EMPTY SUIT by Jock Callous
by Inkberrow
04/04/2010, 5:23 PM #
Shimmering spires of glass
and steel,
in muted testimony, rest.
In silent shrouds
and shattered dreams,
to tell a husband's worst,
and best.
Enjoined in hope
and bitter will.
Beneath the altar,
cold and dark,
strong hearts and weak
together beat,
where once I stood
in wondered awe,
and chased your vows
into the sky
so I could cheat.
Despair you not
my helpmeet's soul,
The hand of God
restraineth thee;
And comfort brings,
and solace gives,
to broken lives,
and faithful wives,
and those still free
to rut and troll.
Here in this place,
now lost to time,
where heroes die,
and mothers cry,
and strumpets hoot,
where now I stand
in jaded awe
and erase my vows
in an empty suit.
Copyright 2010, Heartstorm Press
Showing posts with label inkberrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inkberrow. Show all posts
04 April 2010
29 March 2010
Deconstructing Tim Burton's "Alice"
Deconstructing Tim Burton's "Alice"
by Inkberrow
03/29/2010, 12:19 PM #
is not easy to do, at least carefully. Saw the flick last night and boy do I love Helena Bonham-Carter, though not as much as Mr. Burton himself. Years ago, how many of us imagined being either Julian Sands striding purposefully across that Italian field in A Room With A View, or Ms. Bonham-Carter waiting for him? Even I did, and I was rooting all along for Daniel Day-Lewis as Mr. Vyse---he reminded me of someone.
Randomish observations:
----Tudor roses? Bonham-Carter's Red Queen visually----costumes, castle settings, hair---was deliberately made reminiscient of Elizabeth I. A brief shot of a family portait on the castle wall revealed a Henry VIII lookalike.
----Anne Hathaway's White Queen has no immediate allegorical analogue, but Johnny's Depp's Mad Hatter was portayed oddly enough as a stereotypical (Wonderland stereotypical) Scotsman (sorry Z-B), and almost all the other good and heroic characters reverted oddly to thick Scots accents when push came to shove. Hmmmm....
----The Wages of Colonial Empire a theme, then, as Elizabeth Red's warlike brutality is thankfully thwarted just in time? (Hey, who sent that Armada, anyway?) Our Alice, once back in Victorian England from Wonderland, pointedly rejects the stereotypically inbred prig of an English aristocrat who wants her, and opines boldly (and as it happens, prophetically!) about the vast oportunities respresented by trade and congress with.....China.
----Alice's father is named "Charles Kingsley". I didn't go to Wikipedia yet, but that's the name of the author of Westward Ho! and The Water Babies, children's lit classics for several generations but much less known today. I wonder if Kingsley was friends with Lewis Carroll, and Burton with Roman Polanski?
----Recalling say Joan of Arc and Pope Benedict's recent woes, is our modern-day Alice a hapless victim transformed (again) into another's uses? Not sure without checking---and maybe someone here knows---but I remember reading summat about Wonderland and rabbit-chasing being the real-life Carroll's elaborate, imaginative method of distracting and isolating a real-life teenaged Alice so that he could molest the object of his desires. "Drink me" and "Eat this" and hookah smoke thus had real-life analogues, a drugged girl being more pliant and less dangerous to Carroll before, during, and after his pleasure-taking.....
by Inkberrow
03/29/2010, 12:19 PM #
is not easy to do, at least carefully. Saw the flick last night and boy do I love Helena Bonham-Carter, though not as much as Mr. Burton himself. Years ago, how many of us imagined being either Julian Sands striding purposefully across that Italian field in A Room With A View, or Ms. Bonham-Carter waiting for him? Even I did, and I was rooting all along for Daniel Day-Lewis as Mr. Vyse---he reminded me of someone.
Randomish observations:
----Tudor roses? Bonham-Carter's Red Queen visually----costumes, castle settings, hair---was deliberately made reminiscient of Elizabeth I. A brief shot of a family portait on the castle wall revealed a Henry VIII lookalike.
----Anne Hathaway's White Queen has no immediate allegorical analogue, but Johnny's Depp's Mad Hatter was portayed oddly enough as a stereotypical (Wonderland stereotypical) Scotsman (sorry Z-B), and almost all the other good and heroic characters reverted oddly to thick Scots accents when push came to shove. Hmmmm....
