Book Review

Indestructible & Other Poems by Kristy Rulebreaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Indestructible is Kristy's sophomore effort as an indie author and poet. She is beloved for her contributions to social media circles, particularly the poets of 'G+' If you follow closely, you can see her evolution. She is experimenting with form and verse in interesting ways. I feel as though I am walking through life with her, and it is not sugar-coated. I appreciate her honesty. "The sun is posing but I don't have enough tears to cry for a sunny day that does not warm the heart" she says. In other verses, she gives us a fresh take on the gap between rich and poor. You almost feel as though justice has already been served: "I couldn't buy calm nights with my soul bright as lighter, I couldn't buy clean days with my heart as cotton tender." There is exciting talk about nature, and dreaming about nature overrunning the unnatural world and reclaiming it. In her poem "The wind has lost his mind" she personifies nature well to describe her grief. Her expressions are often spare and crystal clear. She opens windows into relationships and little loves of her life. I really love her work. She beckons me to the living of an authentic sorta life. The one and only way to live.


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Review: Vintage Munro

Vintage Munro by Alice Munro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Vintage series of books is great. Whomever made the selections of writings of contemporary authors did a fine job. The short stories in this book show why Munro won the Nobel Prize. Her power of description is second to none. Her characters may as well be in the room with you. There's a lot of small town Canada in here. The central characters are often revisiting the past through the present, when someone or thing catches their eye. I love the way Munro walks us seamlessly through time, often to explore the interplay of relationships between several generations of any given family. What time has done to them. What time has given them. The characters often have a delicate understanding of their own lives, it seems. Confronted with the opinions and memories of their relatives, trying to hold on to the dialectic without shutting down or falling apart. Like no other, Munro is able to draw the reader into the art of investigating her characters' lives, and feel the pain of separate truths.

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Blogger Richard Gibney's A to Z challenge on K

Just some of the Ks that you will find on this blog




Kari Rosvall: I highly recommend the book Kari wrote about her childhood as an adopted war baby and her life thereafter - she discovers dark secrets related to her origins, and details of a nefarious Third Reich breeding programme. Nowhere's Child is a terrific read. Kari struggles with identity not just of herself but the less introspective, political and national markers to which most people can subscribe. Nowhere's Child's got human rights, social justice, rootlessness, family, the meaning of home and - in fear of sounding glib - it's like the origin story for a superhero. In fairness, Kari Rosvall is a superhero! Read the book! Her co-writer, the unassuming and awesome Naomi Linehan, is on Twitter.

Kevin Bacon, ehh? Need I say more? Yes! Yes I must. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon can be found here.

Katya Mills: This wonderful scribe writes straight outta left-field in the tradition of Dickinson, Ginsberg and other American greats. But she's also a terrific, erudite and insightful interviewee. Her book series featuring Ame involves a subculture of somewhat vampiric creatures who prey not on human plasma, but on human fear. Katya's inimitable phrasing in her long fiction and poetry often shames me into wanting to write a bit more better. Check out her blogand blog.


Kit Kats: Bite off the ends of a Kit Kat finger, and dip one end into your beverage. Whaddaya got? A delicious filter-straw type dealio!



SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: The ends of your KitKat are called #ObesityTips - and a pinch on the lips is an inch on the hips!

That's enough from me anyway!

Review: Interview with the Vampire

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The reason I give this book 5 stars is related to the quality and style of the writing. Anne Rice is a writer's writer. I also felt like she understood her subject matter-- 'Vampires' thoroughly. She did her homework and she filled the characters out around the edges within which vampires must be contained.

Aside: [I will never understand how so many writers and filmmakers can decide to take license with vampires, and endow them with qualities vampires do not have! I know its the 21st century and everybody loves a vampire. But this does not give people license to turn vampires into vampires plus, or just give them horrible makeovers].

Anne Rice fortunately, is not among those who have been taking the species to the sewer in their awfully careless treatments all across the media landscape. (The 'Underworld' films are also an excellent example of vampires done right). Maybe I am a bitter goth from way back. Anyway, thank you Anne Rice for doing right by vampires. The others should go and make their own terrible monsters, and not be so lazy to call them vampires, or so greedy to capitalize on the trend!

