national poetry month day 14

My father thought it bloody queer,
the day I rolled home with a ring of silver in my ear
half hidden by a mop of hair. 'You've lost your head.
If that's how easily you're led
you should've had it through your nose instead.'

And even then I hadn't had the nerve to numb
the lobe with ice, then drive a needle through the skin,
then wear a safety-pin. It took a jeweller's gun
to pierce the flesh, and then a friend
to thread a sleeper in, and where it slept
the hole became a sore, became a wound, and wept.


At twenty-nine, it comes as no surprise to hear
my own voice breaking like a tear, released like water,
cried from way back in the spiral of the ear. If I were you,
I'd take it out and leave it out next year.

- Simon Armitage

national poetry month day 15

Song

The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction

the weight,
( the weight we carry/is love )

- Allen Ginsberg

(no subject)

I now have a forochel in my room. She's visiting for a couple of days, and today we watched The Eagle while eating dinner - man, that is a terrible film, but it made me think. Rundown: it's about a Roman who goes to the north of Britain with his slave and gets captured by a tribe of which his slave is a member, upon which the Roman becomes his slave's slave.

(forochel: "Are you chatting to someone now?"
me: "No, I'm telling the Internet about The Eagle."
forochel: "IT SUCKED!!!")

ANYWAY. The point is, why has this trope not been used in any slavefic I've ever read? It made me think interesting thoughts, about, uh, the reversal of roles that people play out of necessity when they're operating within (for the lack of a better word) society.

(forochel: "Tell them I am eating all your oranges.")

I would read a slavefic that used this particular plotline. Hell, I would watch a movie that executed this plotline, all over again, except better. I don't have the strength to watch an equally crappy movie - not after The Eagle.

Here is a video that amused us very much when we took a break from watching The Eagle: William & Kate: the official trailer

You're welcome.