----The Wages of Colonial Empire a theme, then, as Elizabeth Red's warlike brutality is thankfully thwarted just in time? (Hey, who sent that Armada, anyway?) Our Alice, once back in Victorian England from Wonderland, pointedly rejects the stereotypically inbred prig of an English aristocrat who wants her, and opines boldly (and as it happens, prophetically!) about the vast oportunities respresented by trade and congress with.....China.
----Alice's father is named "Charles Kingsley". I didn't go to Wikipedia yet, but that's the name of the author of Westward Ho! and The Water Babies, children's lit classics for several generations but much less known today. I wonder if Kingsley was friends with Lewis Carroll, and Burton with Roman Polanski?
----Recalling say Joan of Arc and Pope Benedict's recent woes, is our modern-day Alice a hapless victim transformed (again) into another's uses? Not sure without checking---and maybe someone here knows---but I remember reading summat about Wonderland and rabbit-chasing being the real-life Carroll's elaborate, imaginative method of distracting and isolating a real-life teenaged Alice so that he could molest the object of his desires. "Drink me" and "Eat this" and hookah smoke thus had real-life analogues, a drugged girl being more pliant and less dangerous to Carroll before, during, and after his pleasure-taking.....
19 January 2010
Once and for all folks
Once and for all folks---there IS a Heartstorm Press.
by Inkberrow
01/19/2010, 7:07 PM #
I think everyone can agree it is well-past time to write the ending to this sordid chapter of Fray history, and with this post I propose to do just that. Despite some uncharitable suggestions to the contrary over the years, I have learned not only that Heartstorm Press is a legitimate publishing house, but that its very name reflects the heroic struggle of its primary contributor to overcome seemingly unbearable heartbreak and loss, as the result of a painful divorce in late middle age. Loneliness, self-doubt, apprehension, anger, a gnawing sense of inadequacy and failure----these are the wages of virtually any divorce, under the best of circumstances. Now imagine the impact of unwished-for divorce upon a person who is otherwise the perfect person and spouse in every imaginable way. How does reconciling oneself to the Single Life Again in middle age really work for a beautiful, trim, slim, curvaceous, preternaturally youthful, witty, patriotic, progressive, multilingual, worldly, sophisticated, humor-filled, loving, generous, educated feminist yet insufficiently beloved spouse, who also happens to be a talented poet and a well-respected Fray regular?
The answer? Violent, wholesomely aggressive catharsis, by way of serial sexual improprieties and codependence with men of doubtful sincerity and worthiness, so as to inculcate a new feelings of superiority. And violent, aggressive catharsis in the form of heart-rending, stormy, lyric verse .....for Heartstorm Press, a legitimate publishing house created specifically to help pass the gall stone of divorce through creative visualization. Yea, the kidney stone of cruel failure, in the romantic relationship that matters most of all. (But let none call it a failure! More at mutual utility, if anything, a result to celebrate) Here once again after a long absence, is that signature poem which more than any other poem, by the writer who more than any other writer, made Heartstorm Press. The powerful piece which follows, by this woman, whose grit, single-mindedness, and raw courage unites with astonishing sensitivity and an undeniable poetic gift, will take the reader, like it or not, at breakneck speed through the very gamut of human emotions. And for those of us Fray regulars, a triumphant, celebrated career oeuvre is simultaneously explained and justified to anyone's satisfaction. Let no one henceforth dare question why she is what she is, or does what she is does. She shall tell us what is and is not, and we shall be the better for it, if within her ambit and good graces we are permitted to remain. Here, then, somewhat long, but well-worth the trip, is......
"N" is for Nightmares, by Colopoete (a nom de plume)
In Memoriam connubium, 2/15/98
Some nights are better
those nights when men
will come and stay,
blessing me with some company,
a respite from all this, but
some nights, men will not
come, or they come, but do not stay.
In their place slips the insidious
reminder, the chalk white
outline of Him from
the clouds, as white
as the White Cliffs of Dover,
chalky as White Sands---
though gypsum---
which so resembles tzatziki,
seen from thirty-thousand feet.
Then from the right side
of the three a.m. eye screen,
always from the right,
always one hand,
my dark quick hand
sleekly slides
the thin silver blade
(always from the right)
of a freshly sharpened knife
(like a midnight assassin, though
it is just before nine a.m.)
deftly across the neck of my
once-husband, our faithless
hawk-eyed pilot who wanted
nothing more than to fly his
elegant purple bird
across gleaming silver-blue
skies, sunny and cloud-lit,
to any place where I was not.
