Poppy Z. Brite's Blog, page 79

Night of Small but Unfortunate Encounters

1. As I am putting trash out, a dragonfly buzzes into the mudroom. I love dragonflies, as they are both beautiful creatures and friends of the gardener, so I turn off the indoor light, hold the door open, and as this big insect is buzzing around my head, holler, "Go to the light! Go to the PORCH light! Go -- " Instead, the dragonfly decides to go for the crack of light under the other door, which leads into the house. In a flash, a black paw with claws extended comes under the door, smacks hi...

St. Mary's Cemetery

I attended Milton's funeral but not his burial, since I tend to feel those are mainly for the family. Today I took a long walk through St. Mary's Cemetery where he was buried: an Uptown cemetery that used to be quite grand but whose newer section is kind of a potter's field, filled with poor people and poorly maintained. I had some idea that I'd be able to find Milton's grave, but of course I couldn't, so I just took pictures of every fresh-looking grave I saw. Some other stuff, too.

I made a ...

Oiled Word Dream

Last night I dreamed I was lying on a beach dictating words into a tape recorder. Instead of going into the microphone and being recorded, the words kept slipping into the water and washing back up a little while later, covered in oil, ruined and unrecognizable.

For the record, I've never written anything via dictation, though I have watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas way too many times in the past week or so.

For Milton

Yesterday I attended the funeral of a friend who lived a difficult and often painful life, yet always got the most happiness he could out of what little he had. There's a lot I would like to say about Milton, but I'm not ready to do it. For now, this poem is for him and all the other poor black men in New Orleans who die from "natural causes" at ages like 49 simply because nobody in a position to help gives a fuck about them. It happens all the goddamn time.


Missing Dates

by William Empson

Slowl...

"White Widow"

I hesitated to post this due to the concern troll who went nuclear when I posted my review of crack in 2007, but then I remembered my new philosophy, which is "Fuck it." And this shit isn't even a drug, it's a "drug."

Inspired by Hunter S. Thompson's real-time reviews of actual drugs, I wrote this two days ago and can say that so far there have been no further effects (*picks up flyswatter and waves it around head*).

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This is an experiment. I am qualified to ...

"Vienna" & "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"

OMG, you guys. I wouldn't normally start a journal entry with one of those acronyms, but when you find/rediscover an artist you like with a large body at work you can gulp down at your leisure, you get a bit fanboyish, or at least I do. (Those proud, silent few of you who knows what "D,TIR,R,R,R,RFU" stands for already know this, but WE DO NOT SPEAK OF IT.) So I have to say that I've been listening to The Stranger, and yes, OMG, y'all who told me about the underratedness of "Vienna" -- HOLY F...

Addendum: The Lost Souls

I feel like my current, old-farty self has been getting off some pretty good jokes on my young, too-cool gothy self lately. Forgot to mention that I recently learned one of Billy Joel's early bands was called The Lost Souls. HAR! I would never have used the name if I'd known that when I was 19! The horror! The horror!

I'm Really Sorry About This

... but I'm too hyped-up to read and I don't feel like going out, at least not this early (I forgot it was Friday), and I've felt compelled to write this damn thing for days now.


I have a two-part confession to make. One: I've liked Billy Joel since I was 12, which was also the first time I ever dropped a bit of music into a story. "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" was on the radio, and Sergeant O'Leary was walking the beat, and I wrote him into a tragic tale of a poor boy who takes a rich girl o...

Garden Report

I will not dishonor my beloved (if slightly bedraggled) garden by putting this entry behind a cut, but I will say that if you don't care about gardening, you can pretty much skip this one.

TOMATOES

Finished. We get our big crops of delicious summer tomatoes in May/June. Stinkbugs completely ruined mine last year, so this year I grew them in containers (not sure why I thought that would help, but it seemed to, though they had to be watered twice a day) and tried more resilient varieties (Big Bee...

Helling Around

I woke up very late today and found that I could not get through the newspaper. My brain just refused to process it. So instead of continuing to slam my head against murdered babies and pipelines and global overpopulation and reports that national news media are saying the BP oil disaster is allllllllllll fixed now, I got online and booked a room in a luxurious Amsterdam hotel where I've always wanted to stay but never have. This is rapidly turning from the Fuck Hurricane Season/BP/Fifth Anni...