The characters are interesting. The sense of humor is dark, sardonic caustic. The plots are thick. I did put the book down, for weeks at a time, but I read it twice and caught things the second time I missed the first time around. Anne Rice has sold so many books during her lifetime because her writing is bold, flashy, fun, and colorful. If you haven't tried her and you like vampires, check it out.

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Maze 2:14:2

In the last episode 2:14:1 -- "Oh, what would I do? My little sister was hooked on pills and could not be found. My best friend was crushing on me. The Pakis were on my case. Hendrix was slipping in and out my consciousness and wanted to help but was unable to come down to earth. Freddy was being Freddy. Black was hollowing out humans. Humans were being human. And my thirst was relentless. Oh! I really had to get away from it all..."

Book Two

Chapter 14:2

Maze 2:13:3 Storytelling

Book Two

Daughter of Darkness Series

Chapter 13:3

In the last episode 2:13:2  Kell is nowhere to be found. Ame is trying to help Freddy get some tools and Bless is standing around smokin menthols and playing her entitlement card and making jabs at her. The streets are gettin on her nerves. 

Book Review - 'The Virgin Suicides' by Eugenides

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The book is told from the perspective of a young boy (and his friends) in suburban Detroit whose lives are basically put on hold as they are captivated by a mystery of 5 girls in adolescence. They watch the girls from behind trees and fences and blinds and a treehouse where they have - over time - collected minutia (photos, hairbrushes, shoes, etc) related to the girls whom they almost publicly obsess over. Suicide is obviously (from the first page) a topic of great concern.

Eugenides writing style is accessible and engaging throughout. He finds delicious language to describe the most common (and boring) affairs of suburban white America in the 70s, irony, like the city's aspirations to save the Elm trees by removing them one at a time until they are all gone. Their is an underlying sadness in the story, related to us through various characters from the OCD mom to the alcoholic neighbor to the unemployed teacher; an impotence against the fate not only of these young beauties but also of the home, the street, the neighborhood, the culture itself. You wonder if anything is sacred anymore.

I had a lot of fun reading about these boys and there efforts to establish contact if not connection with the girls, how they go about it. They report back on their mischief and it's all very entertaining. There's a desperation which drives the narrative of the spies. How can they get around the carefully constructed bubble the parents (and the culture) have created, to touch the objects of their adoration?

Something strange happens. Eugenides power of characterization could have really brought the girls to life (and I did begin to have feelings and bias towards each and every one of them), however the premise and setup prevent us (like the boys) from getting to know these 'virgin suicides'. I found myself thirsting at times for more direct quotes and closer proximity to Lux and her sisters. So the established POV is very powerful this way. I'm not sure I liked this aspect of the book. I mean, I think I wanted to get a more intimate view of everything. It's not always fun to be made into a voyeur by the author. But it's his book! And so the mysteries are not always gonna unravel.

In the end you are left to make your own judgments about everything. The narrator has his opinion and gives it to us, but not in a preachy way. Mostly we are given an intimate window to a place (post white flight suburbs of Detroit, the automotive center of the universe) and time (1970s) which will never exist again. Which makes me happy, because Eugenides kinda immortalizes it all in this book, so maybe something is sacred, after all.


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Profile: filter systemics, twenty thirteen

She was pretty cool...
before she became lead singer by her own self-election
within the band she formed of her own vainglorious self-promotion
after years on the trail of herself (like a bloodhound) and her own self-unfolding...
in deinterlaced leaves of cascading simplicities.

She was pretty cool by unfair prejudicial standards.
Like teenage mutant ganja standards in the lone star state. Or one of the many states that share its borders, despite vehement sworn disassociation.  What made her cool, cooler, was the precision marching up of bands of heat. Such efforts of interstate hate would not go unnoticed. Unfortunately.