My dark hand completes
its slice, an elegant motion
corrupted by its deadly
mission, and
grabs the joystick
of his purple plane
as it heads for the hangar
of his glittering paramour
then, it falls to the cock-pit
floor, as my gleaming silver bird
knifes precisely into his
stunning, imperious lover,
Osterizer now.
The white neck slit,
the foul usurper's smirk
the deep blood flowing
the upscale catered food
and carafes of
Napa Valley red....all fall
together and melt,
Along with the now
black cloud, my melted
heart, complexes of
bitterness and hate,
thousands of days
thousands of nights
ten of thousands of posts
to unworthy posters on
unworthy fray boards
All surprised, all ash now
all bone, all gray now
all cloud. All dust now
one vast Cremation urn
on the mantle of a once-husband
caught fatally unaware.
Copyright Colopoete 2001, Heartstorm Press
Dedicated to all those who did not survive my marriage, and to my ex-husband, who did.
inkberrow
by Inkberrow
01/19/2010, 7:07 PM #
I think everyone can agree it is well-past time to write the ending to this sordid chapter of Fray history, and with this post I propose to do just that. Despite some uncharitable suggestions to the contrary over the years, I have learned not only that Heartstorm Press is a legitimate publishing house, but that its very name reflects the heroic struggle of its primary contributor to overcome seemingly unbearable heartbreak and loss, as the result of a painful divorce in late middle age. Loneliness, self-doubt, apprehension, anger, a gnawing sense of inadequacy and failure----these are the wages of virtually any divorce, under the best of circumstances. Now imagine the impact of unwished-for divorce upon a person who is otherwise the perfect person and spouse in every imaginable way. How does reconciling oneself to the Single Life Again in middle age really work for a beautiful, trim, slim, curvaceous, preternaturally youthful, witty, patriotic, progressive, multilingual, worldly, sophisticated, humor-filled, loving, generous, educated feminist yet insufficiently beloved spouse, who also happens to be a talented poet and a well-respected Fray regular?
The answer? Violent, wholesomely aggressive catharsis, by way of serial sexual improprieties and codependence with men of doubtful sincerity and worthiness, so as to inculcate a new feelings of superiority. And violent, aggressive catharsis in the form of heart-rending, stormy, lyric verse .....for Heartstorm Press, a legitimate publishing house created specifically to help pass the gall stone of divorce through creative visualization. Yea, the kidney stone of cruel failure, in the romantic relationship that matters most of all. (But let none call it a failure! More at mutual utility, if anything, a result to celebrate) Here once again after a long absence, is that signature poem which more than any other poem, by the writer who more than any other writer, made Heartstorm Press. The powerful piece which follows, by this woman, whose grit, single-mindedness, and raw courage unites with astonishing sensitivity and an undeniable poetic gift, will take the reader, like it or not, at breakneck speed through the very gamut of human emotions. And for those of us Fray regulars, a triumphant, celebrated career oeuvre is simultaneously explained and justified to anyone's satisfaction. Let no one henceforth dare question why she is what she is, or does what she is does. She shall tell us what is and is not, and we shall be the better for it, if within her ambit and good graces we are permitted to remain. Here, then, somewhat long, but well-worth the trip, is......
"N" is for Nightmares, by Colopoete (a nom de plume)
In Memoriam connubium, 2/15/98
Some nights are better
those nights when men
will come and stay,
blessing me with some company,
a respite from all this, but
some nights, men will not
come, or they come, but do not stay.
In their place slips the insidious
reminder, the chalk white
outline of Him from
the clouds, as white
as the White Cliffs of Dover,
chalky as White Sands---
though gypsum---
which so resembles tzatziki,
seen from thirty-thousand feet.
Then from the right side
of the three a.m. eye screen,
always from the right,
always one hand,
my dark quick hand
sleekly slides
the thin silver blade
(always from the right)
of a freshly sharpened knife
(like a midnight assassin, though
it is just before nine a.m.)
deftly across the neck of my
once-husband, our faithless
hawk-eyed pilot who wanted
nothing more than to fly his
elegant purple bird
across gleaming silver-blue
skies, sunny and cloud-lit,
to any place where I was not.
