suggested. "Lowe's has hardware!" So we went to Lowe's. Lowe's: Being the President of the Solar Car Team, I assumed my duties and went up to the service desk. "Do you have any grommets?" I asked the person behind the desk ("Gromit! Gromit!") I was rewarded with a blank look. "What's a grommet?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") "Well, you see, if you have a tarp..." I began with things I hoped he would understand. "A tarp." Good. "A tarp. And it has holes in the edges...." "Holes in the edges." It was like Simon Says, only with a grown-up. "And there are metal rings around the holes, so they don't rip." "Metal rings." He nodded. "Those are grommets." ("Gromit! Gromit!") There was a long silence. "Oh," he says at last. "Why don't you go look in the aisle with the tarps?" After getting directions to the aisle with the tarps, we trooped the entire Solar Car Team dutifully over. In studious silence, interrupted only by the occasional outburst of "Gromit!" from an overenthusiastic member, we surveyed the contents of the aisle with the tarps. Concrete urns. It took a full ten minutes to find one tarp, hanging on a peg, behind the concrete urns. Its grommets were firmly attached. So, fearless leader that I was, I turned to the Solar Car Team. "Where to now?" I asked. The answer was clear. Wal-Mart. Because Wal-Mart has everything, right? So we trekked next door to Wal-Mart, where I promptly led my group to the Customer Service desk. "Excuse me, ma'am?" I asked politely. "Do you have any grommets?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") "Grommets?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") "What's a grommet?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") Repeat conversation, as above, with chorus. Finally, she says "Let me call hardware." Before I can explain that we don't think grommets are hardware, she's on the phone. "Hi, this is Beth up at Customer Service...Yes, and I've got a group of kids looking for grommets." ("Gromit! Gromit!") A pause. "Well, if you have a tarp..." Pause. "And you have holes in the edges..." Pause. "And there are metal things in the holes so they don't rip...." Pause. "Yes, those. Grommets." ("Gromit! Gromit!") "Oh, okay. Thanks." She hangs up the phone. "No, sorry, we don't have any." Her voice was positively imbued with suspicion. So what to do? Lowes apparently only carried concrete urns, and Wal-Mart apparently though that we had ingested some sort of illegal substance. Then someone, whose name is lost to posterity, said "Hey! I've got an idea! Canvas is fabric...why don't we go to Jo-Ann's Fabrics?" Jo-Ann's Fabrics: We piled into the van and took off to Jo-Ann's. On arriving, I led the group into the store and smiled at the salesclerk. "Do you have any grommets?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") She hesitated, and took a deep breath. "Let me ask JoAnn." So she turned around and yelled toward the back of the store. "JOOOOOAAAAANNNNN!" We, the Solar Car Team, are standing there, glancing at each other in surprise, when an ancient, wizened old grand-dame of a woman hobbles out of the back of the store. "That," someone whispers, "must be the original Jo-Ann..." "Do we have any grommets?" ("Gromit! Gromit!") the salesclerk asks. JoAnn nods with a sagely smile. "Yes," she says, addressing the Fearless Leader (me). "Look to your left." We got our grommets, and a grommet-punching tool, and that Saturday the Solar Car Team had a field trip: into the lobby of the Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics, and Humanities. And we watched Wallace and Gromit and the Wrong Trousers. And laughed. Gromit!