Poem To A Mechanical Venus Fly Trap

The following poem is brought to you by Parent Bloggers Network and The Discovery Channel's motion activated Venus Flytrap.

Don't forget to scroll down to the previous post and play Liar Liar Pants On Fire!

I know...two posts in 24 hours. It's crazy creative time here at Chateau Halushki. Mostly, I'm just hopped-up on caffeine.



Poem To A Mechanical Venus Fly Trap

Oh, thing of nature, natural now no more!
The Carolinian bog you disavow;
the tannic waters gone, the smell of salt
now only beads of sweat upon my brow
as I struggle to release you
from this g*d-damned
clamshell packaging.

Oh travesty! Oh horticulture’s sin!
Your synthetic sprayed-red claws cannot aspire
to real-life crimson lobes like velvet lips,
twin labium carnivorous with desire
for bug flesh

and perhaps
that’s a good thing;
there’s only so much Georgia O’Keefe
I can explain in one afternoon.

No rhizome ‘neath your stem - No! Just a cage!
No sticky mucilage, just a trap door;
Your action triggered by three double-As,
A pool of sugar water is the lure.

We placed you in the sun near yellow mums,
near butterflies and bees in springtime’s dance;
we checked you every day for captured bugs,
but all you lured was seventy-thousand ants.

My kids think you are “neat”, I guess it’s true;
though do I need more Made In China stuff?
Especially when we could have captured ants
with cherry cola in a paper cup.

Oh, robot bug trap, worry not your fate!
The summer's long, I'll wager you'll catch bees,
and during winter surely you'll find worth:
you'll make an excellent conversation piece.


-----------------------------

Okay, that was a little far out for a review.

Honestly, my kids - ages 6 and 9 - think the Venus Fly Trap is da bomb. And because I know that you're wondering, yes, they tried sticking their finger into it to see whether or not the Venus Flytrap would "eat" their finger. And okay, yeah, I tried it, too. The answer is, no, if you're a kid, you probably can't get your finger far enough into the contraption to make the trap close on it; but, yes, if you are an adult, you can get your finger far enough into the contraption to trip the trigger and make the trap close.

And no, it doesn't hurt.

I'm fairly sure that the batteries will outlast the novelty. It's a cute idea, but really now, back in the day, I caught a lot of bugs with a glass jar and my own ingenuity. And a few old lollipops. I'm not sure that I'd spend gas money on a mechanical Venus Fly Trap when glass jars are a dime a dozen.

Sometimes I Get Angry At God

But He's a big guy. He can take it.

Abba, Father, Abba.



A prayer, continued…

in Beslan’s School, continued…


Abba,

we cannot imagine. What father
would not rush toward the guns,
throw himself into the flames

bare-chested, beating fists
against gray cinder block
Take me, take me instead,

lifting cars, facing trains head on,
then cutting off his own arms,
put her illness into me,

and knowing if he could
he would? This is no way
to teach a child -

first day of school,
bathed and combed and
brand new shoes,

trusting to walk on, clutching
three pink roses tied in silk;
a simple act of faith.

Are You not almighty?
Can You not explain to us
these lessons of the soul,

but spare the rods, the rows of
bombs taped over naked children
suffering three long days - not hours -

bleeding from a thousand wounds,
flesh burned raw, pierced hands
reaching from a hundred graves?

Is this your only discipline:
this grace-filled exercise in pain,
this sacred because I said so,

while we cry, powerless
to resurrect as You raised-up
Your boy and brought him home?

This method is divine
slaughter once again;
broken bodies weight our arms

as we cut out our own hearts,
and scrub the lintels with our blood
against such testing of
our love -

and, oh,
how hard to call you
Daddy on this day.

Eggplant, Oh Eggplant!

I was cooking eggplant parmesan today.

This is the first time ever that I’ve attempted cooking eggplant parmesan. It looked like a relatively easy recipe with something like six lines of instruction. Simple, right? Except, at the first line I began to panic:


“Peel eggplant and cut into 3/8 inch slices.”

3/8 inch?

Doesn’t that sound a bit…precise?