My dark hand completes
its slice, an elegant motion
corrupted by its deadly
mission, and
grabs the joystick
of his purple plane
as it heads for the hangar
of his glittering paramour
then, it falls to the cock-pit
floor, as my gleaming silver bird
knifes precisely into his
stunning, imperious lover,
Osterizer now.
The white neck slit,
the foul usurper's smirk
the deep blood flowing
the upscale catered food
and carafes of
Napa Valley red....all fall
together and melt,
Along with the now
black cloud, my melted
heart, complexes of
bitterness and hate,
thousands of days
thousands of nights
ten of thousands of posts
to unworthy posters on
unworthy fray boards
All surprised, all ash now
all bone, all gray now
all cloud. All dust now
one vast Cremation urn
on the mantle of a once-husband
caught fatally unaware.
Copyright Colopoete 2001, Heartstorm Press
Dedicated to all those who did not survive my marriage, and to my ex-husband, who did.
inkberrow
15 July 2008
The Best Years Of Our Lives
The Best Years Of Our Lives
by Inkberrow
07/15/2008, 9:51 AM #
Typically, I find myself top-posting when I have something I really want to complain about. Last night I witnessed a travesty on television, courtesy of the Bravo cable network. I'll also call it "farcical", because it was a special entitled "The 100 Funniest Movies Of All Time", an apparently sincere effort to list filmdom's all-time top comedies. Emphasis on "Of All Time" for purposes of this tirade, because this list broke all previous records for the kind of indolent, ignorant, self- or youth-referential twaddle which usually infects lists of this nature. This program was blithely but profoundly disrespectful of the contributions of countless great artists, and the "serious" professionals who appeared as guest commentators, such as John Landis and Rob Reiner, should be ashamed to be connected in any way with this monstrosity, even if their own films were deservedly featured along the way.
Now then---am I simply complaining about the prevalence of recent films, or their relative preference over older classics? Not hardly, though that's been the typical failing in such lists, and it's certainly not absent here in this Bravo abortion. It's so much worse than that. Digest this slowly: 1964's Dr. Strangelove, coming in at No. 56, was the oldest film on the list. Nothing worth listing.....before 1964. Altman's M*A*S*H was second-oldest (1970), hitting the list at No. 17 (just a few yuks short of No. 16, Old School, that crazy 30-somethings frat-house romp with Will Ferrell and Luke Wilson). Toss in the wonderful Harold and Maude and a few Woody Allen and Mel Brooks masterpieces, and it turns out that a grand total of ten or tewlve of the greatest film comedies of all time were released before the 1980s. We've come a long way, baby.
The horror....the horror....of the youth-driven entertainment biz's "Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia" consumerist mentality---and lack of integrity. It's not just that stars with current film contracts like Ferrell or Adam Sandler are favored over traditional fare: e.g. Sandler's The Wedding Singer at No. 6---yes, No. 6---edging out Blazing Saddles at No. 7, and WAY funnier than Young Frankenstein at No. 56, but less of a seminal comedy than There's Something About Mary at No. 4, or Shrek at No. 3.....all while Monty Python And The Holy Grail languishes at No. 40. No, not just unspeakably foolish gradations like that.
What about the fact that the likes of Will Ferrell's Anchorman rates the list, but Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot is absent? Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor remake appears, but no films whatsoever starring Jerry Lewis, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Holliday, or the Marx Brothers. We've got Ben Stiller's Dodgeball at No. 37, and his Meet The Fockers at No. 25, but no room on the list for Peter Sellers in Being There or his genius turn as Clouseau in A Shot In The Dark. I was transported by incisive criticism on the Bravo countdown....not from Leonard Maltin or Devid Denby---hey, gimme David Edelstein!---but from assorted twenty to twenty-eight year-olds, the likes of TV's Bachelor Bob and Chelsea Handler, who let us know, condidentially but authoritatively, that films like Legally Blonde, Happy Gilmore, School of Rock are among the greatest all-time film comedies.....we suspect in part because they've actually seen those films, of course, as opposed to non-raters like His Girl Friday, Harvey, or The Philadelphia Story......and in part because the list-raters aren't (gasp!)......old.