Her reputation bubbled up over bunsen burners, in the kinda legend-making labs only the usa could conjure. Some of the same labs that produced our torrential downpours of cultural insomnia and paranoia, within the context of widely consumed sheets of shards of glass. Ya. A greater misfortune could not have been told by the third of three eyes, in the great psychic trailer pantheon of the sky.

Outside, the lamentations of the past, present, and future loosely-affiliated yet heavily congregated fearful remnants of the war on drugs, were not enough to put out the fire. Perfectly phalanxed in picket line style, yet penetrable nonetheless. Penetrable as a whose-who of crackhead ho's short-on-crack and long on tar black.
Penetration was not even the word for it. Much more subtle, merci dieu. Like those black and white b-flick wannabe cowboys and draft dodgers and other escapades escape-e's wandering into some sunken like forest and high or low-stepping right into quicksand. Sucked into the earth. That kind of sucks. Kinda sux.

 firekiller by katya

This was twenty thirteen. This was filter systemics. Filter politics. Filter engineering. The language obeyed its master. Penetration became Permeation. And permeation defied most laws of geometry. Thus rendering the phalanx useless. And linguistically defunct. Thus turning up the dial on the lamentations. Which only made what sucked, suck worse. The filtercone for swaths of glass had not yet been perfected, by the labs situated conveniently across the street. They were too busy shrinking the nuclear families of warheads for the current fear lobbyists of nuclear war, by government decree, and the tax of psychosocialspiritual stressors on such an endeavor was so high, the barrier of entry was one wrinkle short of a homeland security sanctioned fingerprint. So what sucked worse, only sucked some more.

Ya. She was pretty cool and out of touch-like, and going cold now. Heading toward hypothermia and frozen hysterics. She and her minions would need to purchase a really cool team of youthful fronting lawyers, by cagey corporate costly law school standards, to even gain a fraction of a chance of a snowball in hell with a colonoscopy-probe-probability following on the ass of a seldom struck facebook page. Open the fucking fan club vault, minnie mouse. It's gonna be a reach!

by Katya Mills  @ kissilent.wordpress.com
July 2013

Rolling Allostasis -xi)

She was as unsuspecting as I had been in my third decade. She spaced on budgeting (heat and ac) in her summer heavy, winter heavy, urban gps. Her chakras registered (like christmas lights) the previously unappreciated, suddenly luxury shit, as artificial temperature adjustment. Her eyes gleamed silver. Hammered steel.

She came out of March half frozen, only to suffer in June (and beyond) perpetual dehydration as humidity crept up to a resting allostasis. Right before everyone and everything got really fuckin wet.

The truth dripped around out there, making puddles. Only to be splashed out of reach, again. Reflecting hammered steel.

She saw herself in reflection. She suffered, and by her suffering became more intimately connected with her reality. This time. Others would have to suffer more, to digest the whole raw deal.

I liked this about her. She countenanced truth. Yeah, she gave the world the middle finger sometimes. The warrior in her clawed eyes out. She knew. Truth need not eyes, to see.

the black flowers

About a month ago, I was riding my bike alongside the American River, looking for a place to stop and catch a breath. The mercury was in triple digit heat. I had been riding all day, and my ass was on fire. I found a spot to rest near the train tracks, north of Sacramento, and lay down my bike on a small embankment. The grass was lush green, and the wifi signal was strong and free.  I may as well have struck gold. I broke out my chromebook and started typing. Hallelujah.

In ten minutes time, I had found the zone.  That wonderful place where everything falls away including the mind, and the blessed divine channels right through me. I no longer cared that my ass was on fire. I was no longer distracted by pedestrians and cars. I forgot that I was thirsty. The sun, moon, stars, and sky all faded to black. I stopped worrying about the half-empty battery icon. I just sat there on that embankment, typing away.

Three black sprinklerheads rose out of the ground, almost to the second I fell into my zone. They were strategically placed around my bike, and the water shot out like liquid petals from black flowers. I was worried, but then smiled in a flash. Siddhartha could not have done better himself! The streams of water were washing my black chromoly frame in all the right places. And though my bike was beside me, the water was safely a half foot or more away. I settled back into my zone.

