May 20, 2005

• Red Carpet Department:

  
  

  

  
  

  It is with great pleasure that I announce the creation of a new feature here on WhenWordsCollide: The ElectricPoetry “Words of Wonder Award of Excellence”

  
  

  I’ve been writing for over 35 years, and I have been reading for longer than that. I majored in English Literature in college at USC and planned to teach English at the high school level. Most of what I write is poetry, and until the advent of the internet, nobody much was able to see my poetry, since I have never published. While “internetting” for the past six or so years, I have found and championed, if only by the mere mention of their name, a few poets whose work is astounding. Starting with this entry, and to be repeated on a semi regular basis, I am presenting an “award” for meritorious poetic expression: “The ElectricPoetry ‘Words of Wonder’ Award of Excellence”. I will have a page on my personal Poetry Website, ElectricPoetry, to showcase the recipients and their work. 

  
  

  The first recipient is Sita Strangling, whose Xanga blog, “Razorwords”, contains some of the most well written and emotional soul baring poetry I have ever read (amateur or professional) She is in the process of compiling some of her best work for inclusion in a book she is intending to present to publishers, and is one of the “top ten” poets (listed 2nd) on the Xanga site “Non-Featured Content”. They assess her work thusly:
  “A poetic artist of carefully chosen words, emotionally woven and cultivated into an art form. Her style is lysergic, caustic, biting, and real. The words of her poetry shear through pretense and reveal the core of her soul, exposing it bare for all to read.”

  
  

  In her own words, Sita Strangling writes in her “about me” blurb on Razorwords:

  
  

  “Within hollowed halls with darkened walls, I walk the path of life…
  I saw myself within myself, as I struggled surviving strife…
  I write these words so silently heard before the sun gives way to night…
  and inside the dark, no flame – no spark will enter through my sight…”

  
  

  The “award” has been emailed to Sita, and of course the “full size” copy can be viewed by clicking on the image above.

  
  

  Here is a sampling of the “Poetry of Sita Strangling”. Congratulations, Sita. You may include your “acceptance speech” as a comment if you wish. You have made many a lonely night seem less lonely reading your work. I am fascinated by the blend of the macabre, beautiful, and personal aspects of your poetry, presented with chillingly stark metaphors and dripping eviscerally with the lifeblood of your existence.
  

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  “Genesis”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  
  In the beginning we were created.
  Primordial synergistic reactions
  of blue flame meeting gold.
  Things were much simpler then,
  with us, not being defined by name.
  How lucky were we to be the only ones
  to experience virgin air?
  It was all so new.
  We had no understanding of chemistry or physics.
  We did not know then what the term “war fare” outlined.
  We only knew that here we were.
  Naked, unashamed,
  eyes opened in the purest form of curiosity that has ever existed.
  We did not know disease, or suffering.
  We did not know time.
  We did not know New York City, or Baghdad, or even Jerusalem.
  We only saw here, the concept of there was not yet born.
  I find that those first days are barely reachable, anymore.
  So much has come to pass, and here we sit, you and I…
  Surrounded by the “fruits” yielded by our single betrayal.
  I often wonder, my love, what would have transpired…
  had temptation been offered for abortion.
  Maybe then, I would not be the worlds midwife of sin.

  
  

  
  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by Sita. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  “Daddy’s Hands”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  When I look at your hands, Daddy,
  do you know what I see?
  I see countless storybooks being opened,
  and pages being slowly turned …
  (So that I could see the pictures, too.)
  When I look at your hands, Daddy,
  I see innumerable tears that you so gently wiped away from my face.
  I see golden skin that bares the scars of hard work.
  I see your hands brushing my hair when I was so much younger.
  When I look at your hands, Daddy,
  I see my little fingers interlaced with yours.
  I see us walking together on a sweet summer day,
  until I become too tired to walk on, and then you carry me.
  When I look at your hands, Daddy,
  I see all those times in the back yard
  when you would push me on the swings that you had painted yourself… with those hands.
  Those are the same hands that held me after every bad dream.
  When I look at your hands, Daddy,
  I see your life in the markings and the calluses.
  I see you teaching me how to pray,
  showing me that blind faith isn’t so blind after all.
  I see you pushing me to be better, and comforting me after I fall.
  I love your hands, Daddy,
  but what I love most of all is the way they reach out to me
  every time I need them the most.
  Your hands are healing things,
  and I thank you for sharing that gift with me.