I know, cooking is just as much science and chemistry as it is art, but really…3/8 inch?

If the recipe had said ½ inch you’d figure “Eh, ½ inch give or take. I’ll let recollection be my guide. That looks to be about ½ inch riiiiiiiiggghhhht there.” CHOP!

½ inch, whole inch…they sound like suggestions, right? You never saw Julia Child sautéing with a slide rule in her hand. And that loud Cajun guy, whosit…Emeril. He just picks up handfuls of spices and throws it in the pan. BAM! He doesn’t say “ Now add 3.14159265 ounces of spicy stuff to your shrimp pie and stir at 37 strokes per minute.”

I can’t do precise. This is why you don’t want to hire me as the architect for your new house. Graph paper? Peh. A line here, a line there and presto! Your powder room toilet is now placed in the middle of the family room and isn’t that convenient during those hour-long HBO series without the commercial breaks?

Anyway, measuring eggplant into 3/8 inch slices may be okay when Frank Lloyd Wright is making dinner. What I need to find is a cookbook for the spatially and mathematically challenged. I need a cookbook for slacker-liberal-arts-major types.

I need The Poet’s Cookbook.


Eggplant Parmesan from The Poet’s Cookbook

Ingredients

• 2 eggplants, broad and boastful in their purple magnificence!
• Salt! Singing, crystalline jewels of the kitchen!
• One can- of size and shape ready-made to fit the hand of Zeus - filled with whole peeled tomatoes, bloody stumps recollected from the fragile bodies of lesser gods
• 1 clove garlic, that tiny heart of evil sprung up from Satan’s footprint, peeled and minced and set inside one's souls
• Olive oil, enough to fill Dante’s shoes
• Freshly ground black pepper in amounts which would cover the heads of four angels
• Flour! Flour! Flour!
• Fine dry breadcrumbs strewn across the counter. The muffins weep to see the slaughter.
• 4 large eggs, beaten…somewhere…a chicken runs to find its head.
• Fresh mozzarella cheese, the firm round weight of it reminds me of the Mutter Museum, we stood before the Secret Tumor of Grover Cleveland, the glass case between us and infamy, our tender amour sliced forever in morbid cross-section
• Parmesan cheese…much…much…
• Packed fresh basil leaves, parsley waits at the door and bids her love farewell.

Directions

1. Cut eggplants into slices the thickness of 12 fairy wings. Arrange one layer in the bottom of a large colander and sprinkle evenly and generously with salt. Pray and weep with misunderstanding. Repeat with remaining eggplant. Weigh down the slices with a couple of plates and the first five stanzas of “Howl”. Let drain until the meaning becomes clear.
   
   
2. Commingle and unite tomatoes, garlic and olive oil. Fill two runcible spoons with salt and pepper. Besprinkle upon Italy’s holy trinity.
   
   
3. Drain and press down upon eggplant with leaden hands and disposable towels. In a wide, shallow bowl, combine flour and breadcrumbs. Pray and weep with great sorrow, as Penelope once did. Pour beaten eggs into another wide shallow bowl. Place a large, deep skillet over medium heat, and pour in enough olive oil to drown the small sorrows of sparrows in October. When oil is shimmering -as the ashen light of Venus - dredge the eggplant slices first in the flour mixture, then in the beaten egg, then through the mists of discontent. Working in batches, slide coated eggplant into hot oil and fry until golden brown on both sides, turning once. Pray and weep for all that has been lost.
   
   
4. Preheat oven to the inferno of Hell’s third circle. In the bottom of a glass baking dish large enough to hold Sylvia Plath’s last breath, spread some tomato sauce in the shape of her father’s black shoe. Top with eggplant slices. Top eggplant with mozzarella slices. Sprinkle with Parmesan and basil leaves and think of the snows of the Tyrol, though not pure or true. Close the oven door…close the oven door….
   
   
5. Repeat and close the oven door…close the oven door....
   
   
6. Bake until cheese has melted and the top is slightly brown and the woods have filled up with snow (about 30 minutes). Allow to rest at room temperature before serving. Pray and weep with gratitude and ancient gestures.

