Lox, cream cheese, bagel–
a common brown house sparrow
my sole breakfast guest.
ljgloyd 2013
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Purple Snow
Jacaranda blooms
J. cuspidifolia
May’s purple snowfall.
ljgloyd (c) 2013
Blogging Goals
The Daily Post asked today: “When you started your blog, did you set any goals? Have you achieved them? Have they changed at all?”
My goal when I started this blog a year ago was to make a fresh start in a daily writing practice. I don’t post everything I write daily — oh my goodness, I would not do that to you. I just post the reasonably unoffensive stuff I produce.
Over the course of a couple of months I found myself using this space to experiment. As I explained in a post a few weeks ago, I explore a variety of genre and media in a frequent and consistent practice. And this has become a stated goal. If you look at my “About”, you will read this:
Miss Pelican is a writer and artist who actually spends more time opining about the world than actually writing or arting. This blog is a way for her to get out of that habit by conducting experiments in words and images.
So I guess I can say that I quickly found my blog’s goal and have not deviated much from it since then.
I don’t know whether this a good thing or not.
ljg (c) 2013
Hands: Gathering Stars
Today’s prompt from the Daily Post: “Photographers, show us hands.”
“Gathering Stars”
This is a construction from manipulated photographic images which depicts my interpretation of a qigong movement with this name. (I found this video that shows this exercise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDiBtm2ACWs )
ljgloyd (c) 2010, 2013
I Won’t Be Sylvia Plath
There is a reason I cast poems about lacy-edged waves sliding onto slick sand
and why I write about singing night birds and coyotes skulking in the shadows.
I paint with words the image of moon jellies floating in an infinite blue void.
The teachers say I must write of things I know, and the thing I know best should be me.
The critics say look to the past, share the pain, point to the others who rent my heart.
The experts say a poem is good if tears and rage spill like blood on a butcher’s block.
I won’t be Sylvia Plath going crackers in a bell jar, or one of her
colleagues harping on suicide, and spinning her madness and agony on paper.
I would be Issa and Basho singing of sparkling dragonflies and plopping frogs.
I would be Li Po and Wang Wei crafting verses about trees and shards of moonlight.
I would be Robert Frost and Miss Dickinson finding beauty in silent snowy
roads less traveled and in the elegant simplicity of a homebody’s life.
There is a reason I fling poems about yellow-eyed cats, driving rain and hot coffee.
I will not assume that I should be the center of your universe. I want to
find my world in that proverbial grain of sand and hitchhike on the backs of stars.
LJGloyd (c) 2013
Photo: Moon Jellies in a Blue Void
Green Walls
This is the first verse I have published in a long time. It short and hopefully painless.
Green Walls
Alone, green office walls lock out my mind
I toil to make the dying bread that feeds my flesh
and stakes my spine. My fettered heart bursts forth
and cries aloud, “I need to breathe, I need some light”
and then with pen in hand a poem I find.
LGloyd (c) 2013
Ambient Light
Yesterday evening, I was sitting in my living room. I glanced up at my windows and thought “What in the…..” I jumped up and opened the front door. The setting sun was reflecting off some heavily loaded rain clouds. Colorful sunsets are not unusual where I live, but this time it was different. The colors reflected off the clouds and cast an odd ambient light on the surroundings. The effect made me feel like I was IN the sunset, not just looking at it from afar. The orange had a slight greenish tinge to it and the air felt heavy. It felt like something BAD was going to happen. The fact that my neighborhood had been the epicenter of a small earthquake a few hours before did not help my unsettled mood. However, the clouds blew off, this morning all is clear, bright and blue, and everything is well in my world. My guess is that an unstable weather system coupled with a lot of particulate matter from the brush fires we had earlier in the week had set up this light show.
I grabbed my ipod camera and shot these images. The colors on these have not been enhanced.
ljg (c) 2013
Iamb What Iamb
I was wrung out and exhausted when I got home from my day job this afternoon. After a quick supper, I attempted to separate myself from the chaos of the day by cracking open my copy of The Ode Less Travelled, by Stephen Fry. This book on reading and writing poetry was given to me years ago by a friend who seems to have more confidence in my future as a poet than I did.
Throwing caution to the wind along with whatever sanity I had left, I swore the following oath which is in the book’s Foreward:
“I agree to abide by the terms and conditions of this book” which are to 1) take my time, 2) not be afraid, and 3) always have a notebook with me.
With that, I began the chapter on meter. The chapter contained an exercise which required that I write as many lines of iambic pentameter as I could manage in 20 minutes.
I failed and will not inflict the results upon you.
Now I think I am going to read some Keats and Shakespeare to drive it all home before going to bed.
Tomorrow starts another hectic day, but I think a little poetry study in the evening might provide some vitally necessary self-care for my creative soul.
I’ll let you know how that works out for me.
You Say You Want a Revolution….
I went to the Central Library Saturday because I was looking for a book on prosody. In light of that, somehow it seemed “poetic” for me to chose the study carrel with the word “Revolution” graffiti-ed into the table top.
I pondered this word for a while.
Someone wants to start a revolution?
To that I say: Instead of defacing and destroying property and people, sit down and write some poetry. Then see how the world will change.
ljg (c) 2013
Miss Pelican's Perch 