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by SLT 80. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  
  “Pleading to the Deaf Ears of the Dead”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  
  I remember our first meeting.
  It was your birthday…
  a blind date arranged by Satan, himself.
  I was confident, cool-
  Wrapped in leather and drinking a double scotch.
  You stepped right out of my grandfathers old photographs…
  Black pin striped zoot suit, unfiltered cigarette hanging out of your mouth.
  Your eyes found mine as you slid those opaque sunglasses down your nose.
  I wanted to run- but I stayed,
  my curious nature anchoring me to the bar stool.
  You sat next to me, wasting no time on introductions, and said
  “You know you’re going to marry me, right?”
  I was so taken aback…
  for quite possibly the first time in my life I was rendered speechless.
  My voice was only the first thing you stripped from me.
  I balked at your arrogance,
  yet not an hour later we were dining on curry chicken
  across a candle lit table.
  Thai cuisine is only the first thing you introduced to me.
  That “date” was the catalyst to the violent destruction that became my world.
  You were good at your job, horned angel.
  You will get no argument from me there.
  I was entranced, hypnotised, controlled by you from that night on.
  Even now that you have been gone for so long,
  your memory is still clawing at my bones, poisoning my veins,
  creating an epidemic of nightmares that greets me each time I close my eyes.
  I knew better… I knew better,
  but your hands were such magnificent tools.
  They dressed me, they brushed my hair,
  they taught me how to dance to 19th century Italian arias,
  they lit fires, and they traced my curves until I fell asleep
  wrapped in a set of iron corded arms.
  It only took a few weeks before I was exactly as you wanted.
  An anatomically correct paper doll
  that you could eloquently dress in fabrics of your choosing,
  or leave bare except for the mandatory diamonds you loved
  dripping from my porcelain neck.
  I thank God for arranging the circumstances that followed…
  the shattered bones, the screaming, your schizophrenic need to terrorize.
  I am thankful for the courage, the insight,
  the wisdom to walk away from an abuse that I still do not understand.
  Still, all of that chaos and turmoil is not the mother of my nightmares…
  that came two years later.
  Two years of putting you behind me and struggling to regain “normalcy”.
  You know the day I’m speaking of… I know that you do.
  They day you found me, reached out to me, suffocated me in your despair.
  My nightmares… my nightmares were born
  at approximately 7 PM on a humid summer evening.
  The same evening your dreams came true.
  The same evening you consummated your revenge on me for leaving.
  I remember it so clearly…
  Your hand raising to your face, barrel pointed in your mouth…
  One breath
  One blink
  One shot
  One brain sliding down a blood sprayed wall
  One prayer for your soul
  One of my hands closing your eyes
  One minute of pure, delusionary shock…
  These ingredients had synergized and created
  so many visions, so many nightmares,
  that my sleep can not hold them all.
  You haunt me every moment that I am awake, as well.
  How’s that for revenge?

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2004 by SLT 80. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  
  “Quid Pro Quo”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  I paint your name over and over on these walls
  with my own blood.
  I am trying to bleed you out of my system,
  out of my memories,
  out of my nightmares.
  Your voice is still reverberating
  in the emptiness of my skull,
  where your words have eaten away
  everything of substance that once existed there.
  Your eyes, and their maniacal blue fury
  are still burned into the backs of my eyelids.
  I can not escape you, even in darkness.
  So I bleed more.
  Buckets of crimson coppery smelling life,
  fighting, racing in droplets,
  coating every object in their path.
  You can no longer look through my windows,
  you only see the color of me.
  Do I haunt you in any manner?
  Do you still hear me breathing at night?
  Do your arms wrap around your pillow
  as you imagine me whispering your name?
  Do you still smell my hair on your bed?
  It has been a long time…
  but I know I will always exist
  in the midnight of your memories.
  Do you bleed me out, as well?
  All of the unconditional,
  all consuming,
  awe inspiring,
  smiles, winks, and fingertip kisses…
  do they trickle down your spine
  the same way your words,
  your screams,
  your deceptions run down mine?
  I doubt it.
  You always hated the color red,
  but loved the fact that I wore blood
  with such indignation.
  Once upon a time,
  you were in love with your ability
  to make me invisible.
  These days,
  I am in love with the fact
  that while you may never stop trying…
  I will not ever be invisible again.
  I am the color red,
  outlined in a classy shade of rage,
  and in my hands
  I possess any power
  you ever had over me…
  Ironic that you too
  are now the color of a sun ripened strawberry.
  Are you surprised
  to see your wild card in my hand?
  I’ve been holding it for quite sometime.
  There is no statute of limitations for Karma, my love.
  I give her a kiss…
  and prepare to be avenged.