Five minutes passed and my spokes were glistening in the sun, baby! The wifi signal was busting out four bars or more. An invigorating signal. The sun was in the west, and my screen was well-situated facing the east. Glare-free. The conditions were optimal, and my zone was waxing something proper. God bless america.

That's when the black flowers subsided, back into the earth, beneath the lush green grasses around me. And all seemed well until four or more flowers rose up beside me and knocked me out the box. A vicious attack! I had to drop and roll to the right, to keep my chromebook from getting soaked. I was rattled. I lost my zone.

I stood up and looked all around me. I thought for sure somebody was remotely controlling these black flowers. It was close to April Fool's Day. Maybe some belated joke on me? Some city-payrolled slacker, with nothing better to do? But I could see no one. I had to sit my ass back down and try to get it back.

In five minutes time, the black flowers subsided. Clockwork. Not likely a plot against me. I glanced over to where they had been, irreverently, and caught a little rainbow in the air. Before the water fell out the sky. Then boom! A phalanx of flowers rose up and jacked me! Unbelievable. My keyboard got hit. My screen was shot up bad. All systems down, all systems, power down! I jumped to my feet and ran for safety. I wiped my baby down with the ends of my t-shirt, before I powered her back up.

I had to regroup. Not let it get to me. I situated myself in the demilitarized zone. On the sidewalk. The black flowers were ruthless. They popped up and sprayed me from the edge of the grass. I was stunned. I fell back into traffic. The horns sounded. Some bitch in a Charger sniped at me. Obviously she had never been up against the black flowers!

Clearly this was too good to be true. This oasis of internet and lush green grasses was a trap! The black flowers, they infiltrated the neutral area, shamelessly. I had to pack up and retreat. Then I looked back and saw my bike lying there. In the heart of the madness. I took a deep breath and charged in, the spray cutting across my ankles. I grabbed the bike by the horns and wheeled her about and out.

Soon the whole incident was behind me. It took me time before I could laugh about it. Atleast ten minutes. The shock wore off like lottery ticket scratchcover. My rims and spokes were shining beneath the weight of me, and I was back to cruising the riverside. My course was true as my wheels. Wind and steel and woman, united. Flawless!

And this, my carefully dried  and edited correspondence...from a post I once abandoned, water-logged. At the height of the mad rush of black flowers all around me. At the height of such madness I survived, one day, along the banks of the American River.

Not-To-Mention, mentioned #iii)

Let us circle the wagons back to the horse and the automobile, and the loving kindness with which the horse gracefully agreed to help us build our cities (Sacramento) rather than fight us. The horse may not be indexed generally with the great predators of the world. Still, no one can deny that many a lineage came to its conclusion, behind a horse.The horses today, grandsons and granddaughters of the workhorses of yesteryear, could they not be more grateful to the vision we have together realized? Would they not sit down at desks with feather plumes and fountain pens, armed with loving kindness, beside troughs of ink,  hoof under chin, contemplating before composing epic love letters to Mr. Ford and his former and now widely forgotten associates?

From Stallion, with love. From associated former groups of poor single mares without stallions, on welfare. On behalf of all the mares who were forced to raise their kids single handedly. Single mares living through the nightmares on the farm. The instability of the stable. Untold abuses at the hands of the stablehands. Former oatwinners, shackled to the yoke and the shoe. Chasing mechanical rabbits like the poor greyhounds before them. Stallions reduced to workhorses, side by side with the most meagre of asses! Superlative, indeed.

How tragic, this history. But how the tragedy has turned on a dime and become cause celebre, 21st century! For generations pulling haycarts of America's least wanted. The hayseeds. The rednecks. The layabouts! The long awaited uses of manure toward betterment has arrived... shit for sale! Pulll up a cart! Take a number! They will form in line to worship Mr. Henry Ford et al. They will form a horsepower V, if propriety dictates. You thought the line of humans would be long to give a hug and a handshake to Henry Ford? You were right. Motorheads from as far away as Villarcayo de Merindad de Castilla la Vieja, Spain. Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll of the UK. Rumour has it some expatriates of the ministry of this settlement, which translates loosely as St. Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel , fled to the States and bestowed all formerly assigned virtues upon dear Henry. After all, it was he who made the migration possible, in original Ford motorcars, out of the hollow and on to an industrial era barge (surreptitiously with a payoff to the captain) to cross our dear lady the Atlantic.