Enjoy!

A Perfect Lemony

While I’m holed up with a fussy baby, walking and joggling, sitting every forty-five minutes to nurse, and having given up entirely on trying to type one-handed (Okay, baby! Okay! I hear you down there squarking in the swing! Give momma one more second with her computer!)

…trying to type really fast with two hands to the tune of a grumping little grumpus…

See, this is why I have blogarrhea. Why I don’t write anything for two weeks and then BLAM I put up a 45 page post on breastfeeding or bats. (Just be glad I left out the footnotes and index.)

Anyway, I’m giving out another Perfect Post Award, this time for the month of September to my dear friend Lemony at Lemon Parade.

I love my Lemony.

A few years ago when I was just getting back in saddle what with the words and the phrases and the stringing them together to make sentences, Lemony and I were in a writers’ workshop together. We tweaked each other. We nudged each other. We told each other “You can do it, you can do it! Knock that dust off your knuckles and get down, sister, get down!”

We said, “Tell me more. And now a little bit more. And now tell me even more about what you don’t think anyone has the patience to listen to, what you thought couldn’t - or rather shouldn't - be time wasted on words; the notions and feelings and times of your life that you think are just too ordinary, too humdrum, too just-another-lone-woman-with-kids-in-a-house-somewhere that they aren’t worth the keystrokes. I want to hear what you have to say. I want to hear your voice tell your story from your corner of the living room."

The story of grocery shopping with a child…

The story of a broken sink…

The story of a little girl whose definition of “ordinary” is painfully unthinkable...


And the story of her own little girl putting on her backpack and new sneakers and with absolute faith in the world, walking on toward her first day at school.


Sometimes, it’s all so sublime, these ordinary moments.

Sometimes, you start to write it all down, all this ho-hum, humdrum ebb and flow of everyday life, and the ordinary beauty is so overwhelming that mere sentences aren't enough.

Sometimes, it’s all so wonderful... you break into poetry.

And it becomes something extraordinary.


And sometimes, you say it all perfectly in 50 words or less.


A Perfect Post for September

Space from Lemon Parade

Smooches, Lemony.

You're perfectly out-of-the-ordinary.


Check out Petroville and Suburban Turmoil for the entire list of September's Perfect Posts.

Three Odes To Trash Day

Ah the joys of trash day and obsessive-compulsive nesting!

There's nothing like a day of unsentimental purging to really bring out my creativity! Enjoy!

(With sincere apologies to William Carlos Williams, Shakespeare, and Joyce Kilmer)



This Is Just To Say

I have tossed out
the speakers
that were in
the basement

and which
you were probably
saving
for your dream career as a hip hop DJ

Forgive me
they were blocking
the cool white door
of my front
loader washer.

Let Me Not to the Old Clothes I Do Find

Let me not to the old clothes I do find
Admit impediments. Junk is not junk
Which alters when it suddenly brings to mind
Some old ex-boyfriend, ‘tho he was a hunk:
Oh no! it’s still an ugly pinstriped blouse
That’s cut too low and too big in the bust;
He only gave it to you (the big louse!)
Because his ex returned it in disgust.
What a cheap bastard! Why’d you ever stay?!
Okay, the sex was good, but otherwise…?
When you went out to eat he’d never pay;
You put up with less crap from other guys.
He was jerk-off, toss it in the trash:
Good riddance to the blouse and his sad ass.

Tchotchkes

I hoped that I should never see
A Precious Moments figurine.

A knick knack of a droop-eyed kid,
They freak me out and always did;

I got one once, from my dear aunt,
I keep it hid behind a plant;

But when she comes to visit me
I put it on top the TV;

Some think my gratitude just sucks;
I’m sure that thing cost thirty bucks.

Thirty dollars! What the heck?!
A five-inch chunk of porcelain dreck!

But I still keep it; that tells you what?
I’m not the heartless snob you thought.

So just back off, I‘m not so bad;
I couldn’t make my auntie sad.

Tho when my aunt does pass away
This thing is headed for eBay.