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by Sita. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  “Terminus ad Quem”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  
  The street lamps painted our nights
  the colors of sickness and suicide.
  Mankind let out one collective,
  monotonous cry,
  in denial of the destruction
  of our human race.
  Blame raining from codependent mouths
  in the final moments of a failed civilization.
  The only possible recourse for our salvation
  is the disposal of the puppet strings
  that dance us along this darkness.
  We are a race in love with the night.
  We feed off of the light of the moon,
  and we are only truly free
  when the shadows cloak us
  from this world
  that we refuse to take responsibility for.
  We are engaged in global homicide,
  spreading pandemic disease
  on the streets of our home.
  Soon we will be an extinct people,
  non victims of our own self indulgent,
  narcissistic lust for ruination…
  A biochemical craving to be unruly.
  Do you really think heaven will exist for us,
  after killing the mother of all life?
  I water her earth with my few remaining tears,
  my own fluid farewell…
  As for you…
  we’ll meet our fates together,
  in the synergistic dark undoings
  we have consummated through our history.
  All will be judged.

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by Sita. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  
  “Chimera”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  
  I wonder what she would think
  if she knew that a virtual stranger
  was living vicariously through her past.
  Sometimes it is the only way I can breathe.
  Through a nightly ritual
  of astral osmosis,
  I walk the fluid hallways
  of her memories.
  I sift through the poloroid shots
  of each night that she lay in comfort,
  listening to sounds of security echo
  from her insubstantial heart.
  While she was gathered with iron protection,
  and a soft breath gracing her plastic cheekbones,
  I lay in my own conglomeration of memories wondering
  Why her?
  Just one of those silly questions, I suppose.
  In my most genuine moments,
  there isn’t much of myself that I would not give
  to be her for fractions of a second.
  In those few stolen heartbeats,
  there is much I would change.
  I would make her understand
  that the breath that had so lovingly skated along her skin
  was much more than mere air.
  She was in the company of an angel the entire time,
  who would brush the tears from her dreams away
  with the gentle passing of his pleading wings.

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by Sita. All Rights Reserved.

  
  

  
  “Cycling…”
  Poetry by Sita Strangling

  
  

  
  I, too, shall die.
  I do not know
  When my demise will rise up to greet me.
  I do know
  That greet me, it will.
  I pray that it is not quiet,
  That it does not gently rap upon my door.
  I pray that it is just as loud
  As my life has been.
  I do not want the insult
  Of going peacefully,
  Inside my labyrinth of dreams.
  Let me be awake.
  Let me be alert.
  Let me feel this life
  Slip from my shell
  With every sense that I possess.
  In my final moment,
  Let me know that I lived!
  Let there be no mourning,
  No tears,
  No regrets…
  It is the completion
  Of everything I have worked for.
  Dying is the end
  Of one journey,
  And the birth of another.
  No, let me not go quietly.
  Let me go to the sound of
  War drums and
  The native chants of my ancestors.
  Let me go in the middle of the day,
  While the sun burns into my eyes
  One final time.
  Let me go alone,
  With no one there to hold my hand…
  Let my death mirror my life in all ways.
  I do not know
  When it shall come a’knocking…
  But let it knock loud and furiously
  Before they lay this tired, broken body to sleep.
  I want the last words I hear to be
  “Well at least she lived…
  LOUDLY…”

  
  

  ©Copyright 1992-2005 by Sita. All Rights Reserved.
  
  

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  I am sure all of you will join me in congratulating this well deserving poet, my “Poet Laureate of This Week” at least in the halls of Xangadom. Future awards presentations will be made to artists, photographers, humorists, and journalists (meaning in this case, journal writers who use their Xanga blog to interestingly portray their own lives). Some of these recipients will be found among my readers, my sub list, and Xanga in general as I go “blogsurfing”. There will be no “submission process”. This is an “individual presentation” presented by an individual, moi. I hope to further stimulate the process of interaction amongst Xanga bloggers with this new feature. I read blogs very closely, and even if I come upon a “new one”, if it has ‘back pages’ then I wander among them at my leisure. I am constantly surprised and overwhelmed by the creativity and intelligence I find among the “just plain folks” on the internet, and Xanga in particular. This award has nothing to do with Xanga. “ElectricPoetry” , along with AllThingsMike, is my own website. I use Xanga merely as a portal to my sites. The award is presented by ElectricPoetry and AllThingsMike.
  

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  EDIT: 6:42am pdt. If anyone has noticed too many “words” and not enough “images” on this week’s posts, my apologies, I do like to mix the “literature” and “art” entries. Today was to be a “Yes, But Is It Art? Gallery” post, and I haven’t presented a PhotoPost this week. So be prepared for a barrage of art and photos in the days to come. I believe this weekend I might be visiting one of my favorite art museums, the Getty, which allows indoor photography. The museum is “free” which is a good price in these days of nearly 3.00 a gallon gasoline.
  

  • 8:25 am
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