And still the humans are outnumbered! Legend has it, innumerable studs pay homage to the birthplace of Mr. Ford. And to his gravesite. And to those great ruins of Detroit, including where stood his first assembly line factory. Untold fillys and colts of untold single white mares,  untold crews of anonymous black stallion studs worldwide, together take on the distance and swim the seas if necessary to paw the sacred ground. To hoof and trample any man, woman or child stands between them and their iconic father. Regional roundups from California on east, have witnessed the escape of denizens of horses gathered for such human affairs, rarely without fanfare or incident, and most certainly never pressed and published (for the shame that would inevitably fall upon the heads of the sacrosanct cowboys involved) by local media quickly lassoed. These uprisings would have most certainly made for great press, indeed! Alas, the captive reporters were instructed by the cattlemen to shuck it off in the alleyways of local obits in that American calm regurgitation: death by natural causes. 

Of course calm does lie at the center of it all. Mares and studs, men and women, live strangely yet peacably together under the watchful eye of the Fords. The great state of Michigan would certainly be no more than a footnote of Canada, were it not for the legacy. And it is quite thoroughly understood, the great parts both horses and humans alike played in the fanning out via motorcar of an American zeitgeist or pioneering spirit full of life. The wonderfully yet still violently marked canvas of towns and cities that spread like butter from Detroit once and still buttressed by its man and horsepower from Dearborn and Kalamazoo. In memory of the heaping spoonful of bastard foals and fillys from such strangely named townships as Bad Axe, Climax, Hell, and Jugville.  Those poor begotten desperates from the far reaches of the Upper Peninsula.

Rolling Allostasis -vi)

She was a history junkie. A doctor. phd.
Examining old cultures and wars was her rush.
Anthropology was her fix.

She found what she needed to know while tabbing through her cerebellum's internal ledger, set to siddhartha style scrolling, which kept her mind rolling. Her attention was set to its highest ceiling, steady conscious, you know the feeling. Urgent were these matters she had to attend. She wanted to bum rush the majora with the minora. Do the hundred yard dash toward the cash money stash.

She liked to focus on that heated point where marginalized culture unite, center of the heart of the body of any creative work in motion. After studying each slide of her mind, she would leave it behind. Leave no trace. She set fire to the scrolls after thumbing through the seat of memory with a fine-toothed gnosis comb. You know, right beside the garden gnome. They both stood there, in the corn rows of her dome. And watched the paper separate at its perforations, fold up toward the center as the edges caught fire. The scarecrow shuddered. The crows, they flew away. The margins moved in to drop trails of smouldering ash. The paper chase got chased right out of town.

The revolution was on, like a wheel that's been trued. Effortless and unglued. This was where her mind joined the mind of the people. Territorial boundaries became blurred like some communist conspiracy coming into view. Empowerment via numbers was mathematically guaranteed. They hunted the bloated dumpster raccoons until they were treed. Reduced odds down to one, aka: no other possibility.

She prepared herself for rain. Premonition kept her sane.

Rolling Allostasis -v)

She was a student of hypnosis.
She knew many things.
How to take a moment in time.
How to crystallize the moment.
How to take the frozen product to the bank.
How to hypnotize.
How to capitalize.

Meningitis could not break her. She had specialists who handled these kinds of cases. She always saw them coming. A skin rash. A concurrent fever. Just barely into triple digits. Slight chills. An aching pain that rents space behind the eyes. Blurred vision now and again. Photosensitivity.

Please! she asked politely, no cameras! 

Whether they decided to listen and abide, would be major. Could be the turning point. Those with experience in dealing with her, understood. They turned their sights down. Lowered their guns. Disabled flashbulbs, at the very least.

You did not want to fuck with her.
She would take your ass to court.
WIthout hesitation.