Youth is always interested in youth, in earlier days as now. But the degree of navel-gazing indolence is greater than ever before---not merely ignorance in the sense of a gap in knowledge, but supercilious rejection of any value, for themselves or even others, in what is not within their own ken or interest. The wise lose their wisdom---with the comic geniuses Rob Reiner knew himself and from his father's generation, he should not have lent his face and words to any level of validation for this Bravo atrocity. But then again, perhaps Reiner's in keeping with the signs of the times, where emotion trumps or redefines fact, and history is boring and soooooo yesterday. As Reiner would doubtless say---Obama '08!
inkberrow
by Inkberrow
07/15/2008, 9:51 AM #
Typically, I find myself top-posting when I have something I really want to complain about. Last night I witnessed a travesty on television, courtesy of the Bravo cable network. I'll also call it "farcical", because it was a special entitled "The 100 Funniest Movies Of All Time", an apparently sincere effort to list filmdom's all-time top comedies. Emphasis on "Of All Time" for purposes of this tirade, because this list broke all previous records for the kind of indolent, ignorant, self- or youth-referential twaddle which usually infects lists of this nature. This program was blithely but profoundly disrespectful of the contributions of countless great artists, and the "serious" professionals who appeared as guest commentators, such as John Landis and Rob Reiner, should be ashamed to be connected in any way with this monstrosity, even if their own films were deservedly featured along the way.
Now then---am I simply complaining about the prevalence of recent films, or their relative preference over older classics? Not hardly, though that's been the typical failing in such lists, and it's certainly not absent here in this Bravo abortion. It's so much worse than that. Digest this slowly: 1964's Dr. Strangelove, coming in at No. 56, was the oldest film on the list. Nothing worth listing.....before 1964. Altman's M*A*S*H was second-oldest (1970), hitting the list at No. 17 (just a few yuks short of No. 16, Old School, that crazy 30-somethings frat-house romp with Will Ferrell and Luke Wilson). Toss in the wonderful Harold and Maude and a few Woody Allen and Mel Brooks masterpieces, and it turns out that a grand total of ten or tewlve of the greatest film comedies of all time were released before the 1980s. We've come a long way, baby.
The horror....the horror....of the youth-driven entertainment biz's "Eurasia has always been at war with Eastasia" consumerist mentality---and lack of integrity. It's not just that stars with current film contracts like Ferrell or Adam Sandler are favored over traditional fare: e.g. Sandler's The Wedding Singer at No. 6---yes, No. 6---edging out Blazing Saddles at No. 7, and WAY funnier than Young Frankenstein at No. 56, but less of a seminal comedy than There's Something About Mary at No. 4, or Shrek at No. 3.....all while Monty Python And The Holy Grail languishes at No. 40. No, not just unspeakably foolish gradations like that.
What about the fact that the likes of Will Ferrell's Anchorman rates the list, but Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot is absent? Eddie Murphy's Nutty Professor remake appears, but no films whatsoever starring Jerry Lewis, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Holliday, or the Marx Brothers. We've got Ben Stiller's Dodgeball at No. 37, and his Meet The Fockers at No. 25, but no room on the list for Peter Sellers in Being There or his genius turn as Clouseau in A Shot In The Dark. I was transported by incisive criticism on the Bravo countdown....not from Leonard Maltin or Devid Denby---hey, gimme David Edelstein!---but from assorted twenty to twenty-eight year-olds, the likes of TV's Bachelor Bob and Chelsea Handler, who let us know, condidentially but authoritatively, that films like Legally Blonde, Happy Gilmore, School of Rock are among the greatest all-time film comedies.....we suspect in part because they've actually seen those films, of course, as opposed to non-raters like His Girl Friday, Harvey, or The Philadelphia Story......and in part because the list-raters aren't (gasp!)......old.
Youth is always interested in youth, in earlier days as now. But the degree of navel-gazing indolence is greater than ever before---not merely ignorance in the sense of a gap in knowledge, but supercilious rejection of any value, for themselves or even others, in what is not within their own ken or interest. The wise lose their wisdom---with the comic geniuses Rob Reiner knew himself and from his father's generation, he should not have lent his face and words to any level of validation for this Bravo atrocity. But then again, perhaps Reiner's in keeping with the signs of the times, where emotion trumps or redefines fact, and history is boring and soooooo yesterday. As Reiner would doubtless say---Obama '08!
inkberrow
23 March 2006
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